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Tutorial Blog

High Quality Photoshop Tutorials, Tips and other Great Things...

As I’ve been going through this blog, I noticed that there isn’t anything on Adobe’s color theme creator Kuler.

Kuler is a free online repository of nothing but color palettes and themes created by developers and users for a wide variety of applications based on rules of color theory. It has an established community sharing color palettes and you can create a theme for anything online or out in the real world.

Once on the home page you are able to see…

» The latest color combination posted by a community member
» A search field to find a specific type of theme
» Theme listings by newest, most popular, highest rated or random
» Tags and comments of the specific theme you are viewing
» Site updates from Adobe on the latest and greatest on Kuler

You will also want to register and set up an account to save/tag your own themes and to just be a part of the community. You will be surprised by the sheer number of themes already listed. All of which are named and tagged by their creators.

After you setup your account, it’s time to create a theme of your own. You start with an analogous theme but you can change that to any of the

When you try to please everyone, everyone goes home unhappyYesterday

When I do Web work–whether solo or in collaboration with a Web designer–I’m always mindful that we need to keep things simple. Sometimes keeping things simple forces us to compromise more than we would like or generalize in the interest of time and money (for us and the client’s). Ironically, when you tend to over simplify, that’s when many situations tend to get really messy.

Most Web sites are tailored to a specific audience–business or consumer. How to structure and compartmentalize content in that instance can be pretty obvious.Those are the easier ones for us and the client because they tend to be focused (i.e. simple).

However, I’ve worked on a few sites that attempted to be all things to both consumers and businesses. You essentially need to create two sites packaged into one, even though I know it’s a lousy way to go about it. When you try to satisfy everyone, everyone goes home unhappy.

If I had my druthers, I’d want the client to set up two different sites–one for consumers and one for business customers–but that’s not something a small entrepreneur wants to do, or even has time f

Improve Your SEO Part 3 - Attention To DetailDecember 3

Welcome to the final installment of “Improve Your SEO.” This topic has been spread over three posts, so if you haven’t already, check out part 1 and part 2 of the series. This final post will concentrate on the final touches of Search Engine Optimization (SEO), which you can implement to improve the performance of your site. The topics have been broken down with examples to give you a better understanding of how you can implement the changes.

This tutorial will cover splash pages, backlinking and javascript implementation, as well as URL structure and folder directory layout, all of which are extremely important in optimising your websites search engine friendliness and increasing traffic to your website.

Backlinking

One of the fundamental aspects to good SEO is your ability to obtain backlinks. When Google ranks your website, part of their algorithm is to look at how many other websites link to you, this known as backlinking and is key to the success of your website.

There are many companies offering this as a service, however be careful how you approach getting backlinks. The best rules are: only backlink to relevant websites; and make sure that the link is a worthwhile one.

You can generate links by cont

21 Words That Sound Alike but Mean Different ThingsDecember 3

Is it embarrassment or embarassment or embarrasment? Hell, let the spelling checker figure it out. That’s what most people (including me) would do.

But what about words that sound alike but are spelled differently and mean different things? Those words, friends, are homonyms and your spelling checker isn’t going to flag them if you spell them correctly but misuse them.

I wouldn’t expect ordinary folks to spot “gait” and “gate,” when they’re using a spelling checker, but on the other hand, I would expect professionals to catch something like that. Sadly, I see those kinds of mix ups all the time on graphics put up by my local TV stations, online and in many print publications. Sometimes people aren’t paying attention. Sometimes they just don’t know.

What follows is my list of the 21 most common homonym hang-ups in no particular order:

1. Complement and compliment. You see this one mixed up allot, er, I mean a lot. Complement means to complete or improve, as in, “That whip complements your dominatrix outfit.” Compliment is a well-meaning remark, as in, “Darling, you look smashing in that G string.”

Working in Camera RawDecember 2

Working in camera raw gives you the most control over your images. Camera raw eliminates any processing by the camera and lets you set the parameters for each image - parameters such as white balance, contrast, color saturation, sharpening, and tonal range.

In contrast, when the camera is set to capture images as JPEG files, the camera automatically interprets the image data and makes adjustments and conversions to the data. The beauty of camera raw is that the camera simply captures the image and gives you the raw data. However, because there is no processing and interpreting of the data, be aware that camera raw files are larger files.

Every camera manufacturer has their own file format when capturing images in camera raw. Nikon is NEF, Olympus is ORF, Canon is CRW and CR2. Set your camera to capture images in the raw format, then use Adobe Bridge (File/Browse in Photoshop) to open your images after you download them to the computer.

In the image below, I selected four images inside Adobe Bridge and opened them in Camera Raw. To open images in Camera Raw, right-click on an image in Adobe Bridge and choose Open in Camera Raw.

Open Image in Camera Raw