Welcome to the March issue of the CAFÉ cup!
Welcome to the CAFE cup for March.
Next week sees the kick-off of Photoshop World in Mandalay Bay, Las Vegas. I will be heading out on Monday and will have the PhotoshopCAFE booth on Tuesday and Wed. I hope you can come by and say hello. The online store will also be open and orders will be shipped during this time. I'll post a report at photoshopCAFE while the festivities are in full swing.
This year has started out very strong for the web and we will focus on web in this issue of the "cup". I have authored the Photoshop and Dreamweaver Integration book, the Photoshop and Dreamweaver Integration DVD and Co-authored a book in Hall of Famer Jack Davis series, How To Wow - Photoshop for the Web. (Read about all these resources in this issue)
Keep posted as we will hit Design and Digital Photography topics hard this year.
Tell your friends and get them to sign up on the list, they may just win a prize. Prizes awarded weekly! As always this list will never be shared or sold to slimy spammers. Write to me and let me know what you would like to see in the Newsletter.
CONGRATULATIONS TO LAST MONTHS WINNERS WHO ARE:
Sue Schwegler - Down and Dirty Tricks DVD by Scott Kelby
Carol -
Down and Dirty Tricks DVD by Scott Kelby
Lori Goding- Down and Dirty Tricks DVD by Scott Kelby
John
Seacastle- Down and Dirty Tricks DVD or book by Scott Kelby
Prizes Kindly Provided by NAPP and ScottKelbyBooks.com
(If you are a winner you will be contacted my myself and Bruce from NAPP)
Is it possible to get quality Royalty free stock photos for $1.50? Sure is, check out istockphoto - They also have Flash movies and Illustrator files. |
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Photoshop and Dreamwever Integration is flying off the shelves right now. Finally, here is a Video that will teach you how to build super-cool websites even if you have no experience. But these are not some lame-o websites, these are the techniques that the pros use. Now in reach of everyone.
Take your awesome designs to the web without compromising your style. Add rollovers, remote rollovers, dropdown menus and much more without any programming involved. Everything you need to know to get started is on this video.
Become a superhero of great design at ADIM 8, the premier 3-day hands-on creative design workshop – April 7-9, 2005 in Santa Monica, CA. Join forces with your creative peers to learn mighty new skills and techniques using Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe In Design, iMovie, and digital photography. Recharge your creative powers, challenge your design muscle, and leave inspired and ready to do YOUR part to make the world of design a better place for all. Register or find out more information
Take home a FREE copy of the NEWEST edition of the Adobe Creative Suite–Premium and a MonacoOPTIXXR monitor calibrator - a more than $1,500 gift package PLUS loads of other gadgets and giveaways you won’t want to miss at ADIM! |
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I remember the early days of web design when the world united in an uprising against the villainous Blinking text. This was so successful that the <blink> tag was actually removed from HTML. I am totally serious about this. This weapon has been removed from the hands of the dangerous, however there are other annoying things within reach of children.
The successor of blinking text is the animated gif. This harmless looking character can become a menace in the hands of the "ohh this is so cool" crowd. Imagine reading a book that is crawling with ants and little characters hitting the pages with hammers, perhaps dinosaurs running across the pages only to disappear in a puff of smoke? And just when you get to the final part of the story, a Vegas style marquee jumps up and shouts "Hit the monkey to win!" Would you read this book? Then why do we do this to our web pages?
I think part of it is the misconception of more is more. Or as they said on Deep Purple's classic "Made In Japan," can we have everything louder than everything else." If you really want to get attention on your web page, a yelling carnival of activity will not achieve this. More than likely the viewer will scream and then breath a deep sign of relief as they click away for the site as fast as possible.
When you design your web page, think about content first. (The actual meat of the site) Then think about navigation (The way to get to the content). Animation, imagery and color are there to enhance and augment the content, not to replace it. Animations are not wrong in themselves, however try to slow them down a little and avoid fast jerky movements or sudden flashes. Please. I want to read your page and enjoy your wonderful content, not use your site as a tool to trigger a seizure.
Web tip: Make sure that you use descriptive titles in your page titles. These are one of your main tools for getting a good page ranking in search engines. "Untitled doc" won't get you much traffic. |
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Author of the Photoshop WOW books - Jack Davis invited myself and Jan Kabili to write a book in the new "How to Wow " series.
This book is full of cool designs and techniques to make your sites pop with mouth-watering eye candy. Included CD with project files.
Coming UP, these are events that Colin will be at During March/April:
Photoshop World Las Vegas (PhotoshopCAFE booth and the Portfolio tour, featuring work from members of PhotoshopCAFE)
ADIM Conference PhotoshopCAFE is sponsoring this event and Colin will be onsite with a booth
PIDE San Diego (Workshops and seminar) Colin teaching 3 4-hour workshops
Navigating the layers Palette You can navigate the layers Palette by using the Left and right bracket keys [ ] Different Modifier key will do different things Alt/Option [ ] Navigate up and down the Palette |
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If you are familiar with the hugely popular Super Tutorial on building a web site with Photoshop and Dreamweaver, or my book "From Photoshop to Dreamweaver", you will LOVE this book. This is not an update, this is a COMPLETELY NEW BOOK! This is all the stuff I wish I had put in the previous book such as Expanded explanation of slices and tables, frames and iframes, liquid sites, e-commerce, drop down menus and more. This is a FULL COLOR simple to follow guide that will take you through concept to upload of the DreamweaverCAFE site. It is also flexible enough that you can apply the lessons to any site! I wrote this as the book I wish I had when I started designing web sites.
Tip: When creating an animated gif, lower the colors and use dithering to smoothen out the images. This will produce a smaller file size. |
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Thanks for tuning into the CAFE Cup and remember: Create don't Steal! See you at the cafe
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