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Contents

The March 2009 Seminar by Ycademy will be a new beginning for some and for others the logic continuation of what has been achieved so far.Â

Beginners: You have an online business or products to promote, you are an affiliate marketer, a networker or you have brought your offline business to the Internet. You have a website and a domain, however the site lacks visibility, Google attention and … it just does not satisfy you? Or is it that you have too many sites to take care of, too many niches you promote and not the huge budget necessary to buy all the GoogleAds needed to get sufficient visitors to your site?
Are you an author of great content, but no one knows you, no one finds you, no one knows even that you […]

Original post by Yorgo Nestoridis

• my own web news paper
• PUBLISH YOUR OWN NEWS PAPER

Related posts:

1. Ycademy Online Seminar March 2009
2. Ycademy Online Seminar BIG NEWS
3. Ycademy Seminar: How to Build an Online Business
4. Ycademy Online Trainings
5. Ycademy Online Publishing Seminar

Tonight’s call will focus on more Photoshop Basics. The goal is to become familiar with more easy to use features to produce more interesting graphics for advertising or product presentation.

I am looking forward to an inspiring session :-).

Related posts:

1. 3D Text with Photoshop
2. How to use Displacement Masks in Photoshop
3. Book covers and Jewel Cases with Photoshop
4. Web Design Basics
5. Photoshop Ycademy

How to build a fading Navigation with Sprites

To build a navigation bar using sprites we need an image (menu design), some CSS code to style the menu area and some HTML code to link the menu to target. Finally we drive the feature with a jQuery.

1. Design the Menu

For best design use Photoshop.

• Create a new transparent image with the width of your navigation bar and double the height of the visible menu. In my case, the bar is 1024 pixels wide and 68 pixles high, my new image is thus 1024×137 (I add 1 pixel to the hight which I leave unused).
• Design your Tabs and ad text on the normal view.
• Do the same on the Hover view.
• Save your file.

2.  Create your CSS Style Sheet

I start by resetting CSS (import reset style sheet) and then add some general page styles before styling the fading navigation:

@charset "utf-8";
/*
	Imports
*/
@import url("resets.css");
/*
	General Page Style
*/
body { background: #ffffff; }
#page-wrap { margin: 0 auto; width:1024px; }
h2 { color: #fff; font: 30px Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; margin: 20px 0 40px 0; }
/*
	Basic Elements
*/
#content { width: 1024px; position: absolute; top: 224px; }
/*
	Nav / Menu Fade
*/
ul#nav li, ul#nav li a 				{ background: url(../images/nav8.png) no-repeat left top;  height: 67px; width: 192px; }
ul#nav li							{ float: left;  border: 1px solid #666666; border-left: none;}
ul#nav li a							{ display: block; text-indent: -9999px; }

ul#nav li.home						{ background-position: -1px -1px; border-left: 1px solid #243e3b; }
ul#nav li.about						{ background-position: -194px -1px; }
ul#nav li.contact					{ background-position: -387px -1px; }
ul#nav li.portfolio		 			{ background-position: -580px -1px; }
ul#nav li.development		 			{ background-position: -772px -1px; width: 250px;}

ul#nav li.home a					{ background-position: -1px -69px; }
ul#nav li.about a					{ background-position: -194px -69px; }
ul#nav li.contact a					{ background-position: -387px -69px; }
ul#nav li.portfolio a				{ background-position: -580px -69px; }
ul#nav li.development a				{ background-position: -772px -69px; width: 250px; }

The important part is to position your background properly for each menu tab or field. Use the ruler in Photoshop to measure the distances and translate them to x and y values.Please note that the normal view maintains the y value at -1 pixel while the hover view is constant at -69 pixels. The x values increase in function of the width of each tab.

3. Embed your menu with HTML

To display the menu, we need to embed it in our HTML page using some code snippet similar to the following:

<body>
	<div id="page-wrap">
		<div id="content">
            <h2>Sprites Menu</h2>
            <ul id="nav">
              <li class="home"><a href="#">Blog</a></li>
              <li class="about"><a href="#">About</a></li>
              <li class="contact"><a href="#">Contact</a></li>
              <li class="portfolio"><a href="#">Portfolio</a></li>
               <li class="development"><a href="#">Development</a></li>
            </ul>
		</div>
</div>
</body>

To make the whole thing work with the fade effect we call for a jQuery in the header of the document:

<script type='text/javascript' src='http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.4.2/jquery.min.js?ver=1.4.2'></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
$(document).ready(function(){

	$("ul#nav li a").css({"opacity" : 0}).hover(function(){
		$(this).stop().animate({"opacity" : 1}, 600); //Change fade-in speed

		}, function(){
		$(this).stop().animate({"opacity" : 0}, 1200);//Change fade-out speed

	});

});
</script>

Note: Change fade-in and fade-out speed from the java script as indicated; the values are in milliseconds.

Done!

To make your life easier, you may download my sample files which include the CSS reset and the PSD file of the featured menu.

Related posts:

1. Simple Shopping Cart for your Blog
2. Web Design Backgrounds
3. Web Design Workshop 16 – Scroll over Background
4. Transparent WordPress Semiomantics XO
5. Transparent WordPress Theme Design

Photoshop CS5 and 3D

Photoshop CS5 provides some important improvements, amongst them a more developed 3D design engine.

Here a quick sample of what can be done with just a few mouse-clicks:

3d1

Sample 3D in Photoshop

Join us for a relaxed Ycademy Photoshop 3D intro session next Monday at 9 pm London time at yorGOtalk.

Author: Yorgo Nestoridis, Media Marketing & Publishing, Founder of YORGOO Publishing, YORGOO Press and Semiomantics. If you enjoyed reading the above, please consider following future tips and strategies by RSS reader, Email delivery, or Kindle subscription.

Semiomantics Flash Components for Ycademy May Seminar

The upcoming Ycademy Seminar is focusing on Flash, Flash Components and user experience enhanced by Flash. The Seminar is designed for Website Designers and Developers, who want to take their skills to the next level. Find out more from HERE.

Flash Components by Semiomantics

Flash is releasing a plethora of flash components this month. While they are originally designed to be used namely with Semiomantics XO and News Cast scripts, they can be used on any website. Check it out in the Semiomantics Shop later this month.

Ycademy Seminar Participants will be introduced to the use of one of the most exciting components. It’s the unique Semiomantics Accordion which in fact is more than just an accordion; it’s also a sideshow, a menu, a slider … most anything you want to make out of it.

Now this is something: you can even test the sideshow by clicking on the button at the bottom right.

The Semiomantics Accordion is probably the best out there since its development is based on the second best :-).

As you see, you can load it vertically or horizontally,  you can modify the number of images, even the effects and much, much more. You see an autoplay version and you can play with the mouse on the images … just try and find out what this script jewel can do for you.

Join tonight’s Call at YorgoTalk to find out more about the Ycademy May Seminar.

PS: The Semiomantics Accordion is included in the Seminar ticket price:-).

Author: Yorgo Nestoridis, Media Marketing & Publishing, Founder of YORGOO Publishing, YORGOO Press and Semiomantics. If you enjoyed reading the above, please consider following future tips and strategies by RSS reader, Email delivery, or Kindle subscription.

Portrait Shooting

Based on Digital Photography Ycademy 9 we are able to plan our pictures depth of field. The only remaining problem is: you may have a camera which does not allow for A settings (manual Aperture priority settings).

Don’t worry, there is a way to at least partially compensate for this shortfall.

The below gallery can best be viewed HERE (opens new window).

Depth of Field in Portraiting with a low end Camera or Mobile Phone

Remember, we said that the depth of field is function of aperture and distance. Hence, we can use the distance trick which works with most any digital camera or mobile phone.

First we try to compose our picture in a way that the person is not glued to a background, such as leaning on a wall. Position the person at least 2 meters off the next background. Then frame clsosely from maximum 1.5 meters (without zooming). The result may be better if the background is even further away to fall out of the metered focal range (corresponding to infinity settings) which is at about 10-12 meters.

Now shoot your portrait: the autofocus will grab the face and apply the distance, which in it’s turn will trigger the aperture and shutter speed in function of that distance and light. By setting your camera presets on Portrait, the camera does this as well, whereas a narroc depth of field is forced.

In any case, you will end up with a sharp portrait and a more or less blurred background.

Portrait Post Editing

If you have taken your picture according to the above, then your post editing is a sunday walk. Just apply some of the great lightroom presets or photoshop actions. Some of these professional tools will lift the quality of your mediocre picture dramatically and clearly digg a huge canion between you and the competitors in your camera’s class.

Here an example: the below picture has been taken with my 4 years old $50 supermarket camera according to the above rule. Then I just pulled it through some professional filters such as stuff from from Kubota, Davis and onOne. This is a matter of just seconds :-).

Join tonight’s YcademyWorkshop for more tips and tricks.

Author: Yorgo Nestoridis, Media Marketing & Publishing, Founder of YORGOO Publishing, YORGOO Press and Semiomantics. If you enjoyed reading the above, please consider following future tips and strategies by RSS reader, Email delivery, or Kindle subscription.

The Magic of Depth of Field

At the beginning, many photographers struggle with the concept of aperture and depth of field. I remember back in the 60ies when my dad ciselled the principles into my brain. He was shooting with a good old Leica I loved for all the buttons and little wheels it featured for tons of settings.

I could not imagine what they were good for: but they looked god for sure and that was a good enough reason to fetch my interest.

By the way, have you ever noticed how “look-focused” photographers are? And the look of their camera? It’s part of the over all estethics photographers are in search of and  attached to, I guess.

Of course it is sexier to have your portrait taken in an Indiana Jones Look (or the Marlboro Man minus the smell of the sweating horse and the cow dung…) holding a big cam with a mega lens in front, than Indiana with an iPhone, huh.

Back to the depth of field. I was exercising on flowers in the garden 50 years ago and the game went as follows.

marienkaefer

Marienkaefer

Exercise 1

1. Move as close as you can (don’t use Macro to start with)  to the object you want to take a picture of and set your lens to the widest aperture (that’s the smallers f/number!). In my case it was f/2.8 at that time). If you do this with your digital camera, the cam will automatically select the appropriate shutter speed.

2. Repeat the exercise with f/5.6, f/8, f/11 and f/22.

3. You have now 5 pictures of the same flower with a background (and maybe foreground) of the surrounding flowers. However your pictures are different from each other and the difference is in the depth of field.

Conclusion: The narrower the aperture, the wider the depth of field! This is the real issue here, meaning, the smaller the opening of the lens’s diaphragm (high f/number), the longer the cam will expose the sensor(film) to the light inflow and the sharper your picture gets along the depth (z-) axes.

The wider the aperture (small f/number) the narrower the depth of field (and the faster the shutter speed) and you end up with these beautifully blurred back and or foregrounds. Your digital camera’s auto-focus, focused on the flower you want to feature, will automatically make sure that your depth of field is optimized for the flower.

flower

Flower

Exercise 2

Do the same exercise again by zooming out or moving away from the object you are taking the picture of. Shoot from a distance of about 1 meter to 1.5 meters (4-5 feet). Again you will end up with a series of pictures.

You will find: the further you move away from the flower, the wider the depth of field will get! This is the second important rule.

Put simply: if you want a sharp picture throughout the whole depth, increase the distance and use higher f/numbers. If on the other hand you wish a picture where the focused object is sharp and the background and or the foreground are blurred, then move closer and decrease the f/number (wider aperture or diaphragm of the lens is wider open, which triggers a faster shutter speed).

Conclusion 1

This exercise should help you to improve on your Macro shots and Portraits. The effect is function of depth of field: to limit the depth of field use a wider aperture (smaller f/number) and move closer; the background will be less in focus and you get the desired blur-effect.

Conclusion 2

This is probably the most important single concept which will bring you ahead of the masses. I guess 99% or more of all camera users are not aware of this concept and will continue to shoot happily their flat shots.

Conclusion 3

The best way to achieve the effect is by using your camera’s manual settings (priority on Aperture A-mode). If your cam does not allow for Aperture priority, then you still have the option to pull your picture through Lightroom of Photoshop and to manipulate the background out of focus … but why going that route if your cam can deliver a better quality original?

It’s obvious that skilled Photoshop users are absolutely capable to fake the blur effect, but believe me: if you want it well done, it takes time, loads of it and you have the bitter taste in your mouth of someone who just became aware that he re-invented the wheel. Imagine: the cam does in a fraction of a second (literally) what may cost you hours in Photoshop.

The Camera and Photoshop or Lightroom

No, I am not against Photo Editing Programs at all. Photoshop is a great tool and can do things the camera cannot do; on the other hand the camera is a great tool as well and it can do certain things better than Photoshop. So, let’s use each tool for what it is made and you cumulate the quality of the cam’s work with the quality of PS.

The best results in Photoshop are achieved with a great picture at the base: the more time you spend to make your picture great, the less time you will spend in Photoshop and the better your image data.

Try this over the week-end and come back with some nice, more or less blurred pictures! Stuff them into a new Gallery on Your Semiomantics Evolution site to share your results. I am looking forward to it.

Author: Yorgo Nestoridis, Media Marketing & Publishing, Founder of YORGOO Publishing, YORGOO Press and Semiomantics. If you enjoyed reading the above, please consider following future tips and strategies by RSS reader, Email delivery, or Kindle subscription.

Working with Lightroom Presets

Presets are of great help to adjust images in Lightroom. For easy editing it is necessary to get familiar with terminology and some technical features. Most Lightroom presets find their equivalent in Photoshop.

Tonight at the Workshop we will play with some Lightroom Presets and Photoshop actions.

praz-sur-arly

Praz-sur-Arly

Get your materials from here-below:

[download_box]Presets and Actions Download[/download_box]

Author: Yorgo Nestoridis, Media Marketing & Publishing, Founder of YORGOO Publishing, YORGOO Press and Semiomantics. If you enjoyed reading the above, please consider following future tips and strategies by RSS reader, Email delivery, or Kindle subscription.

New Adobe CS5 Master Collection

It’s smashing, exciting and a milestone, the new Adobe CS5 release! no reason to try to describe all the new goodies wrapped up in the new pack, just go and have a look at the launch presentation at Adobe. Product delivery to the public is expected to start in May.

The single most important reason to buy CS5

If you watch through the various presentation clips, you fill see that for every product being part of the CS5 Master Collection Adobe presents 5 main characteristics. I was wondering, what would be my synthesized single best reason to switch from CS4 to CS5.

With CS5, Adobe introduces eye-bleeding cool features, and loads of them. However one main argument is that the somewhat oldish programs like Photoshop, Flash and After Effects become much more productivity oriented and user-friendly.

Adobe CS5 will definitely make professional tools available to a wider audience and grant a smoother and much more effective workflow. This is where individuals, Home Business Builders, free lancers, designers and developers will find a true possibility to run a media design, development and publishing business as a one-man show. Or, there will be less need for outsourcing, coding, sharing to get a better result faster.

yn

Yorgo Nestoridis Media Publishing

Adobe CS5 from the point of view of Ycademy

Ycademy, our online Educational Arm has been organizing trainings, workshops and seminars focusing amongst others on Web design and Web site development with Photoshop for some time and we are aware of the difficulties Photoshop represents for the average part-timer or newbie. However with some smart add-on actions, filters and plugins, Photoshop became accessible to average computer users. The new CS5 however makes things much easier in as much as complex manipulations can be executed in just seconds, such as moving, replacing or deleting objects from a photo for example whereas as the case may be, Photoshop will automatically replace the object with the appropriate hypothetical background. Smashing!

Whether you use Lightroom or not, the new Photoshop CS5 is a highly efficient image editing tool, not just for graphic designers, but also for Photographers. The interaction of the various tools provided in the CS5 Master Collection or in any CS5 Pack for that matter, provides a fantastic training environment where I am sure we will have new opportunities to help many people to become familiar with professional tools, cutting edge technology and the joy of exceptional results.

CS5 is in the trend: visual expression has become part of our day-to-day language due to the proliferation of mobile devices and social networks. Amongst all the internet users there will always be a good number who  are reaching out for quality, style and the best possible image or branding. Adobe CS5 is a bundle of tools allowing anyone using it to communicate better and in more creative ways. I am looking forward to explore CS5 with our first training group in June.

global300

Web Design and Web Site Development

Adobe CS5 from the point of view of Semiomantics

It has never been and it still is not Adobe’s cup of tea: semantics! The proliferation of more visual communication provides increasing challenges for Semiomantics and in fact our way to optimize editing and publishing of visual content and media (images, movies, sound) has still a long way to go and a brilliant future ahead. In short: the more visual content customers publish, the more they will have the need to use Semiomantics tuned scripts to reach Google Top 10or to show up on Bing’s top end. More important even: Semiomantics Approach to Facebook with the new Semiomantics Flash module, which will be released in May, will open completely new perspectives for agents and customers.

Adobe CS5 from the point of view of YORGOO

YORGOO, focusing on free traffic and free leads will wake up soon, simply because we come close to the end of a long development of new content for YORGOO, focusing namely on social networks and Search Engines in the broadest way. YORGOO will remain a starting point for online Marketing efforts and help people to connect quickly with environments where the people are, where the target customers are looking for products and where people interact. The YORGOO approach will remain a no-profit no-ads program and oriented towards all those who want to start an commercial online activity with limited means and high perspectives.

More soon.

astir300

Media Design

Adobe CS5 from the point of view of ChiHosters and Hosting South Africa

More media and more sophisticated media, more creativity and more creation, faster internet lines and computers entail larger file sized and more media oriented hosting needs. At ChiHosters and Hosting South Africa we have planned ahead; entrusting large freely accessible networks with your copyrighted media is not the safest way to protect your interest. Hosting your originals on your own server or host in a reliable way is a necessity for professionals as well as for many security conscious individuals. We are providing the most cost effective solutions in the industry, namely for small enterprises and individuals. Expanding the activity to high end hosting services are under discussion.

Adobe CS5 from the point of view of YORGOO Media

A year ago we have stalled the YORGOO Media development for different reasons, namely because we were not satisfied with the WordPress MU development as well as with the hosting capabilities we had. With the release of WordPress 3 and the possibility to provide advanced media streaming, YORGOO Media is high on our list of priorities since it will provide highly efficient Semiomantics signed publishing solutions to the over 70 000 YORGOO subscribers.

More shortly.

semio300×300

Yorgo Nestoridis Publishing and Editing

Adobe CS5 Ripoff Pricing Policy

As other companies, such as Microsoft, Adobe has a discriminatory pricing policy, privileging the American Markets. Why the heck should Adobe Products cost more in Australia and Europe than in the USA? Funny, that such a high tech company, with a global approach has such a narrow, short sighted pricing policy. It’s comparable to the pharmaceutic industry and there we know what the natural reaction of the markets are. If anyone from Adobe reads this: tell your boss, time has come to change your rip-off attitude, the global market is looking for global pricing.

More about Adobe CS5 pricing shortly.

Author: Yorgo Nestoridis, Media Marketing & Publishing, Founder of YORGOO Publishing, YORGOO Press and Semiomantics. If you enjoyed reading the above, please consider following future tips and strategies by RSS reader, Email delivery, or Kindle subscription.

Implement your Flash Showcase

Once your script is cleaned out and reduced to what you actually need as described yesterday and as done at last night’s Ycademy call, we can implement our project.

Prepare your upload

Before uploading you may already edit the index.html file and add the title of your site as well as the font as the case may be.

Also you can edit style.css to define link colors and other details if needed.

You may also want to edit your site logo:

Ideally the logo file is a transparent PNG image which in this case can be rather wide since we have just a few menu items. The bottom border of the logo is in line with the bottom of the menu items; therefore it is indicated to use capitals for the site header and align them with the bottom of the PNG file.

Example:

logo

Semiomantics Header

For better visibility I have added a background layer on the above. The dimensions are 592 x 60 pixels.

Upload and start populating Semiomantics Evolution

Before uploading the evolution folder you may want to rename it to the folder name it should take on the server; if you upload the site to the domain root (public_html) then you just load the content of the evolution folder without the folder itself.

Once uploaded you may want to start adding a background image (photo of graphic); I have loaded just a background pattern:

screen2

Background

For this project I keep a uniform background throughout the whole site; however i would be nice as well to create a nice graphic grunge or photographic background.

Edit menu.xml

Edit menu.xml from your xml folder: define the menu item titles and backgrounds as well as the copyright notice in the footer.

Populate your image gallery (about)

I start now by adding images to my showroom. In fact I am using for this project a showroom gallery instead of the about page: I will oad there graphic images representing my bullet list and then add text to the image legends.

screen3

About Semiomantics

The images are created in photoshop in 2 versions: jpg and transparent png. I load both versions to select later the images to keep – may be a mix of jpg and png images. To create the images I just created two layer sizes: 400 x 600 px and 800 x 600 px. Important: the images must be 600 px high. I drop my messages into the pictures using some grungy Times font and using background colors based on my usual color scheme.

The idea here is to use a gallery to replace the About page by graphically representing the main message I want to deliver and allowing for more information attached to each image. (This way of proceeding is not in line with the terms of the contest!)

Populate your Showcase or Portfolio

For the show case I selected screen-shots of websites I have designed and built for Semiomantics. I have selected 30 screen-shots to see the effect and to measure loading time. I will trim this down later and make a representative selection out of the lot. There are also others I may want to add …:-).

screen4

Semiomantics Showcase

The screen-shots are mega sizes from 100 kb to over 400 kb, whereas they will be adjusted for faster loading. I am testing flash compression and loading them as swf files which is one of the advantages of this gallery script.

A legend will be associated with each screen-shot; each image is based on a Semiomantics script type or module and can therefore be linked to a category or product in the semiomantics shop.

My recommendation: try to keep the image size as compact as possible for fast loading: ideally below 100 kb per image.

More later.

Author: Yorgo Nestoridis, Media Marketing & Publishing, Founder of YORGOO Publishing, YORGOO Press and Semiomantics. If you enjoyed reading the above, please consider following future tips and strategies by RSS reader, Email delivery, or Kindle subscription.