Designer's Terminal - A Peerless Station For Design Inspiration And Resources.

85 Amazing Examples of Forced Perspective Photography

Taimur Asghar — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 23:54:49 +0000

Forced perspective is a photographic technique that uses optical illusion to make an object appear smaller, larger, closer by or further away than it actually is. Main uses are photography, film and drawing. It makes use of fooling the users mind by putting objects closer by, or further away from the camera.

This is a amazing collection of images, wich emply forced perspective photography.

When it comes to inspiration then there is no limitation on resources. Photography is one of the key sources of inspiration for some of our past work. Here we talking about photography of Specific form named as “Forced Perspective Photography” which I find usually amaze me. If you know how to shoot a photo then you can also change something fairly simple to something creative or abstract or otherwise more artistic. You don’t need any special skills for taking such shots. It all depends on the environment and perfect timing

Brilliant Examples of Forced Perspective Photography

Photography can serve as a inspiration to designers, these pictures will sometimes blow your mind and amaze you by the sheer stunning beauty. Enjoy Forced Perspective Photography Inspiration!

43 Free Stock Photo Sites For You To Use

Taimur Asghar — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 16:04:27 +0000

When I began the research for this article, I knew of only a handful of free stock photography sites. I set out to find as many good ones as I could, thinking maybe I’d find a dozen. I was quite surprised to find 43 good, solid resources out there. There are probably more, but these are the ones I found. If you’ve got a favorite and it’s not here, send it along.

Note the terms of use for each site. Some of these sites offer free images in addition to images for a fee. All of them are worth a look.

Keep in mind that “Royalty Free” does not mean the images are free; it means that you don’t need to pay the photographer a royalty each time you use the image. These sites offer

Stock.XCHNG is my favorite site for free stock photography. Searching and browsing is a breeze, and they even include a lightbox, which is a handy way to save images for later use.

This is a huge resource, currently indexing over 3 million photos! Every Stock is a search engine for free photos, and it searches many of the sites listed here. Search options allow you to specify license type. Highly recommended.

The photos on Imagebase are free to use, and are licensed under a Creative Commons license. Images are available in two high resolution (1600 x 1200 or 3072×2048) formats.

Morguefile is a completely free source for stock photos. Check the FAQ for usage. The term “morgue file” is used by illustrators and others for a stockpile of images used for reference material. Nothing ghoulish about it!

Openphoto groups their completely free photos by categories, and offers a search function as well. Registration is only necessary if you’d like to upload photos.

Stockvault is a very classy, modern site with thousands of images and some Photoshop tutorials. Membership is free and unlocks some additional features, such as a lightbox. Definitely worth a look.

Unprofound is unusual in that photos are grouped by color, rather than category. There is also a search function. Registration is not necessary, but allows you to create a free online portfolio, and to contribute to the ever-growing collection.

Photo Rogue offers something unique: they take online requests for particular images. Their crew of photographers will actually go out and take your photo for you, for free. Not all requests are filled, but wow! What a concept!

Freerange requires registration before you can download. While there are no categories for browsing, there is a search function. They also invite you to make requests, as they have many images that aren’t online yet.

Geek Philosopher has many categories, and all the photos are free. There’s no registration. They request that you list a photo credit if you use a photo, but otherwise, there’s little restriction. In addition to photos, they offer backgrounds and wallpaper.

Cepolina is an international site, with photo descriptions in 17 languages, and the ability to browse photos using maps of the world, including specific European countries. You can also browse by category, and use a search function.

This site requires registration in order to enter the site, but once you’re in, you can upload or download, and participate in the forum, all for free. This is a very community-oriented site. Photos are grouped by category but there is no photo search function, that I could see. The forum software is a limitation here.

Woophy takes Cepolina’s map concept one step further: the home page is a giant map of the world! Every dot on the map represents photos taken at that location. This is a community for travel photographers, sharing their images with the world. Definitely worth a visit.

Photo Rack has a huge collection of over 27,000 images, nicely categorized. The categories are broken down into subcategories, but there is no search function. This is a place to browse, seeking that perfect image. No registration required. No ability to upload, but downloading is a breeze.

Freepixels has corporate-type images usually only found on pay-per-image sites. It has a search function, categories, and a tag cloud, so finding an image is easy. There are also some good abstract backgrounds here.

Design Packs is a small but nice collection of images, grouped into “packs” of 15 images. The images in each pack follow a common theme, such as Money, Flowers, or Lights. These images should appeal to designers and others looking for “abstract” images for backgrounds. Downloading 15 images as a zip file is a great time-saver.

Freefoto is made up of 117600 images with 153 sections organized into 3285 categories. There’s a search function, and usage is unrestricted. Just include an attribution link back to Freefoto.

Imageafter has 20,000 images available. There are two drop-downs (one for textures, one for images) that make it easy to browse the categories for each. Imageafter allows you to use their images on printed material for resale.

Pixel Perfect Digital has a small but growing collection of images. Registration allows you to upload to your own personal gallery. The search function allows you to search within one or more category.

Free Stock Photos is a small site containing good quality photographs in both low and high resolution versions. Photos are grouped into categories. The search function uses Google, which doesn’t work well for images here.

Free Digital Photos has a lot to offer, including a good search function, which is important when you’ve got this many images. Photos are grouped nicely into categories for easy browsing. Linkbacks are requested.

Public Domain Photos is just that: photographs in the public domain, arranged by category. There’s a good search function, as well. Includes a clip art section, as a bonus.

Nations Illustrated showcases pictures from around the world with over 7,000 photos in its collection. Browse by city, or country, or continent. Good search function, and a site-wide index.

Free Historical Stock Photos has lots of historical images, including many by Matthew Brady (Civil War) and Dorothea Lange (Great Depression). Includes paintings and vintage posters. Categorized, with a search function. Got retro?

Kave Wall is a great source of professional-quality close-up and macro photography. Need a great shot of paper clips or rubber bands? This is the place. Categorized and easy to browse. Not a lot here, but what’s here is first rate.

If your blog is news-related in any way, shape, or form, you need to check out Picapp. Let’s say you want to blog about last night’s Oscars. Picapp has red carpet photos, taken last night, that you can use on your blog now, free. I’m not making this up. The photo will appear on your blog with a wee bit of advertising, but still. For the news, sports, celebrity, travel, fashion, and entertainment blogger.

Freeimages offer more than 3000 medium-resolution stock photos in 75 galleries, as well as marketing tips, links, wallpapers, templates, and other goodies.

Budget Stock Photo has no photos of its own. Rather, it contains some rather long lists of other sites hosting free stock photos. You could spend days here, so grab some coffee (or tea) and hit the lists!

Photo Everywhere has free travel stock photos, especially from the UK, categorized by geographical region. Link back required.

Photoree strikes me as similar in style to Google Image search. Free registering seems necessary. Also, note this warning: “Avoid recommending photos containing nudity, if possible.” So, do try and restrain yourself.

Photogen has a nice search feature, based on tagged photos. Web usage is unrestricted, but free registration is required.

Okay, I know what you’re thinking at this point. “Thousands of free images. Is that the best you can do?” Well, how would you like to try MILLIONS?! Both Flickr and Wikimedia house a bazillion images that are under the Creative Commons license. For this, a large coffee urn will be required. Good luck. (Wikimedia’s CC image are here.)

This blog offers free texture images, and (this is cool) they encourage everyone to upload their own textures to share. What a great idea!

Free Stock Photos has over 10,000 free stock photos for download, nicely grouped into a bunch of categories.

Acobox is unique in that they host all of their photos for you, in different sizes. Just select your desired size and alignment, and Acobox delivers the HTML for you to add to your blog. No need to download. Pretty neat.

Wallpaper Stop has a lot of wallpapers. 12,000, give or take. And they are big and high def. Very nice. Sign up and get free wallpapers in your inbox once a week.

Free Digital Photos has a good idea: give away low-res versions of photos, and sell high-res versions for a few bucks. The low-res (640px) are perfect for a web page. And the photos? They are NICE. Check ‘em out.

Free Foto, like Free Digital Photos (above), offers low-res for free, and higher res for a price. But you’ll need to request the price, and wait for a reply. To download a freebie, you need to sign an agreement and give your email address. Every. Time. You. Download. But they do have over 130,000 photos…

The “pd” in PDPhoto stands for “public domain.” There’s not a vast number here, but they’re free…and if you need a pic of Kermit’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, they’ve got you covered.

“All pictures on this site are explicitly placed in the public domain, free for any personal or commercial use.” And there’s some very nice photos here, hidden in among the Google ads. Worth a peek.

“HD jpeg files up to 3,000 pixels. Coming soon layered Photoshop files and Vector Art.” Some very nice, professional photos. Stunning, really. A nice portfolio site.

Many of the photos here look like print-quality commercial photographs–they’re that good. A jewel of a site.

Photl is very impressive. All the photos are free, and you can search for them by keyword combined with a color. Need a red dress? Type “dresses” and choose the color red from the picker. Bingo. When you go to download, they have a crop tool that allows you to download just a portion, if you like. Big files, high quality. Downloads limited to 35mb a day. I’m bookmarking this sucker.

RGBStock reminds me of my favorite pay-for-stock site, iStockphoto.com. Same nice pop-ups when you hover over an image, same clean design. Only difference is: RBGstock is free. Gotta love it.

Top 10 Pictures Taken by The Hubble Telescope – Space is Beautifull and Inspiring

Taimur Asghar — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 13:35:10 +0000

they illustrate that our universe is not only deeply strange, but also almost impossibly beautiful.”
Michael Hanlon/AH (Nov 25th, 2006)

When the Hubble space telescope was launched in 1990, it immideatly begun relaying beautifull pictures back to earth of some of the most amazing things to be seen out there.

Looking at these pictures, of gigantic constellations billions of kilometers away makes us look up in awe by the incredible beauty that is painted above our heads, and make us feel small compared to it.

These are the top 10 pictures, as voted on by austronauts.

The Sombrero Galaxy - 28 million light years from Earth

The dimensions of the galaxy, officially called M104, are as
spectacular as its appearance. It has 800 billion suns and is 50,000 light years across

The Ant Nebula, a cloud of dust and gas whose technical name is Mz3

Resembles an Ant when seen using ground based telescopes. This dust cloud is between 3000 and 6000 lightyears away from earth

Nebula NGC 2392, called Eskimo

This Nebula is called Eskimo because it looks like a face surrounded by a hood. The hood is, in fact, a ring of comet-shaped objects
flying away from a dying star. Eskimo is 5,000 light years from Earth

Cat's Eye Nebula

The Hourglass Nebula, 8,000 light years away

Cone Nebula

The part pictured here is 2.5 light years in length (the equivalent of 23 million return trips to the Moon)

The Perfect Storm, a small region in the Swan Nebula, 5,500 light years away

Starry Night

Named because it reminded astronomers of the Van Gogh painting.
It is a halo of light around a star in the Milky Way

The glowering eyes from 114 million light years away are the swirling cores of two merging galaxies called NGC 2207 and IC 2163 in the distant Canis Major constellation

The Trifid Nebula. A 'stellar nursery'

This is 9,000 light years from here, it is where new stars are being born.

Be inspired by the amazing beauty nature has given us in these pictures taken by the Hubble Space Telescope

Wódka Commercial Design Study, When Humor Meets Design part 1

Taimur Asghar — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 22:04:06 +0000

Below images were part of a school project of a design academy, they show how funny, well known lines combined with easy pictures provide a very nice package.

These pictures were created by Matthijs Van Lier, a Dutch designer

50 Awesome Free Sans-Serif Fonts

Taimur Asghar — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 11:46:09 +0000

Typography is an art of arranging types and modifying them in such a way that they establish a good visual order and establishing a reader’s mind set about which text or heading is more important than other. It exhibits the personalities of both designer and design. Just like your personality can get crushed and squeezed by rigid and inflexible behavior, similarly art of typography can get squashed if right kind of fonts is not used. Today I have collected 50 Awesome Free Sans-Serif Fonts. I recommend downloading all of them but don’t forget to read the license agreement before using them in commercial projects.

1. Aaargh

2. Afta Sans

3. Aller

4. Andika Basic

5. Anivers

6. Arimo

7. Aurulent Sans

8. AW Conqueror Sans

9. Bebas

10. Bitstream Vera Sans

11. BonvenoCF

12. BPreplay

13. Cabin

14. Calluna Sans

15. Candela

16. Cantarell

17. CartoGothic Std

18. Colaborate

19. COM4t Sans Medium

20. DejaVu Sans

21. District Thin

22. Droid Sans

23. Expressway

24. Francois One

25. Hattori Hanzo

26. Impara

27. Istok Web

28. Junction regular

29. Lacuna Regular

30. Latin Modern Sans

31. Lato

32. Liberation Sans

33. Luxi Sans

34. Metrophobic

35. Molengo

36. Mr Jones

37. News Cycle

38. Nobile

39. Nunito

40. Open Sans

41. Panefresco

42. Perspective Sans

43. PT Sans

44. Puritan

45. Santana

46. Shanti

47. Springsteel

48. Titillium Text

49. Ubuntu

50. Yanone Kaffeesatz

Beautiful Untitled Pictures That Speak For Themselves

Taimur Asghar — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 14:18:09 +0000

Many times when you browse images and photographs online, you see image whose name is not specified already, and you see them as untitled images. I was looking for some inspiration when I saw an untitled image which was explaining itself by itself, not by title. So, I thought let’s find some other photographs and feature them here. So, Today I present to you a collection of 50+ beautiful untitled images that speak for themselves. I hope you will enjoy this collection.

Untitled by Anaris88

Untitled by Branislav Fabijanic

Untitled by Chuck Snow

Untitled by cityand-colour

Untitled by CSchaustPhotography

Untitled by DarkShad00w

Untitled By Edgar Dacosta

Untitled by felicetti

Untitled By Garmonique

Untitled by GavG

Untitled by Hamidreza Sheikhmorteza

Untitled by Jacky Wong

Untitled by Jazer

Untitled by Jeffreyverity

Untitled By JenniPenni

Untitled By Kai Z Feng

Untitled by Kampungjati7

Untitled By Kelvin Nguyen

Untitled by Krister Kleréus

Untitled by lazykev

Untitled by LemonLemonLemon

Untitled by love242

Untitled by Luis

Untitled by Manuel Guerzoni

Untitled by mikeg1996

Untitled by Mords

Untitled by Mpol

Untitled by NickKoutoulas

Untitled by Nils K. Windisch

Untitled by noeleen

Untitled by Noushin

Untitled by Ovidiu Cincheza

Untitled by Ozkar

Untitled by Shazeen Samad

Untitled by Shingo Uchiyama

Untitled by Sookie

Untitled by StarkArt

Untitled by Sugabear

Untitled by Thistrace

Untitled by Tracy Martin

Untitled by Tyler Mitchell

Untitled by veloxis

Untitled by Vibrakiller

Untitled by Wesley Law

Untitled by Wolfram Schubert

Elegant Web Designs Using Thumbnails Creatively

Taimur Asghar — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 13:14:52 +0000

Thumbnails are reduced-size versions of pictures, used to help in recognizing and organizing them, serving the same role for images as a normal text index does for words. Nowadays every blog uses thumbnails because they look good and keep things organized. Thumbnails can be of different size and in different position on the web page; it depends on the mood and creativity of designer. Today I have collected 32 awesome websites which are using thumbnail with creativity. I hope you will like this collection. Enjoy!

1. Twistedfork

2. IWC Schaffhausen

3. Neuarmy

4. Linda Dong

5. Where They At

6. Sylvain Ollier

7. Astronaut

8. MCQ

9. Arnaud Beelen

10. kin Design

11. Greenluv

12. Robert A.M. Stern Architects

13. Gavin Potenza

14. Bernat Fortet

15. Tim Boelaars

16. Mister

17. Interview Magazine

18. The Cut Creative

19. R.fm

20. Dan Sormaz

21. Anders Højland Mikkelsen

22. Premium Pixels

23. Sisu, Inc.

24. Build 2011

25. Futurefabric

26. P.A.Rochat

27. Twoto

28. Polyester

29. KYEE

30. Brandify

31. Nice device

32. 70folk

Awesome jQuery Calendar and Date Picker Plugins

Taimur Asghar — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 13:12:45 +0000

If you are looking for some awesome jQuery Calendar and date picker plugins then have a look at the following collection. I have collected top 14 plugins I found and which seems like they are worthy of getting featured. So, go through these plugins and find which one is best for you. I hope this collection will be useful.

Timeline calendar

Timeline is simple JavaScript driven calendar, which is written on top of jQuery JavaScript framework. Timeline is a horizontal representation of days in month. It can be used to display unlimited number of events with their descriptions.

FullCalendar

FullCalendar is a jQuery plugin that provides a full-sized, drag & drop calendar like the one below. It uses AJAX to fetch events on-the-fly for each month and is easily configured to use your own feed format (an extension is provided for Google Calendar).

Create astonishing iCal-like calendars with jQuery

jQuery Date Range Picker

Simple jQuery UI date picker extension to allow user to choose date ranges. When user chooses a date, a hidden form is submitted. Uses jQuery 1.6 and jQuery UI 1 .8. Tested in and compatible with IE 6 -9, Firefox, Safari, Chrome, and Opera.

Date Range Picker using jQuery

jQuery UI Datepicker Project

jMonthCalendar

jMonthCalendar is a full month calendar that supports events. You simply initialize the calendar with options and an events array and it can handle the rest. The plugin does have extension points that allow the developer to interact with the calendar when the display is about to change months, after the display has changed months and when the event bubbles are clicked on.

Calendar A Javascript class for Mootools

Calendar is a Javascript class that adds accessible and unobtrusive date-pickers to your form elements. This class is a compilation of many date-pickers and has been completely re-written for Mootools.

JavaScript Calendar

Monket Calendar

An Ajax enabled online calendar. Drag and drop events to change dates, drag the start/end of an event to create multi-day events, create and edit events without refreshing the page, all with an iCal style interface.

JSCalendar

JSCalendar is a Javascript class that adds accessible and unobtrusive date-pickers to your form elements. By using it, you can set up the coolest calendar in the shortest amount of time.

Simple jQuery date-picker plugin

MagiCalender

MagiCalender is a visual calender jQuery script that will allow you to add important dates and upcoming events to your website. It has a “smart” search feature, allowing you to search dates and event names. The event descriptions can handle HTML , and the script itself is all XHTML compliant.

jQuery date picker plug-in

100 Attractive Examples Of Bird Photography

Taimur Asghar — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 15:43:55 +0000

If you are nature, especially birds, lover then you are going to enjoy this huge collection of photographs. Today I have collected 100 attractive, beautiful and colorful Examples of Bird Photography. If you like this collection then please share it with you friends and colleagues. Also let me know which is your favorite photograph, in comments. Enjoy

Dancing in the fog by Marcin Nawrocki

Silly Walk by andreas612

Little Owls by Uri Kolker

It’s not what you think by Yaki zander

Aerial Refueling by Uri Kolker

Love by CK NG

Conversation by Marcin Nawrocki

Heron by Brian Scott

Eagle owl by Robert Adamec

Hoopoe by Dov Kalay

TRIO by Ilia Shalamaev

Snowy Owl by Mircea Costina

Weapons by Zoltan Gyori

Flying hornet by tomas du

Pretty Little Angry Man by Nikonian

Avian Angel by Sandy Powers

Swan by Victor Selinger

Under the wing by Luigino Snidero

Lichen Kingfisher by Brian Scott

By Steve Vetter

In flight by shlomi yoav

Meeting sunrise by Vadim Trunov

The catch by des connors

Up & Down by Octavianus Darmawan

Untitled by sammy

Black Swan by Robert Adamec

Batman & Robin by BogdanBoev

Widowbird by Stephen Earle

Landing by Uri Kolker

Kite vs. Crane by Uri Kolker

WASH by AULOMA

Family by Robert Adamec

Feeding Time by Octavianus Darmawan

Loving Heart by Ilia Shalamaev

Allen’s Hummingbird by ProSwedePhoto

Colourfull spring by mvbalkom

Black Kite by nissim

European Bee-eater fight by Filipe Caetano

Is it rain? by Muayad Amer

Face to face by Kai Jensen

Snow Dance by Harry Eggens

Eye to eye by Kai Jensen

Untitled by Bernard Maciulko

Swimming in the fog morning by Stano Strateny

Bawler II by Harry Eggens

Totally in Love by Harry Eggens

Nuthatch reflection by mark hancox

Kukumav by ERSIN ILDAY

Ball with a bill by Vladimir Kucherenko

Miss…. by nissim

Bengal Eagle Owl II by René Pedersen

Barn Owl by Robert Adamec

In flight by Øystein Eriksen

Preparing a dive. by Henrik Just

Tandem by Ales Farcnik

Kingfisher erupting by Noel Marry

Sea eagle by Robert Adamec

Pied Kingfisher by yaki zander

Night Heron. by yaki zander

Milvus milvus by Henrik Just

Duo Landing by Harry Eggens

Rose Ringed Parakeet by nissim

Erguvan by MURAT ACUNER

The Mask by mvbalkom

Singer by Vadim Trunov

By Bernard Maciulko

The big race by Amnon Eichelberg

Bawler by Harry Eggens

On the wing of the wind… by palankaizs

Wings of the Light by Hanay

Cattle Egret by Eric Landsberg

Look at me by Guido Franssens

Milvus milvus 2 by Henrik Just

Primordial elegance by gerard sexton

Deeply Frozen by Harry Eggens

The lost prey by palankaizs

Traffic Regulator by Harry Eggens

Preying by Olof Petterson

Crested tit by Francesco Renzi

Japanese cranes by Dennis Binda

Alone on the Ice by Harry Eggens

Tricolored Heron by Dennis Binda

Protect me by Stuart Gibson

Seagull by Andre Eide

Dalmatian Pelican and Catch by Paula Graham

Dalmatian Pelicans by Werner Bollmann

Flamingo. by yaki zander

Motacilla flava by Leonid_L

Welcome Welcome by Harry Eggens

Jump by Zhecho Planinski

Stretch by Doug Roane

Snipe by Uri Kolker

The Gathering by karenk

Macro photographer by Amnon Eichelberg

Staring contest by Lollo Brandt

Pied Kingfisher by nissim

Ice by Steve Vetter

Pheasant in snow drift by Paula Graham

Egret by liangdawei

Elegant Examples of Embossed Typography in Web design

Taimur Asghar — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 12:39:47 +0000

Embossing is the process of creating a three-dimensional image or design in paper and other materials. Nowadays people are using this technique in web typography also. Although it is awesome to look at but if it is done wrong, it looks crappy. But don’t worry, today I have collected only excellently designed examples of web typography using embossing. This process is also called inset typography sometimes. I hope you will enjoy this collection.