Also, page speed is logically crucial to Google, seeing as they place an understandable focus on the end-user experience. With that in mind – it’s more advisable than ever to optimize your website for better speeds. And we’re going to show you some of the most elementary ways in which you can improve your website speed in 2020!

TTFB – Time To First Byte

Okay, so where do you start when it comes to evaluating why your website needs speed optimization? Generally, it’s a good idea to take a look at the amount of time it takes for a browser to get the very first byte of data from the website’s server. In technical terms, this is officially dubbed the time to first byte, or TTFB. But how do you actually evaluate this metric?

Luckily, Google gives you everything you need. Just use PageSpeed Insights, developed by Google. This handy service uses data gathered from the Chrome user experience reports to present you with the perfect speed test for your website.

And it goes beyond that; not only will you receive all relevant metrics for website speed, but you’ll also learn about all of the suggestions for actually improving the speed. Bear in mind that, while desktop speed is important – mobile page speeds are where the metric truly becomes indispensable.

Proper Web Hosting

When it comes to website speed, many people would simply start working on their web design, and potentially laggy plugins; however, the culprit of unsatisfactory speed is not always immediately obvious.

In fact, your web hosting is quite important for the speed of your page loading. There are web hosting services that could host a lean two-page website and still have slower page speed. That’s why finding the proper web hosting provider is important. And though this can be expensive, there are reliable free web hosting services, take a look at several such options on this page. Indeed, mediocre and improper web hosting is a direct contributor to the poor speed (or lack thereof) of website loading.

There are many factors here, like the bandwidth limits, the server’s available RAM, the number of clients on one physical server, and the geographic proximity to website visitors. Crucially, the final two problems can be solved by using cloud hosting.

And don’t forget – relevant metrics show that more than 70% of users will never go back to a site that needs more than 4 seconds to fully load. With that in mind, don’t always settle for cheaper hosting providers; the hundreds of dollars you’ll save will be dwarfed by thousands lost in potential revenue.

Inactive and Redundant Plugins

You should know that inactive plugins can play a major role in slow website speeds. Though, there’s a reason why plugins contain the option of deactivating them instead of deleting them outright. This part of the design is there so you have the chance to see whether you’ll actually need the plugins in the future. Still, if you want your website to be as fast as possible, removing inactive plugins may be what you want to do.

Clean Out Website Code

While you’re dealing with subpar page speeds, you may want to take a look at another area – the code that is a part of your website. Sure, this is best handled by technical professionals who are adept at this kind of work; but if you’re tech-savvy yourself, you should take a deep look into your website code, and see if there’s anything you could trim.

There are plenty of things that you could fix here: for example, you may find that you have theme files that are poorly configured. These will be in conflict with the browser your users have, thus adversely affecting your website loading speed.

Content Delivery Network

If you use a content distribution network (otherwise known as a content delivery network), you could reduce the amount of time your page needs in order to load by quite a lot. So, how does this work?

Well, we’ve mentioned that the geographical distance of end-users from the server will actually affect how fast they access online content. And what a CDN will do is provide hosting for your website in the cloud. Thus, the server that’s the closest to a particular user will provide the content to them once they access the website.

You’ll have no more delays associated with distant hosting locations. Plus, content delivery networks use caching in order to trim down on hosting bandwidth, which gives you ample room for smoother rendering and content delivery. Suffice to say, you will suffer far less downtime if you host your website this way.

Images

Naturally, images are an essential component of every website. Roughly speaking, about four out of five pages on any website should have at least one image. Also, as you might imagine – images take up most of the bandwidth on any given website.

In order to give your website speed a boost and reap the SEO rewards, make sure that images on your pages are optimized to consume the smallest possible amount of bandwidth. Oversized and heavy images are one of the most common causes of slow web page speeds.

Conclusion

As you’ll undoubtedly learn, there are basically countless ways to optimize your website and ensure better page loading speeds. However, it’s important to focus on the most important and impactful ones, instead of wasting energy on minuscule improvements.

The post 6 Ways to Improve Your Website Speed in 2020 appeared first on Web Design Blog | Magazine for Designers.

This article comes in handy whether you are just starting out, already hold a salaried job, or looking to revive your freelance web development career. Pick areas you need to improve, and get to work. Do you think you need more education? Go get it. Do you need to market yourself more? Just do it.

You’re awesome, and deserve the best job and life, so if that sounds great, walk with me.

What is Web Development?

If you’re the perfect beginner, you might be wondering what web development is all about. Well, web development is all about building websites. Simple as that. It doesn’t matter what the website does, but if you can build a usable website, you’re a web developer.

The most employable web developer is the person who can take a mere idea and convert it into a functional website. As such, a web developer is the guy (or girl) who has the passion, skills and capability to transmute the client’s dream website into reality.

What if you aren’t an absolute beginner?

Can you install WordPress (or any other CMS) and create a remarkable website using a theme and plugins? If so, you’re a web developer. Can you code a monstrous website from the ground up without using platforms such as WordPress? Of course, you’re a web developer.

As long as you can build a usable website, you’re a web developer. Let nobody tell you otherwise. If you’d like to specialize in programming languages, well and good. But in today’s world, where you don’t need coding knowledge to build a website, anybody can be a web developer!

But you aren’t here because you want to be a mere web developer. You here because you want to be the best web developer of them all, and create a successful career while at it. If we are on the same page, let us talk about the money.

How Much Do Web Developers Make?

How much you rake in as a web developer depends on your character, skills and experience. If you suck as a person, your skills and experience won’t help you keep the job. If you’re a great person, but lack the skills and experience, somebody else will take your job.

Still, how much do professional web developers make? According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, web developers earn a median salary of about $70,000 per annum. That offers you a nice picture of what the industry offers, keeping in mind the highest 10% of web devs make more than $125,000 per year.

But before you do the money dance dreaming how you will hold up or throw stacks of money, do you have what it takes to become a successful web developer? What skills do you need, and how do you go from zero to hero in web development? That’s why we are here, isn’t it? See you in the next section ?

Best Tips to a Successful Web Development Career

The world is full of self-taught freelance web developers, and they are killing it, but to rise up the ranks in a salaried job, you must take a different route. Still, at the end of the day, there are steps you can take to start, revive and grow a web development career, whether you freelance or work for the man.

Ladies and gentlemen, without further ado, let us hear the drum roll.

Get the Right Education

Whether you’re a freelancer or employed, getting the right education is one of the simplest ways of starting and building a successful career in web development. You can self-teach yourself into a fantastic web development career, but let’s be honest, formal education gives you an upper hand.

Or as Maryville University puts it, “It’s an exciting time to build a future in the global design industry. Every advancement in technology changes the way creative professionals think and work — and pushes designers to new heights of sophistication. That means the design and digital media field is shifting to appeal to evolving sensibilities, and businesses are looking to build the modern aesthetic to thrive.”

In other words, an online degree in web development or a related field helps you to build a strong knowledge foundation in a structured setting. This quintessential foundation is vital when learning new skills to adapt to a changing work environment.

Gain Experience

Recruiters are infamous for always asking if you have the experience for the job. If you have a couple of web projects under the belt, you can prove your expertise. What if you’re starting out, and have zero work experience? What do you do?

It’s easy, work on personal projects. Create your own website and get it going. Volunteer in your local community to help out charitable organizations. Work on side projects on your free time. Just practice amigo.

Eat, drink and live web development. Clearly you have the passion, but what is holding you back from gaining valuable experience by working on personal and side projects? If you want to work in an office, apply for internships and get the experience.

Don’t just sit there doing nothing living a dream in your head. Instead, get to work whether you’re getting paid or not. Provided you have the tools (which is usually a computer), start building your own websites, and learning from your mistakes. In simpler terms, work on your skills daily.

That’s the only way you gain experience; by hours and hours of practice. This reminds me of the 10,000-hour rule that’s discussed in the Outliers book by Malcolm Gladwell. The principle says that if you put 10,000 hours into any endeavor, you’ll be successful.

Create a Portfolio

You create (or will be creating) websites, and nobody can find you online? You must be kidding me. Nowadays, potential employers use the internet to find suitable candidates. Well, and just to be fair, employers use other recruiting channels as well, but the web is somewhere at the top of the list.

Remember all those personal projects you worked on to gain experience? Did you volunteer to create a fabulous website for a cause dear to you? Did you contribute to an open-source project because you’re awesome like that? Post all these websites on your portfolio website.

Then make sure employers know you’re available for work by adding a contact or hire page. Basically, you’re a web developer, so create yourself a fantastic portfolio website to market your skills, which leads us to the next point.

Market Yourself

Do you want to grow as a web developer? Then you must be comfortable selling your skills. It doesn’t matter whether you freelance or work a 9-to-5, if you nobody knows what you do, nobody will hire you. Get your name out there whatever the cost. Just don’t be the annoying or spammy guy nobody likes.

Network with fellow web developers offline and online because no man is an island. Attend web development events and webinars, and strive to create your own network. Create an email list too while at it, because – as fellow marketers say – the real money is in the email list.

Make social media marketing, SEO, PPC and other forms of marketing your friend and let potential employers know you exist and excited for more work. Guest blog, print business cards, write press releases or send out snail mail if you must, just get your name out there.

Conclusion

A career in web development is as exciting as it is lucrative. It’s perfect for anybody with the passion, regardless of your current skillset. All you to do is get the right education, gain experience, create an astounding portfolio and market yourself like your livelihood depended on it. See what I did there?

Then be an awesome person and a professional web developer. That means you must work on your interpersonal skills if you’re lacking in that area. Or time and project management. Or budgeting. Or whatever area you must improve. Just be an awesome web developer already; the world needs more.

Let us know your thoughts.

The post How to Start a Career in Web Development appeared first on Web Design Blog | Magazine for Designers.

There could be many possibilities for wanting to master the art of t-shirt design; however, the fundamentals of doing so remain the same. It is crucial to understand the entire process from beginning to end to truly understand what tshirt design is.

Here are 7 important steps for mastering the art of t-shirt design:

1. Understanding the purpose:

As we discussed above, there could be various reasons, as to why you’d want to learn t-shirt design. However, whatever might be your purpose, you’d realize it would involve branding to a certain extent. Branding becomes the primary goal for t-shirt design when you’re doing it for brand promotion. Even if you’re into fashion, you’ll need to maintain the sense and aesthetics of your brand into your different garments. A critical aspect of t-shirt design is clear communication, especially for organizing or hosting an event.

A good practice is always to make note of styles, personality traits and key themes you want to make use of, to accurately portray your brand and shirts. Certain parameters you could understand if your brand has a serious undertone or a playful one. Are you into conservative clothing or you have an edgy approach to your t-shirt design? Economically do you produce t-shirts that are luxurious or affordable? A well-executed t-shirt design should answer all these questions at once.

It is important as a designer not to let your personal bias or preferences influence your design. Instead, you need to rely on quantifiable factors like understanding; who your target audience is, what traits as a business you need to have that would appeal to them and more.

2. Set and plan your budget:

A significant aspect of T-shirt Design is to understand your budget and spending capacity for a specific project. Another element to consider is the quantity of the order.  The economics of your t-shirt design does impact your design.

One direct impact of the budget is on the number of colors you can incorporate in your design. Another factor is the choice of the printing method, where using additional colors might cost more money. For a tight budget project, you could save up on cost by conversing colors.

Generally, your printing method is affected by the number of shirts you have to make. There are certain bulk-efficient methods; on the other hand, there are higher cost printing methods per shirt for smaller orders.

3. Understanding the different printing options:

There are many printing options which provide you with the flexibility of selecting the right one as per your budget and requirement. Various factors that affect selecting the best printing method are; cost, production time, appearance and materials.

Let’s get a brief idea about each available printing method:

1. Screen Printing:

It is probably one of the most used printing techniques for a t-shirt design. The printer makes original screens for your design. Each color gets its screen. This allows you to print in bulk quantities.

The advantage it offers is that it is a reliable standard for printing t-shirts. It is also affordable, not compromising on quality. Generally, orders over 20 units are worth printing by this method.  The disadvantage is that you’d need to produce a different screen for each color your t-shirt design has. Hence very colorful designs might prove to be expensive with this method.

2. Direct-to-garment:

This method uses inkjet printing and directly prints on the fabric. Such printers generally have platen that allows the printer to hold the garment steady in one position. The advantage of using DTG printers is the flexibility of creating customizable designs with minute details and range of color choices. However, this method should only be used for a sample size order as the more you use it, the less viable it becomes. It also doesn’t work best on dark color garments.

3. The Vinyl Graphics Method:

Vinyl Graphics takes advantage of heat transfer mechanism to transfer the design to the t-shirt. It works by using a particular machine to cut out designs and letters from a color vinyl.  Then you should heat-press them to the t-shirt for transferring the design’s color.

Vinyl Graphic method leads to t-shirt designs that are highly durable and of great quality. Helps any design stand out. The limitation of this design method is that getting additional colors increases the cost, hence it isn’t ideal for large orders.

4. Planning your design concept:

Now that you have understood the various parameters of t-shirt designing, it is time actually to get started.  You should not rush to reach this place when designing. The more time and thought you give to the process up till now, the better the results would be.

Certain elements that could help you with your design choices are:

1. T-shirt style:

Ideally, a T-shirt is called a t-shirt as it resembles the letter T. However, not all T-shirts are the same, there are some variations available. The t-shirt style also needs to be carefully selected for delivering precisely what the client or customer is looking for.  For instance, crop tops might not be best suited for a formal law firm setting.

2. Size of the sketch:

As you start sketching your initial design idea, ensure that it can translate to actual size.  Generally, an 18 by 18 inches canvas helps sketch you a real-time t-shirt size design.  You need not fill the entire space that canvas has to offer. Depending on your design pattern, you can make use of the space as you like. A minimalist design would use a smaller logo hence taking up lesser space.  Using a realistic size canvas would give you a better idea of the proportions.

3. Imagery and style:

As a designer, you need to remember what the brand is, what market does the brand cater to, and how designing a t-shirt is going to help your brand. Your design needs to be relevant to the market it is catering to. Ideally, you should be able to tell at a glance whom the t-shirt is designed for.

For instance, a kid’s t-shirt might include cartoons and cute animal sketches, whereas a heavy metal band t-shirt might include skulls and flames to better complement and adhere to that target audience. You cannot have a mismatch here, as if you use cartoon designs for a metal band, or skulls for a children t-shirt it would have dire consequences, and you’d lose the market entirely.

It is important to remember that you are designing a t-shirt that is worn on bodies. Bodies don’t have uniformity when it comes to shape and size. From a designer’s perspective, the subject isn’t as symmetrical as you’d want. Hence you should resort to simpler designs that are flat to ensure that the design or the image don’t fall on unintended places.

4. Using Typography for T-shirt Design:

Typography is an essential part of t-shirt design. There is generally some of the other text attached to a t-shirt design most of the times. The fonts that you choose as a designer also reflects the brand you’re designing the t-shirt for. Script and serif fonts help the design look classic, whereas sans serif font gives the design a modern look. You could also experiment with display font; however, ensure you don’t compromise on readability. If the content on your t-shirt is crucial, ensure it doesn’t get overshadowed by too decorative typography.

5. Using colors in a t-shirt design:

Colors are the fastest and easiest way of associating specific characteristics or personality with any design. Each color has various shades, tints and hue. Each of them caters to different emotions. This works great as a quick trick to portray or set the mood of your brand in your t-shirt design.

For T-shirt design, there are two sets of colors you need to keep in mind; print colors and fabric colors. To ensure that both work in harmony and complement each other, it is ideal to use fabric colors as the base of your design ideas. Printing colors can be tricky as t-shirt inks work differently. The cheapest method to do so would approximate the colors of your design.

Each color has a color code; however, if you try searching for a particular code, it might be expensive and time-consuming as well. Hence, one way to go about it by approximating the color value by the color name, not getting into the details. However, this might lead to deviation in color shade from what you see on your printer and the final color on your cloth.

For the exact color match, you would need to use custom CMYK inks or Pantone. Pantone makes use of ink tones that are predefined and that your printers can purchase.  CMYK, on the other hand, attempts to create the desired color, by mixing Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Key inks.

6. Choose a path:

Now that you’re ready with your design idea, next is execution. You could either take the DIY approach or hire a professional to take care of it for you.  Let’s discuss both in detail:

1. DIY (Do It Yourself):

Since you’re designing the t-shirt all by yourself, you can set the price and the budget for it. It also gives you complete creative freedom as a designer; however, you need to understand that there is a reason that professionals charge the premium for their services and stick to specific design guidelines.

If you’re on a constrained budget, you could give trying DIY a chance, and however, if you feel overwhelmed by the designing practices, you should turn to a professional for help.

2. Hire a Professional:

If you’re a businessman or a solo entrepreneur, there’s a lot on your plate, to adjust designing as well. In such cases, you should hand it out to the professionals. When you work with a freelancer, it can get a little tricky, but it’s usually an engaging and productive activity. The key is to find the right designer who understands your design philosophy and understands what you’re searching for.

Effective communication is a must with designers to translate your idea into a tangible design. For doing this, explaining just the design won’t help as much. You should be open to tell them about your target audience, visual style, color schematics and other valuable inputs for them to be able to paint the picture better.  You could also send reference images or design that you think is close to what you intend to achieve.

7. Get the right format:

You’re done with the T-shirt design, and you’re good to go.  However, you need to ensure that you have the right files for your design. Ideally, you’d need your design in a vector format; which would be an Illustrator, EPS or a PDF file.  Apart from this, you’ll also need color codes either by Pantone or CMYK base, to ensure your T-shirt design color translates from digital to print accurately.

Now you’re good to go, and you have a t-shirt design that is best suited for your purpose, budget and relevance to the target audience.  T-shirt designing is gaining widespread popularity, and it’s a trend any business can benefit from if they understand it rightly. This was 7 steps to mastering the art of t-shirt design.

The post T-Shirt Design: Mastering the Art of T Shirt Designing appeared first on Web Design Blog | Magazine for Designers.

Outline Fonts can be very helpful for creating flyers, posters, or even a greeting card design. Here are 20 best outline fonts to give your design an edge. Most of these outlines fonts are free to use, while a few are premium/paid ones.

1. Plabook:

As the name suggests, this font is targeted at designing a banner, poster or any material that is used for fun, playful purposes. Playbook is an excellent font for children’s book cover, posters or any kid-related design. There are three variants available with this font: Playbook Outline, Playbook Fill and Playbook Regular. Though not very extensive in several choices and variants, the font is a playful and aesthetic one to cater to all your design needs for children easily.  It is a very natural font in the sense that using it feels like someone has sketched this typography with a marker pen, which gives it an authentic and attractive feel.

2. Library 3 AM:

Library 3 AM is a free outline font that has an aesthetic and creative design. It comes with two styles: Regular and Soft. There is support for multi-language that makes it stand out from most of its competitors. This font follows a one-line structure. It is considered as a Neon font family and is a free font for both personal and commercial use. Since it’s a neon font, the best application for this font could be for headlines or banners used for night clubs and casinos or even bowling alleys.

3. Potra:

Potra is one of those fonts that have a very futuristic feel. The characters have rounded lines, and it contains all cap letters, numbers and symbols. There are many instances where this font can be used, such as badges, labels, logotypes, banners and headlines and also print. The font is aesthetically appealing and free to use for both personal and commercial use. It would surely make your design stand out of the crowd.

4. Exodar:

Exodar is another futuristic typeface that has elegance in each character. It has a very modern look which makes it sci-fi, futuristic, catchy, stylish and readable. It is also easy to use.  Exodar is a futuristic font. However, it can be used for any commercial activities such as logo, poster design, headline, and album cover. It can also be used for the album, flyer, t-shirts, business cards, social media, magazine, advertising, product designs or anything which needs a hint of futuristic look.

5. Altero:

Altero is an outline font which has a modern approach. It offers a minimalistic and clean design. Altero has a bold design and is available in two styles: Regular and Outlined. It has 505 glyphs, all-cap letters, symbols and numbers. It also has support for 91 languages. Using this font is an excellent idea for headlines, ads, posters and banners.  It is a font that is free to use for both personal and commercial use.

6. Neon Neon:

This font is a great outline font especially if you’re looking for setting an 80s mood. This outline font uses line art in a creative and unique manner. None of the characters is closed completely; there is always an origin point and an exit point. This makes the font look rather stylish and fresh from the rest of the available fonts in the market.  This font can be used for packaging, advertising, poster designs and much more. It would best work for a target audience who are into 80s music or have influences of the 80s generation.

7. Metria Free Display Font:

Metria Font has a unique approach to design and style. It uses angles and shapes that instantly remind one of geometry.  Each character has certain unique characteristic and the font is very fresh to the eyes. It is also highly versatile as it takes the rigid shapes of geometry and adds a fun touch to them with organic curves.  This font is ideal for architectural content and also could work best for mathematic textbooks or quiz header.

8. Fakedes:

Fakedes is a serif font which has a modern edge. Each letter has a certain characteristic that repeats throughout the font. It looks unique and fresh. Fakedes comes with two font styles: Regular and Bold.  It has a curved round shape. The design of the characters is well balanced and easily readable. Fakedes is a font that would look great for casual boardings, headers and also kid’s party’s invitations. Since it has a signature wave pattern in its design, it could also work with any content related to surfing or other water activities.

9. Paralines:

It is an outline font that draws inspiration from both: future and retro design. The structure of the font adheres to the modern practices while at the same time has elements of retro design as well. This font could work great for posters of remakes of vintage films, products that have a modern approach to a nostalgia-driven product, and also as header to any relevant content material.

10. Forsaken Font:

Forsaken font has a very handcraft design. It drives a certain feeling of nostalgia to the users. The font is ideal for prints, apparels and also logos. The font pack includes an outline and filled versions. Using both of these styles you could create some aesthetically pleasing and attractive content. The tail and other elements of each character look like a painting stroke hence this font is also ideal for headers of painting exhibitions or art gallery or even art magazine.

11. Darc:

Darc is a great outline font which is inspired by French writing. It has a retro feel to it and it comes with 5 different options; Façade, Shadow, Roman, Inline and Outline. It is usable for creating signage, café boarding also vintage themed cinemas. Since there are 6 variants of fonts to play around with, this font could single-handedly manage to create a great content layout for any particular project. The font was named as a wordplay on the phrase ‘The arc’. The characters are distinguished from other fonts by their unique arch that adds a modern touch to the otherwise retro outline font.

12. Tokyo:

Tokyo is a great bold san serif font. It comes with both solid and outline variants. The font is designed in a way that the outline font can easily outlay the solid font if you want to use it that way. You can do this using Photoshop. It is an ideal font for invitations, weddings, headers, saves the dates and more.  It is a playful font that can add a lot of character to your content.

13. Decurion:

Decurion has a classic vintage design. It is a slab display font that has many styles and variations like the outline, inline, rough and more. This font can be used for website headers, social media, or even posters.  It comes with 6 different styles. It includes uppercase letters, numbers and also some punctuation.

14. Pittsbrook:

Pittsbrook is a classic typeface which is inspired by letters that were used in old advertisements/packaging. The shape of the font is rigid, sharp and blocky. There are no curves used with this font. It is a particular font that works amazing if you have a specific vintage design project. The various places it could be used at are any e-sport logo, packaging, headline, liquor label, space-fillers, typographic quotes or even logotypes. The font comes with two styles, regular and slanted.

15. Greta:

Greta is a unique outline font as it includes only lowercase characters. There are bold, outlined and filled variants. It has inspiration from the 70s and gives a very retro look. This font is ideal for social media marketing, branding, quotes, text with fill background and much more. It is not the easiest to read font however it has a certain design characteristic that makes it stand out from the other fonts. The weight distribution of each character is different which makes it look more humanized and hand-lettered as a font.

16. Yerington:

Yerington font looks very close to any calligraphy font. It has an elegant and modern approach to lettering. It comes with two variants: plain and outline. There are lowercase, uppercase characters. It also supports multi-language characters. It is a great font for logo design, graphic design, posters and tattoos as well. You can also use it for magic show headers or posters.

17. Buryland:

Buryland is a hand-tailored font, which has drawn inspiration from retro and modern lettering style. It uses san serif as a base for character design. It comes with three variants; Regular, Outline and Stamped. It also has support for multiple languages which makes it accessible and usable across a greater audience pool. The font has a cursive font which makes it look elegant and beautiful. It works great for designing posters with adventure or travel themes, for bike or cycling expeditions and much more. This font can also be used for designing logos, with other fonts to create a nice contrast.

18. Sigma Display:

Sigma Display comes with lowercase, uppercase and important characters like numbers, punctuations, glyphs and currency as well. It comes with four variants that are Regular, Italic versions for both outline and regular versions. Sigma is a tall font which would look great onboarding and posters. It can also be used for branding a product or making their logo. This font would suit the aesthetic requirement of a beer product, or a casino as well.

19. Georgea Sans Serif Font:

Georgea Sans Serif font has an all-caps sanserif font. It consists of regular, grunge and also outline variants. There are six TTF and OTF fonts file. This helps you mix and match various design styles to create a perfect layout of content or use a single font for creating an outstanding design. It is ideal for logo designing, stamps, t-shirt design, posters, and cards and branding. Apart from other characters it also has support for shapes.

20. Crystal Font Family:

Crystal is a trendy font that has support for the two-layering setting. You can easily give the text a 3d gradient by layering outline font on top of the regular font.  It has a great gradient feel and sharp edges. The font resembles a crystal with its sharp and defined edges. It would look great on premium brands and posters and headers.  The font can also be great for logos.

These were 20 best outline fonts to give your design an edge.  Some of these are premium whereas some of these are free. If you’re new to designing and using fonts, try out the free one’s firs to get accustomed to how to use such fonts. Once you have a clear understanding and a better grip, you could try some of the premium ones too. However, the quality of the font doesn’t depend on the fact that its premium or free. Many free fonts have fantastic scope for typography as well. It is a subjective and personal choice that depends on what purpose do you want a particular style to accomplish. Use a complementary font to your business purpose for getting the best out of that font.

The post 20 Best Outline Fonts to Give Your Design an Edge appeared first on Web Design Blog | Magazine for Designers.

The process of designing Album Art isn’t as tedious as it might feel. You need the right mindset and the right approach towards it. Here are 8 essential rules that will help you design a great album cover:

1. Get to know the band:

If you’re a designer who’s designing an album cover for a band, it is a good practice to start by understanding where the band is coming from. Just like designers need to know what a company is all about before designing their logo, it is essential to follow the same process for music albums as well.  Communicate with the band members separately and individually if they’re a group, and understand each of their perspective and emotions related to the band.  Next, try and understand who the audiences are; the band is trying to cater to. They might not have thought about these aspects themselves, but subconsciously there’s always a target audience, and identifying them helps to create a great album cover.

2. Understanding the inspiration:

As a music artist or a band, they might have found some source of inspiration that pushed them forth with each music record on that album. There might be a constant role model, or a brief moment of experience at a party, witnessing some art or conversation. Similarly, your album cover design must have a source of inspiration as well. When you communicate with the band members or the artist, ensure you ask them the right set of questions, and understand better about their roots and history. Doing this helps understand the characteristics and personalities of the members involved or the memory that inspired them. This allows you to translate the thought behind the album cover much better, as you could try making a visual representation of what their inspiration was.

3. Colour:

Once you’re decided on a rough idea as to what the cover design should look like, you can now focus on different elements of designing an album cover. To start with colour is one very important element in designing an album cover.  The choice of colours is always a thoughtful selection when it comes to album cover design. Many album covers are monochromatic; because they invoke emotions that differ from the emotions, you feel when you see a vibrant or colourful album cover.  Each colour can invoke different emotion of a person; it is known as Color Psychology.

Hence to depict different moods, it is essential to make use of different colours.  If the album is happy and light using the colour yellow or other bright colours might complement the feel of the album whereas for melancholy and darker music use of faded, dull and darker colours like grey and dark blue justify the vibe. Another important aspect to remember is the colour scheme which talks about how different mixing colours complements the overall design, and which colours look good together for what purpose.

4. Typography:

Generally, many designers believe that the typeface of a band should not be changed on the album cover.  Many bands have a distinctive font for their band that essentially becomes synonym to their identity. While using such a distinctive feature on the album art could help customers identify them from a glance, not all artists have such a distinctive typeface. Hence typography still holds value in designing an Album cover.  The font that a designer uses could talk volumes about the band. No decision in designing is without any thought behind it.  Typography isn’t necessarily just putting the name of the band and getting done with it. It talks about all the possible places you would like to place content.  There are a bunch of different fonts to experiment with.

You could use a Serif font. Serif fonts are fonts with the little leg at the end of the letters. Generally, such fonts are taken to be more serious and formal. Such fonts generally work best for classical, opera and acoustic music.  Sans serif, on the other hand, means fonts without Serif.  These fonts don’t have the little leg at the end of letters. Sans serif is a much modern font family, and it is streamlined much more than Serif.  Sans serif is often used with a variety of music genres like indie rock and electronic.

Script fonts are fonts that are used to enact hand-lettering and handwriting strokes. There is a wide variety of script forms that can encompass the most traditional and ornate fonts to the most playful and messier ones. Script fonts can be used for a wide range of emotions and music types.  Whereas display fonts are often decorative. They are meant for display, as the name suggests. Generally, such fonts are found on signage and book covers. However specific niche or genre of music can make use of such fonts to add to their album cover just as Gothic. Gothic display fonts are often used to create album covers for heavy metal bands. You could use a bubbly font for children’s music album. The possibilities are endless.

5. Using the right image:

Image or graphic element takes up most of your album design. It is going to be the centre focal point of attention of your album cover.  General habit or trend is to use the picture of the solo artist if he/she is a solo artist or to use an image of the lead singer or any member of the band that audience most relate to.  However, you don’t need t to stick to photographs these days for your album cover. You could make use of graphics, illustrations and collages as well.

There is certain psychology attached to images as well. Generally, there are practices in photography that helps photographers take more engaging pictures. They use different guidelines such as rule of thirds, golden ratio and much more. Similarly, while designing album art, using such principles should be a prerequisite to click a great image that captivates the viewers’ attention. It is seen over some time that people tend to catch human faces on album cover much faster than anything else. It holds their attention the fastest.  A face has the potential to convey many emotions through various expressions. It also has the potential to modulate or change how the viewer feels if the image is captured nicely and the colour and the fonts complement the entire album cover design.

6. Minimalistic Approach:

While there are excellent instances of maximalist album covers too, it is often seen that the minimalistic approach works better on album covers. It creates a statement in album cover design. Minimalism also is a trending design style which is difficult to go out of style, as it’s very timeless.

For instance, Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon album cover has made its presence remarkable over time.  The album was released in record stores during 1973. The album art shows a basic concept of physics that most of us remember studying. A light ray enters the prism and spreads out to different colours of the rainbow on its way out.  The background is kept black for enhancing the simple thought. This album art resonated with many people as they perceived the album art to be saying that before you listen to this music, you’re feeling full and bored, but as you listen to the album, you’ll feel a range of mixed emotions. Hence using a minimalistic design approach, the band had successfully depicted the feel of the songs, and how they intend their audience feels after listening to the album with bare minimum elements.

7.  Optimize for all spaces:

In today’s era, more people stream music rather than buy a physical album. Hence realizing the potential places your album cover is going to be displayed at, becomes essential. Most of the users generally prefer streaming music over services like iTunes and Spotify. Since you know the size restrictions of such thumbnails, you need to look at your design from an overall viewpoint if it would look good downsized to that extent. This is another reason why maximalism doesn’t work as good in album cover design.

Hence it is essential to practice that once you’re done designing your album cover, you check how it looks resized to proportions of such music streaming applications, and if it still makes sense and is visually appealing. If the answer is yes for both, you’re good to go. However, if it is no to either one, you might need to reconsider your design.  Since you already know about this tip now, you could save much time by keeping in mind from the inception that this design needs to look good on a much smaller canvas too. That way, you’d save time and be more efficient.

8. Cover the essentials:

You might create the best possible album cover of the decade. However, it is of little or no use if you forget to add all the essential details. While designing an album cover, you need to be aware of not the aesthetical values or elements but also including the necessary information and other elements as per the niche. For music albums, there are a few elements that the album cover must-have.

Firstly, the band and the album name should be made distinctly clear. You need to position it on the spine of the album cover as well. This is particularly important for classic albums that are sold offline, as they are arranged in a rack many times where only the side of the album cover is exposed for the viewers. Hence writing the name on the sides of the album cover is essential for people to recognize your album cover and the artist and name of the album. However, if you’re going for a digital-only approach, you can very well skip the need to add name and other details as it would be available separately in other section.

Apart from this, you need to include a list of tracks that the album has.   Make sure you also include licensing and legal information. Lastly, you should also pay attention to the inner jackets of the album cover. It needs to follow the same design principle as the outside of the album cover. Otherwise, it needs to feel like an extension of the same.  This helps the album look consistent and aesthetically nice.

These were the 8 essential rules for designing an album cover. Keep practising, and use different sources of inspiration for creating your next album cover. Keep in mind that all designing elements you use for creating an album cover should complement each other. They should add value to the overall design. It should give the first impression and at the same time a summary about what the album is about.

The post How to Design an Album Cover: 8 Essential Rules appeared first on Web Design Blog | Magazine for Designers.

In this tutorial, we discuss four such methods from the easiest to the most complex to quickly and easily remove a background from a photo or image using Adobe Photoshop.

Method 1: The Magic Wand Tool

As the name suggests, using the Magic Wand Tool is one of the quickest and easiest methods for removing background in Photoshop. This method requires that the image you have has clearly defined edges, to work correctly. It works best when there’s a right amount of contrast between the foreground and the background and also when one of these elements is a solid flat colour.

Step 1. Make the basic selection:

Before you start, open your image and duplicate it. Now hide it in the background layer. This helps for referring back to the original image if needed.  Now select the new layer, and pick the Magic Wand Tool from the tool panel. Shortcut for accessing the tool is ‘w’ and ‘shift+w’ to toggle between the tools. Now after selecting the tool, select the flatter area of the image and delete it.

Step 2. Manipulating Tolerance Levels:

The Magic Wand alone can only help to remove a background from an image till a limit. However, you can get around trickier pictures provided they still have sharp edges, by manipulating the tolerance levels of the image.  The tolerance settings are situated in the options menu.  It adjusts the range of colour values you want to manipulate at once.  Increasing the colour value increases the range of colours, and decreasing it selects a narrower range.

For images like the one above, the foreground and the background has a very similar colour which can make it difficult to distinguish both from each other. For this, you need to use lower tolerance levels so that the Magic Wand tool can easily recognize the background as a separate colour. Then by using the Magic Wand tool and the shift key together to select different areas of the background until you cover the majority of it.

In contrast, when you have an image like this in hand that has many different colours in the background but has a bright contrast between the background and the foreground, you need to increase the Tolerance Levels. The dark mountains are set against an orange sunset; hence, the tolerance level needs to increase for a clear distinction between the foreground and the background. After this repeat, the process of taking the Magic Wand Tool with shift and keep selecting the unselected parts of the sky (background) until all of it is selected.

Step 3. Use Layer Masks to neaten things up:

The Magic Wand tool sure gives you a quick cutout; however, it isn’t the cleanest when it comes to the edges. Also, if you’re making multiple selections, chances are you might have left some stray pixels in the background that can look untidy and unprofessional. If we refer to the chair in step 2, repeat the process till selecting the area with Magic Wand Tool and setting the Tolerance accordingly. Now instead of deleting the selection create a mask. For this, you need to invert your selection through the command ctrl++shift+l and then select the Add Layer Mask button situated at the bottom of the Layer Panel.

Using a mask when editing your image allows you to have more control over the image as it’s now nondestructive. This means the unwanted pixels are not deleted; they are just hidden. This allows you to re-edit the masks by repainting or removing in parts of the original image.

To review how neat your layers look, create a New Layer using the New Layer button. Fill this layer using a solid bright colour and then place it below your mask layer. By zooming in you can see the limitations of the Magic Wand Tool as the edges might still be very jagged and filled with lesser stray pixels.

Step 4. Tidy the image using Brush Tools:

Layer Masks allows you to clean up the image. The first thing to do is to get rid of any stray pixels that were not selected with the Magic Wand Tool. You can do this by alt-clicking on the Layer Mask thumbnail in the Layer Panel. Now set the foreground colour to black and select a paintbrush tool to start filling those stray pixels. Tidy up the edges of the image. You can use the “[ ] “buttons to decrease and increase the brush size for covering smaller or larger areas of the artboard.

Step 5. Finesse the Layer Mask:

Now click back on the background image to exit the Layer Mask view. Now reselect the Layer Mask thumbnail to activate it. Once this is done, take some time with the Brush tool to tidy up the image and get rid of any harsh edges.

Method 2: The Quick Selection Tool

The quick Selection tool is useful for making speedy cutouts. It works similarly to the Magic Wand Tool but a bit more efficiently as it just doesn’t capture similar colours, but also similar textures and detects the edges of the object better.

Step 1. Make a selection:

The starting is pretty similar to the first method. Import the image you want to work on, duplicate and hide the background layer. Now select the Quick Selection tool from Tools panel or using the shortcut w and shift+w to toggle between the tools. Click on the foreground subject and drag. The tool works best when you start from the centre of the object to wish to cut and drag it outwards.

If you accidentally select parts that you didn’t want to be included in your cutout, hold down the alt to remove these parts from your selection. Make use of the “[ ] “buttons to resize the brush to control how much area is being affected by the Quick Selection Tool.

Step 2. Soften the cutout edges:

Now when you add a new background to your image, you might notice the cutout has a slight halo effect around the edges. This might look out of place, but you don’t need to worry as rectifying it is relatively simple.  Just select the cutout by pressing control and left-click on the layer mask thumbnail.  Go to Select menu > Modify> Contact while the layer is active. Now enter a value in the contract selection box for trimming off the edge of your image.

Now you need to add a feature by going to Select>Modify. Invert the selection. Now make sure you have the layer mask thumbnail selected, and then delete it. The cutout should have much softer edges that look much more natural on the new background.

Method 3: Work with Channels

Step 1. Getting Started with Channels using Levels:

Start by opening the image that we want to cut. Now go to Channel panel. Browse through all the channels and find the one which has a high contrast to the present image. Duplicate this channel and go to the levels option (control + L). Now you need to adjust the settings to get the output.

Step 2. Clean up Image using Dodge and Burn Tools:

Look for any solid elements in the background and clean them using the Dodge and Burn tools. For the next steps, select the exposure tool and set it to around 100. Now using the doge tool, try and paint the areas that are not needed.

The burn tool is used for the exact opposite reason. Select the tool and darken the areas you need to. Keep doing this until you are satisfied with the visual image. After that, create a mask from the layer panel.

Step 3. Make use of the Refine Edge Tool:

Images with finer details such as hair or fur need more efforts for cutting out the background. The Refine Edge tool helps in this purpose. For using this method, first, open the image. Now duplicate the image through the layers panel. Start with any tool for a rough cutout of the image. Right now do not stress over the finer details and just focus on the selection of objects that you want to keep. And don’t worry about the finer details just yet. Now with this rough selection active, go to the Refine Edge tool. Adjust the edge detection as per the requirement of the image.

Step 4. Restore Details:

Even after the above step, you may want to have a better-edged image. For this use the Smart Radius option. Choose the Refine Radius Tool and now paint over the image in question. Focus on the edges where you want more details to come out. There is an Erase refinement tool which does exactly the opposite, that is, lowers the detailing of the image. There is also an Adjust Edge option which will give you further control of detailing the image. Using all these tools, you can adjust the image and reach your satisfied level. After that output the layer mask through the layers panel.

Method 4: The Pen Tool

All the tricks and techniques discussed as above can be very useful for removing the background using Photoshop. However, in order to achieve perfection and have a better output, you need to get familiar and practice using Pen Tool. The earlier discussed methods had an aim of convenience over perfection. This method is certainly more laborious and requires more practice before mastering the use of it.

Let’s systematically break it down, so it’s easier to comprehend.

Step 1. Start by Drawing a Path:

Open the image first, which needs the background to be removed. Now repeat the process that we have been following all the methods so far. Duplicate and hide the background layer. Once this is done, click on the Pen Tool to select it or use shortcut P. Now you will have to display your skills by drawing an entire path that you want to cut out. To make the path in a better way, you may want to create curves by using anchor points. Hold the mouse key and then click and drag to set the anchor points. This will allow you to set the curve just that way you want on the image. There are many options that you get on how to best use the anchor points; you can explore more of it to master this art.

Step 2. Saving The Path Created:

Once you are done tracing the foreground item and creating a path as per the requirement, we need to convert the path in shape by closing it. This can be easily done by clicking on the first anchor point that you had created. A small circle showing the option will appear on the screen. Once you click this circle, the path will be well closed. This path will then appear in Paths Panel under Window. You also have the option of naming this path by double-clicking on it. Giving all your paths names is a good practice as it helps you identify which ones you want to work on.

Step 3. Editing the Path:

The most significant advantage of using a path is that you don’t need to have it perfect the first time. You always have the option of editing the path you have created. Over a period of time when you feel the curve is not right or the lines are not matching, then you can quickly edit the path by using the tool called direct select. Simply select the anchor point you want to edit and play around with the handles till you get what you need. You always have the option of adding or deleting anchor points as per need. This gives you the much-needed flexibility to get your path in the best shape possible.

Step 4. Converting the Path to Mask:

Once the path is created, we need to convert it into a layer. For this, you will select the path that we have created from the paths panel. Select the load path option. After doing this go the layers panel, and duplicate the layer. After this, opt for the Add layer Mask. Once this is done, you will have to create a new layer and add good bright or loud colour as the background to see how good the cutout has come out.  As discussed earlier, the best advantage of using a Mask is that it allows you to use the hidden information again if needed. If the edges appear rough, you might want to soften the cutout.

These were the 4 ways to quickly remove a background from an image or photo using Photoshop which you can use for editing your next image.

The post 4 Methods to Quickly Remove a Background Using Photoshop appeared first on Web Design Blog | Magazine for Designers.

It is essential to understand that Photoshop has a certain method by which it identifies the different elements imported in it. Photoshop is essentially a pixel-based software that only distinguishes a pixel from another based on colours. It doesn’t automatically detect a shape or form.

Photoshop’s Marquee tool can be used for multiple purposes and comes in very handy, especially if you’re a designer. Here, we will provide you with a detailed tutorial for mastering the Marquee Tool in Photoshop, step by step.

The Rectangular Marquee Tool:

The Marquee Tool is situated in the first place in Tools panel if you have double column and second place if you have a single column tools panel. The icon of this tool looks like an outline of a square.  Start by selecting this tool.  Use the rectangular marquee tool by pressing the mouse at the point where you want to initiate the selection.

The Up Left to low right approach:

Generally, you should always start a selection from the up left end of the object/area you want to select. Now, hold your mouse button, and pull down to the low right corner. Release the mouse,  when you’re satisfied with the selection. Your selection is now complete.

1. Rectangular Selection

If we talk about the image displayed above, you can identify a red block on the first row. Let’s try changing the colour of this block using the rectangular Marquee Tool.  Remember for Photoshop the block isn’t a block or any form, it’s just a collection of pixels like all other parts of the image. Hence it is essential to use your selection tool accurately to make the right selection. Since the shape of the block we want to colour is rectangular, using the Marque Rectangular Tool would be easy.

Start by selecting the Rectangular Marquee Tool. You can either access it from the Tools Panel or using a keyboard button’. Now, as we learned above, start with making the selection from the up-left edge of the block. Hold down your mouse after making that selection. Now pull the selection to the low right corner of the block.

Realigning your selection:

Though the process is relatively simple when starting, it is possible to not get the corners accurately on the first attempt. However, you need not panic because of this, as you can hold down the spacebar on your keyboard and pull your mouse for moving the selection exactly where you need it to me. You don’t have to start over each time. This saves time and proves to be very convenient.  Once you’re in alignment that you want. Let go of the spacebar and continue pulling the selection.

Now as soon as you release the mouse, your selection would be complete. You’ll realize there is a selection outline around the borders of the block. This means any modifications you make now would only affect that particular block and nothing else.

Changing the colour of the selection:

Now we would convert the colour of the block. For doing this, select the Hue/Saturation image adjustment option from the menu labelled as Image. Or you could access it with cntrl+u keyboard button. A new popup would appear, for Hue and Saturation.  For instance, assume we want to change the colour of the block to orange. For changing the colour, you could see a noticeable change just by using the slider for Hue to the left and the right. There is a colour bar below the slider, too that helps understand what colours lie where.  Now if you aren’t satisfied with the saturation of the colour, you can adjust that as well. Dor reducing, pull the slider for saturation to the left and to the right to increase.  Keep tweaking unless you find the option you like. Once done, click OK and exit the dialogue box.

Deselecting the selection:

Once this is done, you might want to edit the other aspects of your image still. For this, you need to deselect your selection from the block. Do this by opening the Select menu and choosing Deselect, or use the keyboard button control+D.

2.  Square Selection:

As discussed earlier, there are primarily only two selection shapes available for Marque Tools; Rectangle and Ellipse.  However, this doesn’t limit the functionality of this tool. You can create a square selection using the rectangular tool.  There are two methods of forcing the rectangular tool to make square selections.

Method 1:

The first method is a bit lengthier, but it is always good to know all the methods to do a certain thing. If we talk about the image above, we would be focusing on the centre tile. Let’s use the centre tile image for creating an impressive background texture. Since this tile is square, our selection tool has to be square.   Click on the Rectangular Marque Tool and go to the Options Bar. The options bar would display options that are available for the mentioned tool. The few parameters that you can change from this option tool are; style,  and height and width.

By default, the style would have been set as normal. This means we are free to move the selection as we like. There’s no limitation to the dimensions and proportions as well. The first step to using a square selection is modifying this option from normal to Fixed Ratio.  Using the basic principles of mathematics, we know a square has equal height and width. Manipulate the value of the height and width column to 1:1. Now, you would be easy to make a square selection for the tile we want to select.

Start with the process we have been following so far.  Start the selection on the up left corner, and pull the mouse down to the right low corner while holding the mouse.  Hold spacebar if you need to make adjustments to your selection. Release the spacebar, and continue pulling till you are satisfied with the selection. The only difference is that our style is selected as a fixed ratio, which would help it be a square.

There are limitations in using this method. The adjustments made to the Options Panel don’t revert to the default settings once you’re done with making the square selection. This could lead to wasting much time for your future projects or should you have to make any other changes in the same document. This is because you’d often forget reverting all the parameters to original values and hence use square selection where you wanted to use rectangle selection. Hence it is essential always to remember to revert the style to Normal before you move on to any other work.

Method 2:

Another approach to achieving a square selection is by using a keyboard button.  All you need to do is, start with selecting the Rectangular Marque Tool, and pull the selection from up left corner to the low right corner. While you’re in the process, press shift key and continue to pull.

You see that the rectangular selection would suddenly turn into a perfect square selection. Now release the mouse to finish your selection. After this, let go of the Shift key. It is crucial to remember the order. If you first let go of the shift key before releasing the mouse key, the outline of your selection jumps back to a rectangular shape. Then press and hold the Shift key again to change it back to square.  You can’t even press and hold the shift key before starting your selection. Doing so activates the Adobe Selection mode. This would create confusion and give you complex and random results as you would start a new selection before ending the previous one.

Hence it is important to remember the order, i.e. Use the keyboard button> Select the starting point> Start pulling >press and hold the shift button>release the mouse for completing the selection>now release the shift button.

The Centre to Outside Approach:

Till now, we have studied how to make  square or rectangular selections from the up left corner to the low right corner. However, this is not the only method to use the Marque Tool. A different approach can be making selection from the centre.

Start with selecting the Marque Tool. Start from the centre of the object you want to select and start pulling your selection outwards. Now press the Alt key and continue pulling. By pressing the Alt key, your selection starts expanding outwards in each and every direction.  Continue pulling your selection from the point you started on till you cover the entire object you wish to select.  Now release the mouse button and complete the selection, then release the Alt key.

Similar to the previous approach, the timing and hierarchy of the steps are crucial. Releasing the Alt key before releasing the mouse makes the selection shift back to its original format of the up left to the low right approach. You then would have to press alt again to get it back to the centre to out approach. Pressing and holding the Alt button before you start your selection takes you to the Subtraction selection mode.

Hence remember, the right order to follow is Use the keyboard button> Select the starting point> Start pulling>press and hold the Alt button>release the mouse for completing the selection>now release the Alt button.

The Circular Marque Tool

The Marquee Tool is situated in the first place in Tools panel if you have double column and second place if you have a single column tools panel. The icon of this tool is Elliptical.  Start by selecting this tool.  Use the elliptical marquee tool by clicking the mouse at the point where you want to begin the selection.  You can switch between the Circular Marque Tool and Rectangle Marque Tool by pressing the keyboard button M.

Circular selections:

Select the elliptical marquee tool and click on the point where you want to begin the selection. Hold your mouse and pull to the direction, you want to expand it to. Once the selection outline covers the entire area, release the mouse button. Your selection would now be complete.

Suppose you want to add a vignette option to any photo like the one above. Using the Elliptical Marque Tool would make the process very easy. First, add a new blank layer. Here you can create any effect without damaging the original picture. Choose the new layer by clicking the New layer icon from the Layers Panel. Now fill this layer with white using Photoshop’s fill feature. Go to Edit>Fill and select White in the Contents section of the dialogue box. Press OK and exit the dialogue box.

Now you would realize that the entire image is blocked with the white fill layer that you just created.  You can temporarily hide the first layer with the eyeball situated next to it. Now that you can see the original image, you can add the vignette effect.  The way you want to make the selection has the same two approaches, upper left to low right or centre to outwards.

The main contrast between rectangular marque tool and elliptical marquee tool is that it is easy to remember your starting point for rectangular marque tool as the corner you start from remains fixed irrespective of how long you make the selection.  However, for the elliptical tool since it’s circular, there are no fixed corners. The selection keeps going away from the start point, which can get a little trickier to deal with. Fortunately, you can reposition the select alignment just like in rectangular one, holding down the spacebar.

For circular selections go to the options menu and select fixed ratio style and input the height and width to 1 each.

You can now make the necessary changes to your vignette to get the desired result to your image.

In this article, we learned about the art of Mastering the Marque Tool in Photoshop. Keep practising, and you’ll refine your selection skills in no time.

The post Mastering the Marquee Tool in Photoshop appeared first on Web Design Blog | Magazine for Designers.

People with disabilities can’t access the internet like normal people can. Depending on the They need special monitors, mouse, speakers, website elements, special contrast and many more things.

For these reasons and more, the Department of Justice has created two important acts, the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) and the Rehabilitation Act which includes section 508. On top of this the world wide web consortium (www) has issued WCAG 2.1 which is essentially a guidebook on the best practices a website needs to implement to make their website accessible.

The bottom-line? If you own a website you need to make sure it’s accessible to people with disabilities because you might be legally exposed, but aside of that you’ll be tapping into a huge market of people that otherwise can’t browse and interact with your website.

Accessibility is about making a website accessible to everyone. It shouldn’t matter whether someone has a disability or other individual requirements for a website. A website is accessible when everyone can use it, operate it, and perceive all its content. Often, however, users encounter numerous barriers.

The problem is, making a website accessible is hard so chances are you waived it from the get-go because: you don’t know how to do it or it’s too expensive or tou can’t reconcile your corporate design with accessibility or all of the above. Not to mention, the implementation would exceed your budget.

Enter accessiBe, an AI-based web accessibility tool that allows you to make your website accessible within hours. You don’t have to spend a fortune on it; you can keep your corporate design. And you don’t have to do more than add a single line of code to your source code.

Disabilities are diverse

To give a few examples: A user has a visual impairment and is therefore dependent on bright contrasts and legible writing. Another user cannot use a mouse because of a tremor but navigates websites using the keyboard. However, many functions on websites are not accessible or executable with the keyboard. A deaf person cannot understand the spoken content in a video because subtitles are missing.

Figure 1: Disabilities are as diverse as people. And so are the requirements for accessible websites.

This enumeration is not complete at all and simplifies the individual needs greatly. Because as different as we humans are, as different are our needs. There is, therefore, no patent recipe for accessibility.

Universal Design: One design for all instead of just a few

In the context of accessibility, there is, therefore, often talk of universal design. The idea behind universal design is that the design is created in such a way that it serves everyone and can be used by everyone. So, it should serve everyone instead of just a few. But this is easier said than done because of the diversity of people, disabilities, and requirements.

Accessibility for all thanks to AI

So instead of working on a web design that involves possible compromises to make an offer more accessible for individual user groups, accessiBe chooses an entirely different way. accessiBe is an AI-based solution and improves the accessibility of a website in two ways.

User interface for individual settings

In an interface visible to the end-user, these can make personal settings. For example, the font size, colors, or spacing can be adjusted. While experienced blind or visually impaired users have their software to use the computer and websites, older users lack both the software and the experience. The accessiBe interface allows all users to customize the appearance of a website. Independent of their technical affinity and technical possibilities.

Figure 2: accessiBe allows individual settings for colors, fonts, or spacing.

AI corrects accessibility issues

Furthermore, accessiBe automatically adjusts possible accessibility problems in the background. This includes, for example, missing labels for form fields or alternative texts for images. This means that website operators can improve the usability of their website without having to deal with the technical details.

Simple implementation using Javascript code

The application of accessiBe could not be more straightforward. You can customize the design of the user interface and then generate a Javascript code. Insert this in the footer of your source code. You don’t need any programming knowledge. accessiBe gives you instructions for different systems so that you can insert the code easily.

Once you have done that, you can sit back and let the AI do its work. After the work is done, you will receive an email notification. This happens after 48 hours or less, depending on how many pages your website has.

Figure 3: accessiBe allows you to choose between two different installation methods.

Figure 4: For the quick and basic Installation, all you have to do is copy and paste the custom code.

Figure 5: The Advanced and Customized Installation allows you use your own colors and other settings.

accessiBe ensures sustainable accessibility

While the accessibility of manually tested and corrected websites decreases over time, accessiBe guarantees sustainable availability. The system repeats the process every 24 hours. So, you can add new content or edit existing content without worrying about accessibility.

Try it now for free

So there you have it, a complete tutorial on how to make your website WCAG 2.1 and section 508 compliant using accessibe. Want to know more? You can test accessiBe for 7 days free of charge and without obligation. Just try it yourself and make up your own mind. You can apply for the free trial access.

The post accessiBe Review: Web Accessibility Tool to Help Websites Get WCAG 2.1 and Section 508 Compliant appeared first on Web Design Blog | Magazine for Designers.

Advantages of Digitized Vectors:

The advantage with digitized vectors is that it can reach many more people, and can be enhanced with proper retouches and refining. It also helps avoid situations of any unpredictable damages to the art. For this reason, the process of transforming Illustrations into Digital Vectors has been gaining widespread popularity. It is enabling artists and designers to collaborate, reach more clients and mark your impression with more impact around the world. Also, vectors are great files when it comes to flexibility of choosing size and scale as they’re easily scalable without any loss of quality. Hence this allows you to use your illustration for different purposes easily.

Converting hand-drawn illustrations to digital vectors allows you to enter new market places for your skill. For instance, if you’re a calligraphy lettering artist, you can digitalize your artwork and place it on different products. These could be merchandise like clothes, gift items, personalized items and more. You don’t need to sell the original piece of your art itself, but copies of it when you convert it in a digital vector. Another way to earn from your design is by licensing it to designers and companies. They can use it in their products.

There are some pre-requisites or guidelines to keep in mind before getting started with the process of converting your illustrations into digital vectors:

 1. Always Use a Clean White Paper:

Ensure using a clean white paper, irrespective of what you’re drawing. This ensures accurate scanning of your drawing. It is ideal to use white paper because the coloured paper could hamper the digitization process.  If you wish to add a colourful background, later on, you can do it digitally later on.

2. Refining the sketches before digitalization:

Make some fine adjustments to the drawing before getting started saves effort and time.  It also makes for a more finished product at the end. You can use erasers, pen or sketch pens to better outline your sketch and getting rid of unnecessary lines. Now erasers also need to be clean since dirty erasers could leave unwanted marks on the drawing that can be difficult to get rid of.

3. Trace your drawings using a Tracing Paper:

Not many artists know about this nifty trick, but it helps a lot in the process. Once you have drawn your illustration, it is always helpful to place a tracing paper on top of it and trace the drawing to a new fresh sheet. This helps because the borders and the overall outlines and details would be much crisper now since you won’t have multiple lines or strokes or smudges from constant erasing.

Now that we are clear with the pre-requisites, it is essential to understand how to effectively transform your illustrations into digital vectors by following 9 simple steps:

1. Draw the Design:

You need to draw the design in your mind, on a piece of paper, using the traditional method of pencil and paper. However, this isn’t going to be like one of your regular drawings as it has to serve a different purpose, i.e. being converted to a digital vector. Some certain tricks and tips help ease this process.

Firstly, if you’re using multiple colours for your sketch, make sure you use strong colours for the scanner to be able to comprehend correctly. This is often easier to achieve when you use a marker as they have a more noticeable impact and are thicker.

Secondly, you’d want your outlines to be really strong and easy to demarcate. A simple quick sketch won’t work as Illustrator would not be able to comprehend it.

You might have a practice of making quick doodles for your regular practice, but when you want to convert a particular project into a vector, you need to pay close attention to the detailing. Avoid using any different coloured paper for the drawing as the contrast between black charcoal of the pencil, and white paper is easier to be picked up by Illustrator.

2. Make your Design digital:

Get started using any of the following two approaches.  You can either scan the design or use a high-res picture of the drawing. Generally, scanning provides better results as it can easily differentiate between the blacks and the whites. Also, it comes with options like setting high contrast. You can also add single tone colours, which further improves accuracy. With taking a high res picture, the chances of missing out on clarity still exist.

Apart from that, there might be chances of producing shadows or overcasting in the picture due to external factors.  Having said this, many times low-quality scanners also aren’t most successful for rightly digitalizing your design, and for this, you should use a good quality scanner.  Make sure the quality of the image is 300 dpi (dots per inch) at the least before starting working on it.

3. Clean it up:

After digitalizing your design and having a digital format of your drawing, clean up the rough edges and any unwanted elements. Do this by opening your design in Adobe Photoshop. The more unwanted details you can get rid of from here, the easier it would be for you to refine it in Illustrator in later stages. Use the Eraser Tool and other such nifty tools from Photoshop to get a cleaner design.

4. Make the required adjustments:

Photoshop has various tools to make your drawing more black and white than it originally is when scanned. A stronger image would only make it easier for you to trace it in the later stages. One such method of tweaking the black and white aspect is using Levels (control+L), and another effective way is using Curves (control+m). Once you’ve made satisfactory and necessary changes, save the file in jpeg format.

5. Start tracing your design:

Once you’ve made the necessary changes on Photoshop and have your jpeg file ready, switch to Adobe Illustrator. Open the application with a fresh new empty document. Now navigate to File, then select Place and import your jpeg file. Now click on the picture to select it, then go to the window and select the option to image trace.

6. Experiment with existing material:

While it is true, that doing everything from scratch or by yourself can result in more accurate and efficient results, many times experimenting with the existing presets can provide you with very similar results for much less investment in terms of time and energy.  Click on the preview option and then on the preset menu in Image Trace, and browse through the choices till you discover the one that best suits your design.

If the trace isn’t picking up your drawing at first go, you could still play around with the presets and thresholds till you find a solution that works best for you. When you select the option for Image Tracing, you might get a popup for warning you that your image is large and suggest reducing the size and rasterize it.  This is mostly a precautionary step which popups irrespective of the fact that it’s required or not. You should check if your computer has enough free space, and if it does, you shouldn’t rasterize the illustration as it would lead to loss of all hand-drawn details from your high-quality scans.

7. Turn your Traces into Paths:

Once you have traced your drawing, you can go up to the toolbar, and click on Expand option. This automatically transforms your traces into Paths.  Once you’re done tracing your image, you might feel like you’re done with the process as you’d see a neat, refined selection. However, you need to check for unwanted white spaces that might have been picked up on by the image trace option.

This is because it takes the white space around objects as well while tracing.  Carefully examine for such white spaces inside your design that are unwanted, and remove them by clicking on them and deleting them. One other way of doing this is by using the Layer Panel and selecting the white areas there. Now you can drag the Layer to the trash using the Layers Panel.

8. Group your Objects:

Once you complete the tracing of your drawing, you should group your objects. Many times it is possible that your drawing would only have one core element(object). In such a case you won’t need to group it. However, if you’re drawing an action scene, or a scenery too,  chances are you’ll have more than one objects. Now to make sure that nothing stays afloat or unaffected by your edits, you need to group all the objects together using the keyboard shortcut control+G. Repeat this process twice for grouping everything together.

9. Smooth out and edit the artwork:

After removing any unwanted background from the artwork, you should invest time to fine-tune and clean up the artwork. Use the Smooth tool that is to your left side toolbar.  Drag it along the paths you want to move it to, by selecting the object. Same goes for hand lettering artwork as well. Now if you want to apply colours to your artwork, do so by selecting your artwork. Now fill it with colours using the Swatches Panel.

10. Export the  File:

Adobe Illustrator saves the file in AI format. This format is useful, especially if you want to save a master copy of your work. However, for different purposes, you might want to explore the different formats illustrator allows you to save your file as.  The various formats available with Illustrator are saving your file as PNG, JPEG, SVG and PDF. You can also save your files as PSD files for further working on the project using Adobe Photoshop. Be sure of the utility of the and purpose you want it for. Then, select the associated file type and export the file.

There are other methods you could use for transforming illustrations into digital vectors as well. A lot of them are much more straightforward, but might not be as accurate and useful as using Illustrator. Some of them include online websites like PicMonkey, Inkscape and others.  The importance of converting illustrations to digital vectors is rising with increased competition across the world. Drawing on paper and selling paintings is an art form still appreciated and valued in the market. However, they are not much readily paid for these days. Keeping this in mind, we curated this list for transforming illustrations into digital vectors in 9 simple steps. Keep practising and refining your skills. You can start with reviving some of your favourite artworks if they follow all the guideline discussed for effective transformation into a digital vector.

The post Transforming Illustrations into Digital Vectors in 9 Simple Steps appeared first on Web Design Blog | Magazine for Designers.

However, a clipping path can only be a vector object, not a photo. A few logical conclusions and guidelines while using clipping masks are; the clipping mask should always be placed on top of an object that you want to clip. You can only have a single clipping path; however, you can clip more than one objects together. All the clipped objects need to be in the same layer group.

Clipping Masks V.S Layer Masks.

Clipping masks can be used as an excellent means for controlling the visibility of a layer. Layer masks serve a similar functionality. Although the end outcome looks similar, clipping masks differ for layer masks by a right margin. A layer mask takes advantage of black and white to show or hide different sections of the layer. In contrast, a clipping mask uses the content and transparency of one layer to control the visibility of another layer.

Getting Started:

For creating a clipping mask, you need two layers. The bottom layer is used to control the visibility of the layer above it. By this definition, the bottom layer becomes the mask, and the top layer is said to be clipped to the mask.

The bottom layer includes the original contents that can be either shapes, pixels or type. The same content is visible on the layer above it. However, if you make any section of the bottom layer or mask layer transparent, the same area for the clipped layer would turn hidden.  Let’s get a better understanding of Using Clipping Masks in Adobe Photoshop with this detailed tutorial.

1. Create two layers:

Open the image you want to work on, and you would see the image is shown on the Background layer as it’s the only layer on the document currently. Now, as discussed earlier, we would need two layers, one to act as a mask, and others to be the clipped layer. Start by unlocking the background layer by pressing and holding alt key on the keyboard and double-clicking the Background Layer. Once it gets unlocked rename this layer as Layer 0. Now press ctrl key and click on Add New Layer Icon.

By doing so, a new layer with the name layer 1 would get created below the photo. Now we have two layers in the background. Now we would turn the bottom layer to a mask layer, and the layer above would be converted to a clipped layer to this mask.

2. Select which layer to clip:

Before starting the entire process, we first need to have a clear understanding as to which layer is going to be clipped to the layer below it. For our image, Layer 0 (top layer) would be clipped to Layer 1 (bottom layer). Hence make sure you have the top layer selected.

Now create the clipping mask by going to the Layer menu and choosing Create Clipping Mask. Now the layer panel would show two layers, top layer, i.e. Layer 0 and a bottom layer, which is layer 1.  You would notice there is a small arrow on the top layer that points towards the bottom layer. This indicates that the top layer is clipped to the bottom layer.

So far, we have managed to hide the image from view using the clipping mask we created. This is because the mask layer, i.e. Layer 1, has no content as of now. It is transparent. As we know that in a clipping mask, any area present on the top layer is situated directly above transparent areas of the bottom layer, and hence hiding them.  Our bottom layer has no content; hence, it is entirely transparent. This is why no part of the above image is visible.

3. Releasing the Clipping Masks:

This isn’t what we ideally want to achieve. For practical use of clipping masks, some portions of the image need to remain visible. Let’s start with getting rid of the clipping mask, for now; we would come back to it with a better approach. To remove the clipping mask, go to the Layer menu and choose Release Clipping Mask. Now you can see the top layer is not right intended and the arrow is gone too, this shows that the top layer is no longer clipped to the bottom layer. Now you can see the image/content of the top layer again.

4. Fill content in the Clipping Masks:

Now we witnessed, that the last time the issue was that our clipping mask was a transparent layer with no objects or vectors on it. This led to complete transparency of the entire image.  Now let’s add content to the bottom layer. Click on the top layer’s visibility icon and hide the image to see what you’re doing.  Now select the bottom layer and activate it.

Firstly, for adding content head over the Marquee Tool and select any shape you want to make use of from the tool. For our case, we would stick to the Elliptical Marquee Tool.  Secondly, after selecting the tool, click and drag an elliptical section outline at the centre of the document. Next, go to Edit and choose Fill. Now you should choose the Contents tab to black, and click OK.  The selection you made with the Elliptical Tool is now black. Now for removing the selection outline from the borders of the shape go to Select menu and choose Deselect.

You would notice that as opposed to the previous attempt, we now have some content in the centre of the bottom layer. However, all the area surrounding the content remains transparent.  You can see the content is reflected in the preview panel at situated in the layers panel as well. If you look at both the layers on the preview thumbnail, you’d understand that some of the content from the top layer sits exactly below the content you created for the bottom layer while the other part of the photo is still sitting on top of transparent areas of the bottom layer.

5. Create another clipping mask:

Now we are better equipped and hence ready for rightly using the clipping mask. Hence we again create the clipping mask by selecting the layer that needs to be clipped to the bottom layer. Firstly, click on the top layer and select it,  secondly make the layer visible by clicking its visibility icon. Now go back to the Layer menu and choose Create Clipping Mask.

Now when you see the document, you’d see that the content of the top layer that sits directly above the shape we created for the bottom layer remains visible however the parts of the photo that rests on the transparent portion of the bottom layer remain hidden.

6. Adjust the content within the clipping mask:

It isn’t possible and not worth the effort to create a shape in the bottom layer according to the position of the content of the top layer that you want to keep visible. It’s not worth the effort as Photoshop has more accessible ways to bring the content you want to remain visible under the object of the bottom layer. Use the Move Tool to re-position the content within the mask tool. Click on the photo and drag it till it’s in a position that you want. As you start moving the image, only the area that fits the shape below remains visible.

This is the final result.

Applications:

Layer masks work best for blending layers with smooth and seamless transitions; however, clipping masks are best for situations where your photographs need to fit within a clearly defined shape.  The shape could be either something you drew from the selection tool as discussed above. However, this isn’t the limit of how you could take advantage of clipping masks. They can also be used for filling a vector shape with an image or placing the image inside text.

One widespread and frequent use of clipping mask is adjusting photos in a photo frame. Let’s discuss the process of that’s done.

1. Get the basic essentials:

Firstly, we all know we at least would need two layers for using clipping masks. Secondly, you should choose the image you want to frame inside the frame and open it as one layer.  This layer has the content has it would be made the top layer.

Next, select an image of a frame from the net or use an image you have.  This image would be the background or the bottom layer. Hide the top layer for now and click on the background’s layer to select it.

2. Draw or select the shape:

Clipping masks work best when you want to fit your image within a shape for instance in our case, the shape is the insides of the photo frame. The area has a solid black colour currently. Firstly use the Magic Wand Tool, and select the area inside the frame. Secondly, copy this area to a new layer by going to Layer Menu and clicking New and selecting Layer via Copy. Now you can see Photoshop creates a separate layer of the insides of the frame that you selected using the magic wand tool. This layer lies between the top layer and the bottom layer we created so far.

3. Create Clipping Masks:

Now we would turn back the visibility on for the top layer by clicking the visibility icon.  Follow the same process of creating a clipping mask from the Layer menu or use another shortcut that requires you to hover your mouse over the two layers you want to select while you press alt key on your keyboard. The cursor changes to a clipping mask icon. Now click on the dividing line between the two layers to create a clipping mask.

Now if you look at the image, it sits well inside the frame and is visible there only because that is the only selected area that has content in the bottom layer. The rest of the photo remains hidden as it is situated above areas where there is transparency.

Next, you could think to use the Move tool and adjust your image and get done with the process. However, many times it happens that the image we have in hand might not adhere to the size of the frame therefore merely moving the image wouldn’t allow you to fit the image inside the frame.  For this, you need to resize the content within a clipping mask. Use Photoshop’s Free Transform command for achieving this.  In our case, the photo is too big for the frame; hence, we need to resize it by selecting Free Transformation from the edit menu.

This would place the free transformation box and handles around the image, even the areas outside the frame. These areas won’t be visible as clipping masks are hiding it for resizing the image press the shift key and click on the corner handles. Drag the image inwards. Holding shift key is essential as it locks the aspect ratio. As a result, it ensures that the image doesn’t get distorted.

Once you’re satisfied press enter on the keyboard to get out of the Free Transform. The photo fits the frame perfectly.

This was the 6 Steps Tutorial for Using Clipping Masks in Adobe Photoshop.  With enough practice and dedication, anyone can master the art of using Clipping marks and use this technique for various purposes. Start practicing today and keep refining your skills.

The post Using Clipping Masks in Adobe Photoshop – Detailed Tutorial appeared first on Web Design Blog | Magazine for Designers.