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OSX: 11 Ways to Optimize Your Mac


11 Free OSX Downloads that every Mac User should have


Make An Exact Copy of Your Mac Hard Drive


Easy to Use VNC Software


300! professionally designed icons… FREE


IE 7 Standalone


How to Convince a Client They Don’t Need a Splash Page


301 Redirect non-www requests to www.yoursite.com

Easy to use time tracker SlimTimer.com/

 
Legal Forms

Freelance Agreement
A standard freelance agreement you can use between yourself and a client or when hiring sub-contractors such as copywriters, designers and programmers.

Terms of Use Statement
A website Terms of Use statement that can be used on all types of websites.

Website Privacy Statement
A website user agreement statement that you can use with almost any website.
Word File (.doc)

Website Copyright Statement
A general statement to protect your intellectual property.
Word File (.doc)

http://www.designerstoolbox.com/legal/tools.php

The inventor of the Web explains how the new Semantic Web could have profound effects on the growth of knowledge and innovation

Q&A with Tim Berners-Lee

from http://www.digital-web.com/articles/to_dance_the_dance_of_freelance/
 

My best recommendation is to get involved in freelancing while you’ve still got the comfort of your full-time job. Now, for many people, this causes a conflict of interest with the current company, so be sure you aren’t violating any corporate rules by moonlighting. At the very least, there’s nothing that says you can’t put up a portfolio and start making connections. I cannot stress enough that you must have a portfolio to show examples of your work. Don’t have any work? Start by thinking of projects for yourself or friends and family that you can put together.

My first project was a three-week website that took almost an entire year to complete. In the end, it was the sum of both of our faults, but there are just some things you learn the hard way.

This tutorial will walk you through creating a 3 layer stencil painting from scratch using basic art materials.
 
Getting Started: Things You Need

Paints
Acrylic paints or Spray Cans, but Oil Paints will work too.
Medium
Stretched Canvas (Medium texture). About $5 for a 16″x20″. I
Paper
Tracing Paper to hand-trace over the printout.
Markers
To trace over the printout and fix areas on canvas.

 
Picking a Subject
This step can be hard for beginners. Try to choose an image with hard shadows and highlights, these present well defined light and dark shapes and clear contrast.

 
Source used for this painting
 
 
 
 
Im using a pic of Australian model Emily Scott.
Why ? It’s easy to separate the different shades in her dirty blond hair to create texture. Uniform hair color would appear flat
The picture is from a Zoo Magazine article about her. More about her : Wikipedia: Emily Scott 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Step One: Photoshop
Open your Image in Photoshop. We can create some abstraction by enhancing the Levels, Saturation and Brightness/Contrast. This creates a separation in the even skin tones.
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
Crop: use the Crop tool to resize the canvas to her head and shoulders only. Concentrating on just that portion will allow for more detail. 
 
 
 

 
Levels To get color separation bring up the ‘Levels’ using ‘Ctrl + L’
or navigate to ‘Image > Adjustments > Levels’.
 
The black triangle on the left represents the darkest pixel and the white triangle represents the lightest. the range between them is the tonal range from dark to light. Bring these sliders together to reduce the range and replace the smooth tone with harder edges between colors.
In this example its 101 for the dark and 130 for the light.
 
The goal is to bring it down to 3 or 4 primary colors. Red, yellow, black and blue.

 
 
Step Two: Trace by hand
Further separation is possible in photoshop but it will create jagged edges and leave blocks of color missing.Time to print out the Image and trace over it by hand to get the best result.

 

Place the tracing sheet over the printout.
Using markers trace over the image using only 3 colors.
Start with the lightest color and move towards the darker ones in order.
Keep the lines clean and colors in separate blocks.
Use your discretion to add or remove sections and smoothen jagged lines.
The goal is to create a vector looking image.

 
 
 
 
Trace Results: I have replaced the blue from the printout with black to reduce the colors. 
 
 
 

I’m now ready to put trace this on canvas and color it in.

Step Three: Painting on Canvas
Begin with tracing an outline of your rough trace on the canvas.
Start with the lightest, most-used color and work your way up to the darker.

Finished Painting

Here is the finished painting. The canvas size is 40″ x 30″

 


 
 
Warnings

• Watercolor or other water based paints will not as they tend to mix into each other.
 
Tips
• For a single-layer stencil its best to switch the Image mode to Grayscale before adjusting levels to get better contrast.

• Tape down the tracing sheet on top of the printout to prevent it from sliding around while tracing.

• You can replace the trace by hand, with an illustrator trace if you have the skills

• Having a lightbox will make the tracing process much easier. You can find them brand new for $30-50 on Ebay

• If your tracing skills arent the best I recommend using a cheap projector.
Im using the Tracer Jr($25) from Micheals.

• Use a sharpie to clean up the edges of the black layer. This gives it a more Stenciled look.

The Yellow Icon has some great free downloads, i recommend you bookmark them and check back often.
 
here is a stunning set by Tim Davies - AIR Icons
 

 
download here

This png fix uses a blank 1×1 .GIF and a .htc file to render png files in IE
 
If you have used pngfix.js from http://homepage.ntlworld.com/bobosola/ then you know that it doesnt support PNG files loaded as backgrounds from CSS, but this fix will add support for them
 
Usage:
You only need to add one line of CSS for this to work.

img { behavior: url(iepngfix.htc); }

 
upload the files blank.gif and iepng.htc into the same directory as your server
[they can be downloaded here]
 
remember if you are using this on something like wordpress where ur html files are generated specify an absolute path to iepngfix.htc
 
 
Original Article here and easy to follow tutorial here