Have you ever noticed that Photoshop will anti-alias the edge of a rectangle? This is because the edge of the rectangle happens to fall in the middle of a pixel. If you follow these few simple rules when designing websites in Photoshop, you can ensure that the edges of your rectangles will fall exactly on the edge of a pixel, making the shape super crisp and sharp.
I’d like to share a method for creating unique typographical effects on the outside of the letters using Adobe Illustrator. See what I mean in the example below. Then read on and find out how to do it yourself!
After installing Virtuemart, a highly integrated shopping cart for Joomla!, I realized that there was a small issue. The issue dealt with the way Virtuemart and Joomla! displayed the pathway of the cart. The product displayed a double pathway, and most of the links were not working. When you were browsing a category you couldn’t go back to the main store because the link was not linkable. This was very annoying to me. After hours of trying to figure out what was happening and going through code pieces, I finally put together bunch of various hacks. This is what ended up working for me. I successfully tested it on all versions of Joomla!, but only with Virtuemart 1.0.5.
After being in the graphic design business for over 12 years I have a tendency to take things for granted and forget the struggles of my past. One question that comes up a lot is what resolution to use for different media types. Here is a quick run-down of what I currently know:
If you are scanning for a particular job and don’t know how to correctly scan the images, use this page as a reference: http://www.scantips.com/basics03.html. It does a better job explaining than I can. If it is for the web, just use 72dpi, unless there is a possibility it will be used for print later as well.
One of the most useful tricks I have learned is how to make your photos snap in Photoshop. I learned this in the era of the first digital cameras (the ones where your pictures looked flat no matter how great your camera was). Since most people aren’t professional photographers, their photos lack the contrast and saturation needed to make it look great. This quick trick will help fix this problem in most cases.
Note: This works better on RGB images, but will work in CMYK.
Best of luck!
When you are in a professional production environment you learn how to move fast so you can deal with clients who change their minds every other minute. One of the skills that saved my butt over and over was learning how to make my Photoshop documents non-destructible. What I mean is, at any point in time I can go back to the original and re-edit if needed. Here’s how to be sure you will virtually always be able to trace your steps back and make changes.
IMPORTANT: NEVER WORK DIRECTLY ON THE ORIGINAL LAYER!
Evoke the magic of the healing brush and clone brush.
Each new version of Photoshop has made it easier and easier to work in a non-destructible environment. With the release of Photoshop CS it became possible to use the healing brush on a new layer instead of on the original photo. Why is that important? If you need to change anything that you’ve ‘healed,’ all you have to do is erase the portion on the healing layer that you changed and simply start over. Your original document is still completely intact. How do you do this?
Non-destructible light and color shifts
One habit you should get into as soon as possible is to start using Adjustment Layers. This is one of the most powerful functions built into Photoshop. On a typical photo project I may have half a dozen Adjustment Layers stacked over each other for one reason or another. Adjustment Layers give you the ability to ‘float’ light over your photo and manipulate it with pinpoint precision. This is great for photos that have someone with too much light on their face on a background that is just right. You can simply add an adjustment layer of levels or curves over the photo, adjust the face to match the background lighting, then mask off everything but the face (I will add an article on masking soon), and voila! You have a perfect photo. If you want to change the light on the face, just double click the adjustment layer and you have full control of the light again. If you decide not to use it, you can simply turn off the layer or delete it and you are back to your original. Try this with hue/saturation to change the color of parts of your photos easily. Here are the steps:
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