Each month, we bring together a selection of the best tutorials and articles from across the whole Tuts+ network. Whether you’d like to read the top posts from your favourite site, or would like to start learning something completely new, this is the best place to start!

Psdtuts+ — Photoshop Tutorials

• 

  Create a Pimped Out Truck Using Photoshop and Point and Shoot Photos

  Making modifications to your car or truck in Photoshop can be a lot of fun. In this tutorial we will demonstrate how to create a pimped out truck modification using photos taken with a simple point and shoot camera, with no advanced lighting setup. Let’s get started!

  Visit Article

• 

  Create an Elephant Sundae Using Photo Manipulation Techniques

  Photoshop is great at seamlessly combing photos to create an entirely new scene. In this tutorial we will create an elephant sundae using several stock photos. Let’s get started!

  Visit Article

• 

  The Incredible Digital Art of Michael Oswald

  In this article we will be featuring the work of Michael Oswald. Oswald is a digital artist with a unique style. His technique involves a combination of photo manipulation and digital painting techniques and the results are often stunning. Let’s take a look!

  Visit Article

---

Nettuts+ — Web Development Tutorials

• 

  Sublime Text 2 Tips and Tricks (Updated)

  Sublime Text 2 is one of the fastest and most incredible code editors to be released in a long time! With a community and plugin ecosystem as passionate as this one, it just might be impossible for any other editor to catch up. I’ll show you my favorite tips and tricks today.

  Visit Article

• 

  An In Depth Analysis of HTML5 Multimedia and Accessibility

  In this tutorial, youll learn how HTML5 helps to provide you with several ways of presenting your media content to users. As a result, youll increase the availability of your media to users with different
  needs and requirements, making it more accessible.

  Visit Article

• 

  Writing an API Wrapper in Ruby with TDD

  Sooner or later, all developers are required to interact with an API. The most difficult part is always related to reliably testing the code we write, and, as we want to make sure that everything works properly, we continuosly run code that queries the API itself. This process is slow and inefficient, as we can experience network issues and data inconsistencies (the API results may change). Let’s review how we can avoid all of this effort with Ruby.

  Visit Article

---

Vectortuts+ — Illustrator Tutorials

• 

  How to Illustrate a Microscope in Illustrator

  The microscopes is a symbol of our civilization. Throughout this tutorial on how to illustrate a vector microscope you’ll take advantage of numerous Illustrator tools. You will learn how to use blends, art brushes and 3D rendering in Adobe Illustrator. Let’s get started!

  Visit Article

• 

  Create a Picture Gallery in Illustrator

  This work is a common project created together with Iaroslav Lazunov and Alexander Egupov. We have used 3D rendering, Blends, Opacity masks, making this three-dimensional stage with vanishing points. Learn every step in how to create this picture gallery work.

  Visit Article

• 

  Important Resources for Learning How to Design Typefaces and Full Fonts

  If you’re serious about creating a typeface design, then you’ll need some solid resources to get started. Learn effective typeface design workflows, how to take an initial spark of an idea from sketch, through Illustrator, into Fontlab, and then work your creation into a complete and custom font design. Here are multiple tutorials that show you how to create fonts in Illustrator and Fontlab, and you can also dive into articles that describe the foundation of quality type design with ample inspirational examples.

  Visit Article

---

Webdesigntuts+ — Web Design Tutorials

• 

  A Beginner’s Guide to Pairing Fonts

  Pairing fonts can be a challenge. Selecting two or more fonts which work well is one thing – selecting two which work together to achieve your typographic aims may have you reaching for the aspirin. Let’s see if we can alleviate any headaches. This guide will help you get started with font pairing for the web.

  Visit Article

• 

  Design a Series of Smart Banner Ads in Photoshop

  With the continuous growth of the Internet, online marketing has gotten bigger every year, and along with it, the advertising industry. One major factor in all this craziness is buying and selling ads.

  Visit Article

• 

  Twitter Bootstrap 101: Introduction

  Twitter’s Bootstrap is an excellent set of carefully crafted user interface elements, layouts, and javascript tools, freely available to use in your next web design project. This video series aims to introduce you to Bootstrap; taking you all the way from downloading the resources, to building a complete Bootstrap-based website.

  Visit Article

---

Phototuts+ — Photography Tutorials

• 

  HDR: Love it or Leave It?

  There are few techniques in the photography world that divide our community as much as HDR. High dynamic range images, or HDR images, are a special type of composite image that combines several images at different exposure settings in order to create an image with increased dynamic range. The look provided by HDR is loved by many, and disliked by perhaps just as many. In today’s article, we’re going to take a better look at what HDR is, and get some opinions from photographers using HDR.

  Visit Article

• 

  Inspiring Images of Cars and Motorcycles

  Cars and motorbikes have been around for 100 years. Throughout the century, they have looked beautiful, satisfied our need for speed and become a symbol for thrill seeking. Today, we’ll look at photos ranging from brand new Ferrari’s to classic muscle cars.

  Visit Article

• 

  Quick Tip: GIMP Portable – Take Your Editing Software With You

  While a number of smartphones now offer photo editing basics (and a plethora of apps to expand things even more), the portability of a solid photo editing program has been hard to come by. Photoshop is a monster in regards to space requirements and its ability to work on any system where it is not expressively installed. Picasa can be fairly ‘lightweight’ but lacks many of the more advanced photo editing tools. So what about GIMP?

  Visit Article

---

Cgtuts+ — Computer Graphics Tutorials

• 

  Modeling, UVmapping And Texturing A Low Poly T-Rex In Blender, Part 1

  In the first tutorial of 2012 you’ll learn how to create an awesome low-poly dinosaur using Blender and Gimp. In today’s post artist Karan Shah will walk you through the entire modeling process step by step, and show you how to create an optimized model suitable for use in any game engine.

  Visit Article

• 

  Create A Realistic Explosion In Maya Using Maya Fluids

  Today you’ll learn to animate and shade fluids, understand all of the major attributes, learn how adding fields will allow you to gain better control over your simulation, and how to light and render the final animation.

  Visit Article

• 

  SpeedTree To UDK: The Complete Workflow, Part 1 Creating The Tree

  Due to the shear number of polygons often required to make believable 3D trees, creating realistic ones for use “in-game” can be a challenging, time consuming task. SpeedTree from IDV aims to change all that with it’s intuitive UI, ease of use and powerful toolset. Making believable trees and plants has literally never been easier!

  Visit Article

---

Aetuts+ — After Effects Tutorials

• 

  Dominoes” CameraTracker and Cinema 4d Case Study – Day 1

  In this tutorial we’re going to go over the principle functionality of CameraTracker from The Foundry, learning basic workflow, optimizing results, aligning the ground plane and exporting this data from After Effects to Cinema 4d.

  Visit Article

• 

  Make An Amazing Motion Reactant Flame – Tuts+ Premium

  Using just a few video elements of torch flames, we composite a burning hand by using a series of null objects and expressions to drive a time lagged displacement effect to simulate fire burning from a moving source. We use the Puppet tool for the distortion and throw on some tracked lighting effects and a displacement map for the Heat. This principle can be used to add realistic, fluid motion to any tracked object.

  Visit Article

• 

  Key Tips To Becoming A Successful Video Freelancer

  Youve watched thousands of tutorials. Youve put in countless hours and spent many late nights working on personal projects. Youve finally come to the conclusion that this may just be something you would like to do for a career. It can seem a little intimidating at first, because how are you going to convince someone to pay you to do this? Up until now youve been your only client. How do you get more? Im going to share my insight and experiences on how to successfully launch your freelance career this year!

  Visit Article

---

Audiotuts+ — Audio & Production Tutorials

• 

  Free Professional Quality Audio Unit Plug-ins for Mac

  Lets face it, software is expensive. While there are hundreds of free plug-ins available online, more often than not two problems will arise: One, most of them are for PCs leaving us Mac users feeling left out. Two, most of them are vary poor quality.

  While I do agree with the saying, “The tools are only as good as the artist,” I also believe the opposite is true; that at some point the artist can only be as good as his tools are.

  Visit Article

• 

  Quick Tip: Drum Processing Part 4: Tips and Tricks

  This short series of quick tips is designed to give you a good overview of the audio processing techniques involved in creating a professional sounding drum beat for use in house, electro and breaks in Cubase. In this final part we will look at a few ways to add even more life to your drums.
  
  Here is a sample of the type of beat you could expect to end up with at the end of this series of tips:

  Visit Article

• 

  Quick Tip: Use the Doubling Technique for Quick Drums

  It’s 3:30 in the afternoon when your phone rings. The head of a music library is calling and she needs your help. They have a commercial for an A-list client that needs music, and they want you to submit an entry. You’ll get $10,000 if you land the gig.

  Visit Article

---

Activetuts+ — Flash, Flex & ActionScript Tutorials

• 

  Create a Microphone-Controlled Flash Game: Code

  In this mini-series, we’re creating a spaceship game where the main control is via the microphone: shout louder to make the ship fly higher. So far, we’ve created all the required graphical elements for the game. Now, it’s time to work on our code. We’ve got a lot to do, so let’s get started!

  Visit Article

• 

  Why Bother With jQuery? A Guide for (Former) Flash Developers

  If you, like many Flash developers, are looking into using HTML5 for your web apps, you’ll almost certainly have come across jQuery. It’s a very popular JavaScript library, used by a large percentage of the most visited websites – but what’s all the fuss about, and should you use it?

  Visit Article

• 

  An Introduction to the HTML5 Gamepad API

  As HTML games begin to gradually increase in popularity, vendors are starting to introduce some exciting new APIs to make gaming that little bit sweeter for both us developers and our end players. One of these is the GamepadAPI, which allows you to connect your good old console gamepad into your computer and use it for browser based games, plug and play style. Let’s dive in!

  Visit Article

---

Wptuts+ — WordPress Tutorials

• 

  The Rise of HTML5 in WordPress

  2011 was a big year for the advancement of HTML5 in the web development community. It became pretty widely adopted, especially for the mobile web. There have been major projects that help developers use HTML5, like Paul Irish’s HTML5 Boilerplate (technically 2010, but popularized in 2011) and books galore!

  Visit Article

• 

  Reusable Custom Meta Boxes Part 3: Extra Fields

  In Part 1 and Part 2 of our custom meta box template tutorial series, we learned how to create a field array to loop through and create a custom meta box with your standard fields. Now let’s throw in a bit of JavaScript for some fancy, but highly useful fields.

  Visit Article

• 

  The Ultimate Quickstart Guide to Speeding Up Your WordPress Site

  Give your site a boost! Implement crucial optimization techniques that will improve not only your ySlow score, but your Google rank too. In this tutorial we will cover all aspects of W3 caching, ySlow, Google page speed, CSS sprites & htaccess rules, to achieve a high ySlow score like i have done on my blog.

  Visit Article

---

Mobiletuts+ — Mobile Development Tutorials

• 

  iOS SDK: Creating an Awesome Carousel

  Engage your users with stunning carousels. We’ll look at how easy and clean it can be to implement scrollable, interactive carousels in your iOS applications. With high configurability, you can have 3D, flat, rotating, and endless scrolling arrays for data, images, or buttons.
  

  Visit Article

• 

  PhoneGap From Scratch: Introduction

  Want to learn how to use PhoneGap, but don’t know where to get started? Join us as we put together “Sculder”, not only a tribute to an excellent science fiction TV series, but a fully-fledged native mobile application for the believer in you!

  Visit Article

• 

  Mobile Flash is Far From Dead: Setting the Record Straight

  In light of recent announcements from Adobe, there has been a lot of confusion over the state of the Flash Platform – specifically in regard to Flash content on mobile devices. This article seeks to clarify many of the misconceptions that exist by addressing the main points of confusion around these announcements regardless of the initial, monumental, and absolutely unbelievable blunders from failed public (and private) relations messaging and general marketing surrounding these announcements.

  Visit Article

Each month, we bring together a selection of the best tutorials and articles from across the whole Tuts+ network. Whether you’d like to read the top posts from your favourite site, or would like to start learning something completely new, this is the best place to start!

Psdtuts+ — Photoshop Tutorials

• 

  Create a Pimped Out Truck Using Photoshop and Point and Shoot Photos

  Making modifications to your car or truck in Photoshop can be a lot of fun. In this tutorial we will demonstrate how to create a pimped out truck modification using photos taken with a simple point and shoot camera, with no advanced lighting setup. Let’s get started!

  Visit Article

• 

  Create an Elephant Sundae Using Photo Manipulation Techniques

  Photoshop is great at seamlessly combing photos to create an entirely new scene. In this tutorial we will create an elephant sundae using several stock photos. Let’s get started!

  Visit Article

• 

  The Incredible Digital Art of Michael Oswald

  In this article we will be featuring the work of Michael Oswald. Oswald is a digital artist with a unique style. His technique involves a combination of photo manipulation and digital painting techniques and the results are often stunning. Let’s take a look!

  Visit Article

---

Nettuts+ — Web Development Tutorials

• 

  Sublime Text 2 Tips and Tricks (Updated)

  Sublime Text 2 is one of the fastest and most incredible code editors to be released in a long time! With a community and plugin ecosystem as passionate as this one, it just might be impossible for any other editor to catch up. I’ll show you my favorite tips and tricks today.

  Visit Article

• 

  An In Depth Analysis of HTML5 Multimedia and Accessibility

  In this tutorial, youll learn how HTML5 helps to provide you with several ways of presenting your media content to users. As a result, youll increase the availability of your media to users with different
  needs and requirements, making it more accessible.

  Visit Article

• 

  Writing an API Wrapper in Ruby with TDD

  Sooner or later, all developers are required to interact with an API. The most difficult part is always related to reliably testing the code we write, and, as we want to make sure that everything works properly, we continuosly run code that queries the API itself. This process is slow and inefficient, as we can experience network issues and data inconsistencies (the API results may change). Let’s review how we can avoid all of this effort with Ruby.

  Visit Article

---

Vectortuts+ — Illustrator Tutorials

• 

  How to Illustrate a Microscope in Illustrator

  The microscopes is a symbol of our civilization. Throughout this tutorial on how to illustrate a vector microscope you’ll take advantage of numerous Illustrator tools. You will learn how to use blends, art brushes and 3D rendering in Adobe Illustrator. Let’s get started!

  Visit Article

• 

  Create a Picture Gallery in Illustrator

  This work is a common project created together with Iaroslav Lazunov and Alexander Egupov. We have used 3D rendering, Blends, Opacity masks, making this three-dimensional stage with vanishing points. Learn every step in how to create this picture gallery work.

  Visit Article

• 

  Important Resources for Learning How to Design Typefaces and Full Fonts

  If you’re serious about creating a typeface design, then you’ll need some solid resources to get started. Learn effective typeface design workflows, how to take an initial spark of an idea from sketch, through Illustrator, into Fontlab, and then work your creation into a complete and custom font design. Here are multiple tutorials that show you how to create fonts in Illustrator and Fontlab, and you can also dive into articles that describe the foundation of quality type design with ample inspirational examples.

  Visit Article

---

Webdesigntuts+ — Web Design Tutorials

• 

  A Beginner’s Guide to Pairing Fonts

  Pairing fonts can be a challenge. Selecting two or more fonts which work well is one thing – selecting two which work together to achieve your typographic aims may have you reaching for the aspirin. Let’s see if we can alleviate any headaches. This guide will help you get started with font pairing for the web.

  Visit Article

• 

  Design a Series of Smart Banner Ads in Photoshop

  With the continuous growth of the Internet, online marketing has gotten bigger every year, and along with it, the advertising industry. One major factor in all this craziness is buying and selling ads.

  Visit Article

• 

  Twitter Bootstrap 101: Introduction

  Twitter’s Bootstrap is an excellent set of carefully crafted user interface elements, layouts, and javascript tools, freely available to use in your next web design project. This video series aims to introduce you to Bootstrap; taking you all the way from downloading the resources, to building a complete Bootstrap-based website.

  Visit Article

---

Phototuts+ — Photography Tutorials

• 

  HDR: Love it or Leave It?

  There are few techniques in the photography world that divide our community as much as HDR. High dynamic range images, or HDR images, are a special type of composite image that combines several images at different exposure settings in order to create an image with increased dynamic range. The look provided by HDR is loved by many, and disliked by perhaps just as many. In today’s article, we’re going to take a better look at what HDR is, and get some opinions from photographers using HDR.

  Visit Article

• 

  Inspiring Images of Cars and Motorcycles

  Cars and motorbikes have been around for 100 years. Throughout the century, they have looked beautiful, satisfied our need for speed and become a symbol for thrill seeking. Today, we’ll look at photos ranging from brand new Ferrari’s to classic muscle cars.

  Visit Article

• 

  Quick Tip: GIMP Portable – Take Your Editing Software With You

  While a number of smartphones now offer photo editing basics (and a plethora of apps to expand things even more), the portability of a solid photo editing program has been hard to come by. Photoshop is a monster in regards to space requirements and its ability to work on any system where it is not expressively installed. Picasa can be fairly ‘lightweight’ but lacks many of the more advanced photo editing tools. So what about GIMP?

  Visit Article

---

Cgtuts+ — Computer Graphics Tutorials

• 

  Modeling, UVmapping And Texturing A Low Poly T-Rex In Blender, Part 1

  In the first tutorial of 2012 you’ll learn how to create an awesome low-poly dinosaur using Blender and Gimp. In today’s post artist Karan Shah will walk you through the entire modeling process step by step, and show you how to create an optimized model suitable for use in any game engine.

  Visit Article

• 

  Create A Realistic Explosion In Maya Using Maya Fluids

  Today you’ll learn to animate and shade fluids, understand all of the major attributes, learn how adding fields will allow you to gain better control over your simulation, and how to light and render the final animation.

  Visit Article

• 

  SpeedTree To UDK: The Complete Workflow, Part 1 Creating The Tree

  Due to the shear number of polygons often required to make believable 3D trees, creating realistic ones for use “in-game” can be a challenging, time consuming task. SpeedTree from IDV aims to change all that with it’s intuitive UI, ease of use and powerful toolset. Making believable trees and plants has literally never been easier!

  Visit Article

---

Aetuts+ — After Effects Tutorials

• 

  Dominoes” CameraTracker and Cinema 4d Case Study – Day 1

  In this tutorial we’re going to go over the principle functionality of CameraTracker from The Foundry, learning basic workflow, optimizing results, aligning the ground plane and exporting this data from After Effects to Cinema 4d.

  Visit Article

• 

  Make An Amazing Motion Reactant Flame – Tuts+ Premium

  Using just a few video elements of torch flames, we composite a burning hand by using a series of null objects and expressions to drive a time lagged displacement effect to simulate fire burning from a moving source. We use the Puppet tool for the distortion and throw on some tracked lighting effects and a displacement map for the Heat. This principle can be used to add realistic, fluid motion to any tracked object.

  Visit Article

• 

  Key Tips To Becoming A Successful Video Freelancer

  Youve watched thousands of tutorials. Youve put in countless hours and spent many late nights working on personal projects. Youve finally come to the conclusion that this may just be something you would like to do for a career. It can seem a little intimidating at first, because how are you going to convince someone to pay you to do this? Up until now youve been your only client. How do you get more? Im going to share my insight and experiences on how to successfully launch your freelance career this year!

  Visit Article

---

Audiotuts+ — Audio & Production Tutorials

• 

  Free Professional Quality Audio Unit Plug-ins for Mac

  Lets face it, software is expensive. While there are hundreds of free plug-ins available online, more often than not two problems will arise: One, most of them are for PCs leaving us Mac users feeling left out. Two, most of them are vary poor quality.

  While I do agree with the saying, “The tools are only as good as the artist,” I also believe the opposite is true; that at some point the artist can only be as good as his tools are.

  Visit Article

• 

  Quick Tip: Drum Processing Part 4: Tips and Tricks

  This short series of quick tips is designed to give you a good overview of the audio processing techniques involved in creating a professional sounding drum beat for use in house, electro and breaks in Cubase. In this final part we will look at a few ways to add even more life to your drums.
  
  Here is a sample of the type of beat you could expect to end up with at the end of this series of tips:

  Visit Article

• 

  Quick Tip: Use the Doubling Technique for Quick Drums

  It’s 3:30 in the afternoon when your phone rings. The head of a music library is calling and she needs your help. They have a commercial for an A-list client that needs music, and they want you to submit an entry. You’ll get $10,000 if you land the gig.

  Visit Article

---

Activetuts+ — Flash, Flex & ActionScript Tutorials

• 

  Create a Microphone-Controlled Flash Game: Code

  In this mini-series, we’re creating a spaceship game where the main control is via the microphone: shout louder to make the ship fly higher. So far, we’ve created all the required graphical elements for the game. Now, it’s time to work on our code. We’ve got a lot to do, so let’s get started!

  Visit Article

• 

  Why Bother With jQuery? A Guide for (Former) Flash Developers

  If you, like many Flash developers, are looking into using HTML5 for your web apps, you’ll almost certainly have come across jQuery. It’s a very popular JavaScript library, used by a large percentage of the most visited websites – but what’s all the fuss about, and should you use it?

  Visit Article

• 

  An Introduction to the HTML5 Gamepad API

  As HTML games begin to gradually increase in popularity, vendors are starting to introduce some exciting new APIs to make gaming that little bit sweeter for both us developers and our end players. One of these is the GamepadAPI, which allows you to connect your good old console gamepad into your computer and use it for browser based games, plug and play style. Let’s dive in!

  Visit Article

---

Wptuts+ — WordPress Tutorials

• 

  The Rise of HTML5 in WordPress

  2011 was a big year for the advancement of HTML5 in the web development community. It became pretty widely adopted, especially for the mobile web. There have been major projects that help developers use HTML5, like Paul Irish’s HTML5 Boilerplate (technically 2010, but popularized in 2011) and books galore!

  Visit Article

• 

  Reusable Custom Meta Boxes Part 3: Extra Fields

  In Part 1 and Part 2 of our custom meta box template tutorial series, we learned how to create a field array to loop through and create a custom meta box with your standard fields. Now let’s throw in a bit of JavaScript for some fancy, but highly useful fields.

  Visit Article

• 

  The Ultimate Quickstart Guide to Speeding Up Your WordPress Site

  Give your site a boost! Implement crucial optimization techniques that will improve not only your ySlow score, but your Google rank too. In this tutorial we will cover all aspects of W3 caching, ySlow, Google page speed, CSS sprites & htaccess rules, to achieve a high ySlow score like i have done on my blog.

  Visit Article

---

Mobiletuts+ — Mobile Development Tutorials

• 

  iOS SDK: Creating an Awesome Carousel

  Engage your users with stunning carousels. We’ll look at how easy and clean it can be to implement scrollable, interactive carousels in your iOS applications. With high configurability, you can have 3D, flat, rotating, and endless scrolling arrays for data, images, or buttons.
  

  Visit Article

• 

  PhoneGap From Scratch: Introduction

  Want to learn how to use PhoneGap, but don’t know where to get started? Join us as we put together “Sculder”, not only a tribute to an excellent science fiction TV series, but a fully-fledged native mobile application for the believer in you!

  Visit Article

• 

  Mobile Flash is Far From Dead: Setting the Record Straight

  In light of recent announcements from Adobe, there has been a lot of confusion over the state of the Flash Platform – specifically in regard to Flash content on mobile devices. This article seeks to clarify many of the misconceptions that exist by addressing the main points of confusion around these announcements regardless of the initial, monumental, and absolutely unbelievable blunders from failed public (and private) relations messaging and general marketing surrounding these announcements.

  Visit Article

Sometimes, it’s easy to become overwhelmed by how much there is to learn in this industry. If jQuery happens to be on your personal “need to learn soon” list, then I’m happy to announce my new course: “Learn jQuery in 30 Days”. If you’ll give me fifteen minutes a day for the next month, I’ll help you become a jQuery pro – and it’s free!

How Does it Work?

Sporadically, your skills will be put to the test, when you take the interactive quizzes!

Once you enroll (free) via email, each day, you’ll receive a 10-15 minute video lesson. As you might expect, every episode will build upon the one it proceeds, and, sporadically, your skills will be put to the test, when you take the interactive quizzes!

Along the way, you’ll learn the essentials (querying and manipulating the DOM), while incrementally working your way up to more advanced topics, such as jQuery’s AJAX methods and plugin development.

I worked particularly hard to make the process of picking up this new skill as easy as possible for everyone – even if you have very, very little JavaScript experience. So…do you want to join me?

We recently showed you the first sneak peek of Photoshop CS6 by Senior Photoshop Product Manager Bryan O’Neil Hughes. Today, Photoshop Product Manager Zorana Gee released a new video showing even more features of CS6. In this video Zorana will explain two really nice enhancements to Photoshop; Background Save and some performance tweaks to Liquify.

The first feature that Zorana shows is Background Save. This is a feature that many users have been asking for. It will allow you to save your file and then continue working while the file is being saved.

Another fantastic feature that Zorana demonstrates is a performance tweak to Liquify. If you’ve ever worked in Liquify, you know that you can’t expand your brush beyond 1500 pixels. This is frustrating if you’re working on a really big image. In this video, Zorana works well beyond 1500 pixels. In addition, the Photoshop team has also improved the performance of Liquify so that it doesn’t tile. You can now use Liquify in real-time with no lag.

Each month, we bring together a selection of the best tutorials and articles from across the whole Tuts+ network. Whether you’d like to read the top posts from your favourite site, or would like to start learning something completely new, this is the best place to start!

Psdtuts+ — Photoshop Tutorials

• 

  Create a Pimped Out Truck Using Photoshop and Point and Shoot Photos

  Making modifications to your car or truck in Photoshop can be a lot of fun. In this tutorial we will demonstrate how to create a pimped out truck modification using photos taken with a simple point and shoot camera, with no advanced lighting setup. Let’s get started!

  Visit Article

• 

  Create an Elephant Sundae Using Photo Manipulation Techniques

  Photoshop is great at seamlessly combing photos to create an entirely new scene. In this tutorial we will create an elephant sundae using several stock photos. Let’s get started!

  Visit Article

• 

  The Incredible Digital Art of Michael Oswald

  In this article we will be featuring the work of Michael Oswald. Oswald is a digital artist with a unique style. His technique involves a combination of photo manipulation and digital painting techniques and the results are often stunning. Let’s take a look!

  Visit Article

---

Nettuts+ — Web Development Tutorials

• 

  Sublime Text 2 Tips and Tricks (Updated)

  Sublime Text 2 is one of the fastest and most incredible code editors to be released in a long time! With a community and plugin ecosystem as passionate as this one, it just might be impossible for any other editor to catch up. I’ll show you my favorite tips and tricks today.

  Visit Article

• 

  An In Depth Analysis of HTML5 Multimedia and Accessibility

  In this tutorial, youll learn how HTML5 helps to provide you with several ways of presenting your media content to users. As a result, youll increase the availability of your media to users with different
  needs and requirements, making it more accessible.

  Visit Article

• 

  Writing an API Wrapper in Ruby with TDD

  Sooner or later, all developers are required to interact with an API. The most difficult part is always related to reliably testing the code we write, and, as we want to make sure that everything works properly, we continuosly run code that queries the API itself. This process is slow and inefficient, as we can experience network issues and data inconsistencies (the API results may change). Let’s review how we can avoid all of this effort with Ruby.

  Visit Article

---

Vectortuts+ — Illustrator Tutorials

• 

  How to Illustrate a Microscope in Illustrator

  The microscopes is a symbol of our civilization. Throughout this tutorial on how to illustrate a vector microscope you’ll take advantage of numerous Illustrator tools. You will learn how to use blends, art brushes and 3D rendering in Adobe Illustrator. Let’s get started!

  Visit Article

• 

  Create a Picture Gallery in Illustrator

  This work is a common project created together with Iaroslav Lazunov and Alexander Egupov. We have used 3D rendering, Blends, Opacity masks, making this three-dimensional stage with vanishing points. Learn every step in how to create this picture gallery work.

  Visit Article

• 

  Important Resources for Learning How to Design Typefaces and Full Fonts

  If you’re serious about creating a typeface design, then you’ll need some solid resources to get started. Learn effective typeface design workflows, how to take an initial spark of an idea from sketch, through Illustrator, into Fontlab, and then work your creation into a complete and custom font design. Here are multiple tutorials that show you how to create fonts in Illustrator and Fontlab, and you can also dive into articles that describe the foundation of quality type design with ample inspirational examples.

  Visit Article

---

Webdesigntuts+ — Web Design Tutorials

• 

  A Beginner’s Guide to Pairing Fonts

  Pairing fonts can be a challenge. Selecting two or more fonts which work well is one thing – selecting two which work together to achieve your typographic aims may have you reaching for the aspirin. Let’s see if we can alleviate any headaches. This guide will help you get started with font pairing for the web.

  Visit Article

• 

  Design a Series of Smart Banner Ads in Photoshop

  With the continuous growth of the Internet, online marketing has gotten bigger every year, and along with it, the advertising industry. One major factor in all this craziness is buying and selling ads.

  Visit Article

• 

  Twitter Bootstrap 101: Introduction

  Twitter’s Bootstrap is an excellent set of carefully crafted user interface elements, layouts, and javascript tools, freely available to use in your next web design project. This video series aims to introduce you to Bootstrap; taking you all the way from downloading the resources, to building a complete Bootstrap-based website.

  Visit Article

---

Phototuts+ — Photography Tutorials

• 

  HDR: Love it or Leave It?

  There are few techniques in the photography world that divide our community as much as HDR. High dynamic range images, or HDR images, are a special type of composite image that combines several images at different exposure settings in order to create an image with increased dynamic range. The look provided by HDR is loved by many, and disliked by perhaps just as many. In today’s article, we’re going to take a better look at what HDR is, and get some opinions from photographers using HDR.

  Visit Article

• 

  Inspiring Images of Cars and Motorcycles

  Cars and motorbikes have been around for 100 years. Throughout the century, they have looked beautiful, satisfied our need for speed and become a symbol for thrill seeking. Today, we’ll look at photos ranging from brand new Ferrari’s to classic muscle cars.

  Visit Article

• 

  Quick Tip: GIMP Portable – Take Your Editing Software With You

  While a number of smartphones now offer photo editing basics (and a plethora of apps to expand things even more), the portability of a solid photo editing program has been hard to come by. Photoshop is a monster in regards to space requirements and its ability to work on any system where it is not expressively installed. Picasa can be fairly ‘lightweight’ but lacks many of the more advanced photo editing tools. So what about GIMP?

  Visit Article

---

Cgtuts+ — Computer Graphics Tutorials

• 

  Modeling, UVmapping And Texturing A Low Poly T-Rex In Blender, Part 1

  In the first tutorial of 2012 you’ll learn how to create an awesome low-poly dinosaur using Blender and Gimp. In today’s post artist Karan Shah will walk you through the entire modeling process step by step, and show you how to create an optimized model suitable for use in any game engine.

  Visit Article

• 

  Create A Realistic Explosion In Maya Using Maya Fluids

  Today you’ll learn to animate and shade fluids, understand all of the major attributes, learn how adding fields will allow you to gain better control over your simulation, and how to light and render the final animation.

  Visit Article

• 

  SpeedTree To UDK: The Complete Workflow, Part 1 Creating The Tree

  Due to the shear number of polygons often required to make believable 3D trees, creating realistic ones for use “in-game” can be a challenging, time consuming task. SpeedTree from IDV aims to change all that with it’s intuitive UI, ease of use and powerful toolset. Making believable trees and plants has literally never been easier!

  Visit Article

---

Aetuts+ — After Effects Tutorials

• 

  Dominoes” CameraTracker and Cinema 4d Case Study – Day 1

  In this tutorial we’re going to go over the principle functionality of CameraTracker from The Foundry, learning basic workflow, optimizing results, aligning the ground plane and exporting this data from After Effects to Cinema 4d.

  Visit Article

• 

  Make An Amazing Motion Reactant Flame – Tuts+ Premium

  Using just a few video elements of torch flames, we composite a burning hand by using a series of null objects and expressions to drive a time lagged displacement effect to simulate fire burning from a moving source. We use the Puppet tool for the distortion and throw on some tracked lighting effects and a displacement map for the Heat. This principle can be used to add realistic, fluid motion to any tracked object.

  Visit Article

• 

  Key Tips To Becoming A Successful Video Freelancer

  Youve watched thousands of tutorials. Youve put in countless hours and spent many late nights working on personal projects. Youve finally come to the conclusion that this may just be something you would like to do for a career. It can seem a little intimidating at first, because how are you going to convince someone to pay you to do this? Up until now youve been your only client. How do you get more? Im going to share my insight and experiences on how to successfully launch your freelance career this year!

  Visit Article

---

Audiotuts+ — Audio & Production Tutorials

• 

  Free Professional Quality Audio Unit Plug-ins for Mac

  Lets face it, software is expensive. While there are hundreds of free plug-ins available online, more often than not two problems will arise: One, most of them are for PCs leaving us Mac users feeling left out. Two, most of them are vary poor quality.

  While I do agree with the saying, “The tools are only as good as the artist,” I also believe the opposite is true; that at some point the artist can only be as good as his tools are.

  Visit Article

• 

  Quick Tip: Drum Processing Part 4: Tips and Tricks

  This short series of quick tips is designed to give you a good overview of the audio processing techniques involved in creating a professional sounding drum beat for use in house, electro and breaks in Cubase. In this final part we will look at a few ways to add even more life to your drums.
  
  Here is a sample of the type of beat you could expect to end up with at the end of this series of tips:

  Visit Article

• 

  Quick Tip: Use the Doubling Technique for Quick Drums

  It’s 3:30 in the afternoon when your phone rings. The head of a music library is calling and she needs your help. They have a commercial for an A-list client that needs music, and they want you to submit an entry. You’ll get $10,000 if you land the gig.

  Visit Article

---

Activetuts+ — Flash, Flex & ActionScript Tutorials

• 

  Create a Microphone-Controlled Flash Game: Code

  In this mini-series, we’re creating a spaceship game where the main control is via the microphone: shout louder to make the ship fly higher. So far, we’ve created all the required graphical elements for the game. Now, it’s time to work on our code. We’ve got a lot to do, so let’s get started!

  Visit Article

• 

  Why Bother With jQuery? A Guide for (Former) Flash Developers

  If you, like many Flash developers, are looking into using HTML5 for your web apps, you’ll almost certainly have come across jQuery. It’s a very popular JavaScript library, used by a large percentage of the most visited websites – but what’s all the fuss about, and should you use it?

  Visit Article

• 

  An Introduction to the HTML5 Gamepad API

  As HTML games begin to gradually increase in popularity, vendors are starting to introduce some exciting new APIs to make gaming that little bit sweeter for both us developers and our end players. One of these is the GamepadAPI, which allows you to connect your good old console gamepad into your computer and use it for browser based games, plug and play style. Let’s dive in!

  Visit Article

---

Wptuts+ — WordPress Tutorials

• 

  The Rise of HTML5 in WordPress

  2011 was a big year for the advancement of HTML5 in the web development community. It became pretty widely adopted, especially for the mobile web. There have been major projects that help developers use HTML5, like Paul Irish’s HTML5 Boilerplate (technically 2010, but popularized in 2011) and books galore!

  Visit Article

• 

  Reusable Custom Meta Boxes Part 3: Extra Fields

  In Part 1 and Part 2 of our custom meta box template tutorial series, we learned how to create a field array to loop through and create a custom meta box with your standard fields. Now let’s throw in a bit of JavaScript for some fancy, but highly useful fields.

  Visit Article

• 

  The Ultimate Quickstart Guide to Speeding Up Your WordPress Site

  Give your site a boost! Implement crucial optimization techniques that will improve not only your ySlow score, but your Google rank too. In this tutorial we will cover all aspects of W3 caching, ySlow, Google page speed, CSS sprites & htaccess rules, to achieve a high ySlow score like i have done on my blog.

  Visit Article

---

Mobiletuts+ — Mobile Development Tutorials

• 

  iOS SDK: Creating an Awesome Carousel

  Engage your users with stunning carousels. We’ll look at how easy and clean it can be to implement scrollable, interactive carousels in your iOS applications. With high configurability, you can have 3D, flat, rotating, and endless scrolling arrays for data, images, or buttons.
  

  Visit Article

• 

  PhoneGap From Scratch: Introduction

  Want to learn how to use PhoneGap, but don’t know where to get started? Join us as we put together “Sculder”, not only a tribute to an excellent science fiction TV series, but a fully-fledged native mobile application for the believer in you!

  Visit Article

• 

  Mobile Flash is Far From Dead: Setting the Record Straight

  In light of recent announcements from Adobe, there has been a lot of confusion over the state of the Flash Platform – specifically in regard to Flash content on mobile devices. This article seeks to clarify many of the misconceptions that exist by addressing the main points of confusion around these announcements regardless of the initial, monumental, and absolutely unbelievable blunders from failed public (and private) relations messaging and general marketing surrounding these announcements.

  Visit Article

Each month, we bring together a selection of the best tutorials and articles from across the whole Tuts+ network. Whether you’d like to read the top posts from your favourite site, or would like to start learning something completely new, this is the best place to start!

Psdtuts+ — Photoshop Tutorials

• 

  Create a Pimped Out Truck Using Photoshop and Point and Shoot Photos

  Making modifications to your car or truck in Photoshop can be a lot of fun. In this tutorial we will demonstrate how to create a pimped out truck modification using photos taken with a simple point and shoot camera, with no advanced lighting setup. Let’s get started!

  Visit Article

• 

  Create an Elephant Sundae Using Photo Manipulation Techniques

  Photoshop is great at seamlessly combing photos to create an entirely new scene. In this tutorial we will create an elephant sundae using several stock photos. Let’s get started!

  Visit Article

• 

  The Incredible Digital Art of Michael Oswald

  In this article we will be featuring the work of Michael Oswald. Oswald is a digital artist with a unique style. His technique involves a combination of photo manipulation and digital painting techniques and the results are often stunning. Let’s take a look!

  Visit Article

---

Nettuts+ — Web Development Tutorials

• 

  Sublime Text 2 Tips and Tricks (Updated)

  Sublime Text 2 is one of the fastest and most incredible code editors to be released in a long time! With a community and plugin ecosystem as passionate as this one, it just might be impossible for any other editor to catch up. I’ll show you my favorite tips and tricks today.

  Visit Article

• 

  An In Depth Analysis of HTML5 Multimedia and Accessibility

  In this tutorial, youll learn how HTML5 helps to provide you with several ways of presenting your media content to users. As a result, youll increase the availability of your media to users with different
  needs and requirements, making it more accessible.

  Visit Article

• 

  Writing an API Wrapper in Ruby with TDD

  Sooner or later, all developers are required to interact with an API. The most difficult part is always related to reliably testing the code we write, and, as we want to make sure that everything works properly, we continuosly run code that queries the API itself. This process is slow and inefficient, as we can experience network issues and data inconsistencies (the API results may change). Let’s review how we can avoid all of this effort with Ruby.

  Visit Article

---

Vectortuts+ — Illustrator Tutorials

• 

  How to Illustrate a Microscope in Illustrator

  The microscopes is a symbol of our civilization. Throughout this tutorial on how to illustrate a vector microscope you’ll take advantage of numerous Illustrator tools. You will learn how to use blends, art brushes and 3D rendering in Adobe Illustrator. Let’s get started!

  Visit Article

• 

  Create a Picture Gallery in Illustrator

  This work is a common project created together with Iaroslav Lazunov and Alexander Egupov. We have used 3D rendering, Blends, Opacity masks, making this three-dimensional stage with vanishing points. Learn every step in how to create this picture gallery work.

  Visit Article

• 

  Important Resources for Learning How to Design Typefaces and Full Fonts

  If you’re serious about creating a typeface design, then you’ll need some solid resources to get started. Learn effective typeface design workflows, how to take an initial spark of an idea from sketch, through Illustrator, into Fontlab, and then work your creation into a complete and custom font design. Here are multiple tutorials that show you how to create fonts in Illustrator and Fontlab, and you can also dive into articles that describe the foundation of quality type design with ample inspirational examples.

  Visit Article

---

Webdesigntuts+ — Web Design Tutorials

• 

  A Beginner’s Guide to Pairing Fonts

  Pairing fonts can be a challenge. Selecting two or more fonts which work well is one thing – selecting two which work together to achieve your typographic aims may have you reaching for the aspirin. Let’s see if we can alleviate any headaches. This guide will help you get started with font pairing for the web.

  Visit Article

• 

  Design a Series of Smart Banner Ads in Photoshop

  With the continuous growth of the Internet, online marketing has gotten bigger every year, and along with it, the advertising industry. One major factor in all this craziness is buying and selling ads.

  Visit Article

• 

  Twitter Bootstrap 101: Introduction

  Twitter’s Bootstrap is an excellent set of carefully crafted user interface elements, layouts, and javascript tools, freely available to use in your next web design project. This video series aims to introduce you to Bootstrap; taking you all the way from downloading the resources, to building a complete Bootstrap-based website.

  Visit Article

---

Phototuts+ — Photography Tutorials

• 

  HDR: Love it or Leave It?

  There are few techniques in the photography world that divide our community as much as HDR. High dynamic range images, or HDR images, are a special type of composite image that combines several images at different exposure settings in order to create an image with increased dynamic range. The look provided by HDR is loved by many, and disliked by perhaps just as many. In today’s article, we’re going to take a better look at what HDR is, and get some opinions from photographers using HDR.

  Visit Article

• 

  Inspiring Images of Cars and Motorcycles

  Cars and motorbikes have been around for 100 years. Throughout the century, they have looked beautiful, satisfied our need for speed and become a symbol for thrill seeking. Today, we’ll look at photos ranging from brand new Ferrari’s to classic muscle cars.

  Visit Article

• 

  Quick Tip: GIMP Portable – Take Your Editing Software With You

  While a number of smartphones now offer photo editing basics (and a plethora of apps to expand things even more), the portability of a solid photo editing program has been hard to come by. Photoshop is a monster in regards to space requirements and its ability to work on any system where it is not expressively installed. Picasa can be fairly ‘lightweight’ but lacks many of the more advanced photo editing tools. So what about GIMP?

  Visit Article

---

Cgtuts+ — Computer Graphics Tutorials

• 

  Modeling, UVmapping And Texturing A Low Poly T-Rex In Blender, Part 1

  In the first tutorial of 2012 you’ll learn how to create an awesome low-poly dinosaur using Blender and Gimp. In today’s post artist Karan Shah will walk you through the entire modeling process step by step, and show you how to create an optimized model suitable for use in any game engine.

  Visit Article

• 

  Create A Realistic Explosion In Maya Using Maya Fluids

  Today you’ll learn to animate and shade fluids, understand all of the major attributes, learn how adding fields will allow you to gain better control over your simulation, and how to light and render the final animation.

  Visit Article

• 

  SpeedTree To UDK: The Complete Workflow, Part 1 Creating The Tree

  Due to the shear number of polygons often required to make believable 3D trees, creating realistic ones for use “in-game” can be a challenging, time consuming task. SpeedTree from IDV aims to change all that with it’s intuitive UI, ease of use and powerful toolset. Making believable trees and plants has literally never been easier!

  Visit Article

---

Aetuts+ — After Effects Tutorials

• 

  Dominoes” CameraTracker and Cinema 4d Case Study – Day 1

  In this tutorial we’re going to go over the principle functionality of CameraTracker from The Foundry, learning basic workflow, optimizing results, aligning the ground plane and exporting this data from After Effects to Cinema 4d.

  Visit Article

• 

  Make An Amazing Motion Reactant Flame – Tuts+ Premium

  Using just a few video elements of torch flames, we composite a burning hand by using a series of null objects and expressions to drive a time lagged displacement effect to simulate fire burning from a moving source. We use the Puppet tool for the distortion and throw on some tracked lighting effects and a displacement map for the Heat. This principle can be used to add realistic, fluid motion to any tracked object.

  Visit Article

• 

  Key Tips To Becoming A Successful Video Freelancer

  Youve watched thousands of tutorials. Youve put in countless hours and spent many late nights working on personal projects. Youve finally come to the conclusion that this may just be something you would like to do for a career. It can seem a little intimidating at first, because how are you going to convince someone to pay you to do this? Up until now youve been your only client. How do you get more? Im going to share my insight and experiences on how to successfully launch your freelance career this year!

  Visit Article

---

Audiotuts+ — Audio & Production Tutorials

• 

  Free Professional Quality Audio Unit Plug-ins for Mac

  Lets face it, software is expensive. While there are hundreds of free plug-ins available online, more often than not two problems will arise: One, most of them are for PCs leaving us Mac users feeling left out. Two, most of them are vary poor quality.

  While I do agree with the saying, “The tools are only as good as the artist,” I also believe the opposite is true; that at some point the artist can only be as good as his tools are.

  Visit Article

• 

  Quick Tip: Drum Processing Part 4: Tips and Tricks

  This short series of quick tips is designed to give you a good overview of the audio processing techniques involved in creating a professional sounding drum beat for use in house, electro and breaks in Cubase. In this final part we will look at a few ways to add even more life to your drums.
  
  Here is a sample of the type of beat you could expect to end up with at the end of this series of tips:

  Visit Article

• 

  Quick Tip: Use the Doubling Technique for Quick Drums

  It’s 3:30 in the afternoon when your phone rings. The head of a music library is calling and she needs your help. They have a commercial for an A-list client that needs music, and they want you to submit an entry. You’ll get $10,000 if you land the gig.

  Visit Article

---

Activetuts+ — Flash, Flex & ActionScript Tutorials

• 

  Create a Microphone-Controlled Flash Game: Code

  In this mini-series, we’re creating a spaceship game where the main control is via the microphone: shout louder to make the ship fly higher. So far, we’ve created all the required graphical elements for the game. Now, it’s time to work on our code. We’ve got a lot to do, so let’s get started!

  Visit Article

• 

  Why Bother With jQuery? A Guide for (Former) Flash Developers

  If you, like many Flash developers, are looking into using HTML5 for your web apps, you’ll almost certainly have come across jQuery. It’s a very popular JavaScript library, used by a large percentage of the most visited websites – but what’s all the fuss about, and should you use it?

  Visit Article

• 

  An Introduction to the HTML5 Gamepad API

  As HTML games begin to gradually increase in popularity, vendors are starting to introduce some exciting new APIs to make gaming that little bit sweeter for both us developers and our end players. One of these is the GamepadAPI, which allows you to connect your good old console gamepad into your computer and use it for browser based games, plug and play style. Let’s dive in!

  Visit Article

---

Wptuts+ — WordPress Tutorials

• 

  The Rise of HTML5 in WordPress

  2011 was a big year for the advancement of HTML5 in the web development community. It became pretty widely adopted, especially for the mobile web. There have been major projects that help developers use HTML5, like Paul Irish’s HTML5 Boilerplate (technically 2010, but popularized in 2011) and books galore!

  Visit Article

• 

  Reusable Custom Meta Boxes Part 3: Extra Fields

  In Part 1 and Part 2 of our custom meta box template tutorial series, we learned how to create a field array to loop through and create a custom meta box with your standard fields. Now let’s throw in a bit of JavaScript for some fancy, but highly useful fields.

  Visit Article

• 

  The Ultimate Quickstart Guide to Speeding Up Your WordPress Site

  Give your site a boost! Implement crucial optimization techniques that will improve not only your ySlow score, but your Google rank too. In this tutorial we will cover all aspects of W3 caching, ySlow, Google page speed, CSS sprites & htaccess rules, to achieve a high ySlow score like i have done on my blog.

  Visit Article

---

Mobiletuts+ — Mobile Development Tutorials

• 

  iOS SDK: Creating an Awesome Carousel

  Engage your users with stunning carousels. We’ll look at how easy and clean it can be to implement scrollable, interactive carousels in your iOS applications. With high configurability, you can have 3D, flat, rotating, and endless scrolling arrays for data, images, or buttons.
  

  Visit Article

• 

  PhoneGap From Scratch: Introduction

  Want to learn how to use PhoneGap, but don’t know where to get started? Join us as we put together “Sculder”, not only a tribute to an excellent science fiction TV series, but a fully-fledged native mobile application for the believer in you!

  Visit Article

• 

  Mobile Flash is Far From Dead: Setting the Record Straight

  In light of recent announcements from Adobe, there has been a lot of confusion over the state of the Flash Platform – specifically in regard to Flash content on mobile devices. This article seeks to clarify many of the misconceptions that exist by addressing the main points of confusion around these announcements regardless of the initial, monumental, and absolutely unbelievable blunders from failed public (and private) relations messaging and general marketing surrounding these announcements.

  Visit Article

Psdtuts+ — Photoshop Tutorials

• 

  Create a Pimped Out Truck Using Photoshop and Point and Shoot Photos

  Making modifications to your car or truck in Photoshop can be a lot of fun. In this tutorial we will demonstrate how to create a pimped out truck modification using photos taken with a simple point and shoot camera, with no advanced lighting setup. Let’s get started!

  Visit Article

• 

  Create an Elephant Sundae Using Photo Manipulation Techniques

  Photoshop is great at seamlessly combing photos to create an entirely new scene. In this tutorial we will create an elephant sundae using several stock photos. Let’s get started!

  Visit Article

• 

  The Incredible Digital Art of Michael Oswald

  In this article we will be featuring the work of Michael Oswald. Oswald is a digital artist with a unique style. His technique involves a combination of photo manipulation and digital painting techniques and the results are often stunning. Let’s take a look!

  Visit Article

---

Nettuts+ — Web Development Tutorials

• 

  Sublime Text 2 Tips and Tricks (Updated)

  Sublime Text 2 is one of the fastest and most incredible code editors to be released in a long time! With a community and plugin ecosystem as passionate as this one, it just might be impossible for any other editor to catch up. I’ll show you my favorite tips and tricks today.

  Visit Article

• 

  An In Depth Analysis of HTML5 Multimedia and Accessibility

  In this tutorial, youll learn how HTML5 helps to provide you with several ways of presenting your media content to users. As a result, youll increase the availability of your media to users with different
  needs and requirements, making it more accessible.

  Visit Article

• 

  Writing an API Wrapper in Ruby with TDD

  Sooner or later, all developers are required to interact with an API. The most difficult part is always related to reliably testing the code we write, and, as we want to make sure that everything works properly, we continuosly run code that queries the API itself. This process is slow and inefficient, as we can experience network issues and data inconsistencies (the API results may change). Let’s review how we can avoid all of this effort with Ruby.

  Visit Article

---

Vectortuts+ — Illustrator Tutorials

• 

  How to Illustrate a Microscope in Illustrator

  The microscopes is a symbol of our civilization. Throughout this tutorial on how to illustrate a vector microscope you’ll take advantage of numerous Illustrator tools. You will learn how to use blends, art brushes and 3D rendering in Adobe Illustrator. Let’s get started!

  Visit Article

• 

  Create a Picture Gallery in Illustrator

  This work is a common project created together with Iaroslav Lazunov and Alexander Egupov. We have used 3D rendering, Blends, Opacity masks, making this three-dimensional stage with vanishing points. Learn every step in how to create this picture gallery work.

  Visit Article

• 

  Important Resources for Learning How to Design Typefaces and Full Fonts

  If you’re serious about creating a typeface design, then you’ll need some solid resources to get started. Learn effective typeface design workflows, how to take an initial spark of an idea from sketch, through Illustrator, into Fontlab, and then work your creation into a complete and custom font design. Here are multiple tutorials that show you how to create fonts in Illustrator and Fontlab, and you can also dive into articles that describe the foundation of quality type design with ample inspirational examples.

  Visit Article

---

Webdesigntuts+ — Web Design Tutorials

• 

  A Beginner’s Guide to Pairing Fonts

  Pairing fonts can be a challenge. Selecting two or more fonts which work well is one thing – selecting two which work together to achieve your typographic aims may have you reaching for the aspirin. Let’s see if we can alleviate any headaches. This guide will help you get started with font pairing for the web.

  Visit Article

• 

  Design a Series of Smart Banner Ads in Photoshop

  With the continuous growth of the Internet, online marketing has gotten bigger every year, and along with it, the advertising industry. One major factor in all this craziness is buying and selling ads.

  Visit Article

• 

  Twitter Bootstrap 101: Introduction

  Twitter’s Bootstrap is an excellent set of carefully crafted user interface elements, layouts, and javascript tools, freely available to use in your next web design project. This video series aims to introduce you to Bootstrap; taking you all the way from downloading the resources, to building a complete Bootstrap-based website.

  Visit Article

---

Phototuts+ — Photography Tutorials

• 

  HDR: Love it or Leave It?

  There are few techniques in the photography world that divide our community as much as HDR. High dynamic range images, or HDR images, are a special type of composite image that combines several images at different exposure settings in order to create an image with increased dynamic range. The look provided by HDR is loved by many, and disliked by perhaps just as many. In today’s article, we’re going to take a better look at what HDR is, and get some opinions from photographers using HDR.

  Visit Article

• 

  Inspiring Images of Cars and Motorcycles

  Cars and motorbikes have been around for 100 years. Throughout the century, they have looked beautiful, satisfied our need for speed and become a symbol for thrill seeking. Today, we’ll look at photos ranging from brand new Ferrari’s to classic muscle cars.

  Visit Article

• 

  Quick Tip: GIMP Portable – Take Your Editing Software With You

  While a number of smartphones now offer photo editing basics (and a plethora of apps to expand things even more), the portability of a solid photo editing program has been hard to come by. Photoshop is a monster in regards to space requirements and its ability to work on any system where it is not expressively installed. Picasa can be fairly ‘lightweight’ but lacks many of the more advanced photo editing tools. So what about GIMP?

  Visit Article

---

Cgtuts+ — Computer Graphics Tutorials

• 

  Modeling, UVmapping And Texturing A Low Poly T-Rex In Blender, Part 1

  In the first tutorial of 2012 you’ll learn how to create an awesome low-poly dinosaur using Blender and Gimp. In today’s post artist Karan Shah will walk you through the entire modeling process step by step, and show you how to create an optimized model suitable for use in any game engine.

  Visit Article

• 

  Create A Realistic Explosion In Maya Using Maya Fluids

  Today you’ll learn to animate and shade fluids, understand all of the major attributes, learn how adding fields will allow you to gain better control over your simulation, and how to light and render the final animation.

  Visit Article

• 

  SpeedTree To UDK: The Complete Workflow, Part 1 Creating The Tree

  Due to the shear number of polygons often required to make believable 3D trees, creating realistic ones for use “in-game” can be a challenging, time consuming task. SpeedTree from IDV aims to change all that with it’s intuitive UI, ease of use and powerful toolset. Making believable trees and plants has literally never been easier!

  Visit Article

---

Aetuts+ — After Effects Tutorials

• 

  Dominoes” CameraTracker and Cinema 4d Case Study – Day 1

  In this tutorial we’re going to go over the principle functionality of CameraTracker from The Foundry, learning basic workflow, optimizing results, aligning the ground plane and exporting this data from After Effects to Cinema 4d.

  Visit Article

• 

  Make An Amazing Motion Reactant Flame – Tuts+ Premium

  Using just a few video elements of torch flames, we composite a burning hand by using a series of null objects and expressions to drive a time lagged displacement effect to simulate fire burning from a moving source. We use the Puppet tool for the distortion and throw on some tracked lighting effects and a displacement map for the Heat. This principle can be used to add realistic, fluid motion to any tracked object.

  Visit Article

• 

  Key Tips To Becoming A Successful Video Freelancer

  Youve watched thousands of tutorials. Youve put in countless hours and spent many late nights working on personal projects. Youve finally come to the conclusion that this may just be something you would like to do for a career. It can seem a little intimidating at first, because how are you going to convince someone to pay you to do this? Up until now youve been your only client. How do you get more? Im going to share my insight and experiences on how to successfully launch your freelance career this year!

  Visit Article

---

Audiotuts+ — Audio & Production Tutorials

• 

  Free Professional Quality Audio Unit Plug-ins for Mac

  Lets face it, software is expensive. While there are hundreds of free plug-ins available online, more often than not two problems will arise: One, most of them are for PCs leaving us Mac users feeling left out. Two, most of them are vary poor quality.

  While I do agree with the saying, “The tools are only as good as the artist,” I also believe the opposite is true; that at some point the artist can only be as good as his tools are.

  Visit Article

• 

  Quick Tip: Drum Processing Part 4: Tips and Tricks

  This short series of quick tips is designed to give you a good overview of the audio processing techniques involved in creating a professional sounding drum beat for use in house, electro and breaks in Cubase. In this final part we will look at a few ways to add even more life to your drums.
  
  Here is a sample of the type of beat you could expect to end up with at the end of this series of tips:

  Visit Article

• 

  Quick Tip: Use the Doubling Technique for Quick Drums

  It’s 3:30 in the afternoon when your phone rings. The head of a music library is calling and she needs your help. They have a commercial for an A-list client that needs music, and they want you to submit an entry. You’ll get $10,000 if you land the gig.

  Visit Article

---

Activetuts+ — Flash, Flex & ActionScript Tutorials

• 

  Create a Microphone-Controlled Flash Game: Code

  In this mini-series, we’re creating a spaceship game where the main control is via the microphone: shout louder to make the ship fly higher. So far, we’ve created all the required graphical elements for the game. Now, it’s time to work on our code. We’ve got a lot to do, so let’s get started!

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• 

  Why Bother With jQuery? A Guide for (Former) Flash Developers

  If you, like many Flash developers, are looking into using HTML5 for your web apps, you’ll almost certainly have come across jQuery. It’s a very popular JavaScript library, used by a large percentage of the most visited websites – but what’s all the fuss about, and should you use it?

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• 

  An Introduction to the HTML5 Gamepad API

  As HTML games begin to gradually increase in popularity, vendors are starting to introduce some exciting new APIs to make gaming that little bit sweeter for both us developers and our end players. One of these is the GamepadAPI, which allows you to connect your good old console gamepad into your computer and use it for browser based games, plug and play style. Let’s dive in!

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Wptuts+ — WordPress Tutorials

• 

  The Rise of HTML5 in WordPress

  2011 was a big year for the advancement of HTML5 in the web development community. It became pretty widely adopted, especially for the mobile web. There have been major projects that help developers use HTML5, like Paul Irish’s HTML5 Boilerplate (technically 2010, but popularized in 2011) and books galore!

  Visit Article

• 

  Reusable Custom Meta Boxes Part 3: Extra Fields

  In Part 1 and Part 2 of our custom meta box template tutorial series, we learned how to create a field array to loop through and create a custom meta box with your standard fields. Now let’s throw in a bit of JavaScript for some fancy, but highly useful fields.

  Visit Article

• 

  The Ultimate Quickstart Guide to Speeding Up Your WordPress Site

  Give your site a boost! Implement crucial optimization techniques that will improve not only your ySlow score, but your Google rank too. In this tutorial we will cover all aspects of W3 caching, ySlow, Google page speed, CSS sprites & htaccess rules, to achieve a high ySlow score like i have done on my blog.

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Mobiletuts+ — Mobile Development Tutorials

• 

  iOS SDK: Creating an Awesome Carousel

  Engage your users with stunning carousels. We’ll look at how easy and clean it can be to implement scrollable, interactive carousels in your iOS applications. With high configurability, you can have 3D, flat, rotating, and endless scrolling arrays for data, images, or buttons.
  

  Visit Article

• 

  PhoneGap From Scratch: Introduction

  Want to learn how to use PhoneGap, but don’t know where to get started? Join us as we put together “Sculder”, not only a tribute to an excellent science fiction TV series, but a fully-fledged native mobile application for the believer in you!

  Visit Article

• 

  Mobile Flash is Far From Dead: Setting the Record Straight

  In light of recent announcements from Adobe, there has been a lot of confusion over the state of the Flash Platform – specifically in regard to Flash content on mobile devices. This article seeks to clarify many of the misconceptions that exist by addressing the main points of confusion around these announcements regardless of the initial, monumental, and absolutely unbelievable blunders from failed public (and private) relations messaging and general marketing surrounding these announcements.

  Visit Article

Psdtuts+ — Photoshop Tutorials

• 

  Create a Pimped Out Truck Using Photoshop and Point and Shoot Photos

  Making modifications to your car or truck in Photoshop can be a lot of fun. In this tutorial we will demonstrate how to create a pimped out truck modification using photos taken with a simple point and shoot camera, with no advanced lighting setup. Let’s get started!

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• 

  Create an Elephant Sundae Using Photo Manipulation Techniques

  Photoshop is great at seamlessly combing photos to create an entirely new scene. In this tutorial we will create an elephant sundae using several stock photos. Let’s get started!

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• 

  The Incredible Digital Art of Michael Oswald

  In this article we will be featuring the work of Michael Oswald. Oswald is a digital artist with a unique style. His technique involves a combination of photo manipulation and digital painting techniques and the results are often stunning. Let’s take a look!

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Nettuts+ — Web Development Tutorials

• 

  Sublime Text 2 Tips and Tricks (Updated)

  Sublime Text 2 is one of the fastest and most incredible code editors to be released in a long time! With a community and plugin ecosystem as passionate as this one, it just might be impossible for any other editor to catch up. I’ll show you my favorite tips and tricks today.

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• 

  An In Depth Analysis of HTML5 Multimedia and Accessibility

  In this tutorial, youll learn how HTML5 helps to provide you with several ways of presenting your media content to users. As a result, youll increase the availability of your media to users with different
  needs and requirements, making it more accessible.

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• 

  Writing an API Wrapper in Ruby with TDD

  Sooner or later, all developers are required to interact with an API. The most difficult part is always related to reliably testing the code we write, and, as we want to make sure that everything works properly, we continuosly run code that queries the API itself. This process is slow and inefficient, as we can experience network issues and data inconsistencies (the API results may change). Let’s review how we can avoid all of this effort with Ruby.

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Vectortuts+ — Illustrator Tutorials

• 

  How to Illustrate a Microscope in Illustrator

  The microscopes is a symbol of our civilization. Throughout this tutorial on how to illustrate a vector microscope you’ll take advantage of numerous Illustrator tools. You will learn how to use blends, art brushes and 3D rendering in Adobe Illustrator. Let’s get started!

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• 

  Create a Picture Gallery in Illustrator

  This work is a common project created together with Iaroslav Lazunov and Alexander Egupov. We have used 3D rendering, Blends, Opacity masks, making this three-dimensional stage with vanishing points. Learn every step in how to create this picture gallery work.

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• 

  Important Resources for Learning How to Design Typefaces and Full Fonts

  If you’re serious about creating a typeface design, then you’ll need some solid resources to get started. Learn effective typeface design workflows, how to take an initial spark of an idea from sketch, through Illustrator, into Fontlab, and then work your creation into a complete and custom font design. Here are multiple tutorials that show you how to create fonts in Illustrator and Fontlab, and you can also dive into articles that describe the foundation of quality type design with ample inspirational examples.

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Webdesigntuts+ — Web Design Tutorials

• 

  A Beginner’s Guide to Pairing Fonts

  Pairing fonts can be a challenge. Selecting two or more fonts which work well is one thing – selecting two which work together to achieve your typographic aims may have you reaching for the aspirin. Let’s see if we can alleviate any headaches. This guide will help you get started with font pairing for the web.

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• 

  Design a Series of Smart Banner Ads in Photoshop

  With the continuous growth of the Internet, online marketing has gotten bigger every year, and along with it, the advertising industry. One major factor in all this craziness is buying and selling ads.

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• 

  Twitter Bootstrap 101: Introduction

  Twitter’s Bootstrap is an excellent set of carefully crafted user interface elements, layouts, and javascript tools, freely available to use in your next web design project. This video series aims to introduce you to Bootstrap; taking you all the way from downloading the resources, to building a complete Bootstrap-based website.

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Phototuts+ — Photography Tutorials

• 

  HDR: Love it or Leave It?

  There are few techniques in the photography world that divide our community as much as HDR. High dynamic range images, or HDR images, are a special type of composite image that combines several images at different exposure settings in order to create an image with increased dynamic range. The look provided by HDR is loved by many, and disliked by perhaps just as many. In today’s article, we’re going to take a better look at what HDR is, and get some opinions from photographers using HDR.

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• 

  Inspiring Images of Cars and Motorcycles

  Cars and motorbikes have been around for 100 years. Throughout the century, they have looked beautiful, satisfied our need for speed and become a symbol for thrill seeking. Today, we’ll look at photos ranging from brand new Ferrari’s to classic muscle cars.

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• 

  Quick Tip: GIMP Portable – Take Your Editing Software With You

  While a number of smartphones now offer photo editing basics (and a plethora of apps to expand things even more), the portability of a solid photo editing program has been hard to come by. Photoshop is a monster in regards to space requirements and its ability to work on any system where it is not expressively installed. Picasa can be fairly ‘lightweight’ but lacks many of the more advanced photo editing tools. So what about GIMP?

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Cgtuts+ — Computer Graphics Tutorials

• 

  Modeling, UVmapping And Texturing A Low Poly T-Rex In Blender, Part 1

  In the first tutorial of 2012 you’ll learn how to create an awesome low-poly dinosaur using Blender and Gimp. In today’s post artist Karan Shah will walk you through the entire modeling process step by step, and show you how to create an optimized model suitable for use in any game engine.

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• 

  Create A Realistic Explosion In Maya Using Maya Fluids

  Today you’ll learn to animate and shade fluids, understand all of the major attributes, learn how adding fields will allow you to gain better control over your simulation, and how to light and render the final animation.

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• 

  SpeedTree To UDK: The Complete Workflow, Part 1 Creating The Tree

  Due to the shear number of polygons often required to make believable 3D trees, creating realistic ones for use “in-game” can be a challenging, time consuming task. SpeedTree from IDV aims to change all that with it’s intuitive UI, ease of use and powerful toolset. Making believable trees and plants has literally never been easier!

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Aetuts+ — After Effects Tutorials

• 

  Dominoes” CameraTracker and Cinema 4d Case Study – Day 1

  In this tutorial we’re going to go over the principle functionality of CameraTracker from The Foundry, learning basic workflow, optimizing results, aligning the ground plane and exporting this data from After Effects to Cinema 4d.

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• 

  Make An Amazing Motion Reactant Flame – Tuts+ Premium

  Using just a few video elements of torch flames, we composite a burning hand by using a series of null objects and expressions to drive a time lagged displacement effect to simulate fire burning from a moving source. We use the Puppet tool for the distortion and throw on some tracked lighting effects and a displacement map for the Heat. This principle can be used to add realistic, fluid motion to any tracked object.

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• 

  Key Tips To Becoming A Successful Video Freelancer

  Youve watched thousands of tutorials. Youve put in countless hours and spent many late nights working on personal projects. Youve finally come to the conclusion that this may just be something you would like to do for a career. It can seem a little intimidating at first, because how are you going to convince someone to pay you to do this? Up until now youve been your only client. How do you get more? Im going to share my insight and experiences on how to successfully launch your freelance career this year!

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Audiotuts+ — Audio & Production Tutorials

• 

  Free Professional Quality Audio Unit Plug-ins for Mac

  Lets face it, software is expensive. While there are hundreds of free plug-ins available online, more often than not two problems will arise: One, most of them are for PCs leaving us Mac users feeling left out. Two, most of them are vary poor quality.

  While I do agree with the saying, “The tools are only as good as the artist,” I also believe the opposite is true; that at some point the artist can only be as good as his tools are.

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• 

  Quick Tip: Drum Processing Part 4: Tips and Tricks

  This short series of quick tips is designed to give you a good overview of the audio processing techniques involved in creating a professional sounding drum beat for use in house, electro and breaks in Cubase. In this final part we will look at a few ways to add even more life to your drums.
  
  Here is a sample of the type of beat you could expect to end up with at the end of this series of tips:

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• 

  Quick Tip: Use the Doubling Technique for Quick Drums

  It’s 3:30 in the afternoon when your phone rings. The head of a music library is calling and she needs your help. They have a commercial for an A-list client that needs music, and they want you to submit an entry. You’ll get $10,000 if you land the gig.

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Activetuts+ — Flash, Flex & ActionScript Tutorials

• 

  Create a Microphone-Controlled Flash Game: Code

  In this mini-series, we’re creating a spaceship game where the main control is via the microphone: shout louder to make the ship fly higher. So far, we’ve created all the required graphical elements for the game. Now, it’s time to work on our code. We’ve got a lot to do, so let’s get started!

  Visit Article

• 

  Why Bother With jQuery? A Guide for (Former) Flash Developers

  If you, like many Flash developers, are looking into using HTML5 for your web apps, you’ll almost certainly have come across jQuery. It’s a very popular JavaScript library, used by a large percentage of the most visited websites – but what’s all the fuss about, and should you use it?

  Visit Article

• 

  An Introduction to the HTML5 Gamepad API

  As HTML games begin to gradually increase in popularity, vendors are starting to introduce some exciting new APIs to make gaming that little bit sweeter for both us developers and our end players. One of these is the GamepadAPI, which allows you to connect your good old console gamepad into your computer and use it for browser based games, plug and play style. Let’s dive in!

  Visit Article

---

Wptuts+ — WordPress Tutorials

• 

  The Rise of HTML5 in WordPress

  2011 was a big year for the advancement of HTML5 in the web development community. It became pretty widely adopted, especially for the mobile web. There have been major projects that help developers use HTML5, like Paul Irish’s HTML5 Boilerplate (technically 2010, but popularized in 2011) and books galore!

  Visit Article

• 

  Reusable Custom Meta Boxes Part 3: Extra Fields

  In Part 1 and Part 2 of our custom meta box template tutorial series, we learned how to create a field array to loop through and create a custom meta box with your standard fields. Now let’s throw in a bit of JavaScript for some fancy, but highly useful fields.

  Visit Article

• 

  The Ultimate Quickstart Guide to Speeding Up Your WordPress Site

  Give your site a boost! Implement crucial optimization techniques that will improve not only your ySlow score, but your Google rank too. In this tutorial we will cover all aspects of W3 caching, ySlow, Google page speed, CSS sprites & htaccess rules, to achieve a high ySlow score like i have done on my blog.

  Visit Article

---

Mobiletuts+ — Mobile Development Tutorials

• 

  iOS SDK: Creating an Awesome Carousel

  Engage your users with stunning carousels. We’ll look at how easy and clean it can be to implement scrollable, interactive carousels in your iOS applications. With high configurability, you can have 3D, flat, rotating, and endless scrolling arrays for data, images, or buttons.
  

  Visit Article

• 

  PhoneGap From Scratch: Introduction

  Want to learn how to use PhoneGap, but don’t know where to get started? Join us as we put together “Sculder”, not only a tribute to an excellent science fiction TV series, but a fully-fledged native mobile application for the believer in you!

  Visit Article

• 

  Mobile Flash is Far From Dead: Setting the Record Straight

  In light of recent announcements from Adobe, there has been a lot of confusion over the state of the Flash Platform – specifically in regard to Flash content on mobile devices. This article seeks to clarify many of the misconceptions that exist by addressing the main points of confusion around these announcements regardless of the initial, monumental, and absolutely unbelievable blunders from failed public (and private) relations messaging and general marketing surrounding these announcements.

  Visit Article

The Photoshop team is looking for their next evangelist. They just announced a contest asking for Photoshop users to submit their own hidden gem tutorial, and we would like the winner to be a Psdtuts+ reader or author! A hidden gem video needs to explain a lesser known feature or workflow of Photoshop. Each video would need to be 2 minutes or less and would need to mention “hidden gems.”

To see more examples of what a hidden gem video would look like, take a look at Bryan O’Neil Hughes’ series. The winning entry will win a trip to Photoshop World. For more information take a look at this post and the video below. Rules are listed here. Good luck!

In this video, Photoshop Senior Product Manager Bryan O’Neil Hughes gives us a sneak at Adobe Photoshop Camera Raw and Adobe Photoshop CS6. The most dramatic change that you will notice from this video might be the darker color of the new interface (although this can be adjusted). What do you think? What features would you like to see in Photoshop CS6 when it is released some time during the first half of 2012?

Photo News of the Week is a new feature on Phototuts+ bringing you the news from all aspects of photography. It is a great to keep up with technology, trends and leaders in the craft. And if you have news from the week to share, please drop a link in the comments!

Kickstarter Photography Project: Happy Valley by Brian Shumway

First, let me say that I have mixed feelings about Kickstarter photography projects. To me, and this is just my opinion, some of these projects seem to have extremely high expectations. Raising over $10,000 for a project about your neighborhood just seems a little overboard. Others showcase photography that is, not to be snotty, but substandard. I believe that taking up photography can enhance everyone’s life, but at the same time, not everyone’s photography should garner thousands of dollars from strangers.

That being said, Kickstarter is a great place to get things funded, and a fair number of the projects on the site are worth a donation. One of these is a proposed project by Brian Shumway documenting his family’s life in a Mormon community in Utah.

This project passes my test for a good Kickstarter proposal for several reasons. First, Shumway is asking for $3,500 USD. This is to cover the costs of photo processing and a couple flights to and from his home in New York to his family’s home. The second reason is that his photographs are wonderful.

Documenting your own family in a thoughtful and honest way is not easy. In fact, for most, it’s probably impossible. Shumway has his own style and unique vision. His photos are sometimes stark, sometimes quirky. His compositions rely on line and weight, but the story they tell is very human.

The project promoted on Shumway’s website.

The other intriguing aspect of this project is how it might relate to the upcoming presidential election. As Shumway mentions, Mormonism is not well understood. U.S. presidential hopeful Mitt Romney is Mormon, and there’s no doubt that people will want to know more about the religion

As of the writing of this article, $220 has been pledged to the Happy Valley project. Fortunately, there are 41 days left to pledge. Pledges will get you prints from the project. Learn more here.

Last week, we talked about choosing the right camera bag for your needs. If backpacks are your bag of choice, then look no further. We’re comparing at two great backpacks that will hold up to just about anything you throw at them.

Most camera bags on the market aim for the largest slice of the bag buying populace; photographers who stick to the city or near a car. Face it, the bulk of photographers are looking for a bag to haul their camera gear and not a lot else. Some bags have upper compartments but often they are designed to hold even more photo gear (cards, filters, portable harddrives, etc…) and keep close to society.

The two bags you will find in this review break that trend. The first bag comes from F-Stop Gear and the second is from a more traditional photo bag manufacturer, LowePro. They are both designed specifically for the active shooter. Someone who wants to get off the well worn trail and wants a pack that follows them effortlessly. A bag that carries camera gear but also a first aid kit, water bladder to keep hydrated, lunch, a rain jacket, spare socks and the other Ten Essentials for a day in the woods.

F-Stop’s pack is big and bold and can carry a mountain of gear if you wish. It is the Satori EXP (short for Expedition) and it can carry not only your camera gear, but overnight backpacking necessities as well. It is designed by a company that prides itself on constantly gaining feedback from its pro photographers and customers alike to craft the next generation of adventure packs.

Copyright Peter West Carey

The LowePro Photo Sport 200 AW is a smaller pack perfect for day trips. It is also meant to be run with for those who love blazing a trail at a runner’s pace. It will fit under a seat in most commercial airliners and is built from lightweight, yet strong fabric to make it an easy choice. (pictured here in orange and black)

Copyright Peter West Carey

Writer, adventurer and friend Genevieve Hathaway was kind enough to test out the LowePro Photo Sport 200 AW while I took on the larger F-Stop Satori EXP.

F-Stop Gear Satori EXP

The F-Stop Satori EXP is a bag that has evolved through many versions after being taken into the backcountry by some of the finest and most hardworking professional nature and adventure photographers in the market (Colby Brown, John Cornforth, Jay and Varina Patel to name a few). The pack is designed to be a heavy hauler and that can either mean all your photo gear or just a subset while leaving plenty of room for overnight backpacking equipment.

Copyright Peter West Carey

The bag accomplishes this through its use of the F-Stop Internal Camera Unit (ICU) system. This system, coupled with internal straps to hold various sizes in place and an access panel on the front of the bag, makes it a quick pick for a number of assignments. For those sporting different gear for different shoots, it is easy to adjust the internal volume by choosing a different sized ICU. And with ICUs able to carry even moderate sized video cameras, the system is a great use of internal space.

Further, the bag has dedicated compartments for filters, spare cards, remote triggers, water bottles (and a water bladder), pens, notebooks and the ever valuable car key strap. Add on the camera’s use of F-Stop’s Dakota Component System and the array of additional pouches, straps and bags make this pack a true utility giant. Don’t forget there is also an internal compartment to swallow a 17″ laptop whole and a sleeve right next to it for all your important papers, notes and files.

Copyright Peter West Carey

Copyright Peter West Carey

Specifications

• Volume: 62 Liter / 3,783 Cubic Inches
• Weight: 1.89kg – 4.16lbs (No ICU)
• Dimensions: 10D x 12W x 26H in. (25.4D x 30.5W x 66H cm)
• Internal Compartment Dimensions: 9.5D x 12W x 24H in. (24D x 30.5W x 61H cm)
• Internal Compartment Space Available with XLarge ICU
• Torso Length: 18.5″
• Aluminum internal Frame for supporting heavy loads and weight distribution

Suggested Retail Price: $359 with no ICU or $419 with one ICU

Use In Real Life

Peter: The first thing I thought about the Satori when I picked it up is that the padding on the front (the side that resides against a wearer’s back) had to be a joke. I’ve seen padding like this before. It’s all bumpy and thick but doesn’t meet my back in the right places and is way too hard to be comfortable. The padding is fashioned around the front zippered opening which is how you access the camera equipment in the interchangeable ICU.

It may sound cliché, but I was pleasantly surprised after taking the pack to Peru for a three-week assignment and tour. Not only did the pack fit well against my back, there wasn’t a break-in time to feel that way. Couple that with a serious backpacking hipbelt, meant to take the bulk of the pack’s weight the way a hipbelt should, and this pack rates an A for comfort and fit.

Copyright Peter West Carey

I tested the pack with the medium ICU based on my normal shooting habits. It was able to hold my Canon 7D DSLR with battery grip and Canon 28-300mm L lens (equivalent in size to the more standard 70-200mm lenses from Nikon and Canon) plus five other lenses I was testing on my trip. The ICU is slightly larger than the hole in the front of the bag, making opening sometimes a bit tricky if the bag is utterly crammed pull of equipment. However, the zippers are smooth and the ICU is quickly opened with a quick tug from the top.

All ICUs (there are five sizes) can be removed and the bag can be used as a standard backpack if desired. And as you may have guessed, the ICUs can be used in various other F-Stop packs of differing sizes. I found the internal configuration as easy as any other velcro arrangement with half height dividers giving me a bit more room to stuff in extra gear.

Copyright Peter West Carey

The Satori excels at fitting on airplanes as well as on your back. I took this bag on at least a dozen flights with various aircraft and the bag always fit in the overhead bin. Because of the curve given to the top section of the bag, it nestled into the bins with easy and within regulation size. The hipbelts, being as thick and load bearing as they are, need to be splayed out and take up a bit of extra space, but this is to be expected.

The only hassle when traveling by air with this bag is the location of the laptop storage. Laptops fit inside the bag in a padded sleeve with a velcro strap to hold it all in place. All well and good, but it ends up typically being below other items in the pack, making retrieval in a security line at an airport a bit cumbersome.

Copyright Peter West Carey

I won’t get into all the bag’s possible accessories. There is a list on F-Stop’s site and some are quite useful for storing odds and ends, or carrying a camera up front while hiking. One accessory that is missing is a pack cover. The bag has a special zippered compartment for it on the bottom, but no cover.

Just outside of that compartment is an ingenious use of space in the form of a garbage compartment. It’s small but perfect for more than a day’s worth of granola and energy bar wrappers or trash found on the trail. Not even my dedicated overnight pack has this useful compartment.

Straps and modularity is what the pack is all about. It comes with a pair of GateKeeper straps over the back for securing a tripod, snowboard or other equipment. Additional straps may be purchased as needed and connection points can be found on all sides, leading to a world of adaptations for skis, climbing ropes, sleeping bags or trekking poles. The bag also has a number of MOLLE loops on the sides, hipbelt and shoulder straps to keep needed accessories, such as GPS, sunglasses or two-way radio, close at hand.

Copyright Peter West Carey

How much gear can it hold? I am in LA for a week to conduct some photography workshops and I brought with me: Canon 7D with battery grip, 28-300mm L lens, three 18-200mm lenses, Canon T1i, Canon 580 EX II flash, Pentax WD-1 GPS point and shoot camera, seven days worth of clothes (six shorts, one pair pants, two pairs shorts, underwear, socks and fleece jacket), 13″ laptop, external harddrive, a pack of notes and paperwork, flip flops, toiletries, rock climbing shoes, rock climbing harness, book, spare batteries, chargers for Canon and Pentax, power cords, three filters, intervalometer, headphones, water bottle, glasses, small gifts, two hard cases for memory cards, card reader, pens, travel power strip, full sized mouse and small Macintosh keyboard.

For Peru I was able to bring a bit less clothes (and do more laundry) and bring a first aid kit, three weeks worth of vitamins, notebooks and more chargers. It is one of the largest photo and adventure packs on the market and the amount of gear that it can transport is impressive. A week away from home with most of my photo gear and a week’s worth of clothes that all fits in the overhead carry-on bin to avoid baggage fees is great.

Other touches that shouldn’t go unnoticed: discreet water bladder tube routing through side of bag; velcro to keep zipper pulls on front of bag away from wearer’s back; weather stripping on most zippers (not truly water proof, but they help keep out dust and moderate rain); hipbelt adjusts at the hips, not at the central connecting point which is a lot easier; bottom of water bottle holders is solid fabric to resist rips more easily when full. I could go on, but will spare you more exhaustive details.

Copyright Peter West Carey

Conclusion

This pack is a joy to wear and use. I love the fact that the camera gear is accessed from the front of the bag, which allows me to lay the pack down with the backside to the ground. This means the shoulder straps stay off the dirt and keep me cleaner than most packs with read or side access. The interchangeable nature of the pack is key for those with varying assignments. The fit is well thought out as is the ability to adapt the bag to various conditions. The rip-stop nylon is tough and can take abuse.

It would be nice to see the laptop compartment somehow rearranged (although I’m not sure how this can actually be accomplished). I’ve been staring at this bag on my floor for about 15 minutes now and I honestly can’t come up with anything else I would like to see improved on it at this time. F-Stop has put a lot of time and effort into this bag’s evolution and refinement and it shows.

Lowepro Photo Sport 200 AW

Lowepro designed the Photo Sport 200 AW backpack for the athlete photographer who brings their gear with them on the adventure. This camera backpack is designed more like a sports backpack than a camera bag, while still protecting your camera equipment. The sport pack design is well suited to a variety of outdoor activities – trail running, light hiking, mountain biking, skiing, snowboarding, and even rock climbing. The camera chamber is padded and has a cinch system that keeps the camera for jostling around, crucial since the designers intend the pack to be jostled.

Copyright Peter West Carey

The Photo Sport 200 AW has a number of useful features. The camera and lens compartment is accessed on the side of the pack. A cinching system tightens this padded compartment around the camera and additional lens to keep it snug while you are running, skiing, climbing or biking. The camera cavity is well padded, but I am still doubtful that it can fully protect your gear on a high speed fall.

In addition to a dedicated camera compartment, this pack also has a number of pouches, sleeves and zippered compartments to keep your gear and items organized. The back of the pack has a slot for a water hydration system. The main interior of the Photo Sport 200 is constructed in a “L” shape around the padded camera compartment. It can hold about 14L of gear, clothing or other items. Tucked away on the underside of the pack is a rain cover that fully protects the entire pack.

The pack also has many of the same features seen in traditional hiking and climbing packs such as ice axe or trekking pole loops, a water bladder compartment, a strap below the lid you can clip rock shoes or other gear to with a carabiner, side buckles and straps, bottom straps for pads or ropes or sacks of gear, attachment points on the shoulder straps and hip belt pouches.

Copyright Peter West Carey

Specifications

• Capacity: Up to a pro-sized DSLR with a kit lens attached, flash, hydration reservoir (not included); toploading compartment with up to 13.9 liters of volume.
• Size(Interior): 7.7W X 3.5D X 9.1H in./ 19.5 X 9 X 23 cm
• Size(Exterior): 10.6W X 6.7D X 19.3H in./ 27 X 17 X 49 cm
• Top Compartment Inner Dimensions: 9.4W X 7.5D X 20.9H in./ 24 X 19 X 53 cm
• Outer fabric: N70D Triple RS with UTS Coating PU 800mm WR, P150D 2 Way Span, N140D 2 Way Span 235g/yd, P600D 74T PU 800mm WR – Kolon
• Interior Fabric: N210D 110T PU 800mm WR, Velcro Hook/loop
• Weight: 2.9lbs/1.3kg

Suggested Retail Price: $199.99 (available in black or orange)

Use in Real Life

Genevieve: I took this bag on a number of day trips around the city. The padding around the camera seems good for city use or even running, but I hesitated to take it skiing because I did not want to risk damaging my gear if I took a fall at high speeds. The pack carries weight very well. It feels like a technical climbing or hiking pack. With all of its true technical pack features, I would take the Photo Sport 200 pack rock climbing.

Copyright Peter West Carey

I was able to easily fit my Canon 60D with a Sigma 18-200mm lens attached into the camera slot, but the camera could not have fit with a longer lens attached. Next to my Canon 60D, I had enough room to fit my Canon 10–22mm lens. The Canon 60D did stay snug in the padded compartment on the side while I walked around the city. The side access to the camera made it easy to keep the camera stored, but when I needed to take a shot I could quickly and smoothly swing the bag around on my shoulder and take the camera out.

A particularly nice feature of this pack is that the camera compartment and the main interior compartment are completely separate. This allows for very little wasted space as clothes, snacks or a book can be shoved around the interior camera compartment. Also, the dedicated hydration compartment has a zipper and some padding, it would work to store a sub-13 inch laptop.

Copyright Peter West Carey

Copyright Peter West Carey

Peter: I have used this pack while rock climbing and on longer day hikes and agree with Genevieve on the fit and utility. The internal space is much larger than it seems, especially compared to like-sized photo bags, because of the ability to stuff items around the camera pouch. While the hip belt is a bit small, the pack rides well for a guy my size (6’1″) and is easy to bring into action. Little touches, like the sternum strap whistle and the key keeper strap, are appreciated.

There are a few areas of improvement for the Photo Sport 200. The pack is a bit small if you want to take a laptop along that is larger than 12 inches. For those of us adventurers who also travel, it would be nice to have a slightly larger option (16L-18L). Also, if you have a lens that is larger than my 18-200mm Sigma, the camera will not fit with the lens attached (NOTE: A standard 70-200mm 2.8 lens on a mid-sized camera will not fit properly). Again, two versions of this pack would benefit the consumer – one for photographers who prefer the 14L version and one for photographers who need a slightly larger version of this pack.

Copyright Peter West Carey

Copyright Peter West Carey

Copyright Peter West Carey

Conclusion

The Lowepro Photo Sport 200 AW is a great sports backpack for hiking, trail running and city or travel use. It could be improved by offering two versions – one 14L and one slightly larger. In real life, this camera pack works great for active use. I would definitely travel with this pack if there was a larger version. Also, this pack has the distinction of being one of the few dedicated camera packs on the market that is a true outdoor sports backpack.

Today we have a unique Tuts+ Premium Pack, which is created in Illustrator by Sharon Milne. It’s filled with 10 illustrated wild animals. Each is completely vector, available in AI and EPS formats. Log in or Join Now to get this exclusive download. Learn more at the jump!

New Tuts+ Premium Pack

There are 10 vector illustrations in this pack, composed of: tiger, giraffe, elephant, rhino, deer, monkey, llama, kangeroo, polar bear, and wolf. The license allows you to use these vectors in your designs, see the download file for details. They can be scaled to any size and colored any way you choose, as these are all vector (in EPS and AI formats)!

This new Vector Premium Pack is created by Sharon Milne. She’s written numerous high quality vector tutorials for us and we’re excited to partner up with her on this exclusive Tuts+ Premium Pack release!

Tuts+ Premium Members can login now for instant access to this tutorial. Membership to Tuts+ Premium gets you access to hundreds of exclusive premium tutorials, top selling ebooks, in-depth courses, member forums, and much more. To learn more about Tuts+ Premium, Take the Tour or Join Today.

Web typography is accessible to everyone. If you’ve ever built or designed a web page, you’ve almost definitely turned your hand to web typography of some sort. As a discipline, typography has been practiced for hundreds of years, and as a result there are many lessons and conventions we can learn from.

Saying that, web typography is a bit like skiing. It’s unwise to just grab a couple of wooden planks and throw yourself down a black piste; you’ll develop bad habits and perhaps even break a bone. Before diving into your next web project, make sure you’ve at least considered the fundamentals.

I can’t help you with skiing, but I can help you with web typography. If you’ve never looked properly into the subject, or even if you need a refresher, Introduction to Web Typography is for you!

Overview

As with all Tuts+ Premium courses, we’ll start at the beginning, working through the basics and some terminology, before moving on to the practicalities. During the process we’ll build ourselves a demo web page which will highlight the theory we cover. Even if you’re not yet confident with HTML and CSS, each video comes with source files stepping off from where the previous video ended.

Take a look at the episodes listed below and be sure to check out the preview videos even if you don’t yet have a Premium subscription.

This course comprises 11 helpful videos.

As with all Tuts+ Premium courses, each lesson has an accompanying forum where you can discuss ideas and questions which arise as you watch the videos.

Get involved with the forum, where you can discuss each lesson.

Tuts+ Premium

The recently re-launched Tuts+ Premium is a service that provides top-tier training in a variety of creative fields. Whether you prefer books, visual training, or in depth tutorials, we have you covered. While we unfortunately can’t afford to provide the service for free, it’s only $19 a month – less than you’d spend on dinner.

I hope you’ll consider checking it out! In addition to learning a huge variety of new skills, it’s also a fantastic way to say thank you to Webdesigntuts+.

This FRAUD ACT has been committed by Jabin Kadel (a senior programmer at MaxBlogpress). Jabin Kadel is now NO MORE an employee of MaxBlogPress. He’s been FIRED.We no longer have any relation with him, so we aren’t responsible for any communication/transaction done with him from now on.

Jabin Kadel is responsible for software, database, company’s files, source codes, ideas theft in the company which he used for his personal benefits while he was still an employee and taking salary for his mis-deeds.

He theft the source codes, database, ideas etc… and used them for creating the illegal clone of our softwares and websites. He even theft our software which was in beta test and wasn’t released publicly and tried to launch it (with different name) before us (in a stealth mode).

Not only that, he and his colleague (Hemanta Maharjan) used fake names and profiles to ruin company’s reputation by creating a misconception to our visitors and customers (in our community as well as in other blogs) for bringing their clone solution (which was developed by stealing the ideas, source codes etc.. from the company) forward.

Their fake names are countless.  For example: Orlando, Bruce Allen, Haundry Hall, Zack etc… They are not different people. They are same people with different fake names.

WHAT DID WE DO?

We took a legal action on them (Jabin Kadel and his colleague, Hemanta Maharjan) – they were in prison for 2 days (they accepted all their ACTS). We’ve already shut down the illegal websites that they created by stealing most of our proprietary files, database, softwares and source codes.

SAFETY MEASURES AND ALERTS:

Jabin Kadel is NOT a part of MaxBlogPress ANYMORE.

• We won’t be liable for losses and damages if Jabin Kadel uses MaxBlogPress name to start communicating with you and harm you in any way. He is no more a part of MaxBlogPress.
• If you want to do any business or monetary transaction with him, it’s on your own RISK. MaxBlogPress won’t be any responsible for the LOSS.
• If somehow, you’re already doing any business with him and have given your login details or your personal ideas or files and if he use them for his personal benefits without asking for any permission from you then MaxBlogPress won’t be responsible for that.
• We have found that he has been claiming that he has developed MaxBlogPress products like subscribers magnet, ninja affiliate, ping optimizer, max banner ads etc… INDIVIDUALLY for getting freelance works. Truth is, he hasn’t developed any of our MaxBlogPress products from the scratch. He’s just contributed on bug fixes and feature additions in few of our products.

It’s our responsibility to protect our subscribers and customers. This blog post is to ALERT our subscribers and customers about his ACT and to protect MaxBlogPress from the people who might use the name “MaxBlogPress” for their personal benefits.

Photo News of the Week is a new feature on Phototuts+ bringing you the news from all aspects of photography. It is a great to keep up with technology, trends and leaders in the craft. And if you have news from the week to share, please drop a link in the comments!

We’re trying something a little different in our news round-up this week. We’re bringing together some more in-depth information about a specific area in the photography world. If you like this format better than the our three-piece style, please let us know in the comments.

Compact Cameras in the News

In the past week or so, three different things happened. First, Canon announced it’s new G1X. This is a G-series camera, so the styling has remained consistent with previous models, but it packs a nearly APS-sized sensor. That’s darn big for a compact point-and-shoot. Canon hasn’t jumped into the mirrorless market yet, so this may be an effort to delay.

The new Canon G1X.

Next, Scott Bourne over at Photofocus published an article questioning if smart phones will ever replace point-and-shoot cameras. He predicted that point-and-shoot makers would keep incorporating special features like slow motion video or underwater sealing into their cameras in order stay relevant.

Finally, Polaroid released their new SC1630 Smart Camera. It looks like a smart phone with a nice lens on the back and is even powered by Android. It’s wifi connectivity means that users can download apps to the camera. Built-in editing and effects apps developed around a touchscreen interface sounds like a great feature for any camera.

The new Polaroid SC1630 Smart Camera.

What is a point-and-shoot for?

For the record, I’m a professional photographer. It’s how I pay my bills. For work, I primarily use a DSLR with three lenses. I also own a point-and-shoot digital, a Nikon P7000 which looks a lot like the Canon G12. I almost never use it for serious work. I carry it as a back-up camera. But when I go to parties or on vacation, the P7000 gets used for all my shots. I simply don’t want to lug my DSLR around.

My smart phone doesn’t get used as a camera, because it lacks all but the most basic controls and the flash is awful. The P7000 gives me control over depth-of-field and it has a real zoom. Those are two pretty huge advantages.

A shot from my vacation made with my point-and-shoot. The quality is fine for a decent sized print.

Where things are headed

I’m not the average user of a smart phone or point-and-shoot camera. I think for most people who want to take photos, but do not want to learn all the ins and outs, a smart phone is fine. The price of DSLRs has come down so much that when a person wants to take the next step in photography, that’s where they’ll head.

That being said, a smart phone is never going to replace a real camera. No matter how good they get, they will have small sensors, they will lack controls and they will have iffy zooms. At the end of the day, it’s a phone. It has to fit in your pocket and have a lot of other technology packed into it.

Also, there are a lot of professional photographers out there who want a small back-up/vacation camera. Saying there isn’t enough demand for an item like that is like saying there isn’t enough demand for a Leica or other niche camera.

What to watch

There are some interesting developments in the small camera market that may change the way it works. The first is an item made by Pentax, the Pentax Q. It’s the touted as the smallest interchangeable lens camera. Officially, it falls in the mirrorless camera class, but it’s size means that cameras like this in the future could change the way we think about small-but-controllable “point-and-shoots.”

The Pentax Q was announced in the summer of 2011.

The other camera to watch is the epitome of niche and special features. Polaroid recently announced their Z340 which utilizes ZINK® technology, an inkless printing solution. The camera operates like a normal digital camera (with some retro styling), but can pump a 3×4 inch print out the front of the camera in less than a minute. The user can also choose to creative borders to put around their prints, including a traditional white Polaroid border.

The Polaroid Z340 was released in November of 2011.

This FRAUD ACT has been committed by Jabin Kadel (a senior programmer at MaxBlogpress). Jabin Kadel is now NO MORE an employee of MaxBlogPress. He’s been FIRED.We no longer have any relation with him, so we aren’t responsible for any communication/transaction done with him from now on.

Jabin Kadel is responsible for software, database, company’s files, source codes, ideas theft in the company which he used for his personal benefits while he was still an employee and taking salary for his mis-deeds.

He theft the source codes, database, ideas etc… and used them for creating the illegal clone of our softwares and websites. He even theft our software which was in beta test and wasn’t released publicly and tried to launch it (with different name) before us (in a stealth mode).

Not only that, he and his colleague (Hemanta Maharjan) used fake names and profiles to ruin company’s reputation by creating a misconception to our visitors and customers (in our community as well as in other blogs) for bringing their clone solution (which was developed by stealing the ideas, source codes etc.. from the company) forward.

Their fake names are countless.  For example: Orlando, Bruce Allen, Haundry Hall, Zack etc… They are not different people. They are same people with different fake names.

What did we do?

We took a legal action on them (Jabin Kadel and his colleague, Hemanta Maharjan) – they were in prison for 2 days. We’ve already shut down the illegal websites that they created by stealing most of our proprietary files, database, softwares and source codes.

SAFETY MEASURES and ALERTS:

Jabin Kadel is NOT a part of MaxBlogPress ANYMORE.

• We won’t be liable for losses and damages if Jabin Kadel uses MaxBlogPress name to start communicating with you and harm you in any way. He is no more a part of MaxBlogPress.
• If you want to do any business or monetary transaction with him, it’s on your own RISK. MaxBlogPress won’t be any responsible for the LOSS.
• If somehow, you’re already doing any business with him and have given your login details or your personal ideas or files and if he use them for his personal benefits without asking for any permission from youthen MaxBlogPress won’t be responsible for that.
• We have found that he has been claiming that he has developed MaxBlogPress products like subscribers magnet, ninja affiliate, ping optimizer, max banner ads etc… INDIVIDUALLY for getting freelance works. Truth is, he hasn’t developed any of our MaxBlogPress products from the scratch. He’s just contributed on bug fixes and feature additions in few of our products.

It’s our responsibility to protect our subscribers and customers. This blog post is to ALERT our subscribers and customers about his ACT and to protect MaxBlogPress from the people who might use the name “MaxBlogPress” for their personal benefits.

In this tutorial you will learn how to easily create a diagonal pattern in Adobe Illustrator. Creating seamless patterns is a challenge in itself, but it is even harder if the pattern is supposed to be at an angle. But there is an easy trick to do so by creating a simple straight pattern first.

Step 1

Create a square rectangle as a base for your pattern. You can do so by selecting the Rectangle Tool (M) from the Tools panel. Double click anywhere on your canvas. By doing so a window will pop up in which you can enter the exact size you want for your square. I chose 1 × 1 in. But you can make it as big as you want your pattern to be.

Step 2

Duplicate the square, I use Command + C and Command + F. This will paste the copy of your square in exactly the same place it was before. Select one of the reference points at the bounding box in the middle and hold down Option while dragging it into the middle of the rectangle. Holding down Option will help you to keep the rectangle symmetrical from the center.

Fill this rectangle with black and change the Opacity to 20%.

Step 3

Repeat the previous step with a new rectangle. This one will be filled with white.

Step 4

Do it one more time and fill the new rectangle with black again. By doing these three steps you make sure that the bottom and top of your pattern repeats seamlessly. Which colors, opacities and blend modes you use is entirely up to you.

Step 5

Select the three new rectangles and duplicate them. Keep the rectangles selected and turn them by 90°.

Step 6

This will be our base pattern.

Step 7

Open the Swatches Panel and simply drag and drop your pattern base into the panel.

Step 8

Create a new bigger rectangle and fill it with your pattern. As you can see it repeats perfectly.

Step 9

Select your rectangle and double click the Rotate Tool (R) from your Tools Panel.

Step 10

The Rotate window will pop up. Check Preview and Uncheck Objects. By leaving only Patterns selected the rectangle will not rotate, but the pattern will. Enter an Angle of 45°.

Final Image

In under 5 minutes you have created a diagonal pattern. Doing it manually is time consuming and hard to get a grip of at first. Luckily Illustrator has many, sometimes hidden, tricks to make your life easier. This is one of them. This works for every angle and so extremely easy to use for effects like scanlines, that can come at many different angles.

If you don’t already use Videohive.net to download insanely well-priced project files and stock video, you’re a fool… and I recant my earlier statement about you being one of my favorite people in the world… seriously, friendship terminated!

Videohive.net has saved me SO much time and money over the past couple years by not having to reinvent the wheel each time I take on a new project. If you are ever on a deadline, this huge collection of “drag and drop” After Effects project files will guarantee a quicker turn around. Create an account, better yet… add some of your own projects! I love logging in after only a couple of days to see that I’ve earned another couple bucks… without doing any additional work.

Anyways, back to this file. It’s a CS5 project file, but you can copy and paste in the included tracking data if you have an earlier version of After Effects. Other than that, just drop your footage in the pre-comp and it’s ready to go.

Project Preview

Photo News of the Week is a new feature on Phototuts+ bringing you the news from all aspects of photography. It is a quick way to keep up with technology, trends and leaders in the craft. And if you have news from the week to share, please drop a link in the comments!

Each week we’ll be featuring three items from three different areas of photography. If you have suggestions for our news roundup, please email them here.

The Perfect Camera: Fujifilm X-Pro1

Yesterday, PetaPixel reported that Réponses Photo has published pictures and specs about the Fujifilm X-Pro1, the interchangeable-lens upgraded version of the X100. I’ve mentioned in comments and in posts that this camera might be a game changer. It’s going to be the poor man’s Leica M9. That $800 price point makes the whole thing even better. Oh, how I long for shutter speed dials.

Economic Woes: Kodak

Kodak seems to be in trouble. Last year it was reported that the company was losing millions each month. It has sold off many parts of its company to try to pull themselves out of the mess their in. Rumors of bankruptcy and a stock of price of under $1 means that the end may be near. The Wall Street Journal has put together a remembrance of the company by talking to workers who were caught up in the downfall.

RIP: Iconic Photojournalist Eve Arnold Dies at 99

Eve Arnold is well known for her photos of Marilyn Monroe, but her photojournalism spanned generations. According to The Hollywood Reporter, her subjects included migrant laborers, New York bartenders, Cuban fishermen and Afghan nomads; celebrities such as Joan Crawford and Elizabeth Taylor; and political figures including Jacqueline Kennedy, Malcolm X and Margaret Thatcher. The Reporter’s article also features some great links to galleries of her images. Don’t miss them.

Don’t forget to share any current news in the comments below!

We’re excited to announce that Tuts+ Premium members now have access to a new Rockable eBook and in-depth video course on DSLR Photography as part of their membership. The eBook is Rockstar Icon Designer (usually $24 USD), and the course is Introduction to DSLR Photography with professional photographer Kim Bultsma. If you own a DSLR but don’t fully understand how to get the most out of it, you’ll love this course. Keep reading to learn more, or become a Tuts+ Premium member.

Say what? The Rundown

Tuts+ Premium is the sister site to the Tuts+ Network. It’s an online educational platform for web designers, developers and creatives designed to be the best value education membership around. Members immediately get access to 740 exlusive in-depth tutorials, $440 worth of eBooks, an ever-growing library of video courses, and more than 1,000 project file downloads. Rockstar Icon Designer and Introduction to DSLR Photography are only the most recent additions to the library.

Try it for one month and if you’re not in love with your membership, we’ll give you your money back.

Introduction to DSLR Photography

Got a new DSLR camera and not sure what to do with it? Get yourself off auto mode and stop being a “green square”!

In Introduction to DSLR Photography, seasoned photographer Kim Bultsma walks you through getting to know your DSLR camera and making the most of it. Learn the basics about modes, aperture, shutter, exposure, and composition. Then, when you’re ready to improve your game, get the low down on lenses, accessories and flash. Introduction to DSLR Photography is designed to take you from a happy snapper to a DSLR pro!

This course includes three public lessons: Welcome, Scene Modes, All Things Light, Part One.

Rockstar Icon Designer – Usually $24, free for Tuts+ Premium members

Veteran icon designer Kate McInnes introduces you to the wonderful world of icon design, so you too can become a Rockstar Icon Designer! In this book Kate shares with you her experience and expertise by covering everything from the history and theory of icon design, to best practices and methods. She’ll also take you through the whole process of creating your own icon set, and walk you through actual tutorial exercises where you’ll design icons from scratch.

The book download includes versions for all major eReading devices.

View Book Page

We’re excited to announce that Tuts+ Premium members now have access to a new Rockable eBook and in-depth video course on DSLR Photography as part of their membership. The eBook is Rockstar Icon Designer (usually $24 USD), and the course is Introduction to DSLR Photography with professional photographer Kim Bultsma. If you own a DSLR but don’t fully understand how to get the most out of it, you’ll love this course. Keep reading to learn more, or become a Tuts+ Premium member.

Say what? The Rundown

Tuts+ Premium is the sister site to the Tuts+ Network. It’s an online educational platform for web designers, developers and creatives designed to be the best value education membership around. Members immediately get access to 740 exlusive in-depth tutorials, $440 worth of eBooks, an ever-growing library of video courses, and more than 1,000 project file downloads. Rockstar Icon Designer and Introduction to DSLR Photography are only the most recent additions to the library.

Try it for one month and if you’re not in love with your membership, we’ll give you your money back.

Rockstar Icon Designer – Usually $24, free for Tuts+ Premium members

Veteran icon designer Kate McInnes introduces you to the wonderful world of icon design, so you too can become a Rockstar Icon Designer! In this book Kate shares with you her experience and expertise by covering everything from the history and theory of icon design, to best practices and methods. She’ll also take you through the whole process of creating your own icon set, and walk you through actual tutorial exercises where you’ll design icons from scratch.

The book download includes versions for all major eReading devices.

View Book Page

Introduction to DSLR Photography

Got a new DSLR camera and not sure what to do with it? Get yourself off auto mode and stop being a “green square”!

In Introduction to DSLR Photography, seasoned photographer Kim Bultsma walks you through getting to know your DSLR camera and making the most of it. Learn the basics about modes, aperture, shutter, exposure, and composition. Then, when you’re ready to improve your game, get the low down on lenses, accessories and flash. Introduction to DSLR Photography is designed to take you from a happy snapper to a DSLR pro!

This course includes three public lessons: Welcome, Scene Modes, All Things Light, Part One.

We’re excited to announce that Tuts+ Premium members now have access to a new Rockable eBook and in-depth video course on DSLR Photography as part of their membership. The eBook is Rockstar Icon Designer (usually $24 USD), and the course is Introduction to DSLR Photography with professional photographer Kim Bultsma. If you own a DSLR but don’t fully understand how to get the most out of it, you’ll love this course. Keep reading to learn more, or become a Tuts+ Premium member.

Say what? The Rundown

Tuts+ Premium is the sister site to the Tuts+ Network. It’s an online educational platform for web designers, developers and creatives designed to be the best value education membership around. Members immediately get access to 740 exlusive in-depth tutorials, $440 worth of eBooks, an ever-growing library of video courses, and more than 1,000 project file downloads. Rockstar Icon Designer and Introduction to DSLR Photography are only the most recent additions to the library.

Try it for one month and if you’re not in love with your membership, we’ll give you your money back.

Rockstar Icon Designer – Usually $24, free for Tuts+ Premium members

Veteran icon designer Kate McInnes introduces you to the wonderful world of icon design, so you too can become a Rockstar Icon Designer! In this book Kate shares with you her experience and expertise by covering everything from the history and theory of icon design, to best practices and methods. She’ll also take you through the whole process of creating your own icon set, and walk you through actual tutorial exercises where you’ll design icons from scratch.

The book download includes versions for all major eReading devices.

View Book Page

Introduction to DSLR Photography

Got a new DSLR camera and not sure what to do with it? Get yourself off auto mode and stop being a “green square”!

In Introduction to DSLR Photography, seasoned photographer Kim Bultsma walks you through getting to know your DSLR camera and making the most of it. Learn the basics about modes, aperture, shutter, exposure, and composition. Then, when you’re ready to improve your game, get the low down on lenses, accessories and flash. Introduction to DSLR Photography is designed to take you from a happy snapper to a DSLR pro!

This course includes three public lessons: Welcome, Scene Modes, All Things Light, Part One.

Photo News of the Week is a new feature on Phototuts+ bringing you the news from all aspects of photography. It is a quick way to keep up with technology, trends and leaders in the craft. And if you have news from the week to share, please drop a link in the comments!

Each week we’ll be featuring three items from three different areas of photography. If you have suggestions for our news roundup, please email them here.

Memories: Ken Regan Releases Book

Ken Regan has covered rock music for more than four decades. But his new book covers more than just music. Regan’s career spans everything from politics to sports. You can see an AOL interview with the photographer here. You can order the book on Amazon.

App: CanonSGLens

If you’re a Canon camera owner, there’s a new free app available in the iTunes App Store for iPhone and iPad. Let me clarify, if you’re a Canon camera owner and a huge gear geek. CanonSGLens give you an in-depth look at a huge range of Canon lens. It includes both a field of view and depth of field simulator as well as sharpness charts and more. Check it out here.

In Combat: From a Marine’s Side of the Camera

Over at The New York Times Lens Blog, Sgt. Thomas James Brennan wrote an article about Reuter’s photographer, Finbarr O’Reilly, who embedded with his squad in Afghanistan. Until I read this, I believed that the relationship between soldier and journalist was tepid at best. Apparently, working side by side in a war zone makes you closer than I thought. You can read the blog here, and don’t forget to click on a few of the links to O’Reilly’s photos.

Don’t forget to share any current news in the comments below!

This year revealed much about how the camera industry and the photography industry operates. In this article, I hope to recap some of the highlights (and lowlights) of this year in case you missed them, and gaze into my crystal viewfinder to predict the future. At Phototuts+, we genuinely hope that your 2012 will be wonderful. Keep reading to see how out fellow photographers and camera makers got along.

2011 Through Three Lenses

18mm: Camera Industry

The camera industry was rocked this year by a variety of things. Flooding caused most Japanese manufactures major delays in fulfilling orders. Nikon was especially hard hit, but still managed to get their Nikon 1 series out before Christmas.

We all learned that making money by making cameras isn’t an easy business. Both Olympus and Kodak had issues this year. In October, “one of the biggest and longest-running loss-hiding arrangements in Japanese corporate history” was revealed, according to the Wall Street Journal. Rumors circulated about ties to organized crime. In the end those seemed untrue, but the upper crust of the company is still under more scrutiny than a mafia crime boss.

Kodak, while not in legal trouble, seems to be in desperate need of money. The company grandly and ceremoniously ceased production of Kodachrome earlier this year. As if it were a sign of things to come, Kodak is now losing millions a week. They are selling off portions of its business like they are on fire. I think Kodak will come out of this on top, but it’s still sad to see the company that basically brought photography to the masses in such a bad spot.

Photo by Nesster/Flickr

50mm: Photography Trends

The buzz around HDR photography started to die down a little. In my opinion, that’s a good thing. But it has been replaced by a plethora of other techniques, some good, some bad.

Tilt-Shift post-production techniques are all the rage with camera companies now including the feature in some cameras. The selective focus technique been around… well, since the first large format cameras were invented, and has the capability to make landscapes appear miniature.

Unfortunately, the other aspects that come with tilting or shifting your lenses are not as easily replicated in Photoshop. On the other hand, the trend brought more attention to the company Lensbaby which produces really interesting lenses that actually allow you to truly tilt your lens. I’m glad the more complicated aspects of photography are being discussed, I just hope it continues.

Photo by Leandro returns/Flickr

Video-shooting DSLRs have possibly surpassed non-video-shooting DSLRs in the current new camera market. With that comes an entirely new DSLR video accessory business. We see dollies and stabilizer everywhere. Because sharing videos is now so easy, people are now starting to get over the novelty and concentrate on the quality. I think this is a really good thing.

Video and photography have begun to merge and will continue to do so. Canon has made a big commitment to the film making industry with its stable of cameras. I just hope people will realize that every video does not need to be shot at f/1.4, a little depth of field goes a long way. If you or your subject moves at all, your focus is gone. Occasionally, this works.

Combining video and photography, I saw a lot of time-lapse videos this year. Some of these were well done, some were pretty self-indulgent. The ones that were most interesting were ones that told a story that was bigger than just time passing. I even saw several tilt-shift miniature time-lapse videos, including a tutorial on how to make one on our site. Again, these are mostly attempts at pushing technique and exploring the limits of what works.

200mm: Three Photographers Stories

The work of the late Vivian Maier exploded on to the street photography scene this year. John Maloof discovered her work in 2007 after a horde of her negatives
]\ n were sold off in a storage locker auction. Before Maloof could fully gather, identify and market the collection Maier died in 2009.

There is now a website, the first of many gallery exhibitions, and a documentary. It would be easy to dismiss her work as mediocre photography wrapped in a good story, but this is untrue. Her distinct style and complete documentation of the cities she lived in is worth more than the story.

In the 2011 Pictures of the Year International competition, the multimedia portfolio category was won by Leslye Davis, a student at Western Kentucky University (the alma mater of yours truly). In second place, Liz O. Baylen with the Los Angeles Times and in the honorable mention spot, Damon Winter with The New York Times.

Davis’ work is stunning and apparently better than shooters at the two of the biggest daily newspapers in the U.S. Check out Davis’ portfolio here. She’ll be interning at the The New York Times next summer, and to that I say, Damon Winter better watch out.

I’ve recently been following the story of a Kansas City photographer named Jose Santa Cruz. He has 30 years behind a camera, but cancer forced him to sell everything he had. He’s been living in the Kansas City Rescue Mission for the past three months.

After the local Fox News station ran a story about him, Kansas City residents donated a camera to him. I hope he gets the help he needs. Being a photographer sometimes means sacrificing a lot of your security. It’s the nature of the profession, but we have to help each other out when we can. You can read the full story here.

The Future: Predictions and Wish List

There are a few things I see on the horizon, and a few more I wish were there, too.

Mirrorless Cameras

Holy crap, have we seen some leaps and bounds in mirrorless cameras or what!? My first prediction: these are here to stay. Pretty obvious, right? Well, if that’s not enough for you. I think Nikon will redesign there 1 series because the function is great, but the looks are hideous.

I think the Fuji X100-type mirrorless with interchangeable lenses will be the first serious contender in the pro market, as long as they get the specs right. Finally, guess which major camera manufacturer isn’t in the game yet? Canon. That’s right, Canon. Remember the wave they made with the G-series point-and-shoots, just wait until their mirrorless drops.

Film

From old to new, let’s talk about film for a minute. I think film will find its place in 2012. That place will be high end fine art photography because there’s just not a reasonably priced substitute for a 4×5 camera out there and there won’t be for a long time (if ever). Don’t talk to me about resolution, I’m talking about functionality.

AND… there’s another place, in the fun enthusiast camp. I’m talking Lomography, people. That crowd will continue to grow because there’s something to be said for the huge variety of cameras that don’t have a screen on the back of them.

Medium Format Digitals

Pentax and Mamiya made waves in the arena in 2011, but even the simplest medium format digital camera/lens combo costs close to $10,000 USD. I think there will be big moves here next year. I wouldn’t be surprised if that number get’s lower than $6,000. Further out, bigger-than-35mm sensor cameras like the Leica S2 will be the pro-option.

My Wishes

My letter to Santa included one thing this year. I want someone to produce a Leica M9 for the masses. By this, I mean, I want a manual focus camera with a shutter speed dial, an aperture ring, an ISO dial and then a few soft buttons next to the screen on the back. The Fuji X100 was close, but unlike a lot of people, I don’t like the viewfinder and I don’t like the fixed lens.

This camera would not be expensive or hard to produce. I don’t need 10 frames a second, I don’t need video, I need a camera that was as straight forward to operate as my Nikon F3. In short, I need knobs, not buttons and menus. It would be nice if they made a SLR version and rangefinder version, too. And could it cost around $400 USD, that would be perfect. And please, keep the color choices to black and chrome. Thanks.

Have a great 2012 everyone! And thank you so much for reading Phototuts+ this year. We hope to bring you a lot of great articles and tutorials next year.

The holidays are upon us, and we’re feeling festive at Tuts+ this weekend! We’d like to take this opportunity to say a huge Christmas thank you to all our readers, and wish you a very Happy Holiday. Read on for a video message from the HQ team, and a few freebies from around the Tuts+ and Envato network!

A Message from Envato HQ

Although the Tuts+ team is spread over the globe, Envato HQ is where much of the Tuts+ magic happens! It isn’t looking traditionally Christmassy in Melbourne at the moment, but we have a special holiday message from everyone at head office:

From everyone at Envato we want to wish you a Happy Holidays and look forward to seeing you all refreshed and ready for another big year in 2012! From Envato HQ to the community, we’ve created a little video to share the holiday cheer. Enjoy!

Music is Kids Holiday Theme by AudioJungle Author CraigHall

Gift Guides & Freebies!

Wondering what to buy your fellow geek this Christmas? Never fear! You may have left it it a little late, but our holiday gift guides can still come in handy. Here are a few great places to start:

• The Official 2011 Nettuts+ Holiday Gift Guide
• 30+ Gift Ideas for Browser App and Browser Game Developers
• 10 Last-minute Gift Suggestions for the Musician in Your Life
• 36 Great Holiday Gift Ideas For The Cg Artist!
• The Official 2011 Phototuts+ Holiday Gift Guide
• 20+ Great Gift Ideas for Any WordPress Developer

We also have a couple of exclusive freebies and discounts, just in time for the holidays:

• Get $6 Off Our New Rockable Book: “How to Record Great Music”
• Exclusive Freebie: 50 Crisp Web UI Icons

The Christmas Freelance Freedom Comic

The “holiday jingle” comic encapsulates everything that we love and hate about freelancing. Don’t forget to sing along to the “Jungle Bells” theme music as you read it…!

You can also enjoy the whole back catalog of Freelance Freedom comics over at FreelanceSwitch.

AppStorm Giveaways

We have two fantastic competitions running over at the AppStorm network over the holiday period, and there’s still time to get your entry in to stand a chance of winning:

1. Business Productivity Bundle Giveaway —Each bundle includes a license to Daylite and Billings Pro – it’s the perfect combination for getting your business organised and making money!
2. The AppStorm Holiday ’11 Video Game Giveaway — In the spirit of this season we’ve hand picked a few critically acclaimed, and award-winning, games released over this year to give away to our readers!

Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year!

All that’s left is to wish you a very happy holiday on behalf of everyone at Tuts+! We hope you’ve enjoyed everything that we’ve had to share this year, and look forward to publishing thousands more top-quality tutorials, articles, freebies, and resources in 2012.

Here’s to another exciting year at Tuts+, and thank you for joining us on the journey!

The holidays are upon us, and we’re feeling festive at Tuts+ this weekend! We’d like to take this opportunity to say a huge Christmas thank you to all our readers, and wish you a very Happy Holiday. Read on for a video message from the HQ team, and a few freebies from around the Tuts+ and Envato network!

A Message from Envato HQ

Although the Tuts+ team is spread over the globe, Envato HQ is where much of the Tuts+ magic happens! It isn’t looking traditionally Christmassy in Melbourne at the moment, but we have a special holiday message from everyone at head office:

From everyone at Envato we want to wish you a Happy Holidays and look forward to seeing you all refreshed and ready for another big year in 2012! From Envato HQ to the community, we’ve created a little video to share the holiday cheer. Enjoy!

Music is Kids Holiday Theme by AudioJungle Author CraigHall

Gift Guides & Freebies!

Wondering what to buy your fellow geek this Christmas? Never fear! You may have left it it a little late, but our holiday gift guides can still come in handy. Here are a few great places to start:

• The Official 2011 Nettuts+ Holiday Gift Guide
• 30+ Gift Ideas for Browser App and Browser Game Developers
• 10 Last-minute Gift Suggestions for the Musician in Your Life
• 36 Great Holiday Gift Ideas For The Cg Artist!
• The Official 2011 Phototuts+ Holiday Gift Guide
• 20+ Great Gift Ideas for Any WordPress Developer

We also have a couple of exclusive freebies and discounts, just in time for the holidays:

• Get $6 Off Our New Rockable Book: “How to Record Great Music”
• Exclusive Freebie: 50 Crisp Web UI Icons

The Christmas Freelance Freedom Comic

The “holiday jingle” comic encapsulates everything that we love and hate about freelancing. Don’t forget to sing along to the “Jungle Bells” theme music as you read it…!

You can also enjoy the whole back catalog of Freelance Freedom comics over at FreelanceSwitch.

AppStorm Giveaways

We have two fantastic competitions running over at the AppStorm network over the holiday period, and there’s still time to get your entry in to stand a chance of winning:

1. Business Productivity Bundle Giveaway —Each bundle includes a license to Daylite and Billings Pro – it’s the perfect combination for getting your business organised and making money!
2. The AppStorm Holiday ’11 Video Game Giveaway — In the spirit of this season we’ve hand picked a few critically acclaimed, and award-winning, games released over this year to give away to our readers!

Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year!

All that’s left is to wish you a very happy holiday on behalf of everyone at Tuts+! We hope you’ve enjoyed everything that we’ve had to share this year, and look forward to publishing thousands more top-quality tutorials, articles, freebies, and resources in 2012.

Here’s to another exciting year at Tuts+, and thank you for joining us on the journey!

A Message from Envato HQ

Although the Tuts+ team is spread over the globe, Envato HQ is where much of the Tuts+ magic happens! It isn’t looking traditionally Christmassy in Melbourne at the moment, but we have a special holiday message from everyone at head office:

From everyone at Envato we want to wish you a Happy Holidays and look forward to seeing you all refreshed and ready for another big year in 2012! From Envato HQ to the community, we’ve created a little video to share the holiday cheer. Enjoy!

Music is Kids Holiday Theme by AudioJungle Author CraigHall

Gift Guides & Freebies!

Wondering what to buy your fellow geek this Christmas? Never fear! You may have left it it a little late, but our holiday gift guides can still come in handy. Here are a few great places to start:

• The Official 2011 Nettuts+ Holiday Gift Guide
• 30+ Gift Ideas for Browser App and Browser Game Developers
• 10 Last-minute Gift Suggestions for the Musician in Your Life
• 36 Great Holiday Gift Ideas For The Cg Artist!
• The Official 2011 Phototuts+ Holiday Gift Guide
• 20+ Great Gift Ideas for Any WordPress Developer

We also have a couple of exclusive freebies and discounts, just in time for the holidays:

• Get $6 Off Our New Rockable Book: “How to Record Great Music”
• Exclusive Freebie: 50 Crisp Web UI Icons

The Christmas Freelance Freedom Comic

The “holiday jingle” comic encapsulates everything that we love and hate about freelancing. Don’t forget to sing along to the “Jungle Bells” theme music as you read it…!

You can also enjoy the whole back catalog of Freelance Freedom comics over at FreelanceSwitch.

AppStorm Giveaways

We have two fantastic competitions running over at the AppStorm network over the holiday period, and there’s still time to get your entry in to stand a chance of winning:

1. Business Productivity Bundle Giveaway —Each bundle includes a license to Daylite and Billings Pro – it’s the perfect combination for getting your business organised and making money!
2. The AppStorm Holiday ’11 Video Game Giveaway — In the spirit of this season we’ve hand picked a few critically acclaimed, and award-winning, games released over this year to give away to our readers!

Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year!

All that’s left is to wish you a very happy holiday on behalf of everyone at Tuts+! We hope you’ve enjoyed everything that we’ve had to share this year, and look forward to publishing thousands more top-quality tutorials, articles, freebies, and resources in 2012.

Here’s to another exciting year at Tuts+, and thank you for joining us on the journey!

The holidays are upon us, and we’re feeling festive at Tuts+ this weekend! We’d like to take this opportunity to say a huge Christmas thank you to all our readers, and wish you a very Happy Holiday. Read on for a video message from the HQ team, and a few freebies from around the Tuts+ and Envato network!

A Message from Envato HQ

Although the Tuts+ team is spread over the globe, Envato HQ is where much of the Tuts+ magic happens! It isn’t looking traditionally Christmassy in Melbourne at the moment, but we have a special holiday message from everyone at head office:

From everyone at Envato we want to wish you a Happy Holidays and look forward to seeing you all refreshed and ready for another big year in 2012! From Envato HQ to the community, we’ve created a little video to share the holiday cheer. Enjoy!

Music is Kids Holiday Theme by AudioJungle Author CraigHall

Gift Guides & Freebies!

Wondering what to buy your fellow geek this Christmas? Never fear! You may have left it it a little late, but our holiday gift guides can still come in handy. Here are a few great places to start:

• The Official 2011 Nettuts+ Holiday Gift Guide
• 30+ Gift Ideas for Browser App and Browser Game Developers
• 10 Last-minute Gift Suggestions for the Musician in Your Life
• 36 Great Holiday Gift Ideas For The Cg Artist!
• The Official 2011 Phototuts+ Holiday Gift Guide
• 20+ Great Gift Ideas for Any WordPress Developer

We also have a couple of exclusive freebies and discounts, just in time for the holidays:

• Get $6 Off Our New Rockable Book: “How to Record Great Music”
• Exclusive Freebie: 50 Crisp Web UI Icons

The Christmas Freelance Freedom Comic

The “holiday jingle” comic encapsulates everything that we love and hate about freelancing. Don’t forget to sing along to the “Jungle Bells” theme music as you read it…!

You can also enjoy the whole back catalog of Freelance Freedom comics over at FreelanceSwitch.

AppStorm Giveaways

We have two fantastic competitions running over at the AppStorm network over the holiday period, and there’s still time to get your entry in to stand a chance of winning:

1. Business Productivity Bundle Giveaway —Each bundle includes a license to Daylite and Billings Pro – it’s the perfect combination for getting your business organised and making money!
2. The AppStorm Holiday ’11 Video Game Giveaway — In the spirit of this season we’ve hand picked a few critically acclaimed, and award-winning, games released over this year to give away to our readers!

Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year!

All that’s left is to wish you a very happy holiday on behalf of everyone at Tuts+! We hope you’ve enjoyed everything that we’ve had to share this year, and look forward to publishing thousands more top-quality tutorials, articles, freebies, and resources in 2012.

Here’s to another exciting year at Tuts+, and thank you for joining us on the journey!

A Message from Envato HQ

Although the Tuts+ team is spread over the globe, Envato HQ is where much of the Tuts+ magic happens! It isn’t looking traditionally Christmassy in Melbourne at the moment, but we have a special holiday message from everyone at head office:

From everyone at Envato we want to wish you a Happy Holidays and look forward to seeing you all refreshed and ready for another big year in 2012! From Envato HQ to the community, we’ve created a little video to share the holiday cheer. Enjoy!

Music is Kids Holiday Theme by AudioJungle Author CraigHall

Gift Guides & Freebies!

Wondering what to buy your fellow geek this Christmas? Never fear! You may have left it it a little late, but our holiday gift guides can still come in handy. Here are a few great places to start:

• The Official 2011 Nettuts+ Holiday Gift Guide
• 30+ Gift Ideas for Browser App and Browser Game Developers
• 10 Last-minute Gift Suggestions for the Musician in Your Life
• 36 Great Holiday Gift Ideas For The Cg Artist!
• The Official 2011 Phototuts+ Holiday Gift Guide
• 20+ Great Gift Ideas for Any WordPress Developer

We also have a couple of exclusive freebies and discounts, just in time for the holidays:

• Get $6 Off Our New Rockable Book: “How to Record Great Music”
• Exclusive Freebie: 50 Crisp Web UI Icons

The Christmas Freelance Freedom Comic

The “holiday jingle” comic encapsulates everything that we love and hate about freelancing. Don’t forget to sing along to the “Jungle Bells” theme music as you read it…!

You can also enjoy the whole back catalog of Freelance Freedom comics over at FreelanceSwitch.

AppStorm Giveaways

We have two fantastic competitions running over at the AppStorm network over the holiday period, and there’s still time to get your entry in to stand a chance of winning:

1. Business Productivity Bundle Giveaway —Each bundle includes a license to Daylite and Billings Pro – it’s the perfect combination for getting your business organised and making money!
2. The AppStorm Holiday ’11 Video Game Giveaway — In the spirit of this season we’ve hand picked a few critically acclaimed, and award-winning, games released over this year to give away to our readers!

Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year!

All that’s left is to wish you a very happy holiday on behalf of everyone at Tuts+! We hope you’ve enjoyed everything that we’ve had to share this year, and look forward to publishing thousands more top-quality tutorials, articles, freebies, and resources in 2012.

Here’s to another exciting year at Tuts+, and thank you for joining us on the journey!

The holidays are upon us, and we’re feeling festive at Tuts+ this weekend! We’d like to take this opportunity to say a huge Christmas thank you to all our readers, and wish you a very Happy Holiday. Read on for a video message from the HQ team, and a few freebies from around the Tuts+ and Envato network!

A Message from Envato HQ

Although the Tuts+ team is spread over the globe, Envato HQ is where much of the Tuts+ magic happens! It isn’t looking traditionally Christmassy in Melbourne at the moment, but we have a special holiday message from everyone at head office:

From everyone at Envato we want to wish you a Happy Holidays and look forward to seeing you all refreshed and ready for another big year in 2012! From Envato HQ to the community, we’ve created a little video to share the holiday cheer. Enjoy!

Music is Kids Holiday Theme by AudioJungle Author CraigHall

Gift Guides & Freebies!

Wondering what to buy your fellow geek this Christmas? Never fear! You may have left it it a little late, but our holiday gift guides can still come in handy. Here are a few great places to start:

• The Official 2011 Nettuts+ Holiday Gift Guide
• 30+ Gift Ideas for Browser App and Browser Game Developers
• 10 Last-minute Gift Suggestions for the Musician in Your Life
• 36 Great Holiday Gift Ideas For The Cg Artist!
• The Official 2011 Phototuts+ Holiday Gift Guide
• 20+ Great Gift Ideas for Any WordPress Developer

We also have a couple of exclusive freebies and discounts, just in time for the holidays:

• Get $6 Off Our New Rockable Book: “How to Record Great Music”
• Exclusive Freebie: 50 Crisp Web UI Icons

The Christmas Freelance Freedom Comic

The “holiday jingle” comic encapsulates everything that we love and hate about freelancing. Don’t forget to sing along to the “Jungle Bells” theme music as you read it…!

You can also enjoy the whole back catalog of Freelance Freedom comics over at FreelanceSwitch.

AppStorm Giveaways

We have two fantastic competitions running over at the AppStorm network over the holiday period, and there’s still time to get your entry in to stand a chance of winning:

1. Business Productivity Bundle Giveaway —Each bundle includes a license to Daylite and Billings Pro – it’s the perfect combination for getting your business organised and making money!
2. The AppStorm Holiday ’11 Video Game Giveaway — In the spirit of this season we’ve hand picked a few critically acclaimed, and award-winning, games released over this year to give away to our readers!

Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year!

All that’s left is to wish you a very happy holiday on behalf of everyone at Tuts+! We hope you’ve enjoyed everything that we’ve had to share this year, and look forward to publishing thousands more top-quality tutorials, articles, freebies, and resources in 2012.

Here’s to another exciting year at Tuts+, and thank you for joining us on the journey!

Photo News of the Week is a new feature on Phototuts+ bringing you the news from all aspects of photography. It is a quick way to keep up with technology, trends and leaders in the craft. And if you have news from the week to share, please drop a link in the comments!

Each week we’ll be featuring three items from three different areas of photography. If you have suggestions for our news roundup, please email them here.

Community: Focussion photo critique website

If you’re looking to take your photography to the level, there’s nothing better than constructive criticism. Lucky, there’s a website just for it. Focussion allows you to upload photos and get them critiqued by others who are passionate about their craft. Even if you don’t have anything you’re willing to post for public scrutiny, browsing the site is a good way to improve your visual literacy. By viewing the images, you can see which images work and which images fail, more importantly, you can read why.

Ebook: How Award-Winning Travel Photographs Are Taken by Mitchell Kanashkevich

Photography guide publisher, Light Stalking has just released a new ebook about travel photography. The author, Mitchell Kanashkevich, a photographer for Getty and Corbis and who’s work has been seen on the cover of Geographical magazine and Digital SLR Photographer as well as in many other magazines. The new ebook takes an in-depth look at several specific photographs. You can see more of Kanashkevich’s work on his website, mitchellkphotos.com.

App: Wander, a photo penpal site

Wander is a free smartphone app for iPhone with an Android version in the works. Here’s how it works. You sign up and give the app your general location. The app matches you with another user in a different location called your “guide.” Then the app will prompt you and your guide with three daily photo assignments, such as one asking you to photograph what’s out your window. For a week, you can exchange photos and change, then the app will assign you a new guide in a new location. I’m very excited about this, it’s the very best of social media, wireless internet and mobile photography all wrapped into one. If you’re interested in different cultures or parts of the world, this is for you. If you’re interested in making connections with people across the globe, this is for you. The app has a built-in translator as well!

Don’t forget to share any current news in the comments below!

This tutorial takes you step by step through the process of creating an upload web button. You will learn how to use just a few simple, yet effective, tools and techniques to create this eye-catching design.

Photo News of the Week is a new feature on Phototuts+ bringing you the news from all aspects of photography. It is a quick way to keep up with technology, trends and leaders in the craft. And if you have news from the week to share, please drop a link in the comments!

Each week we’ll be featuring three items from three different areas of photography. If you have suggestions for our news roundup, please email them here.

Technology: Capturing the Movement of Light

M.I.T.’s Media Lab have produced an ultra-fast imaging system capable of capturing one trillion frames per second. This is fast enough to capture a pulse of light traveling through the air. While the clips in this video are made up of many captures (a sort of layering of video), the result is amazing. This technology will lead to a lot new information. I want to see a video of light traveling through a lens! You can read more about this incredible technology at The Week Magazine.

Product: Camera Obscura

The world renowned pinhole photography Justin Quinnell has release a very cool product just in time for the holidays. For just 25 Euro, you can get your very own camera obscura kit complete with lens and projection screen. This will allow you to turn any room with a window into the very foundation of photography and allow you to see the outside world upside down. You can learn more about that package at pinholephotography.org.

Professional: New York Times to NYPD

Photo by Joe Shlabotnik

A freelance photographer was attempting to cover the arrests of Occupy Wall Street protesters, and was apparently blocked by police from covering the scene. The situation was captured on video. This prompted the rare event of the New York Times sending a letter to the New York Police Department. This came after other media outlets had expressed their concerns to the NYPD as well. The police have been receptive, but it will be interesting to watch the coverage in the coming days. You can read a full account of the story by The Huffington Post.

Don’t forget to share any current news in the comments below!

We’re pleased to announce our 7th in-depth course available to Tuts+ Premium members: Identity Design with Ben Gribbin. Over 18 lessons and nearly 3hrs of video training, you’ll learn all the foundational skills needed to start doing identity design work for clients.

Not a member? Not to worry! There are four public lessons available. Links after the jump.

Public Lessons

• Introduction to Identity Design – We’re going to first look at what Identity Design is and consider what the main differences are between a logo, a brand, and an identity.
• Understanding and Interpreting the Design Brief – We’re going to look at what is often the first step in an identity design project: the design brief. We’ll look at what a design brief does and how it effects your design process.
• Brainstorming & Sketching – Today we are covering sketching and brainstorming. Specifically we’re going to look at brainstorming an identity design project.
• What is a Logo? – We’re going to cover just exactly what a logo is and what makes a good logo. A logo is not a brand. So just exactly what is a logo and where does it fit in your brand?

If you’re on the fence about joining, try becoming a member for a single month, and see how it goes! We have a 30-day, no questions asked, money back promise.

Members: Get Started!

Make yourself a cup of coffee, a pot of tea, or a cool glass of water – and get started with the first lesson!

Questions?

If you have any questions about the Tuts+ Premium service, just leave a comment; I’d be glad to help out any way that I can.

We’re pleased to announce our 7th in-depth course available to Tuts+ Premium members: Identity Design with Ben Gribbin. Over 18 lessons and nearly 3hrs of video training, you’ll learn all the foundational skills needed to start doing identity design work for clients. This includes: research, brainstorming, sketching, designing a logo, business cards, print flyers, web elements (such as banner ads), as well as timescaling, pricing and where to find clients.

Not a member? Not to worry! There are four public lessons available. Links after the jump.

Public Lessons

• Introduction to Identity Design – We’re going to first look at what Identity Design is and consider what the main differences are between a logo, a brand, and an identity.
• Understanding and Interpreting the Design Brief – We’re going to look at what is often the first step in an identity design project: the design brief. We’ll look at what a design brief does and how it effects your design process.
• Brainstorming & Sketching – Today we are covering sketching and brainstorming. Specifically we’re going to look at brainstorming an identity design project.
• What is a Logo? – We’re going to cover just exactly what a logo is and what makes a good logo. A logo is not a brand. So just exactly what is a logo and where does it fit in your brand?

If you’re on the fence about joining, try becoming a member for a single month, and see how it goes! We have a 30-day, no questions asked, money back promise.

Members: Get Started!

Make yourself a cup of coffee, a pot of tea, or a cool glass of water – and get started with the first lesson!

Questions?

If you have any questions about the Tuts+ Premium service, just leave a comment; I’d be glad to help out any way that I can.

Looking for a new web design job? The FreelanceSwitch Job Board is a great resource of freelance gigs and opportunities. New opportunities are posted every day for web designers, and come from a wide range of potential clients. Today we’re showcasing a few of the latest positions that might be perfect for Webdesigntuts+ readers!

Web Developers and PSD to XHTML/CSS/Javascript Experts

Budget: $500 to $1,000 — Location: Anywhere

We’re looking for freelance web developers to lend a hand for a few projects we’re working on.

We’re looking for web developers who have a good experience of building things on the web, and have big ambitions when it comes to delivering development. If you have experience working with…

• HTML5 & CSS3
• XHTML & CSS2
• jQuery & Javascript
• WordPress
• PSD Conversions
• RoR
• PHP, MySQL / LAMP

We have a high standard and quality verification office for the coding and development, we use basecamp and provide with free accounts for dropbox for our most talented people, we want to work on long terms so we will pay invoice for services weekly.

Find Out More

Senior Web Designer

Budget: $10,000+ — Location: Columbia, MO

The primary purpose of this role is to provide senior graphic design services on an on-going basis for Veterans United Home Loans and its divisions. This position will also assist with the creative and art direction of projects, and marketing communication campaigns.

The Senior Graphic Designer will assist the Graphic Designers and direct them on the layout, design and production of projects.

Find Out More

Website UI Designers

Budget: $500 to $1,000 — Location: Anywhere

Do you have the creative sense for User Interface (UI) Design? Then, we are inviting you to showcase your talent now. Exvo.com is looking for web UI designers who are expected to do the following key functions:

• Create user-friendly UI designs and applications which maintain a consistent look-and-feel for each of the Exvo applications
• Work on a variety of projects that require a passion for the user experience and an eye for detail
• Work closely with our Front-End Development team to understand user needs and create interactive mock-ups by using Adobe Fireworks
• Contribute to the user experience and continually improve interface designs

Requirements:

• Extensive experience in user-friendly UI designs- Must be creative and open to new technology- Must have vast knowledge and application of Adobe Fireworks

Note: Be ready for a quick skills test!

Find Out More

Freelance Designer for Web App

Budget: $2,500 to $5,000 — Location: United States

We’re developing several Web applications that gather specific information from the user and then display relevant information to them.

We’re looking for a talented designer to work with our content team to design the GUI for the Web app, basing it off our existing website design and color scheme (to be provided). We would also like to find a provider who can, upon design approval, create valid HTML/CSS markup for the design, though this is not required. Please note, however, that you will NOT need to code the functionality of the application; you would only need to provide the GUI markup.

Applicants should have experience building Web application GUIs and experience in user experience design and concepts. You also MUST be based on the United States and agree to not outsource any aspect of the project.

To apply, please provide links to samples of Web application GUIs you’ve developed as well as what hourly rate you charge. Please also indicate whether you can provide HTML/CSS markup services.

Designer must be willing to sign a non-disclosure, confidentiality and transfer of ownership agreement. Applications without work samples or hourly rate will not be considered. Non-U.S.-based applicants will not be considered.

Find Out More

And Lots More…

These are just a handful of the positions currently being offered over at at Job Board, so be sure to head over and take a look at the full selection. We also have a few RSS feeds that will keep you updated with new openings, and you can even choose only to hear about those specific to web design!

To apply for any of these jobs, simply pick up a FreelanceSwitch membership for an affordable $7 a month. See something you like? Join now!