Many Photoshop enthusiasts use the History panel simply to undo earlier steps of a process. This is super useful, but the History panel is no one-trick pony. When combined with the History Brush tool, you’ve got a powerful ally in your imaging tasks.

The History panel records all of your steps. Just click on an item to revert to that step of your process.

The History panel and History Brush work together to restore specific parts of an image. For example, you can apply a Gaussian Blur to an entire image, then History Brush the focal point so it’s unblurred—great for a depth of field effect.

A similar technique is used to create an antique-like hand-coloring effect on photos. Read the rest of this entry »

The longer you work in design, the harder it can be to stay on top of trends and get new inspiration. It’s easy to just revert to what you’ve always known and what has always worked for you.

It can help a lot to simply pay more attention to the design you see every day, in magazines, on TV, online. But that is always a mix of the best and worst that design has to offer, and only exposes you to design within your locale and areas of interest. I’m not in the market for art classes in Mexico City, so how would I know about the gorgeous interactive experience at semillero.net?

Communication Arts’ Interactive Annual issue introduced me to semillero.net, a triumph of Flash, illustration, music, and interactivity.

After a several year subscribing hiatus, I recently resubscribed to Communication Arts, a magazine for print and interactive designers that you’ve likely come across from time to time. Each issue is practically a book, arriving in a box and printed on lovely stock. It feels nothing like receiving the latest issue of Popular Science… it feels like someone sent you a present. Read the rest of this entry »

I am an engineer by training, a programmer by inclination and a web designer by chance. So, I love organizing information, I can spend hours working on a css or php problem, and I founder when it comes to the colors and the pictures. I’ve read several books about using CSS to make beautiful sites (Zen Garden, transcending css). Wonderful books, but they assume you know how to design the beautiful part of the beautiful sites. What I needed was a book for programmers that explained the basics of designing a good looking site. And, behold, perhaps a month after I thought that, The Principles of Beautiful Web Design by Jason Beaird was published. Talk about timing. Needless to say, I rushed out, bought it, and read it.

Leading You Through the Design Process
The book is organized around the design process of the author, so not only does he tell you how to choose Read the rest of this entry »

In my last Marketing Mentor Tip, How to Dominate Your Market, I focused on what you get if you decide to specialize — namely higher fees because clients are willing to pay for expertise.

But how do you choose which market to focus on? This is the question that stumps many designers.

So here are a few questions to ask yourself about the markets you’re considering:

1. What size and of what type are the projects available through this market?
2. Are they the kind of projects that you enjoy and are capable of doing? Or do the projects conflict with the kind of work you normally do?
3. Do you have experience and samples to show interested prospects?
4. Does this market know they need your services?

Defining your market and determining if that market is viable will be the topic this Thursday, September 27 when my partner, Peleg Top, and I give our first of the Grow Your Business from Your Desktop webinar series in partnership with HOW Magazine.

Like many of its products, Apple recently updated its iLife software. If you already use iLife, you’ve likely seen the little pop-ups announcing the arrival of iLife ‘08 and suggesting that you upgrade. I survived over a year of iLife ‘06 pop-ups and a few ’08s before finally giving in…

Mac users, is the latest version of iLife right for you?

Whether or not you should upgrade really depends on Read the rest of this entry »

Frequently asked questions pages are part of practically any client site project, but tend to be the most boring ones to design. Typically they feature a list of anchors at the top for the questions that jump to the answers farther down the long, uninteresting page. But with a little Ajax (created using a handy Spry widget in Dreamweaver), FAQ pages can look and function a lot better.

As we talked about in an earlier post, Spry widgets allow you to create dynamic features with Ajax, like tabbed or accordion-style interfaces. And accordion-style interfaces are perfect for FAQ pages… Read the rest of this entry »

While browsing through the new Dell catalog the other day, I couldn’t help but notice that ALL of the featured computers (desktops and notebooks) came with widescreen monitors. This has been the case with notebooks for some time now, but for desktops it is relatively new phenomenon (HP and Gateway still offer standard monitors on their cheaper units). What this means to designers is that the 1024×768 resolution, which currently the most common resolution for internet users, is already on its way out, giving way to 1280×800 and larger sizes featured by these widescreen monitors.

That being said, now seems like a good time to revisit the common usability debate about whether a site should be fixed width or liquid width. I don’t want to speak with too many generalizations, but on the whole, usability folks and IAs tend to favor sites that take up all the screen real estate that is available, while designers prefer to create fixed pages that allow for complete control of presentation (or as complete as is possible on the web). The correct answer, Read the rest of this entry »

You asked your legal, copyright and trademark questions, and Jean has answered! All questions are taken from comments posted on the original ‘Ask Jean’ post. We invite you to ask more questions.

Hello Jean,

I am a certified HTML CSS Developer, and own and operate a registered company. I have an entrepreneurial idea. The problem is this, when I publish the idea as a completed idea, it would be very easy to reproduce. Is there any way to prevent or make unlawful the activity of duplication of my concept? It is, I am quite certain a situation of information ownership, but might I be able to get a patent for a constructed product that would limit (or reduce completely) the copying of it by others as well? Read the rest of this entry »

Let’s face it: once you’re April Greiman, Edward Tufte or anyone else on the AIGA list of medalists, you can kick back in a (well-appointed, loft-like) cave dug into the side of a mountain and hungry acolytes will hunt you down.

Until then, it’s up to you to draw eyeballs, and I don’t mean the kind Daniel Johnston is partial to (although, hey—it’s worked for him) . So how do you create some kind of presence? How do you bridge the gap between Talented Neophyte Sans Cred and Design Elder?

Promotion, promotion, promotion. (The good kind, not the cringe-inducing sort.) Read the rest of this entry »

Web designers and developers do a lot of work in Dreamweaver or Fireworks, but tons of time is also spent in a web browser. Screenshotting, checking out source code, validating for web standards… the browser is an essential design tool. And if you have Safari, these tasks can be made easier with some cool plugins.

My latest favorite is Red Snapper. This $8 shareware (with three-day free trial) from Tasty Apps takes perfect, fast screenshots of web pages. You can of course do this with Mac key commands or applications like Snapz Pro (both of which I also use), but one click of the Red Snapper button (added to the Safari toolbar on installation) gives Read the rest of this entry »