Web Design Whim

Update for webdesignwhim – Win a graphics Tablet! FREE TO ENTER

2009-09-21T08:37:27Z

Well…Ok Alot of users have messaged me asking if Its been proved this is a whim because Ive not posted in a couple of weeks . Dont worry all, I’ll explain why now.

Well, Firstly we got our daughter settled back into school. Then My laptop decided to tell me the C drive did not exist (I’m sure you will get a tutorial here soon from Zygo on how not to turn your machine off as I have been told off ) and then I lost all my data as i hadnt done a back up ( yes very bad of me) and the work I planned to post , I couldnt anymore. Also only 5 weeks left till new baby arrives..As you can imagine its a bit hectic here.

So I will be posting some more artwork and I do have plans for more photoshop brushes etc and I will be posting some competitions for all registered users to WIN a FREE Graphics tablet.

Just give me a bit of time guys, and please keep sending messages of support and commenting on posts already here so I know what people want to see more of.

Thankyou all x

Marie

UPDATE:

COMPETITION

WIN A GRAPHICS TABLET – WACOM BAMBOO ONE!

ALL YOU HAVE TO DO TO BE IN WITH A CHANCE TO WIN THE GRAPHICS TABLET IS:

1. REGISTER A USER ON THIS BLOG

2. REPLY TO THIS MESSAGE STATING WHAT YOU WOULD LIKE TO SEE MORE OF ON THIS BLOG, YOUR IDEAS.

ONLY SERIOUS REPLYS CONSIDERED. ONLY ONE ENTRY PER PERSON PLEASE.

THE WINNER WILL BE THE USER TO POST THE IDEA WE LIKE BEST.

ALL SPAM WILL BE REMOVED. ONLY ENTRIES FROM REGISTERED USERS CONSIDERED.

THE CLOSING DATE IS 25TH OCTOBER 2009

THE WINNER WILL RECEIVE:

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To Sleep, Hibernate, or Shut Down, That is the Question?

2009-09-01T19:22:06Z

OK, you have a laptop/notebook/netbook. You close the lid and the screen goes off, you press the power button and the machine shuts down, but what’s actually

happening here? Let me explain what each does.

OK, you have a laptop/notebook/netbook. You close the lid and the screen goes off, you press the power button and the machine shuts down, but what’s actually happening here? Let me explain what each does.

If you Shut Down your PC, windows sends a signal to every program running to prompt to save the data and then close down, Windows itself then closes all of it’s active files, and sends the shutdown message to the PC to turn itself off. when you power on from a shutdown state, this is called a cold boot, all files are freshly loaded, the memory starts from blank, your machine will be as good as it’s ever going to be after a cold boot.

Sleep is a state where every window you have open, every file that you are working on is kept in memory, the display is powered off, but power still runs to your cpu, your memory and some other parts of your machine. If you’ve read my PC guide, you’ll know that RAM is non permanat storage, so when it’s not receiving power it’s wiped clean. this is why the power is kept to your RAM. when you power the machine up from a Sleep state it will appear ready almost instantly. But remember your machine’s ram has not been reset so if you have any memory that hasn’t been fully cleared from programs you were running, it will be in the same state it was previously.

Hibernation is where your computer takes everything you have in RAM, all programs, data, every single window you have open and their locations etc, and copies the entire lot onto the hard drive and then shuts down. When you power back on, it copies it all back from the hard disk to RAM so Windows loads back to where it was.

So what are they for then? Well, Sleep is for when you’re just leaving the machine for a few minutes, and want to preserve some battery life, Hibernate is when you’re away from the computer a long time, it means your PC won’t use any battery power at all. Hibernate takes less time to boot than booting after shutting down does. Most notebooks that are about to run out of battery will automatically hibernate when there’s only a small amount of battery left to give you a chance of keeping any unsaved files. But the problem with Hibernation is that the file that’s copied onto your hard disk may become corrupted. If that happens, you’ve lost whatever you were working on. So hibernation is good to use, but remember to save your work. And shutting down your machine is the best way to keep it clear of memory hogging programs and temporary files cluttering up your hard drive.

What to use is up to you, but remember the drawbacks, sleep still uses battery, hibernate may fail and you end up losing what your working on, and shut down, the slowest yet most reliable of the 3….

If you have any questions feel free to mail me on zygomorphic@webdesignwhim.com

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CHRISTMAS TREE ARTWORK

2009-09-04T15:20:24Z

Christmas does happen to be the time of year I love most. So this morning I decided to start some christmas artwork. Starting from scratch, with no brushes or premade artwork of other peoples work, I created this christmas tree. I drew a basic shape and used the Tool Effect > Distort & Transform > Roughen to create my branches and played about with opacity and then added some baubles and some tinsle and christmas tree lights. I then took a more cartoony style to create the trees backgound. Im very happy with the way this artwork tunred out to be honest, as I think it looks quite unique.

Christmas Tree Artwork

Id love to hear peoples thoughts.
I used this tutorial to help me learn to create my christmas tree:

http://www.ndesign-studio.com/resources/tutorials/christmas-tr ee

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FREE CARTOON CLIPART

2009-08-30T09:44:30Z

FREE CLIPART

: Free Cartoon Clipart

Well the last few days I have been messing around with Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop trying to create more artwork to offer here for free on my blog. Here is the first lot of my cartoon clipart. There are so many websites out there offering the same sort of free clipart to its users. To be honest I get fed up with seeing the same clipart everywhere so I decided to offer my own free clipart. I Love cartoony styles so here is some fun free clipart. Feel free to use these for free, for private or commercial use or to edit. If you do list these in a collection you must list us as the Author AND DO NOT try and pass these off as your own work please, these are done by my free hand and its not nice to steal other peoples work
Enjoy!

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HOW TO CREATE PHOTOSHOP BRUSHES – QUICK & EASY GUIDE

2009-08-27T16:27:10Z

For this tutorial I have used Photoshop CS4 Extended.

Alot of people use Photoshop brushes to create artwork such as website templates or graphical work. I’ve used many myself. I’ve spent hours downloading different ones and I think they are great. What I had’nt tried was creating my own. So tonight about two hours ago I decided to create my own Photoshop brushes and write a tutorial on how I did it.

CREATE PHOTOSHOP BRUSHES QUICK AND EASY:

Firstly I used a mobile phone and went into the garden and took some basic photos of some leaves (yes there are many brushes out there already of leaves, but I found this the most easy thing to hand to create my first ever brushes)

Here is one of the pictures I took:

: Leaves from my garden

STEP ONE: First open your photo or image that you want to create into a brush in Photoshop.

: STEP ONE

STEP TWO: Change your image into Greyscale:

Open the photo you want to convert to black-and-white.
Choose Image > Mode > Grayscale.
Click Discard. Photoshop converts the colors in the image to black, white, and shades of gray.

STEP TWO

STEP THREE: Now we need to get rid of any background so we can make a good brush.

* Remember* Anything that is White will not be seen when the brush is created. It acts as transparent, so make anything white that you dont wish to be included when creating your brush.

We will be using the following tools in Photoshop.

: Quick Selection Tool

: Eraser Tool

Once you have selected all that you can with the quick selection tool go to EDIT and choose COPY. Then go File > NEW. It will automatically open a new document the correct size. Then select EDIT > PASTE. Once you have pasted your image onto a white background, now its time to tidy up the image with the eraser tool.
You will be left with something like this:

STEP FOUR: Now its time to save your new brush. So first go to EDIT > PRESET MANAGER

: STEP FOUR

Once here we need to delete your other brushes that are loaded so we only have the new brushes you create showing here. If we dont do this any other brushes you have loaded will join your newly created set. Once in preset manager press CTL +A to select ALL the brushes and then press the delete option. If your like me and had alot of other brushes loaded and you can’t be bothered to load them all separatly again, all you need to do it CTL+A and press SAVE SET, and save your brushes as a set instead of loading them all separate again.

(dont worry they are only deleted from this list not your computer)

STEP FIVE: Next. Go to EDIT> DEFINE BRUSH PRESET > and then name your newly created brush.

: STEP FIVE

Click OK and now you have created your first Photoshop brush!
Now follow this process for however many images/photos you want in this brush set. For my first try I only included 3 but you can add as many as you like to your brush set.

STEP SIX: Now it’s time to save all brushes as a set. So select your brush icon from your left hand side of icons in Photoshop. Once you do this, your brush toolbar will appear at the top of your Photoshop screen as your tool bar. Now we need you to click the drop down icon next to the selected brush. (1) A box like this will appear:

: STEP SIX

STEP SEVEN: Click the arrow in the circle as shown in the image below (2) and another menu will appear next to your open box.

STEP SEVEN

STEP EIGHT: Here is our last step. In the new menu that has appeared click SAVE BRUSHES… Now name your brush set and save it some where on your computer and there you have finished your new Photoshop brushes!

CONGRATULATIONS! It really is that easy

Here are the 3 brushes that I managed to create for my first try:

: Free Photoshop Brushes

* This article is written by Marie Barnes AKA Pixie of www.webdesignwhim.com Please do not copy our material and portray it as your own work. Feel free to post our articles but only without removing this notice and stating where you got this article from. Thank you *

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