This Adobe Fireworks CS4 Tutorial will help you familiarize yourself with this image editing software and help you create a layout for a website. This tutorial will take you through the making of a website design using fireworks including how to do a logo design in Fireworks. View the tutorial here.

 Have you ever wanted to create vector or bitmap graphics but did’t have all of the expensive programs to work in? Well I got wind of this website/project called Aviary which allows you to do just that.  Aviary has created applications mimicking all of the popular graphics programs out there today. I will list the different programs, what they do and some examples of work created by people. I find it quite amazing what you can do with these programs — and they are all free.  Aviary uses names of bird species for each of their programs. Image Editor (Similar to Photoshop, Paint Shop, Gimp, etc.) which is called Pheonix and is depicted by a very nice Peonix icon. Pheonix has all of the basic things you need to edit an image which include: clone tool, magic wand, filters, selection tools, smudge, layers and image resizing. To Give Pheonix (image editor) a try click here. Here are some of the popular images that I really like. These were created in Pheonix by regular users:   Apple...

This tutorial will give you an idea of how to productively clone an object out of an image. Some people might wonder why it is called cloning. This is because you are creating a part of the image that was not there from other parts of the image. In this tutorial I will tell you some of the basics. Please bear with me, it is difficult to show you in detail every step without overbloating the post with images. Level: Intermediate (can be useful for advanced Photoshop users) Photoshop Version: CS4 (Can apply to Earlier versions up to Photoshop 6) Tutorial: In this image is a bug that we are going to remove. We are going to clone it out by placing pieces of the image over it until it is gone. Each person using Photoshop will have their own way of doing this — so take note: this is my way of doing this particular action. The first thing we want to do is to clone out the major part of the image by using a piece of the image, here we select a square part of the petal. Next,...

Level: Intermediate (useful for advanced users) Description: Have you ever tried to cut an image out of it’s background using Photoshop only to be dissapointed in the fact that it does no look good in its new background? This is one way to do photoshop masking. Here I go over 3 simple steps to make your cutout more realistic. This lesson was created for lower level users as well as advanced users. The technique used here to make the first selection is only used to keep the learning gradient easy. Advanced users would replace the selection steps shown below with what they know of with regard to making a selection. Photoshop Version: CS2 (Can apply to Earlier versions up to Photoshop 7) How to: First select the polygonal lasso tool. Click and drag around the outside of the image you want to cutout.    Next use the lasso tool to cutout the inside parts of the image. You do this by holding [Alt/Option] and click with the lasso, then continue until you have covered the part you...

Make a glass looking button. This is a similar style to the Windows Vista Task bar. Level: Intermediate Photoshop Version: CS2 (Can be done in Earlier versions up to Photoshop CS) How to: First create a blank photoshop document using these settings: Width: 4 inches, Height: 1 inch, DPI: 300.      Select the rounded rectangle tool as shown here: Draw a rounded rectangle in a similar fashion to this. I used a Corner Radius of .125 in. You can change the radius as you like. More radius makes the corner more rounded, less radius makes the corner sharper. Change the foreground color to white and draw another rounded rectangle as you see here. You can change the radius for this as well. To make a more glossy look, decrease the radius, to make a duller shine, increase the radius. You can make many different variations of glass buttons using this technique. There are many other techniques as well for creating glass buttons. This is one of them.      Next, change the opacity of the...