Graphics

Photoshop to the rescue: fixing excessive contrast in your digital pics

Heather Solomon — Tue, 30 Aug 2005 12:13:00 GMT

Take a look at your latest batch of digital photos. Chances are the biggest problem with most of them is lack of contrast. They look dull or muddy because they don’t have the full tonal range of black blacks, white whites, and lots of gray shades in between. That’s easy to fix in Photoshop with a Levels adjustment (pull in the black and white Input slider to the edges of the mound of data in the histogram) or a Curves adjustment (drag the curve into a classic, subtle S shape). But sometimes too much contrast, rather than lack of contrast is the problem with a photo. Can Photoshop help you there? Ben Long offers a cogent explanation of the problem and some practical solutions (like the Shadow/Highlight adjustment) in this article at Creativepro.

Very Resourceful Web Resource Site

Heather Solomon — Mon, 22 Aug 2005 12:24:00 GMT

This site made me go “damn!” Check out the resource topics:

Creativity
CSS galleries, showcases, layouts, menus, techniques, web-tools, services
Color tools, schemes, palettes, patterns, theory
Royalty free photos
HTML
Accessibility checkers
Tools
AJAX
DOM
Fonts
Typography
CMS
Blogging
Specifications
Usability & accessibility
Free Add links
SEO tools and references
How to get things to work
Freelancers

» Web Developer's Handbook

"Acrylic" available for download

Heather Solomon — Tue, 16 Aug 2005 23:58:00 GMT

"Acrylic" (code name) is the professional design program that brings together the richness of pixel-based painting and the performance of editable vector graphics for a more fluid and flexible creative workflow. Create sophisticated designs and graphic elements for your on-screen, Web, and print projects. (MSFT's Overview of Acrylic)

You can get more info about it here and dowload it here (good luck I am still trying).

I definitely don't see this as a Photoshop or Illustrator killer, more just an app that devies will dork with when they need a graphic and don't call upon a designer. Since Photoshop is in its billionth version, it is leaps and bounds ahead of this app so I am not likely to switch. But if it can get devies to stop saying things like “I did an image in Paint”, the world will be a happier place.

Oh, and I am glad this is a code name cause it takes too much mental power to spell Acrylic.

Tab Navigation using CSS only - Great for SharePoint

Heather Solomon — Thu, 11 Aug 2005 00:24:00 GMT

My buddy and design counterpart at work whipped up a tab navigation for a SharePoint client who needed navigation between web part pages. You can put this code into a content editor web part and have insta-nav on your web part pages. Here is a preview:

The ZIP file contains the HTML code with CSS and the images to create the tabs. You can of course tweak to your liking for your own design. And this isn't just for SharePoint, you can use it for any web site.

» Download the ZIP file for tab nav

Chris, who wrote this code, likes to blog about fish and stars and other stuff that shows he has a life. So he generously offered that I could post his tab nav on my site. If you have any questions though, bug me via post comments or my contact form. Leave Chris please to play with his family and fish. :-)

Display DIV's on top of Flash Content

Heather Solomon — Mon, 25 Jul 2005 13:38:00 GMT

Via Erol and on Xander's Blog:

The solution to display a div on top off flash for the newer browser is the wmode option opaque or transparent.

<object classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,29,0" width="100" height="200">
    <param name="movie" value="test.swf" />
    <param name="quality" value="high" />
    <param name="wmode" value="opaque" />
    <embed src="matrix.swf" width="100" height="200" quality="high" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="opaque"></embed>
</object>

The following browsers currently support windowless mode:

Windows and Mac OS X

Internet Explorer 3 or higher (Windows)
Internet Explorer 5.1* and 5.2* (Macintosh)
Netscape 7.0*
Mozilla 1.0 or higher*
AOL*
CompuServe*

* Macromedia Flash Player version 6,0,65,0 (Windows) or 6,0,67,0 (Macintosh) or higher required for this feature.

Read what Macromedia writes about this subject: Flash content displays on top of all DHTML layers -> http://www.macromedia.com/go/tn_15523

Rockin Icons

Heather Solomon — Fri, 01 Jul 2005 11:55:00 GMT

My buddy Chris passed this icon site along to me. Some are free, some aren't. But they are very cool and professional looking and don't look out of some 1990's PowerPoint presentation!

» Free Icons at FastIcon.com
» Royalty-free Icons for purchase at FastIcon.com

Kale passed this URL along... thanks Kale!

» GUI Icons