Cristian Vasile's Blog

The Ultimate Toolbox for iPhone Development

Cristian Vasile — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 10:55:39 +0000

iPhone development can be intimidating, especially to someone who’s unfamiliar with Macs, or the way iPhone apps work.

But with currently more than 100,000 apps officially available from the App Store, it’s kind of hard for a developer to ignore the potential market the iPhone provides.

And there are apps for virtually anything you could think of, from games to productivity apps to horoscopes to news and more.

Below are 70 tools, tutorials, and resources to help you get started developing your own iPhone apps. There’s everything from basic tutorials to templates to resource libraries to help you on your way.

Interview with Vector Illustrator Matthew Skiff

Cristian Vasile — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 12:13:47 +0000

via vector.tutsplus.com

How to Create Stunning and Bold 3D Text

Cristian Vasile — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 11:55:05 +0000

In this graphic design tutorial, you will witness a method for creating attractive 3D text that features some beautiful lighting and textured effects. We will be using Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop to help us get the job done.

Mastering Photoshop With Paths

Cristian Vasile — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 11:40:58 +0000

Anomalously residing within the pixel-gridded world of Photoshop are a series of tools waiting to break out of the canvas’ inherent squareness. Mastering these tools opens the stage for a higher level of flexibility, full of clean lines and non-destructive editing. Presented here is a guide to help you build proficiency, increase productivity and demystify the elusive world of Paths.

27 Must-Have Starter Kits For Web Designers

Cristian Vasile — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 18:22:22 +0000

Starter kits are great timesavers for web designers and they are particularly useful for those who often create mock-ups for project pitching on daily basis. If you are a designer-cum-programmer think of it as your code snippets

So what’s in a starter kit? We think it varies – depending on what each designer routinely worked with. For GUI designers, keeping a copy of form elements (buttons, checkboxes, tab, drop down menus, etc) helps speed up the process of creating screens and layouts; on the other hand, browser (IE, Firefox, Safari) templates with web safe area keep web designers reminded how/where they should prioritize their contents. Experienced designers will usually customize and keep a personal version of starter kit, some might have few too!

In today’s article, we attempt to show you some of the best design starter kit we’ve come to know. You can download (for free) and use them right away, or customize your own copy that will come in handy in future, your choice.

So what’s in a starter kit? We think it varies – depending on what each designer routinely worked with. For GUI designers, keeping a copy of form elements (buttons, checkboxes, tab, drop down menus, etc) helps speed up the process of creating screens and layouts; on the other hand, browser (IE, Firefox Safari) templates with web safe area keep web designers reminded how/where they should prioritize their contents. Experienced designers will usually customize and keep a personal version of starter kit, some might have few too!

Evolution Of Photoshop: 1988 – 2009

Cristian Vasile — Thu, 14 May 2009 10:13:43 +0000

Adobe Photoshop has always been one of the greatest (if not the best) software when it comes to manipulating and editing image. It all started off in 1987 with a Mac application call Display, created by Thomas Knoll. With almost two decades worth of changes and improvements, you almost can’t imagine how the first version of Photoshop would look like by looking at the Photoshop you have on your desktop.

In this post, we attempt to bring you back in time to look at how the very first Photoshop look like, then we scan through each evolution of Photoshop to the latest Adobe Photoshop CS4 in market today.

22 Professional Photoshop Image Enhancing Tutorials

Cristian Vasile — Sat, 02 May 2009 09:58:11 +0000

Adobe Photoshop is the premier tool for digital artists when it comes to professionally enhancing images. Whether you’re a beginner just learning the ropes or an advanced user looking for unique techniques to add to your Photoshop arsenal, you’ll find some tutorials here that you’ll surely want to bookmark.

In this article, you’ll discover plenty of tutorials that deal with enhancing images, adding unique and impressive effects, and recreating digital replications of popular traditional photography techniques.

41 Great Looking Free WordPress Themes

Cristian Vasile — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 10:10:46 +0000

It takes time to search for nice looking WordPress themes, let alone nice and yet free WordPress themes. We constantly keep our eyes on great and free WordPress themes released, bookmarked them and put on a showcase when we think it’s too much to keep.

This following entry comprise of nicely design WordPress themes, magazine alike as well as high quality premium themes you don’t have to pay a penny for. This week for WordPress, we present – 41 Great Looking Free WordPress Themes.

6 Tips to Help You Get the Most Out of Google Docs

Cristian Vasile — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 05:32:31 +0000

There are many services out on the web for online collaboration, but there’s no doubt that Google Docs is rapidly becoming one of the more popular brands. Google Docs is free, web based (i.e. cross platform), and quite simple to use. But that doesn’t mean it lacks features.

Whether you’re a regular user or have just been thinking about trying it out, here are the top 6 tips and tricks to help you get the most out of Google Docs.

23 Ultimate Collection Of Useful Ajax Tutorials & Resources

Cristian Vasile — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 18:06:07 +0000

Ajax a short form of Asynchronous JavaScript and XML is a set of techniques used by many modern and popular web sites. This technique allows portions of a Web page to be updated without refreshing the entire page and to increase the web page’s interactivity, speed, and usability that is a significant advance in the development of websites and web-based applications. For example, a site might allow you to rate a product or item by clicking on a star image. With Ajax, your vote could be registered without having to load the entire page again. If you already know about Javascript, HTML, CSS and XML then you will need to spend your 1 hour to start with AJAX. Here is the list of 23 Ultimate Collection Of Useful Ajax Tutorials & Resources that includes some useful tutorials and few great resources like script, examples etc. We are hoping that you will learn further on Ajax after reading out this post.

7 Common Web Usability Problems

Cristian Vasile — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 18:02:43 +0000

However great you may think your site looks, If it’s difficult to use people won’t come back. If you want to have a successful website, then you have to make sure it’s designed around the requirements of your users. As designers and developers we are sometimes just too close to our sites to see their problems. In this article we have showcased 10 common usability issues that are often overlooked or simply ignored.

Say what it does
Anybody who visits your site should be able to understand what it does within a few seconds. Be mindful that the majority of your visitors will probably not enter via the home page. Write a good tag line explaining what your website does, include it next to your logo or somewhere prominent, this will help get your message across to new visitors.

Inspiring Design Links for Creatives for 2009-03-12

Cristian Vasile — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 17:54:00 +0000

Web Development Nerdy Daily Links For 3/11/2009

Create a Simple, Professional Typographical Design

Downloads: Four Experimental Firefox Extensions We’re Into

25 Nature-Inspired Website Designs

More …

Splashy Icons: A Complete Set Of Icons (460+)

Cristian Vasile — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 11:31:26 +0000

Splashy Icons is a free set of 460+ icons where new ones are added regularly.

The icon set contains almost any image, from arrows to actions or user icons to e-mail icons, that makes it ideal for web applications.

Icons are in PNG format & 16*16px size. They are totally free to use.

The whole set can be previewed here.

Via webresourcesdepot.com

Inspiring Design Links for Creatives for 2009-03-08

Cristian Vasile — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 11:29:45 +0000

WordPress Theme Releases for 03/07 from Weblog Tools Collection

40 Beautiful Examples of Vintage and Retro in Web Design

10 Forums That Web Designer Can’t Miss

Ministry Performancing – Some Great Tools

7 reasons why i will not follow you back on Twitter – updated

Cristian Vasile — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 18:14:34 +0000

Here’s my list of reasons why i will not follow you back on Twitter.

1. You have no user avatar, if you don’t have an avatar how should i know who i’m talking?

2. You list no website, or no bio. I follow people that have same interests as i have, with some exceptions. If you don’t have a website and in your bio you wrote Lorem Ipsum, i will not follow you back.

3. Your website is a MySpace profile.

4. You’re following over 1,000 users, have 10 followers, and no updates or you just won a laptop or 10000$.

5. Your profile features that you are an expert (SEO Expert, Photopshop Expert etc).

6. Your always tweet about you and your website.

7. Your updates make references to any need to achieve more Twitter followers.

8. You are only talking about how much money one can make by joining different affiliate sites. (thanks @Anghus)

Inspiring Design Links for Creatives for 2009-03-07

Cristian Vasile — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 12:51:40 +0000

Red Hot: 20 Inspirational Red Websites

Illustrator’s Pen Tool: The Comprehensive Guide

WordPress Plugin Releases for 03/06 from Weblog Tools Collection

5 for Friday | The Week’s Best Blogs (3/6/09 Edition)

50 Free Photoshop Brush Sets You Should Bookmark

Cristian Vasile — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 12:46:18 +0000

If you’ve got an idea (or concept) but find it hard to present on your artwork because the drawings just don’t add up, try Photoshop Brushes. Brushes are designers best friend, particularly web designers who don’t illustrate graphics much.

Adobe Photoshop does comes with a basic package of brushes but it has not been updated by folks at Adobe for quite some time. Thanks to the great community of designers out there who constantly distributing and sharing their brushes, you can almost find brushes of any patterns these days. Whether you are working on a nature-related artwork looking for floral and wood graphics, or merely adding some torn, burned and cracked effects to your artwork – there’s a free brush pack out there and all you need to do is Google.

In today’s post, we attempt to present you some of the high quality and good ones, those we thought would be generally useful in many occasion and definitely worth checking out and bookmark. Here’s our hand-picked of 50 Free and High Quality Photoshop Brush Sets You Should Bookmark. Full list after jump.

Captify Displays Pretty Image Captions Appear On Rollover

Cristian Vasile — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 11:24:29 +0000

Captify jQuery Plugin displays simple, pretty image captions that appear on rollover. Captions can be locked “always-on”, or set to fade in on rollover. Also, captions can slide in from the top or the bottom.

Captify was inspired by ImageCaptions, another jQuery plugin for displaying captions like these. unlike ImageCaptions at the moment, Captify is easy to use, small/simple, and completely ready for use in production environments. Captify has been tested on Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and Internet Explorer.

Inspiring Design Links for Creatives for 2009-03-05

Cristian Vasile — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 11:18:08 +0000

Branding is Action. It’s about Doing.

WordPress Plugin Releases for 03/04 from Weblog Tools Collection

jQuery – Sliders (scrollbars to the rest of us)

A Collection of 30+ Free Stock Photo Sites

Multi-Level Accordion Script: TinyAccordion

Twitter Is More Than Connecting

Design a Dark and Misty Mountain with Distant City Scene in Photoshop

Cristian Vasile — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 08:48:37 +0000

In this tutorial, I will show you the steps involved in designing this dark and misty mountain scene with a gloomy looking far-away city scene in Photoshop.

Along the way, we will use techniques such as layer blending and masking, adjustments layer, filters effects and a variety of image adjustment options. You will learn methods to seamless blend two (or more) images together and generate cinematic effect. This is a simple tutorial with just 5 steps, have a go!

Here is a preview of before and after effect:

Before

After

Alternative colour scheme: