Design Tutorials

xSystem backend database design

2011-12-18T11:28:00.001-08:00

Want to jump ahead on your back end design and development? This is just the thing for you administration xsystem databse backend. It gives off a great appeal that reminds me of wordpress but custom.I bought this to use on my clients website and have been totally pleased with how much cool stuff it has to offer.

Features:

Styled forms including text inputs, select, radio and check buttons.
Rich text Editor multifunctional – CKeditor
JQueryUI – Sliders, date picker progress bars etc.
Full page calendar – Google like
Backend File explorer
Graphics and charts
200 icons by glypish
Fugue icons – more than 3200 icons by Yusuke Kamiyamane
Fluid 960 grid system
Data tables – real time management
Alert messages
Tabs
Accordion
CSS3 Buttons
Lists, higlights and more…

Want to enhance the eyes in your photo?

2011-12-13T21:06:00.001-08:00

These are some simple techniquies for editing eyes in PS. We will be using the healing brush to start with in this video on my website. I am going to try to ad a cool new video every week to this page and ill be updating this blog when I do.

So make sure to stop in and check out this tutorial and others on my website!

CS6 Photoshop new features

2011-12-06T18:38:00.001-08:00

Check out the new CS6 Image restoration tools you will soon be able to buy. THis has to be some of the coolest technology ever made.

Dont miss your oppurtunity to recive great new items for PS monthly: http://bestadvanced-photoshop.com/video.html

Content aware and dropping an image to white

2011-11-19T23:43:00.001-08:00

Cs5 photoshop amazing techniques from adobe. Drop your object to white. Also fill in bg with content aware.

Check out more tutorials at BestadvancedPhotoshop.com

Content aware and dropping an image to white

2011-11-19T23:42:00.001-08:00

Cs5 photoshop amazing techniques from adobe. Drop your object to white. Also fill in bg with content aware.

Photoshop CS5 - Digital Make Up - Tutorial

2011-11-06T15:20:00.001-08:00

I have a great tutorial on how to add makeup digitally.

Make sure to check out your social media Twitter guide here

Also more tutorials here

Design wise in PHOTOSHOP

2011-10-21T21:37:00.001-07:00

Learn how to design wise in Photoshop. Here are a few tips to get started!

1. Always make sure your designing in photoshop with the least amount of work. Speed is important in this industry. Find the best tutorials to help you! There are hundreds of photoshop blogs, but make sure you read a few diffrent blogs.

2. Everyone designs diffrent and there seems to be a million ways to do on thing in photoshop.

3. Becareful when downloading brushes, make sure its a realible source you dont want any virisus.

4. Design it yourself, dont just use others work unless you bought the rights or got permission.

5. Look at others work to get ideas, dont copy but use there pieces for your photoshop inspiration. Try a few out of the box things you wouldingt usually design. Variety in photoshop is good!

Check out my blog for more great tutorials and Like my Facebook for some great brushes you can use in photoshop!

BLOG

Facebook

3 great Design Blogs worth following

2011-10-11T21:21:00.001-07:00

#1 BestAdvanced-Photoshop.com/wordpress Fairly new but really shows some great work on the web and tutorilas for any Photoshop user. Weather your a designer or a hobbiest using photoshop. Check them out.

#2 For those social network gurus, marketing anaylist, and twitter addicts this one is for you. OnlineTwitterGuide.com. Awnsers any questions you have ever wondered about Twiiter and its most popular 3rd party applications.

#3 This is an awesome blog one of my favorite resources as a designer. Great tutorials and tips for designing. http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/

5 Vintage Actions you must have

2011-10-09T13:22:00.001-07:00

The 5 best vintage Actions for photoshop professionlas. These are great for people and landscape pictures.

Great Vintage Oracle Action

Download

Background enhancer

Download

3 diffrent vintage enhancements

Download

Great vintage colors

Download

Vintage HDR Action

Download

Remeber to follow us and check out our Video Tutorials for photoshop. We are always adding more photoshop Resources for guidiance :)

Posted by: Bestadvanced-Photoshop.com

Who loves Polaroids ?

2011-10-03T16:43:00.001-07:00

We have a great photoshop action in store for you if you love polaroids. This action will turn your photo and make it look like you took it as a polaroid. Enjoy and thank rawimage from Deviantart.com

Download

Make sure to visit our website for more great tutorials and Free Photoshop Tools

BestAdvanced-Photoshop.com

8 Awesome FREE Grungy Dirt Brushes

2011-09-24T15:26:00.001-07:00

Download

Cant go wrong with this Free brush set if your a designer you will find a use for these somewhere. Here is another great resource:

Photoshop:

BestAdvanced-Photoshop.com

Marketing:

onlinetwitterguide.com

New PS brush Set

2011-09-21T22:47:00.001-07:00

Tomorrow I will have a new brush set you can download for free so make sure to come on by snd like our Facebook page to get some Free photoshop Brushes today!

FACEBOOK

Best 3 twitter Icon sets

2011-09-17T12:42:00.001-07:00

These can be used as twitter buttons on your site. Maybe on a poster for the find us on twitter icon. We went out and found our favorites and of course the best!

Our first one is brought to you by: ProductiveDreams Includes both a PNG and PSD versions in a .zip file.You can use the icons for private and commercial projects, blogs and web-sites for free, without any restrictions whatsoever.

These birds are great ive used it on one of my websites. Check it out OnlineTwitterGuide.com

Here are 30 Free Icons for your twitter.Made by Siahdesign.com. I thought these where really amazing for blog posts or just simple icon here and there on your website. Worth the time to download and use!

Last but not least we have this Awesome Free Icon set. I really love the twitter bird they made. It can be used for so many things. But there other icons are useful and awesome too. Here is the link SmashingMagazine.com

Finding an Ideal client for Web Designers

2011-09-13T16:37:00.001-07:00

Many web designers find that they don’t have trouble attracting clients, but they do have trouble attracting the right clients. The work that you do can be far more rewarding, fun, and profitable if you are able to work with the types of clients that are a better fit for your services. Fortunately, there are some things that you can do to make yourself and your services more noticeable and more appealing to the right kinds of clients.

In this post we’ll present some tips that you can implement to help you to attract the types of clients that you want.

1. Identify Your Ideal Client

The first step in attracting the right kinds of clients is to identify specifically what types of clients and projects you want. If you’re struggling with this, think about the clients that you’re currently attracting and why they are not right for you. Once you know the types of clients that you would like to work with you can develop a plan to promote your services specifically to those people.

Some examples of the types of clients and projects that you might want to target could include e-commerce websites (or more specifically, Magento, Shopify, etc.), WordPress themes, Drupal development, band websites, photography portfolio sites, church websites, and so on. You may also want to work with clients in a particular budget range, geographical location, or company size.

How you identify your ideal client is up to you, but the more specific you can be the easier it will be to target that type of client.

2. Target Them with Your Portfolio Site

One of the most effective ways to attract the right kinds of clients is to make your portfolio welcoming and appealing to those people and projects that you are targeting. This could include any number of things, including use of effective page titles, headlines, graphics, testimonials, work samples, and even calls to action.

As an example, let’s assume that you want to target clients with e-commerce projects. In this case you could include e-commerce development in your page titles and headlines on the portfolio site. This could help to improve your site’s rankings for searches related to e-commerce, and once on the site it will help these types of clients to see that you would be a good fit for their project.

You may want to showcase your work samples from other e-commerce projects over your other types of work samples. You could also include testimonials or case studies from past e-commerce projects.

All of these things will help to align your portfolio site with the specific type of client that you want to attract. Taking it a step further, you could also include a blog on your portfolio site where you publish articles about different topics that would be relevant to this audience. This content would help to attract more search traffic and it could help visitors to feel more comfortable about hiring you for their design or development project.

3. Showcase Your Most Relevant Work

As was mentioned in the previous point, you should showcase the work that is most relevant to this target audience. You may want to showcase other items from your portfolio that are not specifically geared towards this target audience, and that is fine because quality work can still show your talent without being directly applicable to their project. However, what you don’t want to do is to not showcase any past projects that are relevant to the clients and projects that you are targeting. So if you don’t already have some quality work samples on those types of projects you will need to get some as soon as possible.

Case studies often help more than just visuals from your past projects because with a case study you can provide details about the project, what was accomplished, and how it impacted the client. When clients in your target audience read case studies about successful projects that have a lot in common with their own project they will be naturally more drawn to your services.

4. Use a Teaser to Attract Attention

One option that some designers use very effectively is to give away a free product or resource as a teaser. For example, you could write a detailed article about the keys to successful e-commerce websites and give it away from your website as a PDF download. Those in your target audience are likely to be interested in this article/report and it could be very helpful to them while also branding yourself as an expert on the subject. Of course, somewhere in the PDF you could include your contact information (or a link to your contact page) and a call to action for readers to reach out to you regarding their own project.

You could require that visitors opt-in to a mailing list in order to get the download, which would allow you to have contact with these people going forward. If the free teaser product is of high value you may even be able to get bloggers who reach a similar audience to mention it, increasing exposure and hopefully leading to more clients.

I’ve seen a few examples of this type of teaser in use by designers and developers who specialize in working with membership websites. Visitors can get a free report or e-book about running a membership website, but most of them will need to hire someone to help set up their membership site, so the author would then be a natural choice for them. As you can see, this approach has a lot of potential for attracting the right type of clients. Of course, on the negative side it will take some work to develop the teaser, but you’ll probably find it to be well worth the time.

5. Demonstrate Your Expertise

If you want specific types of clients to hire you for their projects you should strive to position yourself as an expert in that particular area. There are a number of ways that you could do this, and some will depend on the type of client or project you are targeting. For example, if you are looking to work on projects related to a specific e-commerce system or CMS there may be some type of certification that you can earn. As a certified partner you would bring a great deal of credibility to any related project.

In addition to certifications, there may be associations that you could join. Any certifications or associations should be mentioned on your portfolio site so that potential clients see that you are an expert.

Other options for demonstrating your expertise can include blog posts, books, and podcasts. Blog posts and podcasts could be published at your portfolio site, or you could get involved with large publications in the industry that would provide some added exposure and credibility.

Also please add us on Facebook. Get a free Brush pack if you Like us today!

5 Photography Editing tips

2011-09-07T10:26:00.001-07:00

Guest post by Anna Cruz.

Here are some useful photo editing tips for you. If you are an amateur photographer, you probably have lots of pictures you wish looked better, and professional photos are especially important if you will be using them on marketing materials like brochure printing.

That is what photo editing software is for: taking boring photos and making them pop. Even professional photographers edit their photos. Here are some basic tips to get you started.

1. Do Not Edit the Original

Whatever you do, do not change the original photo. Copy it in the photo editing program and work on the copy. Then if you make a change you do not like, you can always start over. Also, keeping the original intact allows you to use it again later, making different adjustments the second time. You may end up wanting to use the same photo on separate postcard, calendar, and brochure printing designs.

2. Avoid Over Editing

Changing and enhancing your photograph too much will make it look unnatural. It may also lose some of the original details. Know when to stop. Remember you can usually hit the undo button to get rid of the last change if you have taken the editing too far.

3. Enhance Dull Photos

Go to the color menu and increase the intensity of the colors to make a dull photo look more vibrant. You can also adjust the brightness on photos that are too dark or too bright. You might also want to increase the sharpness on pictures that are blurry.

4. Crop Uninteresting Elements

Many times a photograph will have an interesting subject on one side and a wide space of boring parking lot or empty sky on the other. Get rid of the uninteresting portion by cropping it. You will be surprised at how much better your photo looks.

5. Re-size Photos to Get Better Resolution

If you make a photo smaller, it will have better resolution, meaning it will look sharp. For pictures you want to print or put on a brochure printing, make sure the resolution is 300 pixels per inch. If you want to publish the photograph online, it should be 75 pixels per inch; at that resolution it will look good and not take forever to download when someone pulls up the picture on a web page.

Article source: quick online tips

Also checkout this video on how to add Dramatic color to your photos here

Vintage Mania Resource

2011-09-05T18:26:00.001-07:00

Here is a great site on how to make vintage photos, posters, and so much more. This site gives you the best vintage items on the web from enavato products. Also has added some great video tutorials on the art of vintage in photoshop. Vintage is in so you should be too.

Here is an awesome tutorial to learn how to make an Action

2011-09-03T06:30:00.001-07:00

How to make a simple Action to change the color of a set of things.

This is a tutorial I made on making an action to change the main color of a theme. Note: All the objects in your theme should be the same color. First lets add a new Action under the Actions menu.

New Action

Name and start recording by hitting record.

The Hue color button in cs5 if in an older CS Look through your menu for Hue/Saturation

Adjust the color of to how you want it for your all your icons or theme pieces.

Im making my pink icons more of a dark red. Play with the lightness to get more lighter or darker tones.

Hit stop

Go ahead and hit stop unless you want to change more things to your objects of the same color

Now go through and open all your icons you want to change to look like the Action you made.

Now lets hit play and whtch your color change to exactly the same throughout your icons/ theme

Make sure to select the right Action

Simple Action Tutorial summary

Now you should have a grasp on making actions. Go practice and have fun making cool Actions.
Visit my website to get your 2 Free Actions

THe best Free Actions found on DeviantArt

2011-09-01T14:31:00.001-07:00

=night-fate Her profile gives some of the best actions ive ever had the pleasure to use. The best pat is they are free to download and use. I love working iin photoshop witht the best resources I can find. If you download these you wont regret it. Make sure you let her know how much you appreciate and like them on her profile.

DeviantArt.com is a free site to join.

Also check out my blog and site for more great photoshop tutorials and freebies. Click Here

Wicked awesome Background photoshop tutorials

2011-08-31T08:40:00.001-07:00

Today I want to share 3 of my favorite background tutorials. I hope you enjoy them. make sure to sign up for are newsletter and get 2 free Actions LINK

Texture of Black Bubbles Effects

Make a bubble effect BG

Fabric Folds

Fabric folds, such a nice texture too

Texturing of Old Paper

Old map paper, great for pirate themes

How to Make a Green & Sleek Web Layout in Photoshop

2011-08-27T21:00:00.001-07:00

In this web design tutorial, you’ll learn how to create a beautiful, green, and sleek layout in Photoshop. This is a really cool web tutorial and have used it for my personal portfolio. Id say this is a cool advanced tutorilal.

Link to the tutorial

Dont forget to check out this cool toolkit.

5 great tools for web designers

2011-08-24T07:28:00.001-07:00

Here is some cool web tools to help you with your web design for a blog or your first website. Being a web designer myself im always looking for the best plugins and tools to help me design.

1. FireBug

Firebug plug-in has to be a coders dream tool. Ever wanted to know whats not working on your back end. Why your alignment is out of place or maybe you cant remember what class your div tag is? If you said yes, this tool is probably for you then. There are also diagnostic and debugging tools along with several plugin extensions to augment your Firebug plugin. Firebug can even look into your javascript, css and html.

Inspect HTML and modify style and layout in real-time
Use the most advanced JavaScript debugger available for any browser
Accurately analyze network usage and performance
Extend Firebug and add features to make Firebug even more powerful
Get the information you need to get it done with Firebug.

2. Hex to RGB Converter

In creating your website it can be very useful to know the hexadecimal values of RGB colors and vice versa. What kind of thing could really do this you wonder? Well leave it to 321Webmaster's to save the day again with another great tool designers love.

3. Pingdom

Want to know how fast your new web page or blog is loading? See how your new javascript or css is loading and optimizing your web page on the web. It checks you website by mimicking how a page would actually load in a web browser. When the test is complete, you will view detailed information and statistics about your website and the features on it.

4. Free Icons for Web

Ever need a set of matching icons for your blog or website but dont have time to design a set? Let others do the work for you. Some of the sets can even be used for commercial sites. But there a literally 1,000 of icons sets on free icons web.

5. Colorzilla

Another awesome tool on firefox. The plug-ins that firefox has are some of the best for web designers. Colorzilla being a great color tool. This Firefox extension gives developers color design tools like the Eyedropper, ColorPicker, and other great tools. Cant go wrong with a color helper. Since a lot of us are color blind or cant see all the diffrent shades of a color.

Cool Icon Sets for Photoshop

2011-08-22T23:29:00.003-07:00

So im always looking for icons for my clients. Ive been working on a social media site and needed some basic icons for the feed page. I have looked all over the web it seems like. But here is what I found for some cool Free icons under the creative commons license 3.0.

Iphone Icons

Desktop user interface Icons

MAke sure to visit www.BestAdvanced-Photoshop.com to get free stuff for your designing needs. I will email new stuff out every week.

3d pixel Graphics

2011-08-22T23:29:00.001-07:00

Found a cool effect tutorial! Check it out here

Stretching a single line of pixels is an easy way to create special digital effects in graphic design. By taking this technique a step further, we can create wonderful, vibrant 3D effects right in Photoshop!

Check out this cool Creative toolkit

Beginning Photoshop CS4

2011-07-24T14:17:00.000-07:00

I thought this Video is a good starter to learn the basic layouts of PS. It helps you customize the layout of PS. What extras you may need like guides, and rulers in Photoshop. What has changed from cs3 to cs4? What cool new features you may need to master Photoshop and make new masterpieces.

Photoshop Resource Toolkit

2011-07-20T21:12:00.000-07:00

PS TOOLKITThis is the coolest toolkit ive found online! Its great for beginners and PS Pros alike. I have been using it for a while now with no complaints. IT has some really cool brushes and graphics included in the kit. Over 60,000 photoshop resources included.

I really like the design of this video

2010-01-09T19:20:00.001-08:00

Perodic table for designers

2009-12-31T13:27:00.001-08:00

Found this and thought it was way cool.This I think is a really cool way to look at the most popular fonts. There in a few groups but not alphabetical. This has 5 of my most favorite fonts I use everyday. I think im going to print it as a sticker for my wall. It will be my new inspirational poster.

Resource: http://www.behance.net/Gallery/Periodic-Table-of-Typefaces/193759

Graphic vs Web Design

2009-12-29T21:12:00.000-08:00

First off if you work in one of these fields and wouldn't mind sharing years experience and or pay feel free to comment below.

Here are some statistics I've gathered this past year for 2009.

Graphic Designer -
Salary Median- 47,000 Dollars a year. This job usually requires at least an Associates Degree. However skill is looked at the most when hiring for this job.

Web Designer -
Salary Median- 55,000 dollars a year. This job has a broader range within its categories. You could be a front end designer to a back end engineer. So depending n the exact job title this could change.

I only compared these to design jobs but the medians are all within 10,000. Experience and the exact position could alter this numbers. If your looking for a job in these careers its better off you look around before settling with one job.

GOES-P

2009-12-23T18:41:00.001-08:00

This is a patch I designed for a contest. Let me know what you think

http://www.w3schools.com/

2009-12-22T15:00:00.000-08:00

Can you learn more from W3 School's then actual school? Well since I have been in designs schools for over 3 years now. Almost 2/3 of my teachers have referenced this site. It has been a huge help to my success for building websites. I think for graphic designers it can be great too. But to really grasp designing something you need hands on experience or a teacher to push you over the edge. I also have friends with no schooling in the subject coding there own sites by hand no apps like Adobe Dreamweaver. But whatever your experience level or design skills im sure this site can help. Check it out. http://www.w3schools.com/

Favorite Typography Film by: BYU

2009-12-21T23:55:00.000-08:00

My Sticker Decal Company

2009-12-21T20:45:00.000-08:00

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