In my last (and first) article here on MyInkBlog, I dove into some of the key differences that exist between Clipping Masks and Layer Masks in Photoshop. We touched on several different areas, but near the beginning of the article I wrote:

we can start by using any one of a number of different extraction methods (in this case, I used channels, which is another article all on its own).

This is that article. Actually, it’s the first of two articles. It seems that there was quite a bit of interest in knowing more about channels and how I used them to extract the woman from the background in that previous article. Well, I’m more than happy to comply with that request. In this first article, we are going to cover some of the basic concepts behind channels. The follow-up article will be more of a tutorial-like piece, in which I will work through a channels-based extraction.

So let’s get started. For the purposes of this discussion, we’re going be using this simple image of an apple, which can be downloaded for free over at Dreamstime.

Channel Basics

Now, we’ll start with some of the true fundamentals. First, you can access your channels by opening up the Channels Palette (Window » Channels from in the menu). This is where we will be doing most of our work, both in this article and in the follow up tutorial.

In this case, we can see four channels – RGB, Red, Green and Blue. By the way they are laid out in the palette, they actually look a lot like layers. Don’t be confused, though. That is strictly a matter of interface. Channels and Layers are entirely different entities.

You may also notice that the channels seem to reflect the current colour mode of the document – which is RGB. This is indeed true, and leads us to another important point. The Channels Palette will change based on the colour mode of the document. This is because each colour mode uses a different method for defining colour, and at their most basic level channels are simply a programatic way of displaying the interaction of basic primary colours, which combine to create a much larger range of full colour.

The Big Two: RGB and CMYK

I’m sure that many of you are familiar with basic concepts of how colours are mixed, but since this is one of the fundamental building blocks of how channels work, let’s quickly review our two basic colour structures.

First, we have RGB, which is the colour mode of all things like your monitor, television and various handheld devises. RGB makes use of concepts of additive colour, combining tiny bits of red, green and blue lights in varying degrees in order to create a full and rich colour gamut.

On the other hand, we have CMYK, which is what is used for print. With this kind of colour, a printer or press lays down tiny dots of cyan, magenta, yellow and black inks, which blend together to create the illusion of colour. While pixels on a monitor actually emit coloured light, the tiny dots on a page absorb coloured lights, reflecting only the colour that you see. As more ink is mixed together, more light is absorbed. That’s why it is called subtractive colour – because less and less gets reflected as you add more ink.

I should also note that when you’re working in CMYK your screen is still displaying in RGB – Photoshop is simply approximating CMYK colour for display. If you want to learn a bit more of the science, read about additive colour and subtractive colour on Wikipedia.

For our purposes, the important thing to know is that each of these colour models require different sets of colour information, which are reflected in their types of channels. Let’s examine this a bit more closely.

First, open up the image and then pop open the Channels palette. When downloaded from the internet, the image should be in RGB mode by default, so you should see four different channels. Actually, there are three channels (Red, Green and Blue), and then an automatic, and uneditable channel (called RGB). Each channel visualizes the three different streams of colours that compose the document, which we can see by taking another look at our previous screenshot:

The Photoshop default is for each channel is actually represented by a simple greyscale image (though we’ll look at how to change that). For example, here is the red channel for our apple:

It may seem odd that the apple itself actually seems washed out, rather than strong and vibrant, which you might expect given that the fruit itself is also red. There is a good reason for this. Within an RGB channel, any white pixel will be at its maximum brightness for that colour – red in this case. In other words, it will emit the maximum amount of red light. Conversely, wherever it is black, the pixel will not emit any light of that colour. So, because the apple is red, pixels that make up that part of the image are actually quite light.

Conversely, if we convert the apple image to CMYK, we will see something quite different. We now have five channels, one for cyan, magenta, yellow and black, as well as the automatic combined channel.

In this case the channels work somewhat differently, because we are working in a colour space that is intended to mimic the workings of ink on paper. As such, you will find that wherever a pixel is white, it is meant to represent blank, unprinted paper. Wherever a pixel is black, it is meant to represent an area where the paper is covered with the maximum saturation for that particular colour.

Let’s look at the magenta channel as an example. To create red with ink, we can actually combine magenta with yellow. So, if we printed our apple image, we would expect there to be a lot of magenta ink used. This is accurately reflected in the magenta channel.

Notice that the areas of the deepest red are the most saturated with black, whereas areas that contain relatively little red (such as the reflections and the yellow area near the top of the apple) remain much whiter.

That’s really the basics of what channels are. They are simply a way of splitting apart the different colour information in a document, giving you the ability to make tweaks and adjustments on a colour by colour basis. A quick word of warning, though: using channels to make extensive colour modifications on a heavily layered document can be a bit tricky. Making a change in a channel will still only effect the current layer, so I would recommend doing some experimenting.

In fact, I always recommend experimenting! I’ve found that it’s the absolute best way to learn.

Seeing Channels in Colour

Personally, I prefer working with the default greyscale rendering of the channels. However, if you’re finding it difficult to wrap your head around how the colours are actually working, Photoshop has a little interface option to help make it easier for you. Select Photoshop » Preferences » Interface from the menu (PC: Edit » Preferences » Interface). In the dialogue box you should see a little check box with the option “Show Channels In Colour”. By default this is turned off, but try turning it on. In RGB mode, the channels palette and red channel should look something like this:

In CMYK mode, the channels palette and magenta channel should look something like this:

This little trick can be super helpful when it comes to visualizing the colour behind unique channels. However, when it comes to using them for extractions, it can make things a little bit more difficult. So, in the next article, I will have this option turned off again

The Other Colour Modes

While RGB and CMYK are the two most common colour modes in my experience, they are certainly not the only ones, and the other colour modes also change the way the channels work. The following is a brief summary of how some of the other colour modes affect channels.

Lab Mode

This colour space is significantly different from either RGB or CMYK because it is not device dependent. In other words, it is not designed to mix colours, either of ink or light. Instead, it is designed more to emulate human perception of colour, by actually separating the lightness values from the colour values.

There are basically three channels. The first is the Lightness channel, which controls the relative lightness or darkness of a particular pixel. The other two channels (called a and b) contain actual colour information, by determining the relative saturation.

By far the most complex of all the colour modes (at least in my opinion), trying to explain the entire Lab colour model would be an entire article onto itself! It might even take several articles. For the most part, though, it appears to be used primarily for post-production work in photography, so it could be helpful in terms of establishing a proper colour balance. In terms of actual extraction, though, it’s probably not going to be all that useful.

Multi-Channel

As the name would suggest, this one definitely makes use of channels. Basically, though, it amounts to an unmanaged CMYK. Sort of. If you convert to multi-channel right out of RGB, the channels will be converted into CMY, with no black (K). However, if you convert out of CMYK, you will keep all four channels.

The primary difference, though, is that you can actually change the colour of a channel. So, instead of having a cyan channel, you could have a channel dedicated to a unique Pantone colour. This can make for some interesting effects and can be beneficial when preparing a Photoshop design for printing with alternate colours.

From an extraction perspective, it doesn’t really offer anything that is not already available in CMYK mode.

Indexed

An index image is basically just that, an index of colours which are defined across a grid, which represents the canvas itself. Each pixel is essentially given a simple and static colour value from the index of 256 colours. This is the kind of technology that is used in image formats such as GIF.

It is useful for maintaining small file sizes, but makes no real use of channels. If you look in the Channels Palette, all you will see is the actual index itself. This means that indexed mode is completely useless when it comes to channel based extractions.

Greyscale

This colour mode is exactly what it sounds like, and really isn’t a colour mode at all, since it contains no colour. In this mode, the image is basically reduced to values of lighness and darkness, as represented by white, black and a full range of greys.

It can be useful in some circumstances, such as preparing a design for simple one colour print, but is not really all that useful for extraction purposes.

Bitmap

This is the most basic of all colour modes, and is comprised entirely of black or white pixels. There is not even any shades of grey. Again, it has only uses a single black and white channel and has no real use for running extractions.

Duo Tone

Duotone (and the related tritone and quadtone) is kind of like a fake colour mode, insofar as the main image remains primary a greyscale, with highlights, midtones and shadows. You set a colour for each “tone” you choose and then adjust that colour’s levels to dictate how you want it to effect the various tones in your image.

It’s a very different way of working with colour, and is primarily used for adding interesting colour treatments to a black and white photograph – such as creating a customized sepia effect. Since it only has a single greyscale channel, it really isn’t much good when it comes to extractions.

Command-Clicking Channels

Well that’s a basic run down of channels. There’s a lot more we could talk about, but that should cover most of the basics that you will need to know for creating extractions. We’ll get into the nitty gritty in the Part 2 tutorial!

For those of you who just can’t wait though, here’s a little preview. To create a selection from a channel, all you have to do is Command-click (PC: Ctrl-click) on the preview for any given channel. A selection will be made based on the black, white and grey pixels for that channel (with white being fully selected and black being unselected).

Pretty simple right? Well yes – and no. It would be incredibly rare for a default colour channel to be ready for a perfect extraction. It usually takes a bit of tweaking and modifying, and that’s exactly what we’ll get into in Part 2. Be sure to subscribe so that you don’t miss it!

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This post is part of our daily series of posts showing the most inspiring images selected by some of the Abduzeedo’s writers and users. If you want to participate and share your graphic design inspiration, just send us, via email, the image with the link from where you found it, also use “Daily Inspiration” in the subject, and don’t forget to send your Abduzeedo username; or via Twitter sending to http://twitter.com/abduzeedo

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One of the famous movie – Avatar has just swept and shocked the whole world. You may wonder how the image of Avatar to be created. It seems lots of works and not easy to do such creation. However, you can transform a human being photo into Avatar using Photoshop. Now, you can turn any human images into Avatar following this tutorial.

(View This Tutorial)

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Before you begin download the images for the tutorial

Tip 1: Black and white Photo with Color

After you download the picture of the lady laying on a bed with a flower, open it in photoshop.

Duplicate the image

Now make the top image black and white by using the keyboard shortcut ctrl+shift+u. Or you can go image>>adjustments>>desaturate on your top photoshop menu

Now your image should be black and white and you should have a layer underneath it that is still color

Its time to add the layer mask to the black and white layer. So you can click the layer mask icon at the bottom of your layer’s palette or you can go to layer>>layer mask>>reveal all.

Once you do that your layer should look like this

Make sure your foreground and background colors are set to default (black and white)

Get a soft brush around 13px and start painting the flower to make the color show through.

For this to work make sure your foreground color is black.

I zoomed in about 300% with the keyboard shortcut ctrl+ and zoom out with ctrl-.

What if you go over the edges? Well its simple hit “X” on your keyboard to make your foreground color white and paint back the parts you went over.

That is how easy it is to take a color photo, make it black and white, then bring the color back to make your image look professional.

Here is another example

And another example

You can also do the same thing with someone’s eyes if you want them to stand out in a black and white image to add a neat effect. Experiment with this method and
see what you can get!

Tip 2: Adding Depth of Field to an Image

In this next tip I will show you how to easily add depth of field to an image. If you don’t know depth of field is what you see in images when the focus is on one or multiple objects while the rest of the objects in the image are blurred out.

SO open up the wine picture you downloaded previously and duplicate the layer like we did with the other image.

Next we need to add some blur to the image you just duplicated.

You can use about any of the blurs but I like the result the best from the lens blur filter.

So go to filter>>blur>>lens blur

Use these settings or experiment with your own

Now you know what to do, add your layer mask to the top layer and paint away the blur you don’t want in the image. So I will erase the blur from the closest glass so the glass further back will be out of focus.

Do you see the difference on how your eyes see the image now?

Here is what mine looks like

You can also reverse that and put the blur on the closest glass

That is all for this quick and simple tutorial. I hope this shows you some easy techniques you can use in photoshop to achieve some professional results!

Thanks for checking this out!

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Last week, some enterprising fans created a visual guide to the Apple Tablet rumors. Today, the French website Nowhere Else has done something similar for the next generation iPhone. The image highlights the various rumors surrounding the next version of the iPhone (the iPhone 4G if you will) into one annotated graphic.

An OLED display, 5-megapixel camera and a release date between May and July appear to be the most likely rumors (and we agree that those all sound like very distinct possibilities). Also ranking high are rumors of a front-facing camera, dual-core processor with more RAM and a touch-sensitive case.

As for the removable battery rumor, 60% likely or not, we don’t see that happening. Apple has moved its portable line to built-in batteries; it seems unlikely to us that they would add a removable battery to the iPhone.

You can check out a larger version of the image directly at Nowhere Else. What do you think of this roundup? What features would you like to see in the next iPhone? Let us know!

[img credit: NowhereElse.fr]

Tags: apple, iphone, iphone 4g, trending

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A Photoshop action is a recording of a sequence of commands which we can save and use for repetitive tasks and make our workflow fast and much more better. Using Photoshop actions can improve you workflow in Photoshop by speed up you process and ensure accuracy since the same values are applied automatically to all your photos.

Here we’ve collected best different useful actions, which are free to download and will help you to speed up your work. In addition to the below collection, you can find more Photoshop resources in the Photoshop section and you can also preview the following collections of Photoshop actions:

• The Big Collection Of Amazing Photoshop Actions
• Photoshop Actions Free Download Collections

If you like this post, do not forget to join our mailing list and share this post with your friends and social networks.

Snow Globe

At the beginning the action creates a wooden frame around your image. Then it creates a snowglobe and places your image inside.

Red Lips Only

Paper Cube Net

The set contains 2 actions. The first action creates a cube that has the same photo printed on each side. The second action prints 5 images.

Tiktok

Wrist Watch

The first action of this set creates a beautiful wristwatch. The second action let’s you place your own image on the watch face.

Lady Shining

PS Action 42

3D Action with Fund of Colour

Separate Line Art

New Action 2

5 Different Actions

Lomo, Night Vision Effect, Polaroid 600 Instant Film, Infrared, Pixel Borders.

Super Heroes

The first action creates the generic superhero text, the second gives a thinner 3-D effect, and the third takes the 3-D text into the distance.

TackIt! Mini

The “TackIt! Mini” action creates a web-ready picture tacked up on a bulletin board.

Highlight FX #1

This action takes your image and creates a stunning window surrounded by a lighter sepia effect and a soft edge.

Crystal Ball Action

Turn your photo into a “Crystal Ball.

Photo Mattes

The set contains 5 actions — one action to set up your picture so it will work correctly with the mattes, and then 4 matte effects.

Television

The action creates the television set which includes two different frames, customizable TV name, power and control buttons, and a RGB pixel overlay.<

Old Love Letter

This action creates a folded, stained 8 1/2×11 inch piece of paper that looks like it has been stored away and treasured for many years.

FilmStrip Action!

The FilmStrip Action 1.0 takes three images of your own choice and makes a negative. There are three different actions included in this file.

Photographers Collection

A collection of Photoshop Actions developed with the photographer in mind.

Puzzle Action!

This is my first attempt at an action set that makes different jigzaw puzzle effects.

Glass Orb effect

Create an amasing Glass Orb based on the ‘background’ color chip with this free Adobe Photoshop Action.

Out of Bounds

The PanosFX Out of Bounds is an advanced tool which simplifies the steps needed to create the impressive and popular OoB effects.

Rule of Thirds and Golden Mean Actions

As you are learning composition, the so-called “Rule” of Thirds can be helpful. Some folks think the Golden Mean is a better compositional guideline.

Border and Bend

These 2 very impressive (and free!) sets of actions play tricks with borders and shadows to give your images a pseudo-3D look.

Graduated Tint Effect

This works best on dark or deep blue skies. Add a grad-filter type effect to the top of the image.

Ragged Frame Action

Place a ragged frame around your image. You control the color of the frame. The shape is pretty much random.

Reduce Motion Blur Effect

Reduce the effects of camera shake on an image and sharpen up detail.

Photo Cube Effect

Apply a rather impressive photo-realistic 3D photo cube effect to any image.

The Torn Tree

Related topics you may like to read

• Tips to Use Photoshop Smartly and Efficiently
• 40+Impressive Photoshop Text Effects Tutorials
• Fantasy Water Wallpaper Photoshop Tutorial
• Graphic Mania New Look, New Fresh Content and More
• Glass Neon Text With Ornament Photoshop Tutorial
• Creative Color Effects Photoshop Tutorial
• Poppies of Summer Wallpaper Tutorial
• Glass Text Effect in Photoshop in a Minute
• Photo Manipulation and Surreal Art Inspirations
• 45+ Free High Quality PSD Files to Download

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When you set out to create a 2.3×2.5 meter image, you usually do it in a good image editor/drawing program. But a 15-year old YouTube user named scorpiongold did it in MS Paint, and it will blow your mind.

The picture is named “My MS paint World”, and it supposedly took 4 years to complete (the author admits he didn’t work on it every day, but perhaps once a week), and it shows: it’s huge, full of detail, very odd, and amazingly imaginative. If you, by any chance, remember an old ZX Spectrum game called “Go To Hell”, the imagery is somewhat similar (and you’re officially not young anymore).

See the video displaying the various details on the image below.

Tags: MS Paint, social media, viral video, youtube

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For one reason or another, almost all designers using Stock Images in their designs. Stock Images/Photography consists of existing Images/photographs that can be licensed for specific uses. Publishers, advertising agencies, graphic artists, and others use stock photography to fulfill the needs of their creative assignments.

There are a number of Royalty free Stock Images sources available on the web waiting to be paid for. Some of them are worth it, some are not. If you tired of spending money on High-Quality Images then we have something good for you by which you can save your money and increase your productivity.

Below, you’ll find Best Reliable Sources to Get Commercial and Free Micro Stock Images and Photographs over web. However, just make sure to read the license agreements carefully as they can change from time to time.

Buying the high-resolution image (purchasing the license) does not transfer the copyright. You may not claim that the image is your own and you may not sell, license for use, or in any way distribute the image for reuse. We recommend that you credit the agency and the photographer when you use an image. By this you benefit the community, of which you are an integral part, and help increase your success as part of the community, which, by growing contributions, gains quantity and quality.

You may be interested in the following related articles as well.

• 40+ Sources To Download High-Quality Royalty Free Stock Images
• 25+ Reliable Sources to Get Commercial WordPress Themes
• 20+ Reliable Sources to Get Commercial Joomla Templates
• 50+ Sources To Download High-Quality Free Vector Stuff

Please feel free to join us and you are always welcome to share your thoughts even if you have more reference links that our readers may like.

Don’t forget to subscribe to our RSS-feed and follow us on Twitter — for recent updates.

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The fact is that many of the features us designers use in our daily work is also available for every video editor and movie maker. There’s tons of awesome technologies that will enhance anyone to perfection if used in the right way. From filters smoothing out wrinkles to crop tools that makes anyone look like their magically lost 20 pounds overnight.

Well, there are of course some rules that apply when retouching an image or a video. Sooner or later the object in question has to enter public places at some point and that will reveal any “flaws” they have that have been taken away during the retouch process. So, staying true to the persons true identity is to be preferred.

Watching this video really put things in perspective and although we know about these “refinements” we willingly see them as perfection and the norm for how we should all look in order to be accepted and adored. It’s ultimately wrong and will most likely create a sense of megalomania for the object of idolization instead of creating a believable image of someone everyone can truly look up to. But, what should be said as well is that the major part of the most successful celebrities haven’t done anything to alter their true personality and beauty. This way they have preserved their unique and truthful image. Now, you are the judge and no one can take that away from you.

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The FBI this week released a “digitally-altered” image showing what Osama Bin Laden possibly looks like now he’s older.

While the FBI claims to have used “cutting edge” technology to create the image, a Spanish politician has noticed that the poster is a modified version of his campaign photo — he now finds his face in America’s most wanted list.

While on the surface it’s an amusing misstep by intelligence agencies, Gaspar Llamazares, the former leader of Spain’s United Left coalition, calls the move “shameless”. His safety is at risk, he told the BBC, and he no longer feels able to travel to America now his likeness is on a wanted poster: “Bin Laden’s safety is not threatened by this but mine certainly is”, Llamazares said.

\
Left, Bin Laden in 1998; middle, the FBI image; right, Gaspar Llamazares

The FBI is quoted admitting to the error, saying that the artist found the photo on the web and didn’t know it was of a Spanish politician:

When producing age-progressed photographs, forensic artists typically select features from a database of stock reference photographs to create the new image…it appears that in this instance the forensic artist was unable to find suitable features among the reference photographs and obtained those features, in part, from a photograph he found on the internet.

The forensic artist was not aware of the identity of the individual depicted in the photograph. The similarities between the photos were unintentional and inadvertent.

We don’t think it matters that the man in question was a notable politician: using photos from an image search to create a most wanted poster is surely putting the subject at risk, is it not?

Tags: FBI, Photoshop, trending

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This post is part of our daily series of posts showing the most inspiring images selected by some of the Abduzeedo’s writers and users. If you want to participate and share your graphic design inspiration, just send us, via email, the image with the link from where you found it, also use “Daily Inspiration” in the subject, and don’t forget to send your Abduzeedo username; or via Twitter sending to http://twitter.com/abduzeedo

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This series is supported by Webdesigner Depot, a popular web design blog covering tutorials, design trends, blogging and inspirational posts. You can visit WDD at webdesignerdepot.com and follow WDD on Twitter @designerdepot.

If you’re using your social media profiles to promote your personal brand or business, chances are that pre-made themes and watermarked templates just won’t cut it. You need a custom design to make your profile stand apart from the rest and convey important information about who you are.

Some of our favorite social networks afford us this customization, but there are a few tricks that may save you some time and frustration when creating a custom profile background. While none of these can replace the eye of a great graphic designer, they should help you get a sense of the layout you’re after.

Choose an Image Editor

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To start, you’ll need an image editor. Photoshop is probably best suited for the task, but there are plenty of free alternatives on the web.

Gimp is a free, open source image editing and compositing tool that has many of the layering and filtering abilities of Photoshop.

Aviary’s Phoenix is another great free tool that is entirely web based. You can edit and layer images in a Photoshop-like environment right in your web browser, then save the finished product to your desktop.

Photoshop.com also offers a free, “lite,” web-based version of the popular editor.

Once you’ve chosen your tool, it’s time to get to work.

Twitter

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A great Twitter background makes an impression on potential followers. It should communicate who you are and what people should expect from your tweets. Here are some examples of great Twitter backgrounds:

Dimensions: The column that contains your tweets and profile information will always take up about 760 pixels of screen real estate. What’s left for the background will be determined by the user’s monitor. Everyone viewing your profile will see it a little differently, depending on the resolution of their screen. A safe bet to ensure that your background will not be cut off or tiled at most resolutions is a 1680 x 1200 pixel image. The image resolution should be web standard 72 dpi.

Maximum File Size: 800 KB

Layout: Accounting for the 760 pixel center column, the space left over on either side will depend on the visitor’s resolution. The space at the top for the Twitter logo will remain constant at about 65 pixels, and a good rule of thumb is to leave about 200 pixels at the left for your design. This will accommodate most monitor resolutions.

Twitter aligns the background image to the top left, so it is important to focus your main content in that area as shown. The further to the left an element appears, the least likely it will be cut off on a low resolution monitor.

There are a few tools that may help you determine what your layout will look like at different resolutions. To quickly determine your own resolutions as a reference point, jump over to whatismyscreenresolution.com.

For FireFox users, the Web Developer add-on will resize your browser to fit common monitor resolutions so you can see what your layout might look like for other users.

Screen-resolution.com is also a handy tool for popping URLs into resolution-specific browers windows.

Design Tip: Don’t clutter your background with too much information. Because URLs are not clickable in a background, this space is better suited for logos, photos, or other clean graphic elements that express who you are. If you’re encouraging people to connect with you outside of Twitter, make sure the one URL in your profile links to your contact information.

Also, be sure to choose text and link colors that compliment your background.

How To Add It:

YouTube

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A branded YouTube channel is a great way to identify yourself to viewers when they land on your video pages. Here are some examples of great YouTube channel designs:

Dimensions: YouTube channel backgrounds work similarly to Twitter backgrounds in that they must account for the fixed width of the channel content. The area that displays your videos and profile information is 960 pixels wide. Note that the top area that displays the YouTube logo and search is not taken into account with regard to your background. Your background image will begin below the white YouTube bar, so all content should be started near the top of your image.

Like Twitter, screen real estate depends on monitor resolution. A good image size to work with is 2000 x 2200 pixels total.

Maximum File Size: 256 KB

Layout: It is important to understand that YouTube will center your background image behind your channel content. This means that your important image content should appear just to the left and right of the 960 pixel center column. It also means that people with large or widescreen monitors will see much more of your image stretching out to the right and left of their screen. This is why it’s good to use a very wide image (2000 pixels, in this example).

Whereas your Twitter background should be focused as far to the left as possible, the content in your YouTube background should be as close to the central 960 pixel column as possible without going behind it. Again, test different resolutions with the tools above to see where viewers might be cropping your image and adjust accordingly to account for variation.

Design Tip: Because widescreen monitors may view much more of your image on the left and right, it may be useful to incorporate a fade to a solid color on each end. Then, make the page background that same color to avoid an unsightly “break” in the design.

Also, be sure to implement complimentary box and text colors.

How To Add It:

MySpace

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Though MySpace has fallen out of vogue in recent years, it is still a viable platform for younger users and a destination for many bands and music sharers.

If you’re looking to make a statement with your MySpace page, a well-tailored background could do the trick.

Here are some impressive ones:

Dimensions: MySpace’s “Profile 2.0″ customization is actually very flexible and allows a few options. You can change your content size between 960 pixels, 750 pixels, or 100% (which wipes out the background entirely). Decide which layout you like best and build your background to match. The full size should account for large monitors, so something in the neighborhood of 2000 x 2200 pixels should work here as well.

Maximum File Size: Any, but best to keep it under 500K for quick load times.

File hosting: Unlike Twitter and YouTube, Myspace will not host your background file, but simply reference it from a URL. If you don’t own web space, there are plenty of places you can host an image for free, including PhotoBucket and ImageShack. Upload your image to one of these sites and paste the image URL into MySpace’s layout editor.

Layout: Again, MySpace is surprisingly flexible, and the advanced layout editor allows you to align your background against any quadrant of the screen, or center it. It’s up to you how you want to approach the layout. Simply account for your content column (750 or 960 pixels) and design around it. Then position your image accordingly. The best designs fit their graphic elements snugly against the content column so that they’ll be visible at any resolution.

How To Add It:

Others

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The two other big dogs of social networking, Facebook and LinkedIn, don’t offer background customization options. While this may be a disappointment to some, many would argue that the clean, uniform look of these sites has contributed to their success.

Do you have any tips, tricks, or resources you use when designing a custom profile? Share them in the comments below.

Webdesigner Depot is one of the most popular web design blogs in the world. It covers tutorials, design trends, blogging as well as inspirational posts. It’s run by Walter Apai, a web designer from Vancouver, Canada. The blog is a great resource for both beginners and advanced designers looking to expand and improve their knowledge. The site is visited by Fortune 500 companies and is used as a reference by many design schools. Visited by almost 2 million readers per month, WDD is a prime resource for both graphic and web designers. Visit WDD at webdesignerdepot.com. Follow on Twitter: twitter.com/designerdepot. Subscribe to RSS feed: webdesignerdepot.com/rss.htm.

More social media resources from Mashable:

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- 85+ of the Best Twitterers Designers Should Follow
– 100 Great Resources for Design Inspiration
– 5 Ways Social Media Changed Fashion in 2009
– 5 Tips for Building Lasting Online Friendships
– Top 5 Must-Read Social Media Books
– Social Media Can Change The World Through Common Ground

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, skodonnell

Tags: customization, design, how to, myspace, Photoshop, social media, twitter, twitter background, youtube

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This post is part of our daily series of posts showing the most inspiring images selected by some of the Abduzeedo’s writers and users. If you want to participate and share your graphic design inspiration, just send us, via email, the image with the link from where you found it, also use “Daily Inspiration” in the subject, and don’t forget to send your Abduzeedo username; or via Twitter sending to http://twitter.com/abduzeedo

If possible use the HTML code: <p class="imgC"><a href="Link to the page you found the image"><img src="Link to the Image" /></a></p>

Do you want to see all images from all Daily Inspirations? Check out http://daily.abduzeedo.com

alexzabbey

Anthony Flores

Arttu Ratio

One Message For You from aturtur on Vimeo.

Baus

Brukhar

CreativeRule

Cue

DDD

Dev

Draniu

ecrocks

Eric Vasquez

Eugene Kim

Fabiano

Drift from mustardcuffins on Vimeo.

Fabio

Solar rework from flight404 on Vimeo.

Gisele

heymeca

Jermaine Mitchell

John Whitaker

Julia Graves

k002

Mr.Miyagi

Nico-Nico

Papakilla

Steevn

Taran Uppal

yulensoulb

Via Twitter

Send your suggestions via Twitter to http://twitter.com/abduzeedo using #abdz in the end of the tweet.

@thirddesign

@adrianodefendi

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Months of research and strategic involvement bring us a clean & focused look for the familiar theme, giving the ancient Olympic brand a surprisingly ‘current’ feel. This look is perpetuated through an exceptionally executed campaign which seamlessly encompasses both traditional & new brand elements and some truly inspiring illustrations.   See for yourself:

Vancouver 2010 Olympic Logo

Illustrated Vancouver 2010 Website Homepage

Illustrated Twitter Account Page:@FollowtheFlame

Illustrated Twitter Account Page: @2010Tweets

Event Signage

Poster/Banner Designs: With Glowing Hearts

Poster/Banner Designs: Snowboarding Parallel Giant Slalom

Poster/Banner Designs: Ski Jumping

Poster/Banner Designs: Para Alpine Skiing

Poster/Banner Designs: Bobsleigh

Poster/Banner Designs: Biathlon

Remembering Vancouver 2010’s Design Director “My name is Leo Obstbaum, and I am a dreamer.”

The Design Director of the project: Leo Obstbaum passed away August 21st 2009 at the age of 40, he died of natural causes.

With the Vancouver Olympics as his last project, it effected me deeply to realize that his final designs will reach and touch the world. We only wish he could have been here to see it with us.

One of his very good friends Mark Busse wrote a detailed article about Leo after his passing. You should read the article over at GDC/BC Blog.

Need More Vancouver Info?

Vancouver 2010 Brand and Image

Olympic and Paralympic Games design has a long tradition of creativity and excellence. Each Organizing Committee tries to visually capture the Olympic and Paralympic spirit, while telling the unique story of the host region and country.

Vancouver 2010 Graphic Identity

The Host Country of every Olympic and Paralympic Games tells a unique story of culture and imagination through design and artistry. The Vancouver 2010 graphic identity seeks to unify and beautify the Games with a consistent look and feel throughout all its environments and communications.

Transmoflection – A video about the research put in

The Story of the Vancouver 2010 Paralympic Winter Games Emblem

Olympic and Paralympic Games design has a long tradition of creativity and excellence. Each Organizing Committee tries to visually capture the Olympic and Paralympic spirit, while telling the unique story of the host region and country.

Vancouver 2010 Pictograms and Sport Illustrations

Pictograms are icons representing each sport and are found on maps, signage and other communications and creative applications. Every Olympic and Paralympic Games Host Country has added its own unique design to its pictograms.

Social?

@2010Tweets

@followtheflame

@code2010

Vancouver 2010 on Facebook

Sponsored by

Advertise on Fuel Your Creativity.
Fuel Your Creativity 2009 cc (creative commons license)

A Gold Medal Win: the Vancouver 2010 Campaign

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The note overlays are composed of two main elements, an outer border div and an inner overlay div. The trickiest piece, and most fun, was actually the gradient on the border. They didn’t want to use a canvas knockout so instead they used border-image, which is a really versatile but slightly tricky CSS property.

The basic gist of border-image is that you can set an image of your choosing as the overlay for the border of an object, but the truth is quite a bit more complicated.

Requirements: CSS3 Support
Demo: https://zurb.notableapp.com/website-feedback/10696…
License: License Free

Sponsors

Pixmac: Stock Photos, Royalty Free Pictures and Images

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Video Tutorial

Final Image

This is the final image that we will be creating.

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With Glowing Hearts

Snowboarding Parallel Giant Slalom

Ski Jumping

Para Alpine Skiing

Bobsleigh

Biathlon

Illustrations Integrated into Vancouver Homepage

Illustrations Integrated into the Twitter Accounts

@FollowtheFlame

@2010Tweets

“My name is Leo Obstbaum, and I am a dreamer.” Remembering Vancoucer 2010’s Design Director

While doing research about the Vancouver 2010 Graphics I made a sad discovery. The Design Director of the project: Leo Obstbaum passed away at the age of 40. His final day, August 21st 2009 and he died of natural causes. It touched me deeply because after looking through so many different image threads and slides to see his deep involvement with the project and know he is not here to witness its outcome. One of his very good friends Mark Busse wrote a detailed article about Leo after his passing. You should read the article over at GDC/BC Blog.

Need More Vancouver Info?

Vancouver 2010 Brand and Image

Olympic and Paralympic Games design has a long tradition of creativity and excellence. Each Organizing Committee tries to visually capture the Olympic and Paralympic spirit, while telling the unique story of the host region and country.

Vancouver 2010 Graphic Identity

The Host Country of every Olympic and Paralympic Games tells a unique story of culture and imagination through design and artistry. The Vancouver 2010 graphic identity seeks to unify and beautify the Games with a consistent look and feel throughout all its environments and communications.

Transmoflection – A video about the research put in

The Story of the Vancouver 2010 Paralympic Winter Games Emblem

Olympic and Paralympic Games design has a long tradition of creativity and excellence. Each Organizing Committee tries to visually capture the Olympic and Paralympic spirit, while telling the unique story of the host region and country.

Vancouver 2010 Pictograms and Sport Illustrations

Pictograms are icons representing each sport and are found on maps, signage and other communications and creative applications. Every Olympic and Paralympic Games Host Country has added its own unique design to its pictograms.

Social?

@2010Tweets

@followtheflame

@code2010

Vancouver 2010 on Facebook

Sponsored by

Advertise on Fuel Your Creativity.
Fuel Your Creativity 2009 cc (creative commons license)

Stellar Vancouver 2010 Illustrations

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In light of NBC’s blunderous maneuvers, its decision to push back The Tonight Show , and Conan O’Brien’s public statement on the matter, Conan fans are using social media avatars to get their point across.

In fact, one man’s I’m With COCO image is speaking for Facebook denizens everywhere. Mike Mitchell created an image, along with an accompanying website and Facebook Page, that celebrates Conan and his widely discussed hair. Now Facebookers are showing their support for the late-night funny man by changing their pictures to the COCO image.

Mitchell encourages this communal display of solidarity, which is becoming quite the trend on Facebook and other social networks. TMZ reports that even people who work for NBC and The Tonight Show are participating in the avatar-changing movement. Apparently even Conan O’Brien himself has seen the image that pays homage to him and his vibrant hair.

So are you with COCO?

Tags: conan, conan o’brien, facebook, tv

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This post is part of our daily series of posts showing the most inspiring images selected by some of the Abduzeedo’s writers and users. If you want to participate and share your graphic design inspiration, just send us, via email, the image with the link from where you found it, also use “Daily Inspiration” in the subject, and don’t forget to send your Abduzeedo username; or via Twitter sending to http://twitter.com/abduzeedo

If possible use the HTML code: <p class="imgC"><a href="Link to the page you found the image"><img src="Link to the Image" /></a></p>

Do you want to see all images from all Daily Inspirations? Check out http://daily.abduzeedo.com

al b sure

aloa

ardhian.satrya

axvitor

Creative

Cgod

Daniela

Eduardo

eugene kim

Fabiano

Fabio

Florian Nicolle

FuRyLioN

Gisele

Guilherme Marconi

Gustavo Motta

J.Concept

Peter Dahmen

quaos

robot-eos

Robert B

Samuel Lorincik

Taylor

Thiago Rezende

turk1672

WeGraphics

xiondzz

Via Twitter

Send your suggestions via Twitter to http://twitter.com/abduzeedo using #abdz in the end of the tweet.

@thirddesign

@DanielApt

@amessage22

@tiagobenevides

@guilhermeb

The Third & The Seventh from Alex Roman on Vimeo.

@djbennett999

@extragado

Alma from Rodrigo Blaas on Vimeo.

@daniel_nelson

Go to Source

This post is part of our daily series of posts showing the most inspiring images selected by some of the Abduzeedo’s writers and users. If you want to participate and share your graphic design inspiration, just send us, via email, the image with the link from where you found it, also use “Daily Inspiration” in the subject, and don’t forget to send your Abduzeedo username; or via Twitter sending to http://twitter.com/abduzeedo

<!–break–>

If possible use the HTML code: <p class="imgC"><a href="Link to the page you found the image"><img src="Link to the Image" /></a></p>

Do you want to see all images from all Daily Inspirations? Check out http://daily.abduzeedo.com

Today is a special Daily Inspiration, just to celebrate our 404 issue with only 404 error pages! Thanks for the excellent collections at .hongkiat.com and dzineblog.com

Carsonified

Youcastr

Agens

Beta.mnet

Us.blizzard

Huwshimi

Springload

Redtag

Nclud

Wufoo

Expansion broadcast

Surfingonstatic

Cssremix

Mailchimp

Robo

24-7media

Leapanywhere

Twurn

D20srd

Chrisjennings

Astuteo

Studio7designs

Yourwebjob

Lookitsme

Spongebob

Gdzl

Deviantart

Digitalmash

Shelfworthy

Gregone

Fubiz

Cssscoop

Twingly

Unitinteractive

Southcreative

Propeller

B3ta

latelategifts

TurboMilk

Soocial

RetardZone

PatternTap

Abduzeedo

Southpark Studios

Dawdle

Seecoy

Acme

Psyklone

Mmo Game Zone

The Brand Surgery

Jotsai

Amorphia Apparel

Cartoon Network

Centerd

Geeksquad

Chrisglass

Limpfish

Catswhocode

DDZ

Lileks

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CSS and JavaScript are extremely powerful tools for designers and developers. However, sometimes it’s difficult to come up with the one excellent idea that would solve a problem that you are facing right now. Good news: almost every day designers and developers come up with fresh and clever CSS tricks and techniques and share them with other developers online. We regularly collect all these tricks, filter them, sort them, revise them and prepare them for Smashing Magazine readers.

In this post we present 45 useful CSS/JavaScript-techniques that may help you find clever solutions to some of your problems or just get inspired by what is possible with CSS. We cover interesting CSS-techniques, navigation menus, CSS typography, CSS lists and CSS buttons. The focus of this post lies on CSS; please notice that some of the techniques use JavaScript or PHP for enhanced functionality.

Please notice that this is the first part of our large round-up of fresh CSS/JavaScript-techniques. Other techniques (CSS tables, CSS layouts, CSS for Mobile and CSS forms) will be featured in an upcoming article. So don’t forget to subscribe to our RSS-feed and follow us on Twitter for similar articles and a stream of useful resources. Please also let us know what we should change or improve in our future posts!

We are aware that many readers are tired of “lists” floating around in the Web, but we are confident that the vast majority of our visitors will benefit from this post format and will find at least some of the techniques featured in this post useful.

Interesting CSS Techniques

Building the New Visual Annotations
These note overlays are composed of two main elements, an overlay with the shine and a border with the transparency. A very interesting, yet simple technique by the ZURB Design Agency, designers who have written a series of articles on Smashing Magazine as well.

Sexy Music Album Overlays
This aticle shows how to style your music streams and provides you some graphics to do so.

A Colorful Clock With CSS & jQuery
This tutorial describes how one can create a clock using basic CSS and JavaScript.

How To Create Depth And Nice 3D Ribbons Only Using CSS3
We will use box-shadow to create a drop-shadow with RGBa, a color model that allows an optimized contrast with any kind of backgrounds. RGBa is the standard RGB model (0,0,0 – 255,255,255) and it adds the last option (a) for the opacity. We can use this model also for other properties and it works with the new browser.

Advanced Event Timeline With PHP, CSS & jQuery
This Advanced Event Timeline is used with the help of PHP, MySQL, CSS and jQuery. The result: a nice time line with clickable events. Adding new ones is going to be as easy as inserting a row in the database.

CSS Navigation Menus

CSS 3D Meninas
“I’ve took the classic paint The Maids of Honour (Las Meninas) and created a CSS pseudo-3D / Parallax effect. It is pure CSS, no JavaScript or Flash is involved. It has been tested and is working on Internet Explorer 8, Firefox 3, Opera 9, Safari 3, Chrome 4 and Konqueror 3.5, and it validates, too.

Sproing! – Make An Elastic Thumbnail Menu
“In an ongoing attempt to offer alternative methods to spruce up menus, I’ve pieced together an elastic thumbnail menu. It magnifies menu items when they are hovered over and menu items expand upwards.

How to Create Simple and Effective Sub Navs with Definition Lists
“When we need simple and effective on-page navigation, to either jump to content on the page or flip to another view, we use the dl element. Its sub elements, the dt and dd, make it very easy for us to create inline links with a clear label. Here we’re going to share with you a fast, lightweight method for how we’ll use CSS to do it.”

Sticky SideNav Layout with CSS
Learn how to create a fixed sidenav layout for your blog or website. Having a fixed sidenav comes in handy when dealing with blog style websites where the content is extremely tall and there is a need for good amount of scrolling. The fixed navigation allows the user to cruise through the content without scrolling back up to the top to navigate through the rest of the site.

Unobtrusive Dropdown Page Changer
Using a <select> dropdown menu to create navigation isn’t as common as it once was, but it’s still around. It got ripped on pretty good for being an inaccessible / obtrusive. Indeed a lot of the scripts you’ll find out there for creating a menu like this are this way. Bummer. Let’s make one that works with or without JavaScript.

CSS Navigation: No JavaScript, jQuery or Image Required, Free CSS Navigation / Pagination with Tooltip
CSS-based navigation / pagination bar without JavaScript. There is a tooltip on hover for the ‘previous’ and ‘next’ page’s bullets that makes navigation easier.

How to Code an Overlapping Tabbed Main Menu
Main navigation menu is that part of a website design that makes the whole site look lively and complete. But the most common type of navigation menu style still being used a lot is the tabbed navigation menu. Here is a tutorial on how to code an overlapping tabbed menu.

Solution For Very Long Dropdown Menus
“I like to be confident with post titles, but the reality in this case is a possible solution for very long dropdowns. The problem with long dropdowns is that the dropdown itself can go below the “fold” of the website. That is, below the visible area of the browser window. So in order to access those menu items down below, you need to scroll your browser window. For those of us with scroll wheels of some kind on our mice (mouses?), it’s not a big deal. For those without, those lower menu items are totally inaccessible, because to use the browser scrollbar means mousing off the menu (and probably having it close).”

Mega Drop Down Menu w/ CSS & jQuery
When used properly, mega drop down menus can be quite efficient for large scale websites. Let’s experiment with different ways of implementing this technique. A tutorial by Soh Tanaka, Smashing Magazine’s regular author.

CSS Typography and Body Copy

How to Create a Cool Anaglyphic Text Effect with CSS
Anaglyphs are those amazing 3D images that are created by offsetting two of the red, green and blue channels, and are viewed with those nerdy looking 3D glasses with different coloured lenses. I don’t know if this effect works for real, as I’ve unfortunately misplaced my 3D specs, but it’s a pretty cool text effect nevertheless! Let’s take a look at how a similar style can be created for sprucing up your web designs, while taking into consideration semantics and avoiding the repetition of any markup.

Typographic work planner
Enter this, a little HTML/CSS typographic work planner. By using some super-semantic HTML and a dash of CSS you can craft a beautiful looking yet incredibly simple work planner for you and your staff.

Thinning Text in Webkit (Safari)
Safari has a not-so-lovely way of bulking up text using sub-pixel rendering. On previous versions of Safari, this was fixed with a text-shadow declaration, but since Snow Leopard that method no longer works. Fortunately, there is an alternative.

Pseudo Drop Caps
They’ve been around for a while now, appearing in magazines, print and now the web. Designers and developers alike have experimented with multiple workarounds from using inline styles to using image replacement but with both of these solutions there are problems. For example, what happens when you recreate your site and decide that you no longer want to upload the drop cap images, you’re now going to left with a broken image at the start of every single post that you had previously created, this is obviously assuming you haven’t used text-indent. If you decided to go down on the inline style route then your are just bad, just very bad.

How to Create Perfect Pre Tags
If you operate a website that features lots of code examples, you know how important it is to spend some quality time styling the &tl;pre> element. When left unstyled, wild <pre> tags will mangle your preformatted content and destroy your site’s layout. Different browsers treat the <pre> tag quite differently, varying greatly in their default handling of font-sizing, scrollbar-rendering, and word-wrapping. Indeed, getting your preformatted code to look consistent, usable, and stylish across browsers is no easy task, but it certainly can be done. This article explains everything you need to create proper <pre> tags.

Improve your web typography with baseline shift
The baseline is an invisible line onto which all type characters sit, although of course some characters (including ‘j’, ‘p’, ‘g’ and ‘y’) have descenders that hang below the baseline. Baseline shift involves moving characters up or down in relation to the baseline and using it effectively can make a huge difference to the professional look of your type. Although baseline shift has traditionally been a part of using tools like InDesign or Quark, there are ways to accomplish the same results using CSS.

Typograph – Scale & Rhythm
This page is both an essay and a tool. It sets out to explore how two, intertwined concepts, often playful but sometimes cheeky, can be encouraged to dance in web pages. Drag the colored boxes along the scale to throw these words anew. For the most part, this text is just a libretto for the performance you are about to play upon it.

Fancy Quotes With jQuery, AJAX & CSS
Learn how to create a fancy quote rating system that will display a number of famous quotes and will enable site visitors to rate their favorites.

How To Create Simple, Stylish and Swappable Image Captions
Most image caption solutions require a lot of excessive HTML, make it difficult to redesign or don’t communicate clearly that they belong to an image. Let’s see what we can do to address these problems.

Styling photo captions with CSS
Sure, some photos are self-explanatory, but most photos are best served with text captions. It’s true for traditional media like newspapers and magazines, and just as true for blog posts and web articles. Here’s a quick tip on using photo captions and styling them nicely with the magic of CSS.

Image captions on Web pages
This document suggests three ways of presenting an image with a caption in HTML. Styling in CSS is also discussed.

Styling Post Headings That Stick Out
“Recently, I’ve noticed a trend in blog post headings where it sticks out of its base layout. I would like to share this technique for those who would like to give their post headings a new style. One tip to keep in mind when designing this is to make sure it fits your target audience screen resolution size. Note that this technique may vary depending on your design. My goal is for you to grasp the main concept in this tutorial so you can experiment and apply it to your own projects.”

Using ellipsis with HTML and CSS
If the text is too wide to fit into a container, a nice solution can be to have ellipsis to show there’s more information available. While not currently part of the official HTML specifications, it is possible to have ellipsis defined in CSS and it works for Internet Explorer, Safari, Chrome and Opera. It doesn’t work for Firefox but there’s a workaround that can be done with jQuery.

5 Message Boxes to Style your Notifications with CSS
This article presents free notification boxes to use/customize as well as a very simple technique to create your own ones inspired from this roundup.

CSS Lists

Create a Microsoft Word-Style Outline with CSS
As you can see, the browser doesn’t bother to vary the indentation style much, or change the list type from roman numerals to alphabetical characters and so on… all the things we’re so used to seeing because Microsoft Word and other writing programs do them by default. So let’s use a bit of CSS ingenuity to make a Microsoft Word-styled outline using ordered lists!

Pure CSS Timeline
“I wanted to build a CSS timeline for the “About” section of my site while using some clean and simple markup. I wanted to avoid using images as much as possible, so I spent a few minutes prototyping some options and came up with a solution using unordered lists. The result is a simple and clean looking timeline with some very straight forward markup. In this article I’ll share my approach to creating a timeline out of CSS and HTML which results in a nice looking, simple timeline.”

Automatic numbering with CSS Counters
When writing documents, it is often useful to number sections and have a table of contents. You can number these by hand, directly in the markup, but this can be time consuming if the order changes and you have to edit all the numbers. CSS2.1 gives us a automated way to generate numbers using CSS counters, and this article will walk you through how to use them. One word of note before we start is that CSS counters are not yet implemented in IE, although they are on the roadmap for IE8.

CSS tricks for custom bullets

Elastic Calendar Styling with CSS
A traditional calendar is a grid of numbered boxes on a page. As a web designer, you might go right for a table, and I wouldn’t fault you for that. Tables, though, can sometimes be tough to muscle into shape. The CSS purist in me gets pissed when I set the width of a table (or a cell) and it decides it knows better and grows or shrinks as it sees fit.
You can tackle calendar styling with pure CSS, and I feel it makes just as much sense semantically as a table does. What is a calender, if not an ordered list of days? By using CSS, we can even do some cool things like do all our sizing with ems so our calendar layout will be elastic. That is, grow in both width and height when text is resized in browsers, while greatly increasing accessibility.

Style a List with One Pixel
A one-pixel background image can be a pretty versatile thing. With repeat-x it can be a horizontal line, repeat-y makes a vertical line, and repeat makes it a fill color. Just as a little fun proof of concept, we can use that to create a depth-chart looking unordered list.

Style Your Ordered List
By default, most browsers display the ordered list numbers same font style as the body text. Here is a quick CSS tutorial on how you can use the ordered list (ol) and paragraph (p) element to design a stylish numbered list.

Simulating a Table Using an Unordered List
Your first question immediately might be, “why would I want to simulate a table with a list, why not just use a table?” With the raise in popularity of AJAX sortable list elements, using list items to represent a multiple column data table can allow for easy sorting of various more “tabley” information. So let’s get started.

8 different ways to beautifully style your HTML lists with CSS
“The use of HTML lists (<ol> for an ordered list, <ul> for an unordered list) is very common these days. Today, we’re going to look a little bit further than creating regular lists, by showing 8 different ways to beautifully style your HTML lists with CSS. We’ll use some pure CSS techniques to make a bored list look awesome (and even have some extra functionality).”

Quick Tip – Simplify List Margins with CSS
Have you ever set default margins for a layout, and then had to go back and manually adjust all of your lists? By default, list item markers have a negative positioning in relationship to the list item itself. This means that zero-ing out margins automatically leads to an overflow if the list is contained inside anything else. Wouldn’t it be easier to put the list item marker at the same starting point as other elements instead? Lucky for us, there’s a style to help do just that. Let’s see what can be done with the list-style-position property.

Sexy HTML List Tricks
Behold the ubiquitous list elements, <ul> and <ol>. These two sexy elements help millions of websites display lists of information in clean, semantic fashion. Without them, we’d be crawling around like filthy cavemen, eating dirt and howling at the moon. But these list elements aren’t just sexy, they are also extremely flexible, enabling us humble designers to create robust list configurations that are semantically versatile and highly customizable.

Clickable <li>
I originally coded the markup to be a table, but discovered a problem when I tried to make the whole row clickable. I ended up with a list of articles instead.

CSS Buttons

Simply-Buttons v2
This technique presents buttons of the size that always fits the content. There are 3 states: inactive, active and hover. The technique works in all major browsers and doesn’t require JavaScript.

How to make sexy buttons with CSS
This tutorial will teach you how to create pretty looking textual buttons (with alternate pressed state) using CSS. Dynamic buttons save you heaps of time otherwise spent creating graphics and will basically make you a happier person at the end of the day.

Liquid & Color Adjustable CSS Buttons
When working on a large site with multiple buttons, it can be quite tedious to make all the buttons in Photoshop. Making future adjustments on the verbiage and colors can be also be time consuming. By having dynamic buttons, this scenario is much easier to handle, and by having liquid and color adjustable buttons with CSS, we are able to change the verbiage and colors in a flash.

Create a Button with Hover and Active States using CSS Sprites
Too many designers neglect the click state (active-property in CSS) in web design, either because they’re unaware of it, underestimate the importance of it or are plain lazy. It’s a simple effect that improves usability by giving the user some feedback as to what they’ve clicked on but can also add depth to a design.

Recreating the button
“I thought it would be interesting to provide a portion of the background on buttons here, and discuss some of the iterations we’ve been through so far to get to the current state.”

Rounded form buttons

Google’s Imageless Buttons
An interesting discussion about various buttons design techniques to reconstruct Google’s imageless buttons.

Stay tuned!

This is the first part of our large round-up of fresh CSS/JavaScript-techniques. Don’t forget to subscribe to our RSS-feed and follow us on Twitter for similar articles and a stream of useful resources. Please also let us know what we should change or improve in our future posts!

Would you like to see more similar round-ups on Smashing Magazine in the future?(answers)

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Post tags: CSS, javascript, js

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This post is part of our daily series of posts showing the most inspiring images selected by some of the Abduzeedo’s writers and users. If you want to participate and share your graphic design inspiration, just send us, via email, the image with the link from where you found it, also use “Daily Inspiration” in the subject, and don’t forget to send your Abduzeedo username; or via Twitter sending to http://twitter.com/abduzeedo

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al b sure

Brukhar

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joostbooy

Khyzyl Saleem

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orrisen

pippone

Traz

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This post is part of our daily series of posts showing the most inspiring images selected by some of the Abduzeedo’s writers and users. If you want to participate and share your graphic design inspiration, just send us, via email, the image with the link from where you found it, also use “Daily Inspiration” in the subject, and don’t forget to send your Abduzeedo username; or via Twitter sending to http://twitter.com/abduzeedo

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Arco

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Charlie Morton

ciR-e

coeko

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eriktreimann

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Lamborghini Estoque Presskit 2008 from Tom Nowak on Vimeo.

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Eyes are the spirit of the whole image, therefore, it is suggested that you need to spend a longer while to do this bit. There are various ways to draw the eyes. And this tutorial will teach you how to use Photoshop brushes to draw the eyes. The techniques are also suitable for human characters.

(View This Tutorial)

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This post is part of our daily series of posts showing the most inspiring images selected by some of the Abduzeedo’s writers and users. If you want to participate and share your graphic design inspiration, just send us, via email, the image with the link from where you found it, also use “Daily Inspiration” in the subject, and don’t forget to send your Abduzeedo username; or via Twitter sending to http://twitter.com/abduzeedo

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xiondzz

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In this Photoshop web design tutorial, we’re going to learn how to create a slick and minimal-looking website layout. We will use the 960 Grid System as a template to make it easy to align the design elements on the layout.

Preview

Here’s a preview of what we’ll be creating together, click the image to enlarge.

Create a new Photoshop document

1 We’ll be using the 960 Grid System (download it at http://960s/) as a starting template. Once downloaded, ppen up the file called 960_grid_12_col.psd and then hide the group called 12_col_grid.

Creating the background

2 First of all, right-click on the Background layer in the Layers Panel and then choose Layer From Background. This will unlock the Background layer so that it’s editable. I named the Background layer as bg.

3 Now select the Gradient Tool (G), set your Foreground color to #efefef and your background color to #cacaca. Select Radial Gradient as the type of gradient in the Options bar. Drag the gradient onto the canvas so that you have something similar to this:

Designing the header section

4 We’ll add a new horizontal guide at the 50px mark from the top of the document to set our top borders. This will mark the location of the layout’s header section.

5 We’ll start adding our title and slogan; select the Horizontal Type Tool (T) and type your site’s name and your slogan. Here are the font settings I used in the layout:

"YourName"

• Font family: Nilland font (get it from dafont.com)
• Font size: 33pt
• Font weight: Bold
• Anti-aliasing setting: Strong
• Color: #525252

"some awesome slogan"

• Font family: Arial
• Font size: 14pt
• Font weight: Regular
• Anti-aliasing setting: Strong
• Color: #207687

6 Align the fonts on the left top, using your guides for accurate placement.

Creating our navigation

7 Select the Horizontal Type Tool (T) and type the navigation text (home, about us, services, portfolio, and contact) using the following font settings:

• Font family: Arial
• Font size: 17pt
• Font weight: Regular
• Anti-aliasing setting: Strong
• Color: #525252

8 Use the document’s guides to align the navigation link text like the following image:

Creating the search bar

9 Now it’s time to create the search bar that’s situated on the right of the navigation links. Select Rounded Rectangle Tool (U), set the Radius option value to 5px, and then draw the rounded layer shape onto the canvas such that it has 155px width and 20px height, and located at the right of the navigation links.

10 Add an Inner Shadow layer style by double-clicking on the rounded rectangle shape layer in the Layers Panel to open up the Layer Styles dialog box. Use the following settings below for the layer style settings:

11 Let’s create the GO button now. Create a new rounded rectangle shape with the same height (20px) and Radius option value (5px), but with a width of 30px.

12 Apply a vertical (90 degrees) Linear Gradient layer style onto the Go button, with the left color stop being #2fa9c1 and the right color stop being #207687.

13 And then write any text like "search…" using the Horizontal Type Tool (T) on top of the search bar; use a white color (#ffffff).

14 Using the Custom Shape Tool (U), create a white arrow and align it to the center. I used the custom shape called Arrow 2, which comes standard in Photoshop CS versions. Look for it in the Shape option dropdown menu in the Options bar.

Our search bar should be looking like this:

15 Before we move to the next step, just make sure that everything is well-organized in our document. Here’s a screen grab of my Layers Panel as I was developing the layout:

Creating the separating lines

16 Using the Line Tool (U), Create two 1px lines on top of each other, with the following color values:

Note: There are many ways to set the colors of the line shapes. The first is by setting the Color option in the Options bar before drawing the lines. The other way, if you already drew the lines, is to use a Color Overlay layer style. I’ll let you decide how to do this.

Adding the sub-navigation

17 Type your sub-navigation text using the Horizontal Type Tool (T) using the following settings:

• Font family: Arial
• Font size: 17pt
• Font weight: Regular
• Anti-aliasing setting: Strong
• Color: #787878

18 Make sure that the separating line is centrally aligned between the main and sub-navigation. Here’s how it should look:

Creating the featured designs area

19 We’ll start creating the place where the image of a featured design would be, so we’ll select Rounded Rectangle Tool (U), and we’ll create a rectangle of 335px width and 128px height, and a Radius option set to 5px.

20 Apply a gradient Stroke layer style to it by setting the Fill Type option to Gradient. Modify the gradient colors so that it starts at #31aeca and ends at #2b9ab2.

21 Call this newly created layer photo_holder.

22 Well, let’s add an image of a featured design by going to File > Place. This will open up the Place dialog box where you can select an image to place on our canvas. Pick an image, and then press the Place button when you’re done.

23 Make sure that the layer of the image is above the photo_holder layer; if it isn’t, move it. Right-click on the image layer and choose Create Clipping Mask.

24 Modify the size of the image to fit; you can use Free Transform (Ctrl/Cmd + T). When you’re happy with the size, Make sure that your image is aligned according to the image above, flushed to the right of the layout design.

Add some content to the design

25 Let’s add some content to our design, but before we do that, we have to set our boundaries for our content. To do that, drag two horizontal guides like in the following image.

Add a title and a category

26 Use the following settings for the title and category.

Title (in my case it was "Handstand!")

• Font family: Arial
• Font size: 20pt
• Font weight: Regular
• Anti-aliasing setting: Strong
• Color: #2197b1

Category (in my case it was "Photoshop design"):

• Font family: Arial
• Font size: 17pt
• Font weight: Regular
• Anti-aliasing option: Strong
• Color: #313131

Paragraph content

27 Add your paragraph text, using the following image for reference.

28 Choose the Move Tool (V) in the Tools Panel and select our three text layers in the Layer Panel (hold down Ctrl/Cmd while clicking on them to select all of them).

29 Give them equal spacing using the Distribute top edges option.

Create the slider control

30 It’s time to create the slider control. Start by duplicating the two lines we’ve created for the navigation, and then resizing them (you can use Free Transform to do this). We’ll make the dark line darker, giving it a color value of #777575.

31 Then create a small box rectangle shape using the Rectangle Tool (15px wide and 15px high) and apply a Gradient Overlay layer style to it.

32 Before we move to the next step, we have to organize our layers. Use the following reference image to make sure the layers are in proper order.

Creating the content boxes

33 First off, we need to set our boundaries. Drag a horizontal guide and put it on the slider line. Leave a 50px gap, and then add another horizontal guide.

34 Now select the Round Rectangle Tool (U). Create a rectangle of 260px width and 170px height and a color of #d0d0d0. Call this layer bg_1.

35 Align the rectangle like the following reference image, using the Move Tool (V) to position them accurately.

36 Right-click on the bg_1 layer in the Layers Panel and choose Create Layer Mask from the contextual menu.

37 Select the Gradient Tool (G), set your foreground and background color to Black and White (press D to automatically reset the colors). With a linear gradient, drag from top to bottom until you’re satisfied with the look.

38 Now let’s create the shadow. Duplicate the bg_1 layer. Name the duplicated layer shadow. Place the layer beneath the bg_1 layer. Then apply a Color Overlay layer style with a dark gray color (#3e3e3e).

39 While having the shadow layer selected, go Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur. Set the Blur Radius to 5.0px.

40 Using Gradient Tool (G), adjust the layer mask until you have something like this:

41 Add some content to the box. Below, you’ll see what I ended up with.

42 Group the content layers that you created into a group called content.

43 Now we want to align it. Select the content group, hold down the Ctrl/Cmd key, and select the bg_1 layer in the Layers Panel. Choose the Move Tool (V), and click on the Align horizontal centers option and the Align vertical centers option to position them.

44 Now make two copies of this box by duplicating the layers of the original content box we just created. Align them, change the content, and don’t forget to add a horizontal guide at the bottom.

45 Let’s check back and make sure that all of our layers are organized; use the screenshot of my layers as reference.

Creating the main content area

46 Leave a 50px gap and drag a new horizontal guide. Start adding your content and align it according to the following image.

47 Let’s make it look a bit better. We’ll select Rectangular Marquee Tool (M). In the Style option, choose Fixed Size with a fixed width of 15px and a fixed height of 30px. Set your foreground color to #12197b and fill the rectangular marquee selection with the color (Press Ctrl/Cmd + Backspace to fill).

48 Using the same settings, you can add some content in the right side.

49 Drag a new horizontal guide at the bottom. Add a separating line; use the following image for reference.

50 Check back to see all your layers are organized, using the following image as reference.

Creating footer area

51 We’ll start with the footer area creation by (again) creating a new horizontal Guide. Leave a 50px gap between the guide above, and drag a new horizontal guide!

52 Select the Single Row Marquee Tool (M). Set your foreground color to white (#ffffff). Click on the canvas to create the marquee selection. Then press Ctrl/Cmd + Backspace to fill it. Call this layer 1px_upper_line.

53 Select Rectangular Marquee Tool (M) and create a rectangle of 1020px width (it spans the entire width of the canvas, and 160px height. This will be the background of the footer area. Fill it with any color. Apply a Gradient Overlay layer style to it using the following settings.

54 Duplicate the 1px_upper_line layer and move it to the bottom of the footer, call it whatever name you want, but I’ve called mine 1px_down_line. Here’s how it looks.

55 Start adding some content; use the following images for reference:

56 You can download the social media icons from deviantART – they’re called Aquaticus.Social by Junwei.

57 Align them like in the following image:

Creating the small footer

58 Drag a new horizontal guide at the bottom of the big (brown footer), leave a 50px gap, then add a new horizontal guide.

59 Then write your footer navigation text like so:

60 Write the copyright text and align it to the right, add a final horizontal guide.

Adjusting the canvas size

61 Finally, we need to leave another 50px gap between the footer navigation, copyright text and the borders in order to do that, we’ll adjust our canvas size.

Conclusion

And there we have it! We’ve created a clean and minimal layout design!

Download source file

You want a PSD copy don’t you? Here’s a ZIP archive that contains a PSD, and a JPG preview, get it now!

• slick-minimal-layout.zip (4.97MB, ZIP)

Related Content

• Create a Winter Theme Web Design in Photoshop
• Create an Animated “Call to Action” Button
• Design a Minimal and Modern Portfolio Layout with Photoshop
• Related categories: Tutorials and Web Design

About the Author

Mahmoud Khaled a web and graphics designer from Egypt. He’s also a blogger and tutorial writer. At a young age of 15, he already shows skills equivalent to his much older counterparts. Send him a tweet @Mkhaled1, connect with him on Facebook, and visit his site and blog called mkhaled.com.

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Adobe Photoshop involves in every computer related career. As a widely used image editor application, you can find graphic designer, photographers, web designers, video and animation specialists and even developers use it regularly in either projects. And many people use it to edit their own images to upload to social networks or even their own profiles.

Adobe Photoshop extended to be more than just an image editing program, it can help you to save your web page as HTML, create animation, vector art and 3D graphics.

Most of the Photoshop users may know how to achieve there task, but there are hidden tips and tricks behind Photoshop that can help you achieve your task easily and fast. Also, from the background of work with Photoshop tasks, there are common tasks and commands that are used often and usually. If you can achieve these tasks fast, you will be able to reduce the time of your Photoshop project or task. For example, if you have multiple files to resize, you do not have to open each file to resize it individually, instead you can resize all the files at once. In this article, I will point to the hidden features in Photoshop that many people may miss and it can help you getting you job done in fewer time and effort.

Adobe Bridge

Adobe Bridge comes by default with Photoshop and you can reach it from the stand alone icon or from inside Photoshop. Adobe Bridge can help you navigate for your graphic resources and images at your local machine. Adobe Bridge allows you to preview your images and open it in its associated applications easily. For example, you can preview Photoshop PSD files and open it in Photoshop by simple double-clicks it.

The Preview panel in Adobe Bridge allows you to preview the images in any size and you can view them as a slide show. Further, Adobe Bridge lets you archive your images resources and add metadata content for it to reach and organize it. The Metadata panel in Adobe Bridge can help you add information to each image and you can also save images as favorite to reach it later in less time.

One of the most useful features in Adobe Bridge is the batch rename, which lets you bulk rename files based on specific criteria. You can simply batch rename any selected files by right-click the files and choose Batch Rename. The Batch Rename dialog box appears to let you choose how to set the new name sequence. For example, you can set the name sequence based on date, number, specific text and number if digits…etc.

Actions

Photoshop actions are rerecorded steps that are saved as ACN format and let you apply these steps again and again on other file or files to reach the same effect. You can do this without the need to repeat the steps to reach the needed results automatically with no need to repeat steps. You can manage Actions, record actions, play current actions and review the built-in action through the Action panel.

The bottom icons in the Action panel allows you easily record new actions through the record icon and stop the action once you finish recording the steps you do in Photoshop. Each action has a unique name so you can access it easily through the Actions layers. Each action has its layers that show each step in the action. You can edit the value of the step such as a filter value, resize size…etc.

With the ability to record new actions, you can load external actions through the Action panel context menu that let you load external action in ATN format. You can download free Photoshop actions from the links below:

The Big Collection Of Amazing Photoshop Actions
Photoshop Actions Free Download Collections

Automate

The Automate menu is an extension for the Action panel to give you more abilities using some useful actions to apply files. The Automate commands are similar to actions, but it is located in the File > Automate command. The Automate commands include useful actions that can help you so much to archive your tasks easily and fast. For example, the Batch command, Create Droplet and Merge to HDR…etc.

One of the most commonly used Automate command is the Batch command, which lets you apply a specific action to folder of files and save it in the same location or different location. With the Batch command, the Create Droplet command let you create an external icon that link to a specific action in Photoshop. However, when you drag any image to this droplet icon, Photoshop opens and apply the action to this image. This command is useful when you need to apply an action such as resize to any image on desktop or downloaded image directly.

Scripts

Adobe Photoshop integrates with the Adobe Java Script language. However, Adobe Photoshop includes scripts that give you smart solutions through number of built in scripts. You can reach the scripts through the File > Script menu. Scripts menu include useful commands such as the following:

• Image processor, this command lets you convert images format to between different commonly use formats.
• Flatten All Layers Effects, this command allows you to flatten all layer effects in one step.
• Flatten All layer Masks, this command allows you to flatten layer masks.
• Layer Comp to Files, this command converts the layer compositions to separated image files with different formats.
• Export Layers to Files, when you have a file with different layers and you would like to separate each layer in an image files, you can use this command to convert all the layers to files in one step.
• Load Files into Stack, this option reverses the previous one as it coverts multiple files into one Photoshop file with each image in a separate layer.

In the Scripts menu, you can find the Script Event Manager where you can create new scripts.

Layer Comp

Layer Comp panel is a smart panel where you can save through it different views of your Photoshop layers visibility. For example, if you are working in a design and would like to show the client different arrangement of objects, you do not have save every view in a separate Photoshop file. All you need to do is to save different layers arrangements or visibility as different Layer comp and then use the Layer Comp to Files script to expert these layer comps to images.

To save a new layer arrangement as a layer comp, just click the new icon in the bottom of the Layer Comp panel. You can navigate between views through the arrows in the bottom of the Layer Comp panel. Also, you can delete it by just dragging it to the trash icon.

Save for Web and Devices

The Save for Web and Devices option lets you not only optimize your design to meet with the web file size requirements, but also to prepare your design to be added or sent to mobile for testing. This way, you can see how it will look like on different types of mobile devices. However, instead of testing your design on a real mobile device, you can basically test how your design will look like through the mobile emulator in Adobe Device Central. You can reach it by clicking the Device Central on the bottom left of the Save for Web dialog box. The Save for Web dialog box allows you to optimize your image size, quality and number of colors to meet your requirements.

Conclusion

Doing tasks in Photoshop professionally are not just related to how to use the tool, it depends on how you can use these tools smartly to achieve you task in short effect time. And since the workflow in Photoshop include both creative tasks and tasks that are commonly used to save your files, optimize them..etc. The best approach it is be able to do the common task with a smart way to reduce its time and give more time to your creativity. The total result will be a more creative Photoshop project that is done in less time and effort.

Related topics you may like to read

• 40+Impressive Photoshop Text Effects Tutorials
• Fantasy Water Wallpaper Photoshop Tutorial
• Glass Neon Text With Ornament Photoshop Tutorial
• Creative Color Effects Photoshop Tutorial
• Poppies of Summer Wallpaper Tutorial
• Glass Text Effect in Photoshop in a Minute
• Eye Photo Manipulation Photoshop Tutorial
• Photoshop Tutorials You Do Not Want to Miss
• High Quality Adobe Photoshop Tips and Tutorials
• Lava Devastation Photoshop Tutorial

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This is something new for us today – a Photoshop tutorial. It is area in which I have hoped to explore for a very long time. With this, the plan is to have a weekly section dedicated to publishing a fresh and original tutorial, not only for Photoshop, but also for Illustrator and Fireworks.
So, if you would like to jump on the bandwagon and write a tutorial for this new weekly section, get in touch with me here: Contact.

Creating a Realistic Torn Photo Effect – Image Preview

In this tutorial you will learn how to take a standard photo of a girl and tear it into pieces using some stock images and some nifty Photoshop techniques.
The image on the left is what your finished product will look like. OK, lets get started…
Before we start, you should download the source files…

Step 1 –

Step 2 – Drop Shadow Settings

Step 3 – Inner Shadow Settings

Step 4 – Inner Glow Settings

Step 5 – Bevel and Emboss Settings

Step 6 – Merge layers

This is the result so far

Step 7 – Torn Paper

Step 8 – Crop the Torn Paper

Step 9 – Select with the Magic Wand

Step 10 – Scale and Rotate

Step 11 – Torn Background

Step 12 – Torn Background II

Step 13 – Torn Background III

Step 14 – Torn Background IV

Step 15 – Torn Background V

Step 16 – Torn Background VI

Step 17 – Torn Background VII

Step 18 – Copy and Paste the Selection

Step 19 – CTRL + CLICK

Step 20 – Cut the image of the Girl

Step 21 – Position the Torn Paper

Step 22 – Applying Shadow

Step 23 – Positioning another piece of cardboard

Step 24 – Repeat the process

Step 25 – Finished

The Author

Paola has been the author of todays tutorial, she is also known as Violet Bag and you can visit here website, Violetbag.com to view some of her awesome works.

You might also like…

The Best 40 Photoshop Text Effects from 2009 »
49 Most Creative Photoshop Tutorials of 2009 »
20 Beautiful HDR Photographs of the Marvels and Mysteries of Iceland »
30 Artistic and Creative Photoshop Poster Tutorials »
40 Amazing Photoshop Brush Directories and Collections »
50 Imaginative Fantasy Art Tutorials for Photoshop »
25 Cool Digital Photography Tutorials, Techniques and Effects »
30 Useful Photoshop Buttons and Badges Tutorials »
25 Photoshop Tutorials for Creating that Perfect Web Page Design »

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This post is part of our daily series of posts showing the most inspiring images selected by some of the Abduzeedo’s writers and users. If you want to participate and share your graphic design inspiration, just send us, via email, the image with the link from where you found it, also use “Daily Inspiration” in the subject, and don’t forget to send your Abduzeedo username; or via Twitter sending to http://twitter.com/abduzeedo

If possible use the HTML code: <p class="imgC"><a href="Link to the page you found the image"><img src="Link to the Image" /></a></p>

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2escape

Adomas Jazdauskas

al b sure

Ankur Patar

Cgod

Christopher-Robin

Just another day from christopher-robin eklund on Vimeo.

creative

daily deviation

Dev

Eqairo

eugene kim

fabiandelange

Fabiano

Fabio

Showreel 09 from Fredrik Davidsson on Vimeo.

Gisele

John Mark

Mauricio Cardoso

nickswakinglife

oribalazs

Postreman

rydenbreeze

r2d2

Shnalla

Tiago Benevides

zuca

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In case 720p wasn’t enough for your gorgeous, transcendent works of motion picture art, Vimeo will begin hosting 1080p videos by the end of this month.

Unfortunately, that you’ll have to be a Plus member not just to upload these files but to view them as well. Plus members pay $60 per year or $10 per month — worth it if you’re a big fan of the sort of art-house fare that makes up Vimeos niche, not so much if you’re not (though according to the top 10 video sites poll we ran recently, a lot of you are).

1080p videos use 1080 horizontal lines to draw the image, as opposed to 720 for 720p, 480p for 480, and so on. More lines mean a sharper image on screens that can handle the resolution.

YouTube already rolled out 1080p videos a month ago, but it bears mentioning that most computer displays and mobile devices have lower resolutions than 1080p, which is (along with bandwidth limitations) one of the reasons 1080p hasn’t taken hold on the web yet. Nevertheless, 1080p is now the HDTV standard, especially for larger televisions.

Tags: 1080p, 720p, hd, high-definition, streaming video, Vimeo, web video, youtube

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This post is part of our daily series of posts showing the most inspiring images selected by some of the Abduzeedo’s writers and users. If you want to participate and share your graphic design inspiration, just send us, via email, the image with the link from where you found it, also use “Daily Inspiration” in the subject, and don’t forget to send your Abduzeedo username; or via Twitter sending to http://twitter.com/abduzeedo

If possible use the HTML code: <p class="imgC"><a href="Link to the page you found the image"><img src="Link to the Image" /></a></p>

Do you want to see all images from all Daily Inspirations? Check out http://daily.abduzeedo.com

al b sure

Alessandro Grandinetti

Carbon knight

creative

Cgod

Chris

Eugene Kim

Fabiano

Fabio

Modern Collective – The First Visions from Poor Specimen on Vimeo.

Gisele

grafi-ray

Guilherme

Jannitor

Jeroen

Jeffrey Man

2009 Motion Graphics Reel from Jeffrey Man on Vimeo.

marco

Monica Galvan

Naomie Ross

Naomie Ross – Self Portrait ’09 from Naomie Ross on Vimeo.

sept

Shnalla

xiondzz

Via Twitter

Send your suggestions via Twitter to http://twitter.com/abduzeedo using #abdz in the end of the tweet.

@thirddesign

@MorganLott

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In many ways, branding is as much an art as it is a science, a technique of knowing how to read the mercurial moods of the purchasing public. In the age of the digital marketplace and an ever-connecting world population, new challenges and ideas present themselves to the savvy business. Anyone with a brand to promote must heed these signs or find themselves left behind.

Vox Populi

An increasing trend in digital branding is the user-driven brand. Traditional branding relies on the parent company presenting a particular image they wish associated with their item – Chevrolet and Ford wish to project a brand associated with ruggedness, leading to the “Ford Tough” and “Like a Rock” slogans of the late 1990s. User-driven branding, on the other hand, appropriates an image cultivated from the product’s user base and embraces it, allowing the people to choose how they associate with the brand.

Spelling Challenged Kittens

Perhaps one of the most intriguing overnight branding success stories is that of the popular image blog, “I Can Haz Cheezburger?” LoLCats are user-generated images of felines in various adorable or questionable poses, with humorously misspelled captions attached. That is it; no product to sell, just funny images uploaded to social message boards and forum – the phenomenon began in earnest with the weekly ‘Caturday’ on the highly controversial site 4Chan.

Cheezburger was an effort to archive these pictures more permanently in a blog format, without the socially rambunctious atmosphere of some other boards, nothing more. Within two years the company was purchased for two million dollars, has created a number of products such as books and garments, and has gathered users’ humorous misspellings into an actual Constructed Language project that is translating major texts. The brand is clearly associated with its humble beginnings, and continues to draw input from users – in particular, the LoLspeak project itself is entirely user-driven in a wikipedia style collective effort.

Trendy Kids and their Toys

Apple’s “Get a Mac” and “Mac vs PC” commercials are already entering into modern legend as far as branding efforts go. Apple was shunted aside as the standard home computer by the proliferation of Windows-based machines, and Mac users developed a reputation for the odd computing enthusiast.

However, just as the cultural image of the nerd and geek were slowly turned into countercultures and social trends of their own, Apple picked up on these movements and re-branded itself as the tool of the ‘indie’ kids eager for something different. While not as direct an example as with LoLCats, it still demonstrates the influence a user base can have on a brand that they personally identify with. An audience decided to embrace a certain image, and this image allowed Mac to launch itself into the modern resurgence it has enjoyed.

Dudes and Dells

Recently, Dell Computers closed their popular Customer Care message board. These were user forums Dell set up in 1997 to cater to customers who weren’t interested in fighting with telephone tech support, or wanted a solution other than hauling their PC across town to a big-box shop for repair and refit. The boards allowed users to contact actual Dell employees with their grievances, and were a major cornerstone of Dell’s long-standing claim to superior customer service and support. Dell users spread their experiences by word of mouth and internet communication, and the Dell brand became synonymous with its dedicated user base.

When Dell announced the decision to close these boards in 2005, the decision caused a bit of an uproar. Longtime fans and users of the board protested en masse. Dell claimed good reasons for their decision – technical services were for registered purchasers, and the forums couldn’t be made completely secure against identity theft when personal information was exchanged. However, the users still protested and raised equally good cases, citing story after story about how the Customer Care boards were part of the reason they had stuck with Dell so long. In a final compromise, Dell chose to keep open their non-technical support boards so customers could still participate in discussions of Dell technology and practices, and share ideas with other Dell users. The people spoke, and Dell took the time to let their users continue to affect the brand.

The Big Picture

Each of these three stories presents a case in which the customers shaped the destiny of a major brand. Is this the path for every company? Of course not. However, the Internet and the web provide companies with more tools than ever to reach their audiences. Word of mouth is more efficient than ever before, and customers can cause the rise or fall of major businesses through their online contacts. Companies interested in maximizing the effect of their brand should do more than ‘look into’ putting their goods on a website – they need to seriously consider letting their audience, the people that buy the brand, help define the brand.

Post from: SiteProNews: Webmaster News & Resources

Branding In The Digital Age

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To make it even easier for you to choose, I also added live demo link under every jQuery plugin! However if you are searching for even more alternatives with Flash, plain CSS or another Javascript library, check out this post -57+ Free Image Gallery, Slideshow And Lightbox Solutions.

1. ImageFlow

ImageFlow is an unobtrusive and userfriendly JavaScript image gallery.

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2. GalleryView: A jQuery Content Gallery Plugin

GalleryView aims to provide jQuery users with a flexible, attractive content gallery that is both easy to implement and a snap to customize.

View Demo

3. Sliding Image Gallery jQuery Plug-in

The SlidingGallery plug-in will take a group of images and turn them into a cyclical gallery of images which the user can click through. One image will be centered on the screen, with two smaller images off to the sides. The user can click either of the smaller images to bring them to the center, or the center image to enlarge it. For optimal use, this plug-in should be applied to seven or more images, but can work with fewer (images will be duplicated in order to bring the total to seven).

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4. PrettyPhoto jQuery Lightbox Clone

PrettyPhoto is a jQuery based lightbox clone. Not only does it support images, it also add support for videos, flash, YouTube, iFrames. It’s a full blown media lightbox. The setup is easy and quick, plus the script is compatible in every major browser.

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5. Create Beautiful jQuery slider tutorial

This tutorial explains how to develop Create Beautiful jQuery sliders tutorial with image description and name.

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6. AD Gallery – a jQuery gallery plugin

A highly customizable gallery/showcase plugin for jQuery.

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7. FancyBox

FancyBox is a tool for displaying images, html content and multi-media in a Mac-style “lightbox” that floats overtop of web page.

View Demo

8. Shadowbox

Shadowbox is an online media viewer application that supports all of the web’s most popular media publishing formats. Shadowbox is written entirely in JavaScript and CSS and is highly customizable. Using Shadowbox, website authors can showcase a wide assortment of media in all major browsers without navigating users away from the linking page.

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9. Galleriffic

Galleriffic is a jQuery plugin that provides a rich, post-back free experience optimized to handle high volumes of photos while conserving bandwidth. I am not so great at spelling, and it was much later that I realized that the more appropriate spellings would be Gallerific or Gallerrific, but is too late now for a name change, so Galleriffic remains.

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10. Colorbox

A light-weight, customizable lightbox plugin for jQuery 1.3.

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11. The Lightbox Clones Matrix

Comparison of various scripts that display images and other objects in somehow cool CSS popups

12. Full screen image gallery using jQuery and Flickr

It’s a full screen image gallery that automatically scales the image with kept aspect ratio to fill the browser background. It also supports a flickr search engine, thumbnails, captions, preloader and some other goodies.

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13. Moving Boxes

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14. Creating a Slick Auto-Playing Featured Content Slider

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15. Start/Stop Slider

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16. SlideViewerPro 1.0

SlideViewerPro is a fully customizable jQuery image gallery engine wich allows to create outstanding sliding image galleries for your projects and/or interactive galleries within blog posts.

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17. Pirobox V.1.2.1

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18. s3Slider jQuery plugin

The s3Slider jQuery plugin is made by example of jd`s smooth slide show script.

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19. CSS and Jquery – Creating an Image Slider

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20. Create an Image Rotator with Description (CSS/jQuery)

An image rotator is one great way to display portfolio pieces, eCommerce product images, or even as an image gallery. Although there are many great plugins already, this tutorial will help you understand how the image rotator works and helps you create your own from scratch.

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21. jQuery spherical panorama viewer

A javascript viewer for displaying spherical panoramas. An alternative to Java and QuickTime technology.

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22. Zoomimage – jQuery plugin

Present you images in stylish way. The links are unobtrusively highjacked to open the images in an inpage popup with drop shadow and border.

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23. Building a jQuery Image Scroller

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24. Easy Slider 1.5 – The Easiest jQuery Plugin For Sliding Images and Content

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25. jQuery Panel Gallery Plugin

• No slicing or editing of the images is needed
• It’s just 5K
• Easily configurable
• Reusable on multiple containers

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26. Supersized – Full Screen Background/Slideshow jQuery Plugin

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27. Pikachoose

Pikachoose is a lightweight Jquery plugin that allows easy presentation of photos with options for slideshows, navigation buttons, and auto play. Pikachoose is designed to be easily installed, easy to setup, and well… all around easy. Creating an image gallery shouldn’t be a complex thing. I’ve created a new plugin that I’m packaging with PikaChoose called SliderJS.

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28. jQuery Image Overlay Plugin

The image overlay plugin is a simple jQuery plugin that attempts to present an image with an overlaid title/caption. The overlay drops in on hover, as you can see above.

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29. imgAreaSelect

imgAreaSelect is a jQuery plugin for selecting a rectangular area of an image. It allows web developers to easily implement image cropping functionality, as well as other user interface features, such as photo notes (like those on Flickr).

Plugin features:

• Highly configurable
• Customizable with CSS styling
• Handles scaled images
• Keyboard support for moving and resizing the selection
• Supports callback functions
• Provides API functions for easier integration with other application components
• Lightweight — the packed version is less than 8KB

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30. PFeloader

This is a preloader, it scans DOM and loaded StyleSheet’s for occurence of images (in sheet, style, as element).

StyleSheet file has to be in the same domain as page using it.

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31. Image Reveal using jQuery

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32. The jQuery Cycle Plugin

The jQuery Cycle Plugin is a lightweight slideshow plugin. It supports pause-on-hover, auto-stop, auto-fit, before/after callbacks, click triggers and many transition effects. It also supports, but does not require, the Metadata Plugin and the Easing Plugin.

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33. Galleria Plugin

This demonstration shows you aome more advanced effects you can accomplish with the Galleria plugin. The history object is also active, so feel free to try the back button in your browser and bookmark a page. The next and previous links are simple to create since the galleria object has two public functions for traversing the images in your list.

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34. CrossSlide jQuery plugin

CrossSlide is a jQuery plugin that implements in Javascript some common slide-show animations, traditionally only available to the web developer via Adobe Flash™ or other proprietary plugins. CrossSlide builds upon jQuery’s animation facility, so it is as portable across browsers as jQuery itself (a lot.)

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35. Fancy Thumbnail Hover Effect w/ jQuery

View Demo

36. Apple-like Slideshow Gallery

View Demo

37. JQZoom

JQZoom is a javascript image magnifier built at the top of the popular jQuery javascript framework.jQzoom is a great and a really easy to use script to magnify what you want.

View Demo

Related posts:

1. 57+ Free Image Gallery, Slideshow And Lightbox Solutions
2. 35 Stylish And Modern WordPress Plugins Using jQuery UI
3. 38 jQuery And CSS Drop Down Multi Level Menu Solutions
4. 55 Jquery Tutorials, Resources, Tips And Tricks: Ultimate Collection
5. 15 Incredible Apple Webdesign Style Coding Tutorials

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This post is part of our daily series of posts showing the most inspiring images selected by some of the Abduzeedo’s writers and users. If you want to participate and share your graphic design inspiration, just send us, via email, the image with the link from where you found it, also use “Daily Inspiration” in the subject, and don’t forget to send your Abduzeedo username; or via Twitter sending to http://twitter.com/abduzeedo

If possible use the HTML code: <p class="imgC"><a href="Link to the page you found the image"><img src="Link to the Image" /></a></p>

Do you want to see all images from all Daily Inspirations? Check out http://daily.abduzeedo.com

aaronkato

al b sure

Arco

Arturo Velazquez

BlueFields

Clement Denis

Dev

Draniu

Enrim

Fabiano

The Third & The Seventh from Alex Roman on Vimeo.

Fabio

Gary A. Holmes

Eugene Kim

Gisele

k002

karolzielinski

PhilipSzrama

ricardofx

Scott Richardson

Snoz

subgrafix

T-Loso

Hamburger Eyes from Nick Fogarty on Vimeo.

Tyler Smith

Via Twitter

Send your suggestions via Twitter to http://twitter.com/abduzeedo using #abdz in the end of the tweet.

@tariqdesign

@LukeSF

@MateToth90

Go to Source

This post is part of our daily series of posts showing the most inspiring images selected by some of the Abduzeedo’s writers and users. If you want to participate and share your graphic design inspiration, just send us, via email, the image with the link from where you found it, also use “Daily Inspiration” in the subject, and don’t forget to send your Abduzeedo username; or via Twitter sending to http://twitter.com/abduzeedo

If possible use the HTML code: <p class="imgC"><a href="Link to the page you found the image"><img src="Link to the Image" /></a></p>

Do you want to see all images from all Daily Inspirations? Check out http://daily.abduzeedo.com

angoladesign

al b sure

Alessandro Grandinetti

alexzabbey

White Box from makoto yabuki on Vimeo.

allthewretched

Carlos Hayes Abreu

creative

Daewon Haaghun

Dhyan

Fabiano

Fabio

OLYMPICS Director’s cut from FMK_7 on Vimeo.

frame

gisele

Habib Q

Jacky Skyline

Josh Sand

Khyzyl Saleem

Miguelus

Nipson

NM

ottosen

pana

qaos

ricardofx

sLiFeR

Thetastyserver

yulensoulb

Via Twitter

Send your suggestions via Twitter to http://twitter.com/abduzeedo using #abdz in the end of the tweet.

@thirddesign

@carolinsellman

Carolin Sellman – SHOWREEL 2009 from Carolin Sellman on Vimeo.

@Insanemoe

@MorganLott

Avant-Garde from Morgan Lott on Vimeo.

About the author

My name is Fabio Sasso, I’m a graphic/web designer from Porto Alegre, Brazil and I’m the founder of Abduzeedo. I hope we can share lots of information, tips, and ideas through Abduzeedo. Also you can follow me on Twitter or my personal site at http://fabiosasso.com.

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There are a whole host of ingredients that contribute to a good email marketing campaign. Permission, relevance, timeliness and engaging content are all important. Even so, the biggest challenge for designers still remains building an email that renders well across all the popular email clients.

Same same, but different

Before getting into the details, there are some uncomfortable facts that those new to HTML email should be aware of. Building an email is not like building for the web. While web browsers continue their onward march towards standards, many email clients have stubbornly stayed put. Some have even gone backwards. In 2007, Microsoft switched the Outlook rendering engine from Internet Explorer to Word. Yes, as in the word processor. Add to this the quirks of the major web-based email clients like Gmail and Hotmail, sprinkle in a little Lotus Notes and you’ll soon realize how different the email game is.