Software Articles

November 21, 2010

Web Design Courses Can Kick-Start Your Web Development Career

Filed under: Dreamweaver — Tags: , , , — admin @ 12:09 am

If you are a business owner you may wonder how web design training can help your business succeed. If you are involved with a computer related business, it can be easier to see how it will benefit you. However, even if you are not directly involved with computers, web design in general can be a benefit to you professionally and personally.

If you have a business that you are trying to promote, a web site can be essential to your advertising methods. It allows you to reach a much wider client base than you would be able to reach through standard media advertising, and it can allow you to present a larger number of goods or a larger amount of information that you would be able to through a print or television advertisement.

Good web design is important but it can be expensive. You can expect to pay anywhere from a few hundred dollars for a basic website to thousands for a complicated or involved design. And by allowing an outside company to design your website you are letting go of the control you have over the finished product. It can be easy and worthwhile to look into web design courses through online learning sites or through community colleges.

If you want to learn business related web design applications, you should concentrate on courses such as writing for search engine optimization, e commerce related programs and general site design concepts so that you can generate a professional and logically designed website. Web designers that are making a career of the business learn basic design principles, information on incorporating images and video, and special applications such as flash animation.

Even if you are more interested learning to design websites for yourself and relatives there are some principals that will carry through from the commercial side of the business. You will want to make sure that your site will load well no matter what the connection speed is of the people viewing it. You will also want to make sure that people can find the information they are looking for. Web design training can help you achieve all of these things and more.

Even if you complete your training you should keep in mind that you may need to take refresher courses from time to time. You need to make sure that you are up to date on new operating systems or changes and developments that take place when new versions of programs are released.

If you are interested in web design training, you may be surprised at how easy and fun the courses are. From a starter course in basic web design to building complex sites with multiple pages, you can find a course which gives you the information and the training that you need.

Dreamweaver Web Design courses.

April 26, 2010

Adobe InDesign’s Vector Drawing Capabilities

Filed under: InDesign — Tags: , , , — admin @ 9:49 pm

Given that Adobe own both InDesign and Illustrator, it should come as no surprise that the vector drawing tools found in InDesign function in pretty much the same way as those found in Illustrator. InDesign contains tools and menu commands for creating, manipulating and transforming vector shapes. These are used when working with text and graphic frames as well as with decorative page elements such as backgrounds, lines and flourishes.

The three shape tools (rectangle, ellipse and polygon) are duplicated in InDesign. The first series of tools are used for creating frames, containers into which the user can place images. The second series of tools is used to create simple shapes in exactly the same way as in Adobe Illustrator.

The shapes created with the two sets of tools are distinguished from each other by their contents: frames, by default, are containers for images; shapes contain nothing. You can change the contents of any item created with the two sets of tools by right-clicking on the object and choosing one of the options in the Content sub-menu: Graphic, Text or Unassigned.

Having created a vector shape you can transform it in the usual ways: move, resize, rotate, flip horizontal, flip vertical and shear. As with Illustrator, InDesign allows you to transform an object either by using one of the transformation tools or by using the options in the Transform sub-menu found under the Object menu. The advantage of using the tools is that you can specify the pivot point used during the transformation. This appears as a registration positioned, by default, in the centre of the object which may be moved to any position inside or outside the object being transformed.

One very powerful transformation feature in Illustrator is the ability to repeat a transformation using the Transform Again command and InDesign also incorporates this feature. Say for example, you are creating a layout where you want some text copied and rotated several times with each copy having a different tint of the same colour, giving a kind of fade-out effect. Having copied and rotated the original text once, you can repeat the rotate and copy step by choosing Object – Transform Again – Transform Again or by using the keyboard shortcut Control-Alt-3. It is rather a nuisance that this shortcut differs from the one used in Illustrator, Control-d, but kind of inevitable since Control-d is used in InDesign as the shortcut for File – Place.

Click here for Adobe InDesign training.

April 18, 2010

Marquee Selection Tool In Adobe Photoshop

Filed under: Photoshop — Tags: , , , — admin @ 1:14 pm

The Marquee tool is one of the three tools in Photoshop which are used to make selections, the other two being the Lasso and Magic Wand. It is perhaps the most basic of the three, allowing you to make a rectangular or elliptical selection on any part of the image. As with all of the other selection tools, it can be used to make both new selections and to modify existing selections. To choose the marquee shape you wish to create, simply click on the tool and hold the mouse button down until the flyout menu appears then choose either “Rectangular” or “Elliptical”.

When making new selections, the modifier keys can be used to determine the behaviour the tool. If the Shift key is held down while you drag to describe the selection, the resulting selection will either be a circle or a rectangle. If you hold down the Alt key while creating the shape, the shape will be drawn outward from the point you initially click on. Naturally, you can use these two keys in combination to draw a circle or square from the centre.

If you have an existing selection, you can use the same two modifier keys to determine how the selection you make will interact with the existing selection. This time, Shift is used to add to a section while Alt is used to subtract from the selection. Thus, for example, if you want to make a semi-circular selection, you could start by making a circular selection with the elliptical Marquee tool. You could then switch to the rectangular Marquee tool, hold down the Alt key and draw a rectangle which intersects one half of the circle. The area where the two shapes intersect will be subtracted from the selection.

The options toolbar also allows you to change the behaviour of the Marquee tool. You can switch from Normal mode to Constrained or Fixed Size. Thus, for example, if you were creating a series of images which all need to have a 4 by 3 aspect ratio, you could choose the Constrained option and enter 4 for the with and 3 for the height. Each selection you make with the Marquee tool will then automatically have this shape.

In addition to the elliptical and rectangular shape, the Marquee tool flyout menu also allows you to choose “Single Row” and “Single Column”. In this mode, simply clicking on any part of the image creates a selection one pixel high or wide going right across the image. If you zoom in, you can hold down the Shift key and click again to make it two pixels, three pixels, etc This mode is sometimes useful when restoring old photographs to select a crease in the original photograph prior to using the cloning tools to remove the flaw.


Click here for Adobe Photoshop training classes.

Graphic File Formats And Adobe Photoshop

Filed under: Photoshop — Tags: , , , — admin @ 1:01 pm

The native file format of Adobe Photoshop documents is “.psd”. This is the only format which supports all of Photoshop’s features: layers, layer masks, layer comps, etc. If you have used these features in creating your final artwork, it is always a good idea to retain the “.psd” version and use File – Save As to export your work in any other format.

When exporting images from Photoshop, you will normally either be targeting print or web graphics. Print graphics are saved in the CMYK colour space while web graphics remain in Photoshop’s native colour space: RGB. With print graphics the focus is on quality, while the main talent of web graphics formats is file compression.

When exporting work for print, the standard format to use is TIFF (Tagged Image File Format) and the colour space CMYK. Although the TIFF format is capable of preserving layers, best practice is to make sure that you flatten the image by choosing Layers – Flatten Image before exporting. EPS (Encapsulated PostScript) is another option for exporting files for print. However, this option is now normally reserved for files that contain one or more spot colours.

The two main formats used for exporting web graphics are GIF (Graphic Interchange Format) and JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group). The GIF format compresses files by reducing the number of colours in an image. This makes the format ideal for exporting images that contain flat colour such as logos, charts and symbols. If photographs or images containing smooth transitions of colour are saved in GIF format, posterization and banding will normally occur. This is where, instead of seeing all the colours that were in the image, we see simplified clumps or bands of colour.

The JPEG format reduces file size by dividing the image into blocks of 8 x 8 pixels and locating redundant information within these blocks and rewriting the information in a simplified manner which requires less data storage. The fact that the human eye does not detect slight changes in colour means that pixels which have very similar colour values can be treated as being identical. When saving an image in the JPEG format, Photoshop allows you to specify the degree of compression. Naturally, there is always some loss of quality, so it is never a good idea to open a JPEG, make changes to it and then resave it. It is always better to fall back on the original PSD file if changes need to be made.

Click here for Adobe Photoshop training classes.

April 10, 2010

How To Transform Adobe Photoshop Selections

Filed under: Computers — Tags: , , , , , — Chris Mason @ 7:42 am

Selections are a big deal in Adobe Photoshop. If your boss says to you, “Can we cut out this person and put them against a different background?”, there is no way that you can tell the program to do this. As far as a computer is concerned, your image is just a series of pixels. How easy or difficult it is to select the person will depend on how much contrast there is between them (or more likely their clothes) and the background scene behind them.

Having made an initial selection, you will often need to transform it in some way. Photoshop selections can be transformed in a manner not dissimilar to the way that objects are transformed in the vector environment. One key thing to remember is that in order for this transformation to work, one of the selection tools has to be active. If the Move tool is active, the pixels inside the selection will also be transformed.

The simplest form of transformation is movement. This can be done either by placing the cursor inside the selection and dragging or by using one of the cursor keys on the keyboard. Each time a cursor key is pressed, the selection will move one pixel in the direction specified. If the Shift key is held down while a cursor key is pressed, the selection will move 10 pixels in the given direction.

For other forms of transformation, choose Transform Selection from the Select menu. A bounding rectangle will then be displayed around the selection with handles similar to those found in vector drawing programs. You can drag the handles to resize the selection or drag just outside the handles to rotate. You can even hold down the Control key and drag the handles to distort your selection.

As well as these manual transformations, Photoshop’s Select menu also contains a number of automatic transformation commands. One of the most commonly used is feathering: Select – Feather. Feathering blurs the edges of a selection enabling the selected area to blend into the non-selected parts of the image. To access the other options go to the Select – Modify sub-menu. For example, the command Select-Modify-Expand allows you to increase the size of the selection by the number of pixels you specify. Naturally, there is also the reverse command: Select-Modify-Contract.

Click here for Photoshop training courses in central London.

August 27, 2009

Using DataBound Controls In ASP.Net 3.5

Filed under: ASP.Net — Tags: , , , , — admin @ 10:32 am

Displaying data on a web page which is bound to information in a database is a very common requirement in web applications. In ASP.NET version 1, the main control for achieving this was the DataGrid. In the current release of ASP.NET, version 3.5, the DataGrid is conspicuously absent from the Toolbox in Visual Web Developer. In fact, although the DataGrid can still be used in ASP.NET pages and will work fine, it is now deprecated. The good news is that there is a good choice of more powerful new controls which have taken its place. Four of these controls (GridView, DataList, Repeater and List View) are suitable for displaying multiple records from a data source and then there are another two (FormView and DetailsView) which are used to display only one record at a time.

The GridView control is the workhorse of ASP.NET’s DataBound controls. It displays data items in an automatically-generated table and has a rich set of easily-configurable options.  Options include the ability to customize columns and to include custom content in columns such as images or any other relevant HTML column. Command columns can also be added containing links which will enable the user to edit and delete records. The control also supports paging and sorting.

The DataList control also automatically generates a table when it produces its output. However, unlike the GridView control, it allows the display of more than one record per row using its RepeatColumns property. The DataList is also template-driven, requiring the use of an ItemTemplate containing dynamic data. The elements placed inside the ItemTemplate are rendered once for each item in the bound data.

The Repeater Control also uses an ItemTemplate element to format its output. However, since it does not automatically generate a table, it offers considerable flexibility of layout. Output can be rendered as paragraphs, as a series of DIV elements, an ordered list, an unordered list or a customized table.

The ListView control, introduced with ASP.NET 3.5, also uses templates for displaying its output. However, it is far more sophisticated, allowing the use of a variety of templates, for example: a LayoutTemplate for specifying the overall container for the data; an ItemTemplate for specifying the rendering of each item of data; an ItemSeparator template, used to specify the content displayed between items of data; and so on. The ListView control also supports paging, sorting and editing records as well as the creation of new records.

Of the two controls used to display single items of data, the DetailsView resembles GridView in that it displays its output in an automatically-generated HTML table. The other single record data bound control, the FormView, resembles the ListView control, in that it is entirely template driven. Both of the single record controls support paging and sorting and allow you to edit and delete records as well as adding new ones.

Author’s company runs ASP.NET training courses in London and throughout the UK.

Powered by WordPress