Category: Tutorials

You learn something everyday if you pay attention

Tips on How to Pick the Right Icons for Your Website

When designing a website, we often spend a good bit of time considering which visual assets to use. Photos and illustrations, for example, can have a large impact on a design. However, those aren’t the only assets we should focus on. One asset that can get easily overlooked is icons. There are a lot of… Continue reading Tips on How to Pick the Right Icons for Your Website

11 Best Social Media Scripts and Plugins to Streamline Your Workflow

If you are running a business or building a brand, you are always looking for ways to increase your online reach. A streamlined, accessible and consistent social media presence is essential, whether you are a bricks-and-mortar shop, a digital specialist, or a marketing influencer. Using scripts and plugins from CodeCanyon, you can make your life… Continue reading 11 Best Social Media Scripts and Plugins to Streamline Your Workflow

How to Draw Natural, Textured, Afro Hairstyles (Afros, Locs, Braids, Twists)

What You’ll Be Creating In this tutorial, we’ll look at drawing multiple hairstyles that tend to be popular choices for natural, afro textured hair: afros, locs, braids, and twists. While these styles could potentially be worn by people with other hair types, we will primarily focus on Type 4 hair. We’ll take a stylistic approach… Continue reading How to Draw Natural, Textured, Afro Hairstyles (Afros, Locs, Braids, Twists)

Hands-on With ARIA: Accessibility for eCommerce

Looking to make your site more accessible? Or maybe you want to make it easier to traverse your site overall using browsers and other interfaces? Using ARIA, you can do both. Let’s take a look at what ARIA is and how it can benefit an eCommerce site. We’ll also go through some examples step by… Continue reading Hands-on With ARIA: Accessibility for eCommerce

Create Custom Maps With the MapSVG Plugin

What You’ll Be Creating If you’re like me, you’ve been using Google Maps to add maps to your WordPress sites for years, but you sometimes get a little frustrated about the lack of customization options. In this tutorial, I’m going to show you how to use an alternative—a WordPress plugin called MapSVG that lets you… Continue reading Create Custom Maps With the MapSVG Plugin

Practical Tips for Effective Design Critique

Facilitating an effective design critique is a great way to have a conversation with stakeholders and check in on the progress of your project, collecting a wide breadth of feedback as you do so. Leveraging the feedback of a group, however, exposes you to many perspectives which may be unhelpful if you don’t use your… Continue reading Practical Tips for Effective Design Critique

How to Digitally Paint Dimension and Texture in Adobe Photoshop

What You’ll Be Creating How do you add volume and texture to digital paintings? Simple. Just reference real-life objects! Digital painting is difficult for many people, but it’s really all about patience and giving yourself adequate time to develop details to the best of your ability. So today, we’re going to tackle this challenge by… Continue reading How to Digitally Paint Dimension and Texture in Adobe Photoshop

Render Text and Shapes on Images in PHP

In the previous, we focused on loaded and manipulating images with PHP. We learned how to rotate, resize, scale or flip an image. We also learned about different filters and the convolution matrix. Those tutorials also covered some practical uses of the GD library like resizing all images in a directory or adding watermarks on multiple… Continue reading Render Text and Shapes on Images in PHP

20 Different Fonts to Make Stylish Graphic Design Projects in 2018

Explore different letter fonts to complement your work. Get inspired with this awesome list of new resources for 2018. Make Stylish Graphic Design Projects With These Fonts Every designer should have a collection of different font styles in their arsenal. Because no matter the occasion, creative fonts are the best way to upgrade any project.… Continue reading 20 Different Fonts to Make Stylish Graphic Design Projects in 2018

25+ Best Joomla Personal Blog Templates for 2018

When it comes to content management systems, Joomla is a versatile and popular CMS that can be used for all types of websites. From business to portfolio sites, Joomla can help you get your business online and show potential customers what you’ve got to offer. But, Joomla can also be used for personal blogs whether… Continue reading 25+ Best Joomla Personal Blog Templates for 2018

20 Best WordPress Calendar Plugins and Widgets

Whether you need an event calendar plugin, a booking system with payments, or a Google calendar widget, this list of plugins will have something to improve your app or site. Take a look at these 20 plugins available for download on Envato Market to see what WordPress is capable of. WordPress calendar plugins encompass plugins for… Continue reading 20 Best WordPress Calendar Plugins and Widgets

How to Create a Chalkboard Sign With Chalk Text in Adobe Photoshop

What You’ll Be Creating Learn how to create a chalkboard sign with chalk text effect in Photoshop using textures and layer styles. This chalk photo effect is a part of the Chalk and Chalkboard Photoshop Actions from my portfolio on Envato Market.  You can also the check the new Chalk Photo Effect Photoshop Action. You can create realistic… Continue reading How to Create a Chalkboard Sign With Chalk Text in Adobe Photoshop

How to Boost Email Conversions With Personalization and Dynamic Content

Did you know, that instead of sending the same email to everyone on your mailing list, you can improve your results and conversions by sending highly-targeted messages to laser-focused audiences? I’m not just talking about just personalizing the message subject line or the greeting–those things help, but what I’m talking about is using dynamic content… Continue reading How to Boost Email Conversions With Personalization and Dynamic Content

How to Create a Pastel Photo Effect Action in Adobe Photoshop

What You’ll Be Creating In this tutorial, you will learn how to create an amazing pastel photo effect in Adobe Photoshop. I will explain everything in so much detail that anyone can create it, even those who have just opened Photoshop for the first time.  The effect shown above is the one I will show… Continue reading How to Create a Pastel Photo Effect Action in Adobe Photoshop

Resize and Manipulate Images in PHP (With Examples)

In my previous tutorial, we discussed basic image manipulation using the PHP GD library. In that tutorial, I gave a brief introduction to the library and showed you how to load images from a file or create them from scratch in PHP. After that, we learned how to crop, rotate, scale and flip an image… Continue reading Resize and Manipulate Images in PHP (With Examples)

How to Upload a File in PHP (With Example)

In this article, I’ll explain the basics of file upload in PHP. Firstly, we’ll go through the PHP configuration options that need to be in place for successful file uploads. Following that, we’ll develop a real-world example of how to upload a file.  Configure PHP Settings There are a couple of PHP configuration settings that… Continue reading How to Upload a File in PHP (With Example)

How to Formulate an Email Design and Development Strategy

In this tutorial I’ll explain how to focus your efforts on the email clients and webmail clients being used by your target audience. Note: this tutorial is part of a whole week’s worth of email content on Tuts+ Web Design–check out the Mastering HTML Email learning guide for more! 1. Understand the Importance of a Strategy Your target… Continue reading How to Formulate an Email Design and Development Strategy

Your Guide to InDesign’s New Rival

Adobe InDesign has long been the market leader in publishing software. But rival layout design programs are starting to make waves in the market, with Affinity Publisher being the latest to offer a competitive alternative to InDesign. If you’re a seasoned print designer or are looking to dip a toe into publishing design, you’ll want… Continue reading Your Guide to InDesign’s New Rival

How to use the wind blast effect in Adobe Photoshop

Feel like firing up Adobe Photoshop and creating something cool? Let’s leave boring posters behind and work with the wind blast effect to come up with a neoclassical-style poster template. Ready? Let’s go! What you’ll learn How to set up guides in Photoshop How to crop an image using Layer Masks in Photoshop… Continue reading How to use the wind blast effect in Adobe Photoshop

5 Photoshop Effects for Mind-Blowing Web Graphics

Utilizing the right images on your website can make a huge impact. Images can get your message across in a way that words alone cannot. It’s one of the most surefire methods to stand out from the crowd. To get the most out of your images, you’ll want to use a professional-grade tool like Adobe… Continue reading 5 Photoshop Effects for Mind-Blowing Web Graphics

How to Create a Glowing, Fireflies Photo Manipulation in Adobe Photoshop

What You’ll Be Creating Have you ever caught fireflies on a warm summer night? When I was a kid we used to call them “lightning bugs.” I was always fascinated by how they would shine and glow against the sky, and loved releasing them back into the night. So in this tutorial, I’ll show you… Continue reading How to Create a Glowing, Fireflies Photo Manipulation in Adobe Photoshop

8 New Ways to Refactor Your Code With Swift 4

Swift is one of the fastest-growing languages in history, due to its elegance, simplicity, and “safety by design”. In fact, Swift’s official mantra is “to make programming simple things easy, and difficult things possible”. In this post, you’ll learn how to use Swift to its fullest by refactoring your code. While a lot of the… Continue reading 8 New Ways to Refactor Your Code With Swift 4