Try it out!

Some of the categories are still in their infancy and our Devs are working hard on improving the overall UI of Creattica to make things even easier to navigate.

Please feel free to submit any of your own work to our new free categories!

I’m not sure how we managed to not realize this was happening for such a long time, and I’m very sorry to all our users that this occurred. Plainly we need better feedback mechanisms in place. In the meantime we’re adding automated testing to the Favourites feature to make sure at the very least that same issue doesn’t crop up again.

So in summary, favouriting is all working again! Go forth and Favourite!

In the meantime our Creattica gallery has grown and grown and grown. Today it’s serving up over 10,000 items of inspiration to 500,000 visitors and 4,000,000 pageviews every month! And we’ve got big plans for the site in 2011. But where to announce those plans and news as they happen? Why right here of course!

And so, as of today the Creattica Blog is back as a simple news and updates blog for what’s happening on what we hope is going to be the world’s largest gallery of inspiration!

What’s Happening on The Site

Our first bit of news is to let you know that it seems we have some issues happening with the favourites button which has bizarrely begun logging people out as of four weeks ago. Amazingly we’ve only picked this up this week, and are working on a fix now!

We’ve also added a host of new categories to the site this week including: Architecture, PowerPoint & Keynote Design, Product & Industrial Design, Digital Painting, Pixel Art and Graffiti!

We’re getting the first submissions in now as well as adding a few ‘found’ items through our creattica user. So you should see lots of great new inspiration coming through very shortly!

In the meantime if you have a category you’d like to see on Creattica, leave a comment!

Packed with WordPress, Site templates, CSS, Javascript, Motion projects, PSD’s, 3D Models and textures, Vector files, TUTS+ Premium Tutorials, and vouchers from MediaTemple and RockablePress!

The bundle is on sale for 5 days, starting now. This is a limited time offer that ends on Tuesday, August 24 at 12:00pm Melbourne, Australia time (check the current time at Envato HQ!). Visit the Birthday Bundle website & purchase the bundle now!

What’s in it?

Open

WordPress Theme – $30

96 Display

Site Template – $15

BrandMedia Modern

PSD Template – $10

Graphic Designer Newsletter

Email Template – $10

DesignerWannabe

Site Template – $15

3D Coming Soon Mini Placeholder

Site Template – $15

Photoshoot Creative Template

Site Template – $15

The Archer WordPress Video & Movie Player

Video Player – $12

Digital boxes preloader

Preloader – $3

Unity3D Starter Pack

AviaSlider – jQuery Slideshow

Javascript – $12

Griddler Pricing Grid I

CSS – $4

Twitter Widget Pro

WordPress Plugin – $12

AJAX Contact Form; Extended

PHP Script – $5

Simple User Counter

PHP Script – $3

jSocial

JavaScript – $4

Reveal Transition

Motion Graphic – $2

The Elegant Spin HD

Project File – $15

3D Identity

Project File – $12

The Shatter

Project File – $15

Sketch

Project File – $8

Incubus Logo

Project File – $10

Onyx Logo

Project File – $8

8 Grunge Backgrounds

Graphics / Backgrounds – $5

Stylish Mosaic Background Wallpaper

Graphics / Backgrounds – $1

6 Photoshop Actions

Add-ons / Photoshop – $2

Flyer / Postcard Template

Design Template – $5

Sexy Vector Laptop

Vector – $2

Tileable Leather: Woven Texture 3.0

Texture – $2

Shiny Bubble Backgrounds

Graphics / Backgrounds – $3

Lead True Type v1.0

Font – $4

Badges and Sale Tags

Graphics / Web – $3

Old TV – Wide & Normal

Isolated Object – $2

Solar Pricing Table

Graphics / Web – $3

Creative Pro Mega Pack

Design Template – $4

Smart Photo Strip

Photo Template – $3

The Newspaper – frontpage

Design Template – $6

Light Bubbles

Presentation Template – $3

21 web icons

Icons – $4

High Armchair

3D Model – $20

HDRi – 1325 Sun Clouds

CG Textures – $20

Game-Ready AWP Sniper Rifle

3D Model – $10

One Fine Day

Corporate Music – $9

Driving Far, Far Away

Corporate Music – $9

Dreaming

Ambient Music – $9

Space Sequence

Ambient Music – $11

Smoke Orchestra

Cinematic Music – $9

Space Battle Number Four

Electronica Music – $9

Coding a Complex Design into CSS and HTML

Combine Hand-drawn Art with Photoshop

How to Blend Images Together Using Adjustment Layers

Ultimate Type Twisting with Adobe Illustrator

And not to forget the vouchers from MediaTemple and RockablePress!

Visit the Birthday Bundle website, and purchase the bundle now!

Last year a friend recommended I move from Windows PC’s to Apple, I was a skeptic!

Then I did it, and the Apple bug hit me!

I bought a Macbook which was joined by an iPhone then added an iMac and have very recently bought an iPad (O.K it’s my wife’s but it’s still in MY house ;) )

Here are some Apple related sites, images etc to keep any Apple fanboy or girl salivating for more!

Interesting reads!

MinimalMac – Keeping your Mac lean and mean!

Mac.appstorm.net – Mac software reviews and roundups from the Envato network

MacStories – Lot’s of interesting news and reviews.

Cult of Mac – Apple, News, Reviews and How tos.

Smoking Apples – Apple, Mac and iPhone news, views and reviews.

iPhone.appstorm.net – iPhone & iPad Apps, Games, Roundups & Giveaways.

Mac Rumors – Apple Mac Rumors and News you care about.

Awesome apps!

These are some of the apps I use on a daily basis and would recommend, of course there are many many others, and I’ve tried to keep it to Utility like software, obviously there are code editors and ftp apps and design software but we’ll leave that for another time, leave a comment if you feel strongly about a particular app!

AlfredApp – (Free) a quicklaunch application for Mac OS X, which aims to save you time in searching your local computer and the web.

Cinch – (7$) Cinch gives you simple, mouse-driven window management.

DelibarApp – (18$) Delibar focuses on giving Mac OS X users an easy and quick tool for searching, managing and sharing their bookmarks.

Dropbox – (2Gb Free) Dropbox allows you to sync your files online and across your computers automatically.

Skitch – (Free’) Easy screen capture and if you wan’t also sharing via skitch.com.

Notify – (7$) An awesome email notifier for Mac OS X.

TimeMachineEditor – (Free) One simple purpose, to change the default one-hour backup interval of Time Machine.

MagicPrefs – (Free) Improving the functionality and options of your Magic mouse.

TextExpander – ($34.95) saves time by using customised abbreviations for frequently used text eg. email sigs, code snippets.

AppCleaner – (Free) a small app allowing you to thoroughly uninstall unwanted apps.

Fliqlo – (Free) That cool clock screensaver!

Image credit: Charles Brooks

Turns out Bokeh is quite simply Blur… it doesn’t matter if there are lights or not it’s just an image with portions of the image blurred.

How do you produce images with great Bokeh?

Open up your lens’ aperture to its widest setting (this is the F number), strangely the lower the F number the larger the aperture. Lenses with low F numbers like 2.8, 2.0, 1.8, 1.4 and lower are your best choices for ‘Bokeh Shots’.

Being close to your subject and also a good distance between subject and background is going to help.

Sometimes you don’t even need a subject and the whole shot is Bokeh

Some of the most mundane images or items around your house suddenly come alive with that reduced Depth of Field.

You can Bokeh up your pets too!

Coming back to my opening line I think the most dramatic look still comes from the inclusion of lights behind and around your subject.

Some great posts with more Bokeh inspiration:

80 Awe-Inspiring Photographs Taken With a “Nifty Fifty”

88 Brilliant Examples of Bokeh Photography

Are you a Bokeh Addict? Add a link to your favorite Bokeh image in the comments!