Sometimes it is just worlds easier watching a tutorial than reading it, and the Internet has made video tutorials of all kinds very available. Photoshop tutorials are especially popular due to the complexity of the popular program.

Continue reading 20+ Photoshop Video Tutorials.

Over years Adobe Illustrator has become the standard application when it comes to illustration design. Artists, illustrators and graphic designers use Illustrator to create vector-based graphics which — contrary to raster-based editors such as Adobe Photoshop — can be easily rescaled without the loss of quality. E.g., Illustrator is often used to quickly transform hand-drawn sketches on a sheet of paper into lively and colorful digital images.

Read the rest of the article Adobe Illustrator Tutorials - Best Of

Michael purchased Adobe Creative Suite at MacWorld. He was kind enough to contact Creation Engine about extending the discount pricing and they are continuing their show special until January 31, 2008. You will need to have a student ID that you can fax or email to them after you place your order.

Details are at http://www.creationengine.com/macworld2008

Smashing Magazine has pulled together a list of the best Flash tutorials. There are over 25 tutorials and sites for you to check out.

Now is a great time to learn about Adobe Fireworks, an image editor originally produced by Macromedia. I thought I would post descriptions of all of the tools used in Fireworks and some tutorials.

Tool Panel	Tool	Expanded Tool
Selection tools - Used to select and alter existing objects
		SubSelection Tool - Use this tool to select items that are hidden behind other objects
		Tools used to alter the appearance of existing objects
Drawing, editing and selection tools for Bitmap (typically photos) image.		Used to make square or circular selections - selections can be filled with color, copied, resized, distorted, etc.
		Used to make precise selections
		Magic Wand Tool - Quickly selects an area based on color
		Brush Tool - Draw brush strokes
		Pencil Tool - Draw freehand lines
		Eraser - Erase areas of an image
		These tools are used to enhance the appearance of photos.
		These tools are used to enhance the appearance of photos
Tools used to edit Vector images		Line tool - Draw straight lines
		Used to draw freehand vector graphics
		These are vector shapes you can use in your artwork
		Text tool
		These tools are used to alter vector drawings (paths)
		Used to cut a vector shape
Tools used to define areas of a Web page		Tools used to define areas of a Web page
		Tools used to define areas of a Web page
		Hide slices
		Show slices
Used to set tool the color of an object		Eyedropper tool - used to select a color from anywhere on the screen.
		Fill shapes and selections
		Set the stoke color of an object
		Set the fill color of an object

Fireworks Tutorials

Using the Gradient panel in Fireworks CS3

Free Fireworks Gradient Styles

Gradient Tiles

How to Make Text Glow Better

Create Web2.0 logos with Fireworks

Pixel2Life Tutorials

Realistic 10-step 3D simulation with reflection in Fireworks 8

Animation: The Fireworks CS3 to Flash CS3 Connection

Fireworks Resources at Adobe

Adobe Fireworks Developer Center

Virtual Clues Fireworks Tutorials

Tutorials2Go Fireworks CS3 Tutorials

Adobe Fireworks CS3 Tutorial

Fireworks Resources at WebSiteTips

Using Fireworks CS3 to design effective, interactive website presentations

Project: Create a Layout in Fireworks CS3

100 Fireworks Tutorials at Tutorialsphere

Create a Planet from scratch with Fireworks

Introduction to Fireworks

Solar Dream Studios

Removing Image Backgrounds With Fireworks 8

Rapid Fire #1: Photo-Realistic

Rapid Fire #2: Golden Seal

Text on Path using Fireworks 8

Water Drops

Fireworks Tutorials

I have updated the Dreamweaver FTP tutorial to reflect the new hosting details. You can feel free to start using your new accounts immediately.

I also posted an abbreviated version of the Dreamweaver FTP tutorial. Students who have already read the full Dreamweaver tutorial should use this version.

Christmas Globe

A Christmas Story in 30 seconds as told by bunnies

Both of these links use Flash and both have sound.

If you enjoy the bunnies visit http://www.angryalien.com/

The Favourite Website Awards was established in 2000 to showcase the latest and best cutting edge web sites. The sites showcased are considered “future thinking and progressively designed sites that feature cutting edge technologies”. These sites typically employ Flash designs and some may require the Flash 8 player.

Jakob Nielsen shares the Top Ten Web Design Mistakes of 2005. This is a compilation of web design annoyances submitted by his readers; all of these issues deal with usability. The really nice thing about this article is that links to other articles that address the issues are provided; you’re not just left wondering how to fix or deal with these problems.

Last week we briefly discussed Web 2.0. Tim O’Reilly has an article, What Is Web 2.0? that I think all of you should read to get a clearer understanding of the term.

National Geographic offers some beautiful wallpapers for your desktop.

Liquid Sculpture has some beautiful “liquid” photo galleries. I think I might try some of these experiments at home, I like to photograph water and light.

If you have downloaded Fireworks 8 you may want to visit SolarDreamStudios for some new tutorials in order to learn the new features of the program. Maybe one of these days I’ll actually be able to download Fireworks 8 and try out the tutorials myself.

Yesterday I mentioned that Rachel Andrew has a new book available at SitePoint titled Build Your Own Standards Compliant Website Using Dreamweaver 8. I just wanted to let you all know that you can download a sample chapter of this book at SitePoint, it’s 130+ pages. Please don’t print this in class; if you would like to read this in print form I will print a few extra copies and share them with you. Just let me know, I would appreciate your feedback since this might be an excellent choice for adoption in the classroom. You may also want to read Dreamweaver 8 does standards at SitePoint which is also an excerpt of the book.

Google Search Tips 2005

PCWorld shares the 100 Best Products of 2005. Toys, toys, we must have toys!

GmailThis! - Very handy! Have a link that you want to send to someone via your Gmail? GmailThis adds a bookmarklet to your links bar, when you find a page you want to send, click the bookmark and Gmail will open with a new message including the subject and the desired link. This is really handy if you want to quickly email yourself a link to a web site from class. If you don’t already have a Gmail account for class, let me know and I will send you an invite.

TutorialSelect.com has links to a variety (a lot!) of tutorials for Photoshop and PHP.