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How to Create Glossy Icons in Illustrator - Nov 20

Source: Flash, Design, Vector, Photoshop, Adobe Tutorials | GraphicMania.net by Vanilla-Bear

This tutorial shows how to create vector glossy icons in Adobe Illustrator, you can use these icons for different uses on your site, this tutorial takes an example of creating RSS glossy icon that you can apply the same concept in other icons.

Ever wondered how they make all these RSS logos you see on most sites today?
Here’s how to go about it…

1. Open up Illustrator and create a new document. Click and hold the the mouse over the Rectangle Tool and select the Rounded Rectangle Tool below underneath. Draw your shape on the artboard while holding down Shift to create a square. You can use the arrow keys to change the roundness of the corners to your preference.

2. Head up to the top and clear the stroke of any presets, then open up the Gradient panel. Add an orange fill that goes from dark to light vertically on the shape.

3. Select the shape, go to Object > Path > Offset Path. Enter -1mm in the options. Get hold of the corner of the object and drag it through 180 degrees, this will make the two gradients flow in opposite directions.

4. Select the Circle tool and draw a circle anywhere on the artboard. Get rid of any fill preset and set stroke to a thick 16pt black one.

5. Select the white arrow (Direct selection tool), click only the bottom left points of the circle and delete them to create a quarter of a circle.

6. Copy (Ctrl+C) the quarter circle and paste on top (Ctrl+F). Scale it down whilst holding the shift key to keep everything to scale.

7. Adjust the strokes to match the original 16pt

8. Now draw a small circle in alignment with the quarters to create the well known RSS shape.

9. The two quarter circles are still stroked paths. lets convert them to shapes by going to Object > Expand and selecting the convert stroke option.

10. Select the 3 objects and add a grayish -whitey gradient running vertically. Also add a thin 1pt light grey stroke to finish off the RSS object.

11. Now group these objects together by selecting them and pressing Ctrl+G.

12. Select the inner rectangle from the orange box. Copy (CTRL+C) and paste above (CTRL+F). Fill it with white.

13. Draw a wavy shape over the entire graphic, the shape depends on what you want. It could be a plain oval or an up and down curve, whatever suits you. Move it so it covers some of the white rectangle, again wherever suits you. Now select both the white rectangle and the new shape. Click the Intersect Shape option in the Pathfinder palette.

14. Now reduce the opacity of this new shape to around 20% to give it a sleek glassy shine.

You should end up with something similar to mine:

Remember this isn’t just for RSS, the techniques here can be used in any modern logo.
I hope you like my first tutorial, if there is anything you need help with or would just like to comment on the tutorial itself please comment below.

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Dark Universe Wallpaper Tutorial - Nov 19

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

In this photoshop tutorial you will learn to create a beautiful abstract space-like wallpaper with a minimum of Photoshop skills. Wallpaper download included.

1. Start with a color fill layer, #004455 (it’s dark greyish blue) for example. Then add a light White-to-Transparent gradient fill layer at a proper angle over the color fill to enlighten the upper and left parts of the image. Set the blending mode to Overlay, decrease the fill to 45% or so. You can rasterize this layer and scale, rotate and transform it a little to get the best result, just like I did:

2. Next step is to darken the bottom right area, in contrast to the previous action. Add a gradient fill layer again, this time Black-to-Transparent and set the right angle (120 for my image). Set the blending mode to Darken and the fill to 35%. Edit this layer’s mask a little – I masked the center part of the layer with a large soft brush with small meaning of opacity – to get this:

3. Add some blurred light in the center of the picture. Make a curves adjustment layer and play with the graphs to get some interesting tone and color, however you can always change all these parameters later. This is my example – the curves dialog box…

…and the curves layer, over the image, masked at the edges (involve your talent of painting here, haha)

4. Add the type. The font I used is called Atomic Clock Radio. I suggest creating a separate group called “TEXT” for the type, not to get lost in all the layers.

So, type the text and go to blending options. Add outer glow (Blend Mode: Screen, Opacity: 85%, Color: #6dd1ff, Spread: 0%, Size: 3px) and gradient overlay (light cyan to white, Blend mode: Normal, Opacity: 100%). Then duplicate this layer, hide all of its effects, rasterize it, and apply motion blur filter (choose the best settings for your own image). Put this layer underneath the original and change its blending mode to color dodge, fill to 70%. Add some more layers and edit them like shown above, use your fantasy! This is how I did it:

5. Let’s add some more light, with the help of curves again. This adjustment seems strong according to the curves positions, but the truth is that almost all of this layer was masked, only some blurred light is visible in the center.

6. The star consists of two layers, both are simply large soft white brush on a blank layer. You can actually as many such layers as you feel the need to, just remember to gradually decrease the diameter of the brush and increase the fill of the layer to achieve the best effect. My star is ready:

7. Get some nice stock picture of smoke (like this), to continue to the next step. Ready? OK, place the picture over the image, stretch it to fit the image and do all sorts of retouching (if necessary) to reduce the artifacts of the stock photo. Then desaturate it and change the blending mode to soft light. We will need two inverted copies of this photo. The inverted one is below the original black-and-white. It will be best if you first fill both of these layers’ masks with black and then painting with a large soft brush with little opacity, revealing the parts of the smoke texture where you need them. You will need your painting talent here, again!

Stock photo: inverted, desaturated, soft light, partially masked:

Same photo on top, rotated 180, not inverted, desaturated, soft light, partially masked (a different mask):

8. We’ve already made one big star, and let’s add more small ones. Take a small brush (white, as usual and edit its settings like showm below – add scattering and shape dynamics:

Then paint with light strokes to achieve a natural effect. Also play with opacity, brush sizes, masks and blur to get a starry sky that you like.

9. The last step is optional. I will add a gradient over the image in “color” blending mode with small opacity (20%).

Congrats! We’re ready!

Download the wallpapers: 1920×1200, 1600×1200, 1280×1024, 1024×768

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Quick Guide for Freelancers to do Well in Recession - Nov 18

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

During the current recession, many of people may find themselves out of the game and lose their jobs any time, especially with the big recession when companies are losing clients and looking for reducing employees. This article tries to give a solution to find another better way to get more money and more clients, and gives tips to start your freelance career and give resources sites that can help you get more jobs and clients.

Introduction

When Peter lost his job earlier this year with the massive layoffs at the beginning of this year, he got no job, less money and much time to speed in front of his computer searching for jobs and applying for recruiting sites. For someone who spent more than 20 years of his life as a full time employee, it was not in his mind to think about being a freelance when he thought to give it a shot.

Peter started to google for freelance jobs over the web, guess what? Peter was lucky to start his first freelance job and started to get more clients and more money from his freelance job. He could also spend more time in work as he is actually working from home and saves the time that he used to lose in driving to office and in big companies routine.

Actually, Peter story is not real, but the facts are. I made up this story based on true events and experience from people that experienced both working as a freelancers and full time employees.

Living as a Freelancer

Living as a freelancer is not an easy career. Freelancers are self employed and try to get more clients and projects to be able to continue their lives, which mean higher risk factor comparing with setting in office and get paid.

When you are employed in a company, you do not have to find projects, set deals or develop relations with clients, you only do your tasks and jobs. On the other hand, freelancers can be considered a small company as they get new clients, develop business relations, set deals and work in the project as well.

When you work as a freelancer, you do not have eight hours working limit. With the risk of unstable clients flow and market status, you need to get the most out of your projects and clients, so you try to invest more in your time and work for longer hours to be save in the bad days.

Since most of your deals are made through the web, you become under another risk to lose your money or meet a client who do not pay try to get extra work for free, so you have to be prepared for such really silly clients.

Along with the above risks, being self employed will make you be able to get more profits out of your job. Most company that is looking for freelancers are looking for less cost than a big company can provide, as big companies calculate over head costs on each project such as the offices, clearing , security and assists…etc.

You can give less prices than big company does and get more hourly rate than you can get out as an employed in a company.

Also, freelancers are more independent and able to take their own decisions as they do to belong to a company structure or routine. You have the choice to work or not to work, choose the type of projects you find more challengeable or even spend more time to learn new stuff that can open more opportunities for you.

Can You Live as a Freelancer

People who lost their jobs like Peter will have no problem to try freelance life till they find another job. But if you are already employed, you have to think more before taking this important decision unless you can return to your job any time which is not available for everyone.

You have to be able to live the freelancer’s life and got the talent to develop business as well as developing tasks and technical stuff. Also, you need to choose if you are one of those people that like to get higher positions and titles or focus on getting your own independent company and clients.

Before taking such a serious step, you have to have enough money support to relay on till you get enough clients and projects, although building relations and projects are not easy and losing it are. So, you have to be careful when building relations because bad impressions can destroy you before you start.

One of the advisable tips before getting into the freelance job is to try couple of projects in your free time after your full time job or in weekends. It is a big load but helps you to know if you can succeed in your new life and avoid part of the risk.

Tips Before Getting Into Your Freelance Career

Before you start the freelancer life, there are some tips that can help you avoid getting into troubles and help you build good business. These tips are:

Start as a company

Most people trust companies than individuals, because companies have more resources and more professional attitude. Build for yourself a website that includes your resume, brief about you and samples of your work. This will help clients to know about you and see samples of your work easily.

Develop relations

The relation developing process starts with your first job proposal, make your cover letter professional and focused to let the client knows that you are the one and encourage the client to look at your work and resume.

Most of the freelance relations start with a small task but you can drive more work with gaining more trust from the client and provide more services.

Develop business

Doing your task in a professional way is the most important part in this process, so the client can trust you and give you more tasks.  The right developing process lets the client thinks that you are real professional such as receiving the requirements and materials and know exactly what the client needs. Also, make sure to deliver the client the project in a professional arranged way, the client does not have the time to search for files or learn your job to be able to understand your matrix.

Timing

It is one of the important point to consider, meeting deadline and manage time is very important and give your client an impression how they can depend on you and relay on your time in their plans. You can use program such as MS Outlook to arrange your emails, deliveries and milestones.

Payments

One of the issues that make people do not want to work as freelancers is managing their payments and the chance to meet bad people who do not want to pay. You need to work with this issue carefully as some clients start to test your ability to be tricked from the first interview. It is always good idea to have an in-advance or down-payment amount of money that ensures the client is serious enough.

Freelance Resources Sites

The biggest resource for freelance projects is the web, and fortunately there are increasing number of the sites that provide freelance projects and connect among freelancers and project owners, some of these sites control the process among both freelancers and clients.

Elance

Scriptlance

Getafreelancer

Gofreelance

Odesk

Getacoder

Freshwebjobs

Freelanceq

Icanfreelance

Thefreelancenation

Freelancerjobs

Guru

Conclusion

With the increasing number of freelance sites, freelancers got more chance to get clients and people have more chance to get into the freelance career. The freelance career can help you get more money and challenges than you can get from your full time job and it can help you getting money when you are affected with the recession and bad market times.

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30+ High Quality HDR Architecture Wallpapers - Nov 16

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

HDR technology is not a new concept; it is based on the theory of the eyes’ ability to see high range of light degrees and depth.  The improved computer render technology and photography supports this concept with the ability to produce images with High Dynamic Range of depth or contrast.

Before enjoying our today’s amazing HDR wallpapers, let understand a little what is the HDR images and brief about the HDR technology.

What Are HDR Images?

The human eye has a very high range of sense to images’ light perspective and depth. This range varies from seeing image details in the star light at night or in bright sun light, this is what is known as the human eye dynamic range.

The HDR (High Dynamic Range) images use this concept to provide images experience that includes high depth and contrast between the image elements to give it more artistic effect.

How to produce HDR images?

There are two main concepts to produce HDR images, the computer rendering process which help creating full High Dynamic Range images and using multiple shots of the image and merge those images into HDR image.

The camera shots are known as Low Dynamic Range images as it does not provide that wide range of light and contrast. Thus, to be able to produce HDR images, multiple shots of the object with different settings are arranged together or laminated through applications such as Photoshop to produce the HDR images with high range of contrast and light that produces an artistic dramatic effect.

Generally, the images that are used to produce the HDR images are taken as Camera RAW extension to provide the highest quality available to create the image depth.

Let’s Enjoy It!!

HDR images are real artistic and having HDR wallpapers on your desktop is real fun and good experience for your eyes to experience wider range of light and contrast in images. However, here are some of the most amazing HDR wallpapers with different dimensions.

The Towers of Angkor Thom

Munich MarienPlatz

Paris – River side

Brooklyn’s Doomsday HDR

The Dark Temple Corridor in Morning Mist

Butrón castle

Little Red Lighthouse on a dark day

Downtown Dallas from the Flower Market

The Art Museum

Anyone care for a dance?

Relaxing in Dresden

Mighty Heading West

Paris – Eiffel Tower

5 – wallpaper

Paris – Louvre

Stille nacht, ruchlose nacht.

My City Screams

zapallar

Trackmania riviera

Water Barrier

Waag Nijmegen

Grunwald HDR Wallpaper

DDesigN – Hdr Cathedral

HDR Unreal Palace Desktop Wallpaper

HDR Greek Architecture Desktop Wallpaper

HDR City Desktop Wallpaper

HDR Hollywood Tower Hotel Desktop Wallpaper

HDR From My Window Desktop Wallpaper

I hope you enjoyed this collection and it can provide you with real examples of the HDR images and how to produce them, lets start creating your on HDR amazing shots and share it.

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How Can Designers Effectively Avoid Coding - Nov 12

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

In this article, I will try to fill the gap between design and developing from the designers’ aspect of view to help designers to understand the coding concept and allow them to complete their own projects with smart way without the need to hire or get help from other developers.

Introduction

Do you think you are a code dumb and design lover? Do you like looking to colors instead of taking hours looking to lines of code? Do not worry, it is not your fault. This mean you are a right brain thinker and you may find your love to design is part of your DNA structure if you got the chance to do a DNA test. Before human being move to the web, designers did not require to know any code knowledge, they used to design printing materials where there was no coding step lays after finishing the design job, you just create the design based on totally art concepts and send it to the print house to handle printing your design. However, after the big jump to the digital content and cyber world where every person on the globe has his or her own site or blog, design becomes not enough, there is a step to convert your design to a really interactive web site, or desktop application…etc.

This step is the developing process where there are alot of coding and scripting lays beneath. In most firms, they understand that must be a designer and developer to finish a website or desktop application, which makes designers more comfortable to not have to learn coding, they focus on the creative issues and design task where they belong to.

But actually this is not enough, in my last article about how developer can be better designers, there are two points where both design and coding intersect. This first case is where you are in a small firm or trying to build your own web profile or blog. The other case is that you need to understand how the coder will handle your design and how your design will compliant with the output requirements and specifications such as web site developing concepts, output resolution or design structure that is required by some CMS systems.

In this article, I will put an end to this gap by providing some examined tips that can help designers to be more smarter when putting their design and be aware about the next steps that will handle their designs and avoid coder to destroy designer’s work or facing a bad news that the design is not suitable for the web site required…etc.

Design or Code

Many designers are looking to learn coding to serve themselves in regard to complete their project to supply their own needs to create a profile web site or demo presentation…etc. This may help if you do not have a long list of design tools that you want to learn to enhance your work and give your creativity extra ability to show up. Design and animation tools are too many and they should be in the top of your learning list already. However, there are four types of solutions for this dilemma:

1. Find a friend to do the coding
2. Contract someone to do the code
3. Learn to do the code yourself
4. Do not do the task at all

First, I will exclude the fourth solution since it is not logical in our case. The first solution may not be available for many of us especially when you got a limited connections with developers. For the third solution, this may not help much especially with limited time project or you do not have the time to learn these developing tools.

The next sub-titles work around the second solution by giving you ideas about how to complete your project with design and code in a fast efficient way.

Bridging the Gap Between Designers and Code

I have noticed a common problem with designers who never touched code or get an introduction to how the code works, most of this type of designers are printing designers and art students who only worked with traditional art. The problem is these designers are used to see things and work with visual tools such as icons, panels and dialog boxes…etc. When designers are faced with code lines, they may find it difficult to understand the other way of thinking and think about commands and tools they do not see with their eyes.

However, I think designers have to learn basics about the code and the output format for their design. For example, designer who are doing websites, they should be aware of the web basics and how their sites will be implemented on the web. Also, they should know what is needed to deliver their work to the next developing stage such as learning how to use the Slice tool in Photoshop to convert their design to the web page. One of the important skills that designer should acquire is the knowledge of the project functions and how to provide user friendly design for these functions or the audience will never be bale to use it easily.

The designers who know these fundamentals will be able to save their design from being distorted if it does not meet will with the output or modified from its original idea to meet with the final output. Also, designer who know these skills will be able to talk well with the developer and be able to understand how to deliver the idea with an appropriate terms that can be understood by the developer.

CMS Based Sites

One of the solution for the coding problem for designers is to relay on a Content Management Systems, which allow you to handle content, design and functions with ready made system, so you only want to know few and easy to learn information about the system. The disadvantage of using CMSs is that it limit your design ability in themes or skins that only meet with their structure, which differs from one system to another. There are many structures that can fit with your project needs such as Joomal, Mambo and Drupal for website management and the lovely Wordpress for blogging.

Since most of the PHP CMSs are open-source, most of its information and tutorials are free which enables you to find a variety of systems to use and work with based on your needs in the project.

Services to Handle Your Design

With the increase of cloud computing applications and specialized services over the web, a new creative solution has been found to solve our problem, you do not have to search for developer to do your work and you do not have to manage or hire a developer to do the project. There are web sites that all you have to do is to provide it the design in PSD format and they handle the rest, they convert your design into functional project and brings it to life with adding dynamic content and function codes for your design static graphic elements.

With this idea that may look new to many of you, it will help reducing the cost and provide better workflow for your project, here are some of the useful web sites that provide this service for you and your project.

w3-markup

psd2html

rapidxhtml

convert2xhtml

drmartian

psdgator

xhtmlslicing

design2markup

crazyxhtml

Conclusion

Finally, the knowledge with code and site structure for designer helps better workflow for your design and the ability to understand how the project moves and what does the project really need from the designer. There are tools such as CMs tools and web sites that can help you convert your Photoshop  PSD file to coded web site content, which helps you to complete your project without the need to developer next to you to complete the work.

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