Learning Photoshop Online
January 30, 2007
I’ve found myself playing around with Photoshop CS more and more lately. I used to be into graphic design and art but to this day I really never started looking at the cool things that can be done in Photoshop CS. I am not a pro by any means but I do enjoy messing and playing around with this program a fair bit and when I muster the courage I may try out Illustrator next.
Because the internet is such a great tool to be used there are plenty of Photoshop related sites that are truly great for the beginner.
PhotoshopLab.com – I’ve been looking at this site for some time now and it’s got a great wealth of information related to Photoshop. The tutorials are laid out pretty cleanly and lead the reader with visual queues through the page. All in all a great little site for learning some Photoshop-ing!
TutorialOutpost.com - Damond was nice enough to point out this site when i asked him for some recommends on Photoshop Tutorials.
Feel free to pass along some of your favorite Photoshop tutorial sites.
Luc
Firebug: New Bad Boy Plug-in for Web Developers
January 28, 2007
I am all about web tools that make things easier for everyone and that allow you to use them for free so when I came across a utility called “Firebug” that allows developers to edit, debug and monitor CSS, HTML and JavaScript from live web pages I was definitely interested to read a little more and test it out because its open-source meaning “free”.
Cool Features of Firebug
Unlike other editors that edit and preview in an almost static mode, Firebug does it all from a browser based online mode which is pretty different but interesting way to do development work and site editing.
Firebug allows developers and designers alike to do a couple of really great things…
- Allows you to tweak CSS, HTML and JavaScript in a live environment
- Allows you to visualize CSS metrics
- It can aid you in site performance issues by monitoring network activity on a given site
- Catch errors on your site before they become a problem
- and more!
I believe that they currently have an IE (Internet Explorer) plug-in available but I would highly suggest downloading FireFox because it really is an excellent browser and works well with the native Firebug Plug-in that was built with FireFox in mind.
You can get a copy of this by either searching “Firebug” on the Firefox browser website or go to GetFirebug.com which shows some of the sexy features this browser plug-in has.
Lucas
iStockPhoto.com
January 26, 2007
Sure, there are plenty of stock image libraries scattered around the cyber world, but how many of them actually have that exact image your looking for? With luck, a cross of your fingers and a penny in the wishing well you just “might” find a perfect photograph…close to what you’re looking for.
For those of you who have not been enlighten on who the “God of Online Stock Libraries” really is, check out iStockPhoto.com. They not only offer great image searching, easy light-box interfaces, ridiculously simple account management, but they also offer video stock, vector illustration stock and Flash Stock.
WordPress Tip: Adding a Visual Editor to WordPress 2.1
January 26, 2007
Well you can add the visual editor by going to the “User” tab and then select “Your Profile” there is a checkbox option that says the following…
Use the visual editor when writing
…Check that box and you’ll notice that when you go back to edit or write a page or post you’ll now have two options. One that says “Code” and the other that says “Visual” that will allow to edit and flip between the two as you write.
Lucas
WordPress Rocks the Open Source Scene with Ella
January 25, 2007
For those of you that are very familiar with WordPress you’ve probably heard that they just released 2.1 aka “Ella” the other day. I’ve had a chance to load this version of WordPress and play around with it a little bit so far. It is pretty sweet and simple.
Some of the updated features include…
- Autosave makes sure you never lose a post again.
- Our new tabbed editor allows you to switch between WYSIWYG and code editing instantly while writing a post.
- The lossless XML import and export makes it easy for you to move your content between WordPress blogs.
- Our completely redone visual editor also now includes spell checking.
- New search engine privacy option allows you take you to indicate your blog shouldn’t ping or be indexed by search engines like Google.
- You can set any “page” to be the front page of your site, and put the latest posts somewhere else, making it much easier to use WordPress as a content management system.
- Much more efficient database code, faster than previous versions. Domas Mituzas from MySQL went over all our queries with a fine-toothed comb.
- Links in your blogroll now support sub-categories and you can add categories on the fly.
- Redesigned login screen from the Shuttle project.
- More AJAX to make custom fields, moderation, deletions, and more all faster. My favorite is the comments page, which new lets you approve or unapprove things instantly.
- Pages can now be drafts, or private.
- Our admin has been refreshed to load faster and be more visually consistent.
- The dashboard now instantly and brings RSS feeds asynchronously in the background.
- Comment feeds now include all the comments, not just the last 10.
- Better internationalization and support for right-to-left languages.
- The upload manager lets you easily manage all your uploads pictures, video, and audio.
- A new version of the Akismet plugin is bundled.
Source: WordPress’ Official Site
There are other features included in the upgrade but you’ve got to download a copy and upload it yourself to see what this bad boy release can do.
Lucas
