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Mar 10th, 2010 by Barker Design
Amazing Avatar Creation

Avatar has swept the whole world. Lots of designers have done lots of art works related to “Avatar”. Lots of designers have been working on the transformation from a human photo to “Avatar”. However, this tutorial will start the artworks from pencil drafting. You will learn how to develop an impressive Avatar art in a new way.

(View This Tutorial)

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Filter Forge – Photoshop Plugin with 6500+ Textures and Effects

 
Mar 9th, 2010 by Barker Design
5 Advanced CSS Pseudo Classes that will Save your Day

In today’s article I’m going to take a look at 5 pseudo-classes that will simplify our design process and reduces a lot of time to create a certain visual effects. You will also find demonstration below each point.

 
Mar 9th, 2010 by Barker Design
Very Useful 65 Wordpress Hacks

You have here in this article a number of 65 interesting Wordpress hacks or articles that will teach you in detail how to edit your WP theme like a Wordpress rockstar.

 
Mar 9th, 2010 by Barker Design
How to Create a Fancy Image Gallery with CSS3

Even though CSS3 is still in the development stages, it is the new craze that many web developers are excited about. CSS3 is something that will take web…

 
Mar 9th, 2010 by Barker Design
30 Fresh and Professional Blog Designs

psdfanmembersbut 30 Fresh and Professional Blog Designs

30 Fresh and Professional Blog Designs

Blog design has always been a special art. Bloggers often have to fit a lot of content into their designs – post contents, titles, dates, social bookmarking options, advertising – the list goes on…

That’s why today we present 30 fresh and professional blog designs that present their content elegantly and cleanly. Some really inspiring designers here!

freshblog1 30 Fresh and Professional Blog Designs

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psdfanmembersbut 30 Fresh and Professional Blog Designs

 30 Fresh and Professional Blog Designs

 
Mar 9th, 2010 by Barker Design
Freebie: Vector Devil-Skull Illustration

Fuctastic has created an awesome skull illustration for the readers of Vectips. Download the illustration and check out all the intricate details! It is a great illustration to use by itself or pick through the many elements used to create the skull!

Illustrator Version: CS4 and Illustrator 10 EPS
License: See Terms in Download

Download Freebie


 
Mar 9th, 2010 by Barker Design
Create a Simple News Scroller Using Dojo

My journey into Dojo javascript has been exciting and I’m continuing to learn more as I port MooTools scripts to Dojo. My latest experiment is porting a simple new scroller from MooTools to Dojo. The code is very similar!

View Demo

The HTML

  • News Item 1Pellentesque habitant morbi...Read More
  • News Item 2Pellentesque habitant morbi...Read More

The news items are placed into list items. The UL will be the element that’s animated.

The CSS

#news-feed	 { height:200px; width:300px; overflow:hidden; position:relative; border:1px solid #ccc; background:#eee; }
#news-feed ul	{ position:absolute; top:0; left:0; list-style-type:none; padding:0; margin:0; }
#news-feed ul li { min-height:180px; font-size:12px; margin:0; padding:10px; overflow:hidden; }

The absolute positioning is essential to proper animation. Unlike my MooTools example, this example no longer requires a fixed height for each news item. I did add a minimum height so only one item shows up within the scroller window at a time.

The Dojo Javascript

dojo.require('dojo.NodeList-fx');
dojo.addOnLoad(function() {
	/* settings */
	var list = dojo.query('#news-feed ul'),
		items = list.query("li"),
		showDuration = 3000,
		scrollDuration = 500,
		scrollTopDuration = 200,
		index = 0,
		interval;

	/* movement */
	var start = function() { interval = setInterval(move,showDuration); };
	var stop = function() { if(interval) clearInterval(interval); };
	var reset = function() {
	    list.anim({ top: 0}, scrollTopDuration, null, start);
	};
	/* action! */
	var move = function() {
	    list.anim({ top: (0 - (dojo.coords(items[++index]).t)) }, scrollDuration, null, function(){
			if(index == items.length - 1) {
				index = 0-1;
				stop();
				setTimeout(reset,showDuration);
			}
	    });
	};

	/* stop and start during mouseenter, mouseleave  */
	list.onmouseenter(stop).onmouseleave(start);

	/* go! */
	start();
});

This is where I have the epic description…but the above code (at least for MooTools users) should look familiar. The logic is exactly the same but the code uses dojo.* methods instead of MooTools’ Fx, $$, $, and Element.Dimensions methods.

The MooTools Javascript

window.addEvent('domready',function() {
	/* settings */
	var list = $('news-feed').getFirst('ul');
	var items = list.getElements('li');
	var showDuration = 3000;
	var scrollDuration = 500;
	var index = 0;
	var height = items[0].getSize().y;
	/* action func */
	var move = function() {
		list.set('tween',{
			duration: scrollDuration,
			onComplete: function() {
				if(index == items.length - 1) {
					index = 0 - 1;
					list.scrollTo(0,0);
				}
			}
		}).tween('top',0 - (++index * height));
	};
	/* go! */
	window.addEvent('load',function() {
		move.periodical(showDuration);
	});
});

The above code was taken from my original post. Take a moment to compare the Dojo and MooTools code.

View Demo

What do you think? Three Dojo posts in — what are your thoughts about Dojo to this point?

Don’t forget to follow me on Twitter and be sure to visit Script & Style for the best Javascript and CSS articles around!Sponsor the David Walsh Blog and get your brand in front of several thousand users per day!

Create a Simple News Scroller Using Dojo

Related posts:

  1. Create a Simple News Scroller Using MooTools, Part I: The Basics
  2. Link Nudging Using Dojo
  3. Remove Broken Images Using Dojo
  4. QuickBoxes for Dojo
  5. Using MooTools 1.2 For Drag, Drop, Sort, Save

 
Mar 9th, 2010 by Barker Design
How To Use Curves in Photoshop

If I were forced to give up all but one image adjustment tool, I would keep curves. Hands down. The curves adjustment tool is an integral part of every professional’s knowledge base and image editing package.

Even if you’ve taken a good photo, chances are it can be improved or it needs to be adjusted to work in a collage or collection. Or even to just to intensify a mood. You can always make a good thing better – and curves is a one-stop-shop way to do that.

With curves you are able to:

  • Adjust the over-all contrast or tonal range
  • Adjust the local contrast or tonal range
  • Adjust the color

Let’s jump in and find out how. It’s simpler than it looks.

Overview

Image Description

The idea behind Curves is all about re–mapping values. A pixel starts out at a certain brightness, and you change it to be brighter or darker.

The curves box opens as a straight line because you haven’t made any changes yet. That means that the brightness values before and after are the same. You will effect a change by changing the shape of the curve.

The points from left (bottom) to right (top) affect: blacks, shadows, midtones, highlights, and whites. By altering the position in these regions will affect the corresponding tonal range of your image. Leaving the line in the center will leave the tones unchanged.

You begin altering the brightness values by clicking once somewhere on the line. This will establish a “point”; this point can now be dragged to a different place within the grid, which causes that tonal value to change, either lighter or darker depending on whether you drag it up or down. The reason it’s a curve is so that the change blends smoothly throughout the image. An abrupt change in value can be very noticeable. The increasingly gradual change of the brightness values on either side of the change permit a very smooth and believable adjustment.

It’s important to note, however, that you can’t increase contrast in one region without decreasing it in another. The curves tool redistributes contrast. Therefore think of the image having a contrast allocation or budget and you need to decide how to best spend it.

Also, the curves tool will preserve the tonal hierarchy (unless you use uncommon negative slopes). That means that the brighter parts of the image will stay brighter even after your conversion – just maybe not by the same amount.

Quick Tip

Keep effects on adjustment or separate layers to enable quick alteration or removal at any time during the color correction process. (Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Curves. Or at the bottom of the Layers panel.)

S- and Inverted S-Curves

Rollover Image

The S-Curve and the Inverted S-Curve are two curves most commonly used. The S-Curve adds contrast to the midtones while subtracting from the shadows and highlights. The Inverted S-Curve does the opposite.

Often in photography, it’s difficult to expose your image perfectly. Brightness or darkness in tonal ranges can benefit from optimization. The S-Curve is often useful in these cases – not to mention, quick and simple.

Empty Tonal Range and Histograms

Rollover Image

One very useful and important function of curves is to correct empty tonal ranges – in the histogram edges (blacks and whites) or gaps in between (shadows, midtones, and highlights). An under exposed image can be helped by pulling in the black and white points to correct the exposure.

Or if there are gaps in between the tonal peaks you can decrease contrast in specific parts of your image – thereby freeing up the contrast to be used in the more visible areas of your image.

Clipped Highlights

Rollover Image

Images containing a bright light source, such as the sun, can often be harsh or posterized (also called color banding). Posterization of an image entails conversion of a continuous gradation of tone to several regions of fewer tones, with abrupt changes from one tone to another. This can create an unrealistic look, and often a smoother transition to white is preferred.

Correcting Color Balance

All curves thus far have been applied to RGB values of luminosity. But they can also be used on individual color channels to correct color casts in specific tonal regions. Often the color in an image is correctly balanced, but due to reflection or a light source with a varying temperature or color, you may see unwanted tints in a tonal region. Changing the white balance or adjusting the overall color would inadvertently harm the other tones. So we can selectively increase or decrease the amount of a color cast in the red, green, and blue channels to achieve perfect balance.

Image Description

Any adjustments upward of the diagonal line in the red channel increase the red in the image. Lowering, below the diagonal line, increases the cyan. The other channels are the same: Upward in the green channel, green; lower, magenta. Upward in the blue channel, blue; lower yellow.

Image Description

RGB color images should be thought of as being comprised of a composite channel and three grayscale channels containing the values of the three colors – red, green and blue. This is shown in the example above of the red on the left, green in the middle, and blue on the right.

Window > Channels to see this on your image.

Rollover Image

You can see in the image above that there is a slight blueish cast in the color tone. Not to mention, the image is slightly washed out (improperly exposed).

As you can see, the sky is already quite white, so we won’t want to effect the highlights and above. By lowering the curve in the midtones and shadows, without effecting the highlights, we solve the exposure problem. Then we’ll get rid of the blue color cast: By lowering the blue in the low end, we eliminate the problem and the gowns go to black – as they should be.

Note

If precise color adjustments aren’t required, simple color balance correction might be easier (Image > Adjustments > Color Balance).

Blending Modes

Image Description

Also, curves adjustment layers (Layer>New Adjustment Layer> Curves) can be set to make curves only apply to a channel – such as Color and/or Luminosity – which allows for further, varied control. Another benefit is that it can make your adjustments more subtle through use of the opacity controls for the layer.

Notes

Practice makes perfect. The more you use the tools and techniques available to you the better you’ll get, improve your photography, and have fun.

Here are some things to remember when using the curves tool:

  • Minimize use of the curves tool, as anything which stretches the image histogram increases the possibility posterization.
  • Avoid the use of the curves tool on an already altered image.
  • Perform curves on 16-bit images when possible. (Image > Mode > 16 Bits/Channel)
  • For extreme levels of color correction, consider applying curves using LAB mode.


 
Mar 9th, 2010 by Barker Design
Astounding Ajax/CSS Forms: 30+ Modern Trends , Tips and Techniques

This article with the title 30 amazing css ajax form will explain the various techniques, tutorials, examples relating to the form.

 
Mar 9th, 2010 by Barker Design
10 Cool Websites with Amazing jQuery Effects

jQuery has made our life easier to achieve great result. It’s time to show you something cool. Check out the these websites, they all are using pretty amazing animation and intensive javascript effects!

 

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