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How Web Developers Can Become Better Designers – Tips - Nov 04

Source: Flash, Design, Vector, Photoshop, Adobe Tutorials | GraphicMania.net by Rafiq Elmansy (admin)

This article addresses developers who like to fill a common gap when faced by providing dummy design for their projects or need simple design skills to provide their coding in the project with good look layout or color combination without the need to designer assistance in this early stage of the project.

Introduction

Although few of us are capable to do both design and developing tasks at the same time, most of us are either developers or designers or at least feel better in either fields. There is no doubt that during the web design project, desktop projects or other project process, there is an intersected gray area that need from both designers and developer shared knowledge of each other part, since it is a team work and no one is working in his or her separate isolated world.

Through my years of work as a designer, I always face the same situation with developers again and again, most developers who are building their functions and code lines are and have to create dummy layouts that will be handled with the designer later. But this dummy layout may put the designer into dilemma and confusion about what the developer really want to do. In this situation documentations and alot of meetings can handle this issue, but when the developer need to submit this dummy to the client, it has to be good look to not make the client angry enough to cancel the project.

This, in many situations such as the above one or for a developer who like to create his own profile or website to show resume or work samples, the developer need to have some design skills to handle these situations. The idea is, design skills are divided into two parts. The first part is talent, which is hard to be gained because it is actually a gift or bless inside each designer. The second is learning and practice, which is gained by trying to learn and get visual experience from other work examples and designs.
However, the second part is the secret behind the article here. In this article, I will trying to reveal some tips for developers to gain design skills that can help them handling the design part of their projects and small tasks.

Start by Practice

The most important part in the designer body is the eye. It is the source of his or her inspiration and learning skills. In my old study in fine arts, my mentor used to advice me to look and keep looking for designs and visual scenes in my daily life, it is some thing that is called visual experience. The visual experience helps you know basic design concepts and color combination ideas from design projects that have prove user friendly and accepted designs from many existing users.

This first tip is the easiest one as you can start by asking a designer from your friends to send you some inspiration design ideas or just Google for the best web designs and design ideas on the web, start by looking to a new design every day and enjoy it, but do not forget to navigate every new design and see how much user friendly is it and how much it is easy for your personal experience.

Build the Design Layout

When you start a project, you usually have a list of functions and its location in the project, this is a good start to let you start putting the place of the function and how it will look like based on the client needs and the experience you gained from the above tip. In large projects there is some one that is specialized for the layout design, but it is a good skill to acquire as it helps giving you good experience about the project workflow as whole.
You can build the design layout on paper, Microsoft Power Point, Microsoft Word or even graphic applications such as Adobe Photoshop.

Templates or Not to Templates

In the few last years, the Internet has been facing a new trend in web services based application after the spreading of the cloud computing concept. Nowadays, you can find many sites that provide ready good and cheap design templates that fit with different projects such as static web sites, Flash web sites, CMS based web sites such as Wordpress templates and even you can find templates for brochure design and business cards designs.
Although, the web templates and stock royalties site provide graphic elements with a low price, it can not replace the designer work because the these template design does not provide the unified look to your project unless you bought its total rights with high price. The other disadvantage of using templates that is may not meet your real needs such as the customized designs the designer can provide. But over all, it can help developers to get out to the client with a project with the design requirements needed to finalize the project.

Stock Images and Free Royalties Sites

In these sites you can search and find images to use in your project and buy it with low price and high quality as well

Istock Photo

Fotolia

Dreamstime

Stock Icons Sites

Stock Icon

Icon Shock

Web Site Templates CMS Based Templates Sites

Template Monster

Press 75

Studio Press

Dream Template

Print Layout Designs

Stock Layout

Fonts Resources

1001 Fonts

Dafont

Urban Fonts

Choosing Colors

Choosing colors and color scheme for the design is always one of the most important challenge when it comes to create layout and designs. The first and second tips can help setting the color scheme for the project, but in some times you may need to set your own color combination. As designers, we can use color palette to set the color combination used in the project or website. One of the most famous color combination tools is Adobe Kuler, which allows you choose between different color schemes, rate it, edit it or even use it with graphic applications.
Adobe Kuler has an icon to be accessed from different Adobe products, but it is also as an Adobe AIR desktop application that you can setup on your computer and get updates from online users color combination collections and choices.
There are some other web tools that can help you choose the color palette for your project or set the color combination for it such as the following:

Adobe Kular

Color Schemer

Febooti

Few Design Skills Won’t Hurt

I do not mean that you need to go the the design school or learn design application, but it can help if you know some basics about one of the famous design tools which is Adobe Photoshop. The important of Adobe Photoshop is that it fits to all design tasks such as web design, user interfaces, print designs and mobile application design.
Adobe Photoshop is a huge application that extend to many features such as animation and 3D, but you do not need to know about all this, you can only know what you need to edit image, create a banner ans some simple design skills.
There is also an online free version of Adobe Photoshop that help you edit images from your computer and uploaded from your mobile phone. You can also use some of the free online tools to edit images.

Conclusion

These tips help developers to complete their simple task or small project with a good design look for better influence on the client and better communication with the designer. These tips can not replace the designer position as it helps only in the intersected area between both designers and developers and can not replace the the unified design and creative ideas experience that the design can do for your project.

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Answers for Flash CS4 Certification Exam Practice 01 - Nov 04

Source: Flash, Design, Vector, Photoshop, Adobe Tutorials | GraphicMania.net by Rafiq Elmansy (admin)

Here are the answers for the first part in Flash CS4 certification practice, you can find the answers below along with discription for the correct answer.

Please review the answers below and compare it with you own answers, also share these answers with others who interest in practicing the Flash exam:

1- You have a movie clip that is located in many places in your Flash document, what is the panel that is used to find the places where the movie clip is in the document?

c- The Movie Explorer panel

Description: The Movie Explorer panel helps you navigate your Flash document resources and search the location of each item as well as filtering movie item based on its type.

2- What is the best method to create a star of that is consists of 5 sides in Flash?

a- The Polystar tool

Description: The Polystar tool lets you create either polygon or polystar shape and allows you customize its number of faces.

3- What is Not true about bones in Flash?

a- Support AS2 and AS3 files

Description: Bones tool is one of the new features in Flash CS4 that is based on Action Script 3, so when you work with Bones, you have to have a Flash AS3 document version.

4- Which Flash object does Not accept applying filters to it?

c- Graphic Symbol

Description: Filters can be applied to either text, buttons and movie clips.

5- When you import PSD file to Flash, the layers can be converted to any of the following?

b- Layers

c- symbols

Description: The PSD import dialog box let you import Photoshop layers into Flash and give you the option to convert it to symbols and either Flash layers or frames.

6- What is Not a tag in the animation XML file?

d- Tweening

Description: The tweening is not one of the tags that is used in the XML animation description code when you copy any motion tweening.

7- What is Not a method to play external video in Flash?

c- Embedded

Description: The Embedded is the oldest method to add video content to Flash and depends on importing video content to Flash layer, so it does not support large video files.

8- You are publishing a Flash movie that includes sound tracks, what is the best sound compression to create the highest quality?

a- MP3

Description: MP3 is the best audio compression especially when working with complex sounds.

9- What is Not true about Action Script 3 debugging?

a- It can work with any Action Script debugger version

Description: Action Script 3 has its own debugger version which is more advanced and have more capabilities than the old AS2 debugger.

10- What is Not an anti-alias option when adding text to Flash?

d- Anti-alias for dynamic content

Description: When you create a text in Flash, you can set its anti-alias option to either readability, animation, use device fonts, bitmaps or choose not to add anti-aliasing for the text.

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Are You Right or Left Brain Thinker - Nov 04

Source: Flash, Design, Vector, Photoshop, Adobe Tutorials | GraphicMania.net by Rafiq Elmansy (admin)

Do you feel like a developer or a designer? whatever your feelings are,  actually it has a relation with another factor than just feelings, it depends on your brain right and left parts. Lets see how your brain power can affect your desire to be an inspired designer and guru developer.

Sarah is a high school girl who is thinking in building her future and start her own career in the web field dreaming to have her own web profile and may be her own business. I can remember those many questions she asked me in her email, and how much she was confused and worry about choosing the right pass to take. She named to me number of software tools that gather between both designing and developing tools, therefor I got the idea that Sarah is missing one important question to ask. Should I learn to be web designer, web developer or both?
I replied “Lets see, do you want to be a web designer or we developer?”, she told me that she does not know and she is still new into this. Actually, this situation has repeated many times that I thought it is a good idea to spill all about it in this article.
One of the important aims I put into my mind when trying to advice ambition people like Sarah is to know what he or she does not know about his or herself. So, the question I used to ask which do you like the most drawing or math? The aim of this question is to know the real talent inside this person. If you used to love drawing, then you are more like a design targeted and if you like to do math and calculations, then you are more to be developing targeted.
Finding your strength is the most important step to find your career. When you have the initiation to excel in a field can help you moving forward easier and fast than having a career where your skills does not fit well with it.

Right Brain and left Brain

Actually, my question to find the real skills in your mind is based on a theory about right and left brain. Roger W Sperry, an American psychobiologist, had a research in 1960 that discovered that the human brain is divided into two main sections in regard to thinking, right brain which is responsible on emotions, Subjective processing to information and have a whole look to information received, and the left brain which is responsible on logic, objective processing to information and look to the receive information step by step till complete a whole look to the situation.
Based on the comparison between right and left brain created by Marion Boddy-Evans on About.com. The right brain thinkers are more talented in skills related to focus to images, feelings, touching and feeling objects…etc. The left brain thinkers are more talented in skills related to logic, planning and observation…etc.
As a conclusion of this comparison, people who got skills in looking to images and ability to feel objects are more like to be designers than developers, vise versa, the people who got logic and objective skills are more like to be developers and their nature can help them excel in their career in developing.
Meanwhile, some people are having equal skills in both fields which can help them in both fields but most of the people are having more powerful part than the other.

Why Should I Care

The idea behind mentioning this theory is to use it to find the nature skills inside you that can help you excel in either being a designer or developer.
It is like swimming in same direction of the wave or against it, when you swim in the same waves’ direction, it would be much faster and less hard to achieve you target point.
You do not have to judge your skills through the theory, but you can judge it based on a hobby you liked to do when you were young or a skill you used to excel in school.
The nature always has its influence on us without we realize this especially when we are young unless we got parents that can explore these skills and develop it.

How Can I Know My Brain

The right brain thinkers and left brain thinkers are having the same brain shape, so the X-ray will not help find out if you are left or right brain thinker, but the good news that you can find out this through digging into your skill while you young as we mentioned or through test like this one.

Conclusion

Finally, the idea is to discover your nature and the initiative power you got by nature and start to find your career based on this nature, this will help you develop your skills better and give you a good ability to get excel and compete with others people in the field that do not have your skills or even did not try to search behind their real excel points.

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52 Amazing Shots of Classic Cars - Nov 03

Source: Flash, Design, Vector, Photoshop, Adobe Tutorials | GraphicMania.net by Radwa Samir

If you can look to a classic car from the golden years parking next to a new one, you will notice how the auto design trend has changed through the years. When recent auto design focus more on functionality, economy and security factors, the early cars designs have been focusing about the design and the artwork in the car body ore that the functions inside the car, this is why these classic cars still got its affect inside us especially for people who appreciate the effort spent in designing these cars and building the monsters behind it.

The early 1950th and 1960th cars used to focus on the alot of details in the car body, which affects the car speed and driving flexibility. But this has changed in the 70th when the world was looking for more speed cars and bigger space inside the car. Both trends have produced amazing auto design concepts and artwork run in the streets for years and still running for some well-kept classic cars.

Merging between both the art of photography and auto design can produce wonderful photography artwork that tell about the great classic cars design story through the history, no matter if these classic cars are shown in a gallery in a big city or parked on a far away deserted farm, but the beauty of the effect is the same and will never change. However, I would like to share with you some of the amazing classic cars photos that merge between both artworks.

Vintage Styles IX

Like two old friends sitting in a quite place remembering the the old days of glory.

MiniCooperrrrr

An amazing camera angle for Mini car

YILLARIN iZi – HDR

HDR photo for old truck in a farm, the rust on the car just merged with the car original color to create this amazing look of an old unused car.

Blue Merc

What a great monster!! this car holds many of the design lines that are not used any more such as the colored wheels, hidden rear wheels and Nickal front.

A French Classic

Pink

This shooting angle for this pink classic car shows the details I we talked about above, notice how many details are added to the lights of  the cars and how it design to give more feel of speed.

Busted II

The Car

Notice that the car design lines are merged and used to unify with the car functions such as light and wheels.

sepia speed

505. it’s dr. tran

Fight or Flight

1962 Chevrolet Impala with Air Ride Suspension.

Old Car

Vintage Styles VII

wood truck

The Road Less Traveled

Mercury Blues

Althoug many people may get confused because of the similar design for some classic cars, but actually it is not similar, each marque has its own style in the design and lines such as the above Mercury, try to compare it with other styles.

‘57 Chevy

1957 Chevy Bel-Air

Chevrolet Impala

This wonderful shoot for this Chevy makes it look lik a real creature looking to you with the red color and the shape of the light that is similat to human eyes.

Lost in time

Rat rod

Vintage Styles XIII

Yellow and Rust Truck

Celebration

Cadillac

Old Life

One Final Stop

Vintage Styles XIV

An old car that is covered with rust totally and parks on a farm.

Our Emergency

400 tires show: BelAir

Bello tre

Porsche Super 1600

Some marques has general design guide along the years and car models with changing the small details from a model to another. However, when you look to the car models along the years, you will find some thing similar in the design that remark this car than other marques.

One of these marques is the Prosche car design which kept its own style so you can easily recongnize the Porsche cars whatever it is model and year of make.

SS

49 Ford

This shoot shows Ford with less shape details and more

Out of Service

Corvette

Antique Car Show

489. DRS IV

Impala in the Savanna

Red Steel

Red Veteran car

Old International

Hoffmans Rat

Old VW Transporter vans 2

The Fury

Origin of an Icon

Life Begins At 40

One of a Kind

Timeless

Madame de Chevrollianne

1929 Chevrolet Truck HDR

One eyed Discombobulation

Out of the Blue

As we see above good photo shots not only shows creative photos but also reveals the hidden creativity behind such classic marques and how it changed alot through the years with special style and trend in design for each marque and each model.

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Adobe Photoshop CS4 Certification Exam Practice 02 - Oct 25

Source: Flash, Design, Vector, Photoshop, Adobe Tutorials | GraphicMania.net by Rafiq Elmansy (admin)

It has been a while since our last Photoshop exam practice questions, and I would like to thank every one who joined the previous exams and every one who asked me for another series of questions. It is the time for another series of Adobe Photoshop CS4 exam practice questions.

The aim of these series to to provide practice exam for every one that interest in becoming an Adobe Certified Expert or already registered for the exam. This series consists of 10 questions exams every time about different Adobe products such as Flash and Photoshop.

This is the second series in Adobe exam question and you can find other additional questions with answers in the first series . I hope you like this questions collection and share it with all your friends who interest in Adobe products and Photoshop.

Ok, lets start…

1- Which 3D format is Not supported when importing 3D object to Photoshop?

a- 3DS
b- U3D
c- MAX
d- DAE

2- You have a Photoshop flayer that need to be printed in 4 color separation process, which format you should choose when creating your file?

a- RGB
b- LAB
c- CMYK
d- Grayscale

3- You have a text line in Photoshop and would like to convert it to curve, what is the option you should use to achieve this? (Choose two)

a- Use Arc from the Warp dialog box.
b- Use Twist from the Warp dialog box.
c- Use the Type Mask tool.
d- Create a curve path and add the text to it.

4- What is the best method to reverse group of layers order in the Layers panel

a- Choose Arrange > Reverse from the Layer manu
b- Drag the top layers to the bottom.
c- Drag the bottom layer to the top
d- Choose Reverse from the Layer panel context menu

5- Which is Not a drawing tool in Photoshop?

a- Brush tool
b- Pencil tool
c- Healing brush
d- Rectangle tool

6-How can you change the rulers units? (Choose two)

a- Double click the ruler to change its units
b- Choose Units and Rulers from the preferences panel
c- Change the units from the Image Size dialog box
d- Double click any of the document guides

7-How can you create a 3D postcard in Photoshop?

a- Right-click the layer and choose 3D postcard
b- From the 3D menu, choose New 3D postcard from Layer
c- From the 3D menu, choose postcard from the New 3D Shape from Layer
d- You need to import the layer in 3D file format

8- What is the best method to reverse color gradient preset

a- Check the Reverse check box in the gradient tool bar
b- Open the gradient and reverse the colors by dragging it
c- Create the color gradient from scratch
d- You can not reverse the gradient presets’ colors

9- How can you add a registration points to the Photoshop print document?

a- From the print dialog box choose Registration Points from the Color Managements area.
b- From the print dialog box choose Registration Points from the Output area.
c- The registration points is created by default
d- The registration points is not available in Photoshop

10- How to change the pixel aspect ratio of an existing document with graphic content in it?

a- From the Image Size dialog box
b- From the Pixel Aspect Ratio in the View panel
c- From the Document Presets dialog box
d- You can not change document pixel aspect ratio when it includes graphic content

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