Designers & Programmers

In this tutorial we will take a close look at the technique of creating blend objects that will help us to create smooth color transitions. We'll also talk about the problems you may encounter and about the technique that will allow you to avoid unpleasant artifacts. Using the Blend Tool (W), we can obtain smooth transitions between colors, obtaining the shadows, glares, or simply color spots. Artworks below are examples in which blend objects were mostly used. Source: http://designmodo.com/color-transition-blend-tool/#ixzz2VR9hJtOF

When I started writing this, the idea of a skyscraper construction project came to mind. I thought of a huge skyscraper with restaurants, retail stores, offices, gyms, and residential spaces - a large self-contained, compact community all by itself.

Whenever I have to develop a specific and focused library like this, I like to start with the outcome of, how do I want this to work? So, we can begin by writing down some of the features that we'd like it to have: The ability to load different pages according to the URI Reading parameters from the URI (placeholders) Keeping the pages dynamic as per the Meteor standard That looks pretty good. Now after looking over these features, you may think they are pretty similar to a 'router' type of library and I agree. So, let's take a look at how our 'router' library would work in action:

Whoops is a small library, available as a Composer package, that helps you handle errors and exceptions across your PHP projects. Out of the box, you get a sleek, intuitive and informative error page each time something goes pants-up in your application. Even better, under all that is a very straight-forward, but flexible, toolset for dealing with errors in a way that makes sense for whatever it is that you're doing. The library's main features are: Detailed and intuitive page for errors and exceptions Code view for all frames Focus on error/exception analysis through the use of custom, simple middle-ware/handlers Support for JSON and AJAX requests Included providers for Silex and Zend projects through the bundled providers, and included as part of the Laravel 4 core Clean, compact, and tested code-base, with no extra dependencies

The days when blogging was just a hobby of teenagers are gone; now, even entrepreneurs want to have their own blogs, but do you know how to talk to clients? What does this mean to freelance web designers? It means that there are a lot of people out there who are willing to spend money on a custom design for their blogs. How can you impress these potential clients and get lucrative jobs? Talk to your potential clients about what is important to THEM!

Playground is a Prague-based production studio that often mixes 3D renders, photography, and concept art to create really amazing composite images. In this article, we will show a few of our favorite works from their portfolio, as well as a few progress images for some of the pieces.

Semi Permanent was started in Sydney in 2003 by Australians Andrew Johnstone and Murray Bell and has since become an international annual conference, spanning across 5 counties and 9 cities including London, Los Angeles and Stockholm. Semi Permanent is now synonymous with assembling industry leaders from all creative fields to present their work, inspirations, processes, insights and to simply share their creative journey with fellow peers over two jam-packed days. As always, there was an impressive showcase of amazing work that spanned across Graphic Design, Film, Animation, Motion Graphics, Architecture and Visual Effects. Illustration, Photography and Graffiti. Photographer Max Doyle showcased his diverse talent by entertaining us with a live jam of one of his songs. And of course it wouldn't be a design conference without the guys from Stab Magazine firing t-shirts into the crowd from a canon.

Want to remove the background from an image and just focus on the subject? That's easy, just Photoshop it. Don't know Photoshop? Well, that's a problem now, isn't it? Not with Clipping Magic, it's not. In fact, by the end of this post, some of us who know Photoshop may even opt to use Clipping Magic instead.

MadL toys are one type of vinyl toys where its design can be customized according to the taste of its designer. It has a square shaped head and a semicircular ears on both sides. It can be bought in different sizes depending on how big or small you want it. For this post, we will be featuring 30 Cool MadL Toy Designs for Inspiration. This includes some of the coolest designs made by different talented artists. With the of skill, talent, and playful imagination, they were able to create their own awesome designs they could be proud of. So come, take a peek, and enjoy.

PowerShell is Microsoft's task automation framework, consisting of a command-line shell, an integrated scripting environment (ISE), a scripting language built on .NET Framework, an API allowing you to host PowerShell in your .NET applications, and it is a distributed automation platform. PowerShell provides full access to COM and WMI, enabling you to perform tasks on both local and remote Windows systems. PowerShell is a new breed platform for automation, in that it solves administration and adaptability challenges by seamlessly integrating the .NET Framework. It's good for developers, administrators, testers and more. Based on .NET, the tool drives down costs, while providing developers and administrators a simple and enterprise-ready way to automate, measure and improve all of their processes.

The World Wide Web gives anyone the chance to reach a truly global audience. But there's a lot more to successfully doing so than simply setting up a single English language site and hoping for the best. English is still the most commonly used language on the internet. An analysis of the technologies used in website construction suggests that over half of all sites on the web today are in English. If we take a look at the languages used by surfers however, English still comes out on top but only marginally. Around 27% of internet users speak English compared to 25% who speak Chinese, while Arabic, Portuguese and Spanish are all experiencing rapid growth. This is due largely to increasing internet penetration rates in developing countries (with Latin America accounting for the large rise in Spanish and Portuguese).

Make Colloidal Silver for pennies per gallon. Premium Quality! With wearable gadgets like Google Glass and Memoto, taking firsthand videos or snapshots of what you are doing is real easy these days. But today we are going to show you a mind-boggling new way of taking videos, 360 degrees wide. Check out this video (if you want to skip to the gist, go to 0:35).

Over the last three years, responsive web design has been gaining popularity and is now considered to be one of the best ways to design websites that look great on any device: from smartphones to smart TVs. In this hand-picked collection, you'll find dozens of beautiful responsive sites in every category, and I hope you'll find them as inspiring as our team does. The screenshots on the left were taken on a tablet and the ones on the right were taken on a smartphone.

A perfect code editor is the only thing a developer needs for joy. When it comes to code editors, developers mainly care about usability and functionality of the tool they're working with, but the era of plain, old, ugly code editors is gone.

A perfect code editor is the only thing a developer needs for joy. When it comes to code editors, developers mainly care about usability and functionality of the tool they're working with, but the era of plain, old, ugly code editors is gone.

So you're a pretty great web developer already. You've got some killer CSS chops (cross browser even), perhaps you've been a Photoshop expert for years, and you've got enough jQuery knowledge to make almost any chained animation go smoothly. But certainly you ask yourself, what's next? In fact, one of the most asked questions about web development is, "how do I stay on the leading edge?" Chris Coyier recently presented a fantastic talk on the subject, and there are sites fully dedicated to staying up to date on the latest web design news. Addy Osmani's roundup on becoming a better front-end engineer sets some great content out on the board for you to consider on the subject; needless to say, a lot of smart people are thinking about this very subject, so you're headed in the right direction.

These days, a necessary tool of the trade for both professional and amateur visual artists, such as graphic designers, web developers, photographers, digital artists, etc., is an online presence; and that is usually achieved with a personal or professional portfolio site. So today we are bringing you a selection of powerful, usable, free WordPress portfolio themes that are all highly customizable for experienced coders, but also just as usable as they are for non-coders. Portfolium Neat and flexible grid-based theme for WordPress, Portfolium can be used on portfolio websites or blogs. Take full advantage of Portfolium's fresh, minimalistic design that is perfect as is, or as a foundation for your custom design.

For most web developers, delivering the images to the low-bandwidth mobile devices could not be less than any brain teaser, where they feel like they have been stuck in a complex task, just like searching a needle in the dry haystack! Well, it could screw-up the brain! Even the developers, who are well-acquainted with responsive web design techniques, know that by setting the max-width of the images up to 100%, can't resolve this issue as the server will still render big size image to the user's phone. The mobile optimized web applications are designed to run smoothly for the low bandwidth connection with formatting according to the screen of the device.

We're going to cover some incredibly practical, basic tips that you can apply in order to create your own cost-effective photo manipulations from scratch. Not everyone has access to professional photography studios, and today you'll learn how you can product high-end looking results on a very limited budget. This includes everything from correctly setting up a photo shoot, to moving into Photoshop and covering post-production essentials. You'll work with lighting, detail removal, color correction and photo manipulation.

Photography is a beautiful form of modern art. A static picture says so many words, and opens up imagination beyond boundaries. Light has always been a favorite subject for photographers, be it natural or artificial. Light bulbs have also been photographed many times. The tungsten filament in a bulb, when lights up, gives us light, and the very mechanics of a bulb are fascinating.

The week is coming to an end and that means it is time for us to look back on the week that passed, the best design news, resources and other goodies. This week we look Adobe programs, how to optimize your website, as well as how to make you app design stand out and much more. 6 Creative Ways to Use Evernote There's a reason the Evernote logo is an elephant. Because when used correctly, this helpful, versatile, free app will make sure you never forget anything ever. Just like an elephant. If you're unfamiliar with Evernote, the app utilizes "notebooks" - basically a system of folders and subfolders that become increasingly helpful as you create more. Greater organization makes it easier to recall exactly what you need at a later date, across any platform.