TikiJon.com » Henry

10 Blogs to Help You Become a Photography Expert

Henry — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 06:49:03 +0000

Photography often plays a major role in web design. So It’s no surprise that many web designers have an interest in it. However, there are so many aspects to photography such as lighting, composition, and equipment features that can make it difficult to master. In this article I’ve rounded up 10 of the best blogs that consistently produce valuable tips and resources to help you with your photography.

Digital Photography School

Digital Photography School is a website with simple tips to help digital camera owners get the most out of their cameras. It is maintained by Darren Rowse who you probably know from ProBlogger.net.

The Photo Argus

The Photo Argus is a resource for photographers novice to advanced. It’s aim is to deliver useful information, inspiration, technique, photographer showcases and more.

Epic Edits

Epic Edits is a resource and community for photography enthusiasts of all experience levels. It’s focus is to explore many aspects of photography through discussion, example, and participation in group projects.

PetaPixel

PetaPixel was born in May of 2009, and is a blog about photography geared towards tech-savvy digital photographers. Our goal is inform, educate, and inspire in all things related to photography.

Strobist

Strobist is about one thing: learning how to use off-camera flash with your dSLR to take your photos to the next level.

Photojojo

The writers of Photojojo scour the internets, rip pages out of magazines, ransack our friends’ closets, and go through dumpsters to find the very best Photo tips, DIY projects, and Gear.

Joe McNally’s Blog

This is the blog of Joe McNally, a phototgrapher for National Geographic, Life, and Sports Illustrated. Joe’s blog is full of inspiration and tips that will help your photography.

Photocritic

The Photocritic is all about learning more about photography, from the incredibly insightful (rarely) to the dreadfully mundane (also, hopefully rarely) via just about everything in between.

DIY Photography

DIY Photography’s goal is to provide a place for photographers to share, and learn from each other, and to bring cheap studio equipment to those who can’t really buy all the expensive stuff out there.

Photodoto

Whether you shoot with an inexpensive digital compact or the latest digital SLR, Photodoto will help you get the most out of your digital camera.

The Best Free Icon Sets of 2009

Henry — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 06:18:39 +0000

In 2009 we’ve witnessed many talented and generous designers creating tons of amazing stuff and giving it away for us to use. We’ve already shown you all of the best free fonts from this past year. Now we’re going to show you the best free icon sets. There were plenty of free sets created this year, but these stand above the rest in terms of quality and usefulness.

Basic

Onebit Icon Set 2

Hand Pointer Icons

WP WooThemes Ultimate Icon Set

Led Icon Set

MinIcons

Grunge Peeling Stickers

Onebit

Web Injection

Watercolor Icon Pack

Finance

Flavour Extended

Social Media Icons

Must Have Icons

Social Icons Hand Drawn

Weby Icons

Quartz

Convert Your PSD’s into Web Pages with SiteGrinder 2

Henry — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 06:43:50 +0000

If you’re the type of Web Designer that doesn’t like to get your hands dirty with XHTML and CSS, SiteGrinder 2 could become your best friend. It’s a plugin for Photoshop that can turn a design into a fully functional website. This means you will no longer need to outsource the programming of your designs.

Enabling Photoshop to Do More

Out of the box, Photoshop is a robust graphics package with a powerful set of tools that enable designers to work their magic and create visually stunning web designs. In a typical web site creation workflow, when the design process is finished, so is Photoshop’s role. However, if you’re using SiteGrinder 2, Photoshop becomes a fully functional web page building solution. It’s a plugin that makes the transition from design to code seamless.

SiteGrinder 2 also ensures that the integrity of the design is maintained. This is so important for designers. Often times in a typical web site creation process, important aspects of a design have to be omitted because they require complex coding. SiteGrinder 2 makes sure that your design will look just as good in the browser as it does in Photoshop.

The main aspect of SiteGrinder 2 that designers will love the most is the fact that no coding knowledge is required. All of the code is generated by the plugin and it happens behind the scenes. And if you are the programming type, SiteGrinder 2 is going to be a huge time saver. There’s no longer a need to switch to Dreamweaver or TextMate after your design is finished. SiteGrinder 2 does all of the coding for you, leaving you more time to tweak your design.

So How Does it Work?

This explanation of how SiteGrinder 2 works is going to be short, because it’s such a simple process. It’s all about how you name your layers in Photoshop. The plugin requires special “hints” that tell it what each layer should be. For example, if you have a button in your design, just add “-button” to the end of its layer name, or “-rollover” to define its rollover state. Of course, for some designers this will mean actually being organized with their layer naming and overall PSD structure, but this is something that web designers should get in the habit of doing anyway. Plus the time saved by using this plugin makes it a non-issue. These hints are also used to create more complex web site elements, such as drop down menus, forms, multi-media content and more.

Basic or Pro

SiteGrinder 2 comes in two flavors: Basic and Pro. The right version for you will really depend on the functionality requirements of your sites. The Basic version gives you all the standard features, but does limit you to using solid color backgrounds. Going Pro will give you more options for background images and the added ability to easily create photo galleries, include Flash media, and add forms to your pages.

When products come along that claim to make difficult and complex tasks “push button” easy, it’s natural to be skeptical. However after using SiteGrinder 2, I’m convinced that this is a powerful plugin that can make a web designer’s job much easier.

Visit the official SitGrinder 2 site to learn more about this product.

50 Time Saving Photoshop Actions for Enhancing Photos

Henry — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 06:45:13 +0000

Adjusting and enhancing photos in Photoshop can involve a lot of trial and error, and be very time consuming. Thankfully their are actions to make our job easier. Here are 50 excellent Photoshop actions that can add professional looking enhancements to your photos with the click of a button. There are a few links below that contain more than one action.

Bright Eyes

Old Photo Action

Cool photo effect action

Soft Elegance

Pencil Draw Photoshop Action

InFection

Old style sepia effect

Photoshop Photography Action Set (8 actions)

Polaroid GENERATOR V1 (9 actions)

Vintage

Diabolic

Dim and Jade

Lith Print

Gradient action

Red action

Sharp action

Dream Blur

Oscar Pilch Photoshop Action

Wedding Enhancers (12 actions)

Black white sepia

Photo Coloring II

Stylish Sepia

Retro

Photo Coloring 11.2

A Showcase of Fantastic Footer Designs

Henry — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 06:49:58 +0000

Website footers have become more than just a place to put the copyright information and a few links. Now web designers are making full use of the footer as way to keep the visitor on the site longer. You will see from the examples below that this can be achieved by using clever placement of graphics and design elements along side links to additional content.

Story Pixel

The Photo Argus

RedVelvetart

Carsonified

Ecoki

Sprocket House

Media140 London

Edgepoint Church

Blog Amuki

Biola Undergrad

Brad Candullo

CSS Tricks

Branded07

Jason Santa Maria

Sam Rayner

Orman Clark

Revive Africa

Psdtuts

R.U.4 Children

The Best Vector Icon Sets All In One Place

Henry — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 04:36:48 +0000

As you’ve probably noticed, we love finding the best freebies out there and sharing them with you. In this post, I’ve rounded up the best vector icons available. Vector icons are great because they can be scaled to custom sizes while not losing any quality. Some of the sets below will also include raster versions.

Milky

Money Icons

On-Stage

Handy

Fresh

Ecology Vector 4

Primo

Siena

Bright

Glossy Buttons

Monofactor Vector Icons

90 Vector Icons

Food Icons

Stationery

Simplicio

Social Bookmarking Icons

Project

300+ Excellent Photoshop Brushes for Creating Painted Effects

Henry — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 04:18:18 +0000

If you are thinking of creating your next web design using a painted style, you have two options. You can purchase real painting materials and create your own Photoshop brushes, or you can use free brushes that have been created by someone else. Since most web designers have limited time and short deadlines, it is an easy choice. Here I’ve collected over 300 excellent Photoshop brushes to save you time in creating painted style designs.

WaterColor Reloaded – 83 brushes

Splatter and Watercolour Brushes For Photoshop – 21 brushes

Watercolor Splatters – 9 brushes

Wet Paint Acrylic Photoshop Brushes – 16 brushes

Messy Spraypaint – 10 brushes

Brush Stroke – 20 brushes

Hi-Res Splatter Photoshop Brushes – 10 brushes

High-Res Grunge Ink Splatter Brushes – 9 brushes

Watercolour brushes set 2 – 20 brushes

Hi-Res Acrylic Texture Brushes Set 1 – 15 brushes

Free Hi-Res Watercolor Photoshop Brushes – 18 brushes

Destroyed watercolour PS brushes – 26 brushes

Free Hi-Res Watercolor Photoshop Brushes Set II – 20 brushes

Watercolour Brushes Set 1 – 26 brushes

21 Best Fonts for Hand Drawn Style Web Design

Henry — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 05:33:05 +0000

By now you have probably noticed a lot of “hand drawn” style web designs. It has become a very popular option for designers when a project calls for a fun and inviting theme. We’ve shown you where to get your hands on some really great hand drawn design elements, but if you are getting ready to start on a site design that requires this particular style, you will need some hand drawn fonts. Here are 21 of the best available.

Grutch Shaded

Pointy

Pee Pants Script

Fh Scribble

OPN Stun Filla Wenka

Mia’s Scribblings

Jamaistevie

Sketch Block

Tire Shop

Bearpaw

Barnes Erc

My Turtle

Against Myself

Fail

Karabine

McCoy – Hello Lori

Clementine Sketch

Oh Ashy

The Quiet Scream

3Dumb & 2Dumb

Rock Show Whiplash

13 Useful Techniques for Enhancing Web Design Photography

Henry — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 05:56:34 +0000

Photography can either make or break a web design. This starts with the photographer and the camera, but more than likely, photos coming straight from the camera will require some type of adjustments or treatment in order to match the style of it’s surrounding design. Here are 13 Photoshop techniques that you should find useful for enhancing photos to be used in your web designs.

How to turn your photo into movie-like effect

Add A Realistic Rainbow To A Photo In Photoshop

How To Make Digital Photos Look Like Lomo Photography

Awesome Photorealistic Coloring Techniques

Add Dynamic Lighting to a Flat Photograph

Curvy Cross Processing in Photoshop CS3

Dramatic Gritty Effect

Photoshop vintage effect

Tilt Shift Photoshop Tutorial: How to Make Fake Miniature Scenes

Watercolor Effect

Coloring Effects

Split Toning Black and White Photos In Photoshop

Infrared Photo Effect In Photoshop

All the Small Icons You’ll Ever Need

Henry — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 05:34:47 +0000

Big highly detailed icons make great eye candy, but small icons can be very useful when designing websites. They are great for styling lists and giving links visual flair that is eye catching and meaningful. It’s amazing what can be said visually in a 16 x 16 pixel area. In this post, you will find a large collection of small icons that should fit most of your design needs.