A lot of time can be spent in Photoshop clicking between menu items and palette buttons. Learning a few Photoshop CS4 shortcuts can really help you to work more efficiently. Here are some of the most common Photoshop keyboard shortcuts that I use.

New Document	Ctrl+N
Open	Ctrl+O
switch between open Photoshop files	Ctrl+Tab
Save	Ctrl+S
Cut	Ctrl+X
Copy	Ctrl+C
Paste	Ctrl+V
Undo	Ctrl+Z
Redo	Ctrl+Y
Step Backward	Ctrl+Alt+Z
Select All	Ctrl+A
Deselect	Ctrl+D
Select Inverse	Ctrl + Shift +I
Switch Foreground/Background Colors	X
New Layer	Ctrl+Shift+N
New Layer via Copy	Ctrl+J
Free Transform	Ctrl+T
Zoom in	CTRL + +
Zoom out	CTRL + -
Help	F1

To see all the Photoshop CS4 keyboard shortcuts open Photoshop and click on Edit > Keyboard Shortcuts > Summarize

You can see a list of all the default Photoshop CS4 shortcuts here. There is also a downloadable Photoshop CS4 Shortcut Cheat Sheet here.

In my next post I will show you how you can customize Photoshop CS4 shortcuts.

Inlinks (or backlinks) are the incoming hyperlinks that can direct traffic to a website or blog. Inlinks are often used by web designers and developers as an indicator of the popularity or importance of a web page. By using Yahoo Site Explorer you can see how many hyperlinks are coming in to your site or a competitor’s site.

Go to http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com

Enter the name of the site you would like to check and then click Explore URL. In this example I am going to use the Acoustic Guitar Player site run by Tony Hogan http://the-guitarplayer.com/

This will take you to a page showing you the number of pages on the site. You need to click on the inlinks button to see the links in to the site.

This will take you to a page that shows all links in to the site including any links that are happening within the site. To see only the links that are coming in from outside sites you will need to click on the Show Inlinks drop-down box and select Except from this domain

Then click on the next drop-down box and select Entire Site

 You can now see that this site has 3650 sites that link back to http://the-guitarplayer.com/. If you want to have a look at any of these that have hyperlink in to this sites you can just click on the Explore button.

Here is a video tutorial from YouTube that shows you how to use Photoshop CS4 to easily make a shiny button to use in your website design projects.

Click on Videos on the navigation bar

Click +add videos at the top right of the page

You have 3 choices of uploading videos in relation to where they are located
• Upload Videos from Your Computer
• Add videos from YouTube or Google
• Add videos by phone or email

Upload Videos from your Hard Drive

To add a video from your hard drive you need to navigate to where the video file is located on your hard drive. Each video may be up to 100MB in size. Ning supports videos in the .mov, .mpg, .avi, .wmv and .3gp file formats so make sure your video is one of those formats before you try to upload it.

When you have navigated to your video file through the Ning navigation box, you just need to drag the file from the left column in to the “Videos to Upload” box and click the Next button in the bottom right corner.

Now add a Title, Description and Tags as shown below and decide whether who can view the video (Everyone, Just My friends, or Just Me), then click the Upload button in the bottom right corner.

Just wait while your video uploads and then you are finished.

To Add Videos from YouTube and Google

Scroll down to the bottom of the page where you will see this:

Click on Add Video

To embed a YouTube video, just go to the YouTube page that has the video you want to upload and copy the code from the “Embed” box—you can find it in the “About This Video” box when you’re watching the video.

Just highlight the complete embed code and then right click and copy this code.

To embed a Google video, go to the Google page that has the video you want to upload and Click on the “Embed video” link on the right-hand side of the playback page. Highlight the complete embed code and then right click and copy this code.

The embed code is only available on certain videos that were uploaded to Google Video. Note not all Google video’s will have this embed code.

Go back to your original ning “add video” page and paste the embed code in to the box as below and click Add Video

This is where you can add a Title, Description and Tags as shown below and decide whether who can view the video (Everyone, Just My friends, or Just Me), then click the SAVE button in the bottom right corner.

To Add Video by Phone or Email

You can add photos and videos to Bling @ Ning by sending them to your ning.com email address. If you are not sure what your ning.com email address is then click on Add videos by phone or email and if you are logged in you will be shown your ning.com email address.

How it works

Send one photo or video per email. The subject of the email becomes the title of the photo or video, and the body becomes the description.

In this tutorial I am going to show you how to make a simple reflected text header which you can use in your web design.

Create a new document with a white background. In this example my header is 960px x 200px (you can make it any size that suits your project.)

Double click the background layer to unlock it.

Next apply a gradient effect to this background layer. Click Layer > Layer Style to add a Gradient Overlay blending option to your background layer. Click on the gradient box to edit the color of the gradient (As below)

You can either choose one of the gradients you already have or make your own. To change a color, double-click on its color stop and the color picker will open, allowing you to select a new color. The color I will use for the stop on the left is #a49c6c. The color I will use on the right stop is #4c482c.

Now add your title text. Click on the Text tool. Choose your font and type your title. (I have used the font Trebuchet MS, Bold, 60pt, Color #FFFFFF (white)). The text at this point needs to be somewhere towards the top of the canvas.

Click on the type layer to highlight it.

Now right click on the highlighted layer and click Duplicate Layer.

Click Layer > Layer Properties and rename the original text layer to “reflection”

Make sure you have selected the “reflection” layer and then hit CTRL+T (this selects the transform tool)
Click Edit > Transform > Flip Vertical. Now use your arrow key to move your reflected text like shown below:

Rasterise the “reflection” layer by right clicking on it and selecting “Rasterize Type”
Now select the Rectangular Marquee Tool by hitting “M” or clicking on the tool in the toolbar. Select a feather of 10px.

Now use the marquee tool to make a selection on the “reflection” layer like the one below:

Now hit your backspace key, then CTRL+D to deselect the marquee tool
Make sure the “reflection” layer is still selected and change the opacity of the layer to 40%

Make sure your reflection layer is still selected then hit CTRL+T . Click Edit > Transform > Skew and drag the bottom left and right corners so your header looks like this:

Select the Title type layer and then click Layer > Layer Style > Drop Shadow and add a drop shadow to your title using the settings below:
Blend mode: Multiply
Opacity: 75%
Angle: 120%
Distance: 3px
Spread: 0%
Size: 5px

Make sure that the Title type layer is still selected and then click Layer > Layer Style > Gradient Overlay and add a gradient to your title. Click on the gradient box to edit the color of the gradient The color I will use for the stop on the left is #585757. For the stop on the left use #FFFFFF. Click on the top right stop and change its opacity to 0% as shown below

Click OK then make sure your gradient settings are the same as below before closing:
Blend Mode: Multiply
Opacity: 100%
Style: Linear
Angle :90
Scale 100%

Hold down your Shift Key to select both the reflections layer and your title (text) layer and use your arrow key to move the text down so your finished header looks like this:

If you don’t have Photoshop CS4 you can try Creative Suite 4 Free!

It’s now very easy to change the background gradient colour if you want to change the look.  Here are a few examples below:

For this blue gradient, edit the gradient overlay on the background layer and use #87d1e0 for the left stop and #237c9a for the right stop.

For this pink gradient, edit the gradient overlay on the background layer and use #ff5db3 for the left stop and #ef007c for the right stop.

In this tutorial I am going to show you how to make content boxes with rounded corners which you can use in your web design. In the example below I made a series of content boxes which were made in to clickable links to pages on the client’s site.

You will need to create each content box as a separate Photoshop file.

Create a new document with a white background and 190 x 130 pixels dimensions

Create a new layer, then hide your background layer. Select the Rounded Rectangle Tool and then set the radius to 10px and check anti-alias. Under options choose “Fixed Size” with 180×130 px dimensions

Now draw a white rounded rectangle in the new layer you created. Now you need to center the rectangle on the layer. To do this you need to click on the move tool:

You will need to Select All (CTRL+A) then Click on align vertical centers then align horizontal centers (see below if you are not sure how to do this).

This will make sure that you rectangle is sitting exactly in the center of your layer. Now deselect by hitting CTRL+D. Now you need to create the border around your rounded rectangle using a layer style. Click Layer > Layer Style and add a Stroke blending option to your rounded rectangle layer as below. Change the size to 1px and choose your color (I have used grey # 999999).

Unhide your background layer and your rectangle should look like this:

Now you need to use a picture that has a transparent background like this butterfly I used.

You will need to create a new layer (name it accordingly eg butterfly) and copy and paste your image in to the new layer. Now position your image where you want it to go on the layer.

Now you can add your heading text. Choose your font and type your heading. (I have used the font Segoe Print, Bold, 12pt, Color #003366)

Now type your main text using a smaller font. You will need to hit enter to go to each new line. I have used Trebuchet Ms, Regular, 11pt, Color #333333)

Now add your text to “Click Here” or “Read More” if it is appropriate for your content box. ( I have used Trebuchet Ms, Bold, 11pt, Color # 003366). Your content box should now look similar to this:

Now we will add a couple of drop shadow effects and you will be finished. Click on your Heading layer to select it, then click Layer > Layer Style and add a Drop Shadow to your text using the settings below:

Blend mode: Multiply
Opacity: 75%
Angle: 23%
Distance: 3px
Spread: 0%
Size: 5px

Now select your image layer and add the same drop shadow effect to the image (in this example it is the butterfly). Your clickable content box is now complete.

You can now go ahead and create the rest of your boxes.

To access the RSS Feeds you subscribe to you will need a RSS Feed Reader. There are a large number of RSS Feed Readers you can use. Good Feed Readers allow you to search, organize and categorize RSS news items.

My Top 5 free RSS readers are:

Google Reader

http://www.google.com/reader
Google Reader features:

• Works in most modern browsers without needing to install any software.
• Has sensible keyboard shortcuts to make navigating easy
• Lets you tag, sort and organize individual items using labels
• Allows you to easily share items on a public web page that has an RSS feed itself and send items by email, or use tags for blogrolls.
• Has a blog and news search engine to make it easy to find and subscribe to feeds
• Google Gears allows you to access up to 2000 items offline

Bloglines

http://www.bloglines.com/
Cool Bloglines features:

• Mobile Bloglines: Allows access to your favourite content on your phone
• Drag and Drop Feed Manager: Drag and drop to manage your feeds
• Bloglines Top 1000: Keep track of the Top 1000 most popular feeds
• 3 Pane Reading View: Gives you more options for reading your feeds
• Custom Start Page: Allows you to customise your start page with your favourite content

Feedreader

http://www.feedreader.com/
Feedreader features:

• Feedreader is completely free software that you download and install on your computer
• It has a very simple and easy-to-use interface which even non-technical users find easy to understand and navigate.
• Users can create smart feeds by adding key words or phrases related to their area of interest. Feedreader automatically monitors articles, and displays those topics
• Allows you to add or remove columns from your view
• With a single click you can group headlines by source, date, or tag

MyYahoo

http://my.yahoo.com/
You can subscribe to RSS feeds using My Yahoo!

MyYahoo features:

• By entering a keyword or search term Yahoo will automatically create an RSS feed to track the latest news search results for that topic.
• Yahoo has a very good tutorial on how to set up RSS feeds on to your “My Yahoo!” Page. Click here to read it http://help.yahoo.com/tutorials/my2/mycham/my_addcontent3.html

Firefox Feedly Reader RSS Add-On

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/8538
If you use Firefox as your default browser then you should consider using the Firefox Add-On Feedly Reader  to view your RSS Feeds Firefox Reader features:

• Allows you to import your favorite RSS feeds and sources from Google Reader, Bloglines, Netvibes or your bookmarks
• Allows you to collect and organize RSS feeds into tabs/categories
• You can configure multiple views: title only, title and summary, image grid, video grid, entire content
• Allows you to filter the most relevant/popular content
• You can share articles on twitter, friendfeed, tumblr, delicious and facebook
• Has an excellent list of keyboard shortcuts

 The firefox add-on can be found here https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/8538

So you have seen the term RSS and the orange RSS logo on many sites, so what exactly is RSS? Many blogs and news sites syndicate their content

Benefits of RSS

You do not have to visit each of your favourite websites individually to stay informed of their latest content updates. This saves a lot of time and makes it so much easier to keep up to date with news and information about things you are interested in. RSS can seriously make your life a lot easier! Also it’s free!

If you subscribe to an RSS feed on a website you are interested in, the feed reader will check the website for any new content. Any new articles will be displayed within the reader without you having to go back to the original site and check yourself.

You also don’t have to give your email address to the sites you subscribe to. This means you don’t have to worry about the site on-selling your email address or sending you spam email. RSS is an easy anonymous way to keep up to date with your favourite sites content and it’s very easy to unsubscribe (usually with just one click).

Stay tuned for my next post which will review free RSS Readers.

Follow these Simple Steps:

Log in to your Wordpress blog

Click on Posts and either Add New or Edit depending on where you want to embed the YouTube video

Click on the Kitchen Sink button as shown in the picture below

On the toolbar below click on Insert/ edit embedded media

In the popup window that appears paste the URL address of the YouTube video into the File/URL box

Leave Type as the default Flash

WordPress will automatically add the Dimensions if you click on the Preview box or when you hit the Insert button

Click Insert and you are done!

Registering a domain name is fairly simple process but for many actually finding a suitable domain name that hasn’t already been taken can be an overwhelming task. Many of the “good” and easily remembered domain names have already been registered and are not available.

Here are a few tips to help when choosing your domain name:

• Try and make your Domain Name easy to remember and easy to spell. If possible choose your exact business name otherwise try and use words that describe your product or service.
• A Domain Name can be up to 63 characters long and can use only letters, numbers, and dashes (-).
• Short Domain Names are usually better than long ones but many of the short domain names are already registered, so if you have to choose a long domain name make sure it is memorable and easy to read.
• Domain Names are not case sensitive. TipsForWebsiteDesign.com will work the same as tipsforwebsitedesign.com.
• If you are aiming to have a worldwide audience be aware of spelling variations for certain words and avoid using them in your domain name e.g. color and colour, center and centre, jewellery and jewelry

Transfer your domain for just $6.99* and get a year free!

Always make sure your chosen name doesn’t have an unintentional double meaning. Check out this YouTube video to see what I mean…..