When photographers and graphic designers think of microstock, three agencies typically come to mind:iStock, Shutterstock, and Dreamstime. Dreamstime opened for business in 2004 and quickly became a powerhouse in the microstock world, thanks to their friendly staff, an easy-to-use uploading process, and for providing an overall great service. For a while Dreamstime was known as the bottom achiever when compared to iStock and Shutterstock. The past year has changed this dramatically. Dreamstime is now easily considered on par with its two main competitors, and may soon surpass one, or both in popularity. Dreamstime continues to improve and explore new markets, they currently accept royalty-free microstock photography, graphics and editorial photos. They are also the only microstock agency to offer photos in RAW and, most recently, TIFF format to their buyers.

Dreamstime employs both a ‘credit’ method and a subscription method of sales. This means there are multiple ways for a photographer to make money on Dreamstime. Every year Dreamstime updates their price model. This essentially gives photographers an annual raise as commission with Dreamstime is percentage based.

Dreamstime has a chart that you can use to determine the amount of money you can make per sale. The amount you make is based on multiple factors: the number of downloads the photo has had in the past, whether the photo is exclusive to Dreamstime, if the photographer is exclusive, and if the photo buyer used ‘credits’ or a subscription plan to purchase the photo. Dreamstime also pays a varying amounts for RAW and TIFF formats. This is dependant on the maximum resolution of the photo, the larger the file size, the larger the commission.

The most lucrative sales for photographers are the RAW and TIFF sales and any of Dreamstime’s five extended license sales. Dreamstime pays some of the highest commission rates in the microstock industry.

With a host of tools, great advertising and an extremely active community, it is no wonder that Dreamstime has been gaining ground on its competitors. Dreamstime features a full management page where you can manage any uploaded files, FTP, model and property releases, any referral earnings, and much more.

To help advertise contributors and their uploads, Dreamstime does more than any other microstock agency. They have a monthly contest called the “Dreamstime Assignment”, in which each contributor with at least 50 files on Dreamstime can enter up to three files. The files can either be bought outright by Dreamstime for $25, or the contributor can choose to retain the rights to their upload. If the contributor retains the rights, then the file is automatically bumped to level five, meaning the contributor is making top dollar for every sale. Once the assignment is closed for submissions, anyone, contributor or buyer, can vote on the submissions and the top three win prizes. These prizes can range from an iPod to cash. The Assignment has proven to be a great way to boost a contributors portfolio each month.

Dreamstime has many other ways to help feature a contributor’s work, like the “Editors Choice” section on the main page. Every week an accomplished contributor also gets his or her work showcased across the main page banner for the week. They show off any new files uploaded and the latest files downloaded in the “Latest” tab, just off the main page. There are also special sections for “undiscovered” and “popular” files.

The biggest contributor to Dreamstime’s success is its community. With a very active message board and active blog section, the sense of community on Dreamstime keeps getting stronger. The strength of the community has been a great benefit to both Dreamstime and its members.

Preview

Step 1

Open up Adobe Photoshop and create a document with your desired
poster dimensions. Remember to use a high DPI (between 150-300 dpi) and
CMYK Color Mode if you are planning on sending your work to the press.
For this tutorial, I created a document sized at 800x1200px, RGB Color
at 72dpi for web use.

Step 2

To start, download and open the Capodimonte Deep Field, use Free Transform (Ctrl/Cmd + T) to rotate and resize image so that it fits within our canvas.

Add Hue/Saturation adjustment layer (Layer > New Adjustment Layer
> Hue/Saturation) and lower Saturation to -60 and Lightness to -15,
to drop down colors a bit.

Step 3

Open Astronaut
photo in Photoshop, zoom in closely to the image and, with your Pen
Tool (P), begin to trace around the astronaut, following its shape. We
want to create a path that will allow us to clip out astronaut from
background.

Once you have made your way around the astronaut, close your path to
complete the outline. Control-click/right-click anywhere along your path
to reveal a dropdown menu. From this menu choose Make Selection.

Copy and paste astrounaut in our canvas, scale it down and position using the image below as reference.

Go to Image > Adjustments > Hue/Saturation and make following adjustments:

Duplicate astrounaut layer (Cmd/Ctrl + J), apply Gaussian Blur filter with 1.4px Radius and lower the Opacity to 50%.

Step 4

Download the Earth
image and then open it in Photoshop. With the Elliptical Marquee Tool
(M), make a selection around earth, copy it (Cmd/Ctrl + C) and then
paste it (Cmd/Ctrl + V) into our design, scale it down and place it
behind astronaut.

Drop down earth colors a bit by lowering Saturation to -40 (Image > Adjustments > Hue/Saturation).

Cmd/Ctrl + click on the thumbnail of earth layer to put a selection
around it. Create a new layer and, on this new layer, fill the selection
with black. Move the black circle towards the right, leaving just a
portion of earth visible.

Apply the Gaussian Blur filter with Radius at 30px on the black
circle layer. You can see that this technique gives our earth a nice
shading effect, which in turn gives our work aspects of realism and
accuracy.

At the end lower the Opacity of black circle layer to 80%.

Step 5

We’re going to add a lens flare into our scene. Create a new layer,
fill it with black (#000000), and then go to Filter > Render >
Lens Flare. Change the Lens Type to Movie Prime and make sure the
Brightness option is set to 100%.

Change the Blend Mode of the layer to Screen and position the lens
flare so that it’s right at the edge of the earth and in the middle of
the planet glow.

Step 6

Grab free sample from Vintage Clouds texture pack, import into our design, Desaturate (Cmd/Ctrl + Shift + U), scale it down and change the Blend Mode to Screen.

Adjust Levels (Image > Adjustment > Levels) to blend clouds perfect into our scene.

Next, we are going to add The Red Rectangle Nebula; go ahead and download it and open it up in Photoshop.

Desaturate the image to remove its colors, import in our design, use
Free Transform to resize it, and then position like on the image below.

Set the Blend Mode to Screen and apply Layer Mask (Layer > Layer
Mask > Reveal All). Set the Foreground Color to black (#000000).
Choose the Gradient Tool (G), select the Foreground to Transparent
preset in the Gradient Editor, and draw a few gradients to soften (and
mask out) edges of the nebula.

Choose #640775 for Foreground Color, pick up Brush Tool (B), and with large soft brush dub one spot over nebula.

Change the Blend Mode to Multiply and apply Clipping Mask (Layer >
Create Clipping Mask (Cmd/Ctrl + Alt + G)). Duplicate this layer
(Cmd/Ctrl + J) and set Blend Mode for duplicated layer Soft Light.

Download and open Satellite image in Photoshop, extract from background using Pen Tool (P) and import in our design.

Open Layer Style by double clicking on layer, and add an Color Overlay effect.

Duplicate Satellite layer, give this layer Gaussian Blur with Radius
set to 1.4px and set the Blend Mode to Soft Light and Opacity to 90%.

Step 7

Next, we are going to add a planet to our composition, which we’re going to make from a texture. Download the Rust Textures Pack, pick up the texture you like, I choosed Metal_V1_1109, then open it in Photoshop.

Draw a circular marquee using Elliptical Marquee Tool (hold down
Shift to make a perfectly round circle) and copy into our composition.

Make it smaller using Free Transform Tool (Cmd/Ctrl + T),

create selection around (Cmd/Ctrl + click on layer thumbnail), go to
Filter > Distort > Spherize and set the Amount to 100%. The
distortion of the shape creates a three dimensional appearance to give
the basic form of a planet.

Move the planet in the upper left corner, then begin adding some layer styles.

Create planet shadow using method explained in Step 4. Here’s what we have now.

Let’s brighten up the scene a bit. First, create a new layer. For
your Foreground Color, choose a low-saturated pink color (#eebbfb). Use
the Brush Tool (B) with a large, soft brush tip to create a spot,

apply the Gaussian Blur filter on this layer (Filter > Blur >
Gaussian Blur) with Radius of 130px. Then just set the Opacity of this
layer to 70% to soften and blend the effect into its background.

Create another new layer (Cmd/Ctrl + Shift + N), choose green color
(#2cbe7e), and with Brush Tool and large soft brush dub one more spot
but this time in the upper part of canvas.

Apply Gaussian Blur (Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur) with Radius set to 150px and set Opacity of this layer to 50%.

Step 8

Press Cmd/Ctrl + A to Select All, then go to Edit > Copy Merged
(Shift + Cmd/Ctrl + C) and paste the result into a new layer (name this
layer “original”). Duplicate this layer (“original”) twice and set the
Blend Mode for the duplicated layers to Multiply.

Select the layer just above the “original” and then apply Filter >
Stylize > Find Edges. Lower this layer’s Opacity to 20% and change
the Blend Mode to Overlay. Let’s take a look (the layer on top is
hidden).

Next, click on the other duplicated layer (which should be on top of
the first duplicated layer). Go to Filter > Stylize > Glowing
Edges and use the following settings:

• Edge Width: 2
• Edge Brightness: 8
• Smoothness: 10

Desaturate this layer by going to Image > Adjustments > Desaturate (Shift + Cmd/Ctrl + U).

Invert the layer’s colors by pressing Cmd/Ctrl + I,

and finally set Opacity to 40%.

Go back to “original” layer and apply Noise filter (Filter >
Noise) with Amount set to 20%, for Distribution choose Gaussian and make
sure that Monochromatic is selected.

Change the Blend Mode to Soft Light.

Download and import film texture, resize it to fit canvas and set Blend Mode to Linear Light and Opacity to 25%.

Step 9

It’s time to add some text to our composition. You will need League Gothic and Deftone Stylus fonts, so in case you don’t have it already go ahead download it and install. Let’s start with first word “Journey”.

Set Blend Mode to Soft Light, then duplicate layer, and for duplicated layer change Blend Mode to Overlay.

Use this method for all blocks of text.

Step 10

This is the final step of tutorial. First let’s add an adjustment
layer to give our entire composition the color theme we are going for.
Go to Layer -> New Adjustment Layer -> Gradient Map to add an
adjustment layer above all the other layers. Set a gradient going from
#1c004b to #fa9900, then lower Opacity of adjustment layer to 40% to
give our design a vintage feel.

We will finish this tutorial by adding border to our design. Select
all layers in the Layers Panel into a layer group (Cmd/Ctrl + G) and
name this group “poster”. Go to Image > Canvas Size and expand canvas
by 20px.

Download and open this Handmade Paper
stock image. Extract the paper from its background by using the Magic
Wand Tool (W) to select the white color in its background and then
inverting the selection by choosing Select > Inverse (Shift +
Cmd/Ctrl + I).

Copy the paper and paste it into our design. Scale it to fit our
canvas with Free Transform (Cmd/Ctrl + T). Move the paper layer below
the “poster” layer group.

Using the Rectangular Marquee Tool (M), make a selection that is slightly smaller (15px) than the canvas.

With the “poster” layer group selected, go to Layer > Layer Mask > Reveal Selection.

Select paper layer again, go to Image > Adjustments >
Hue/Saturation and set Saturation to -13 and Lightness to +34 to bring
down paper color a bit and we are done!

Source Make a Retro Space Themed Poster in Photoshop

With the internet being used more and more by your average consumer,
you may be wanting to start your own online shop so you can unleash your
products to all those potential customers. I’m sure you know that there
are countless ways to do just this, but here I’m going to talk
specifically about e-commerce plugins for WordPress.

Maybe you’ve heard about the odd plugin that allows you to sell
products from your WordPress blog, but you might not know exactly what
they are. To help you on your way to selling your products, I’m going to
tell you about the five best e-commerce plugins for WordPress.

1. Ecwid

Ecwid is a free plugin for WordPress. It is a full shopping
cart/e-commerce system that is extremely easy to install and even easier
to maintain. It’s also customizable so you can have it looking however
you like. See their showcase gallery that features live sites that use this WordPress plugin.

But as with most things in life, there is a downside. Ecwid uses Ajax
for nearly everything, so SEO could be affected and users who don’t
have JavaScript enabled can find it impossible to use your site. But
don’t let that stop you because this is being worked on and there are
already three solutions that you can utilize.

2. eShop

eShop is another full e-commerce system for WordPress. Again, it is
free and it is an all-around good e-cart. The admin area of the plugin
is extremely simple to use and adding products, reviewing products and
checking stats couldn’t be any easier.

The whole system is customizable so you can have it looking awesome. Worm Sign T-Shirts and A La Modern are two e-stores to check out to see how the plugin works in the wild and how it can end up looking with customizations.

The downside to eShop is the payment options. You can only accept
either PayPal, Payson or use eShop to take in payments for you. When
using eShop as a payment method, you will not be able to print an
invoice for the customer as you would be able to with PayPal. I hope
that this will be upgraded eventually, and apart from the limited
payment options, eShop is a very good cart.

3. WP e-commerce

This is another free e-commerce solution for WordPress. WP e-commerce
is one of the most used out there in this space, and it has a lot more
features than eShop. To say that this is merely a “plugin” in the
conventional usage of the term is a disservice to this amazing
WordPress-based e-commerce solution. Some very complex and robust sites
out there use this plugin. For example, both IconDock and City Surf use this plugin to run their business. IconDock in particular has a very unique drop-and-drag interface for buying products.

With WP e-commerce, you can accept manual payment (checks/money
orders), PayPal Payments Standard, PayPal Payments Pro, PayPal Express
Checkout, Google Checkout and Chronopay.

There is also a Gold version of the cart that has many more features
and accepts more payment types. And on the site, they have a number of
add-ons for the cart such as product sliders and shipping modules.

The only shortcoming with this one is printing invoices. There is no
option to customize an invoice, but you can still view the invoice and
print it via the web browser.

4. Shopp ($55)

Shopp is an excellent cart plugin for WordPress, but excellence comes
with a price. That price starts at $55. For that price, you’re getting a
single license for the software, and then you can buy extra
plugins such as payment gateways, shipping modules and priority for
support. But for any business venture, $55 is a negligible business
overhead, especially for something as critical as a system that handles
your product purchases.

The plugin is extremely easy to install and use, and it seems a lot
cleaner (interface-wise) than the free plugins. The customer support is
good and there is quite a bit of documentation, as well as a user forum,
on the official site.

The sites that they have featured in their showcase are nice sites (Soigneur and Gourmet Candle Co. are just two of them), and the look of the cart is easily customizable.

There is very little to fault with this one; I personally found
nothing during my testing and the only problem I heard of was when
another WordPress plugin was conflicting with it.

5. PHPurchase ($49)

PHPurchase is another paid plugin costing $49 for the Standard
edition and $99 for the Pro version. Similar to Shopp, it seems to be
of better quality than the free versions as well as slightly easier to
use.

It has the same features as the previously mentioned plugins, but
accepts a few more payment gateways including PayPal Website Payments
Standard, PayPal Website Payments Professional, PayPal Express Checkout,
eProcessing Network, Chase Paymentech, Quantum Gateway and
Authorize.net.

The system is highly customizable. WeGraphics and Hydrapak are two examples of how you could get your site looking after customizing it all.

Overall, this is a very good e-commerce solution. As with all
systems, you should expect to run into some bugs as you use it, but I
personally didn’t find any during my testing.

Conclusion

Picking an e-commerce solution depends on how much money you are
wanting to spend (if any), what you need your e-commerce solution to be
doing and how much knowledge you have in relation to running,
developing, and customizing e-stores.

All of the solutions I’ve mentioned are perfect for small- and
medium-sized projects, but are probably not ideal for managing a
full-scale, Amazon.com-like e-commerce website selling thousands of
products. For that kind of size, you’re probably better off looking into
a custom-built solution or a dedicated e-commerce publishing platform
like Magneto, Zen Cart, or Shopify.

But if you already know how to use WordPress, your needs aren’t like
Amazon.com, and you want an e-commerce solution that integrates well
with your other content management needs — using an e-commerce WordPress
plugin is definitely something to strongly consider.

Source Top 5 Excellent E-Commerce Plugins for WordPress

The design we’ll be creating is a dark military theme for youtube
gaming channel. Subtle camouflage patterns, grungy background textures
and an array of awesome weaponry all combine to form an eye catching
background design to entice viewers and subscribers.

Like many social websites, YouTube allows the customisation of your
personal profile through the uploading of a background image and the
modification of the profile’s colour scheme. In order to make sure our
design fits well with the YouTube website and its various palettes we
need to base it on a template. Here’s a YouTube design template I made
earlier, download it and feel free to use it in all your future
projects. The template highlights where each palette is located and
shows how much of the page is seen by common monitor resolutions.

The first step towards our dark gaming channel design is a camo pattern background. Here I’m using my free repeating camo patterns I posted on Blog.SpoonGraphics, with a slight colour adjustment.

Next, draw a large selection around the main YouTube container from the template and fill it with black on a new layer.

Download a grungy texture like this one from LostandTaken and scale it into position over the black area in the design. Reduce the opacity to tone down the grungy effect.

Toggle on the template and CMD+click the palettes layer thumbnail to
load the selection. Fill these palettes with a black background and
reduce the opacity so the texture can be seen through them.

Create a new layer then right click the selection and choose Stroke.
Enter 1px with the color White. Change this layer to Soft Light.

Use the Eraser tool with a soft brush setting at 50% opacity to grunge up these borders by erasing out random areas.

Being a military themed gaming channel means we need guns, lots of
guns! Scour the stock photo websites for various weaponry.

Open up each weapon photo into Photoshop and desaturate, then use the Magic Wand to quickly make a selection of the object.

Go to Select > Modify > Contract and enter 2px in the settings.
This helps clip out any unwanted white area that the Magic Wand might
have included in the selection.

Clip out every weapon image you find and compile the selections in a
new document. Aim to find a range of weapons of various sizes, including
knives.

The images won’t be in proportion with each other, so scale and order each weapon according to their actual size.

Starting with the largest weapon and moving down, rotate and position the guns so they flare out in a kind of wing shape.

If the tones of some weapons don’t match, quickly adjust the Levels to clip their shadows and highlights.

The smaller weapons may need duplicating to fill out their area of
the wing. Stack these weapons to give the impression of layered
feathers.

Finally arrange the knives until the rotation of elements reaches the
180 degrees mark. Again stack and layer these objects to fill in any
gaps.

When all the weapons have made up a complete wing shape, group them
together and paste them into the main YouTube design document.

Scale and position the wing behind the content panel. Take into
consideration the common monitor resolution guides to ensure the weapons
will fit within the screen area of most viewers.

Paint in a blue overlay over the weapons to add a cool colour cast.
This blue will also be sampled for use as the link colour to tie the
design together.

Duplicate the group of wings, right click and selection flip
horizontally, then position the duplicate in the same place on the
opposite side.

Toggle on the design template to double check the scale of the design
and its elements. This design will fit into 1440px resolutions, but the
tips of the larger guns will be cropped off on anything smaller.

We also need to take into consideration larger monitor resolutions
and browser window scrolling, so add a black fill to fade out the edges
of the design to a solid colour.

Crop the design as tightly as possible, then save the image. Compress
the JPEG settings as far as you can while keeping an acceptable image
quality. The max filesize YouTube accepts is 256kb.

Log into your YouTube profile and edit your channel. Upload the
background image and deselect the repeat option. Then go through and
edit the design background, text and link colours. Also remember to set
the transparency of the YouTube wrapper and palettes to 100% so the
underlying background can be seen.

Source How To Design a Custom YouTube Background

• Program: Adobe Photoshop CS3
• Difficulty: Intermediate
• Estimated Completion Time: 1/2 Hour

On last January 27 th Sony Computer Entertainment has announced a new portable video game which will succeed PSP. It’s called Next Generation Portable (NGP). As I wanted to share some techniques and trends used in web and GUI design, I decided to write a tutorial teaching how to build the buttons of this console in a realistic way. Take a look at the NGP:

What you will be creating:

Step 1

Create a new document using the settings shown below. The background color can be set to either white or transparent.

Step 2

Grab the Ellipse Tool (U) and open the Geometry Options window. Select Fixed Size, and then set both width and height to 74px. Click in anywhere of your workspace and this setting will automatically create a circle shape. Fill it with any light color since we will cover this shape with effects later.

Step 3

Rename this layer to “Base”. Double click on Base layer to bring up Layer Style. Apply the following layer styles:

Always remember to pay attention at the Preview of Layer Style, in this way you will understand what each effect produces.

Your circle should be exactly like the image below:

Step 4

Let’s duplicate this layer: right click on it and select “Duplicate Layer…”. Name this new layer to “White border”. This new duplicated layer comes with all the styles that you created for Base layer, but we want only the shape of circle. So, right click on this new layer and select “Clear Layer Style”.

Step 5

Double click on “White border” layer to bring up Layer Style. Apply the following layer styles:

Be careful! As we only want the effects of layer style without any fill, we have to set the Fill Opacity to 0% on Advanced Blending.

Your circle should be exactly like the image below:

Step 6

Duplicate “White border” layer and name the new layer to “Grey border”. Again, clear the layer style of this layer and apply new styles following the images bellow:

Your circle should be exactly like the image below:

Step 7

It’s time to add the iconic shapes of any Playstation videogame’s: triangle, square, circle and X. Maybe some of you are thinking to download a font with these frames or vector free file. But this time let’s explore Photoshop potential, you will see that a lot of things can be done using only Photoshop in right way.

Grab Custom Shape Tool (U). Open Custom Shape picker window, click on the little black arrow and then click on option “All”, in this way all the shapes will appear on picker window and you will find easily triangle, circle and square frames. X button will give us a little more of work and I will show you how to create it at the end of this tutorial.

Set the Foreground color to #FFFFFF, so our shape will be white. Choose some shape that you prefer, and open the Geometry Options window. Select Fixed Size, and then set both width and height to 40 px. Click in anywhere of your workspace and this setting will automatically create the shape.

Step 8

We will have to align our shape at the middle of the button. Ctrl + Click on Base layer thumbnail to activate the selection of circle. Grab the Move Tool (V) and select our shape layer. You’ll see at the top of your screen some alignment buttons, in this way we will align the shape to the selection. After that, press Ctrl + D to deselect.

Step 9

This preset frames have a too rigid shape. So let’s diffuse this a little bit. Select the layer and go to Filter >> Blur >> Gaussian Blur. Set the Radius to 0,3 px. To understand better this step take a look closely the shape with zoom before and after of applying effect. Remember to give a meaningful name like “triangle” to this layer.

Step 10

Our button looks too flat and we will change that. In order to make more realistic icons, buttons and layout in general you have to use slightly textures. I see a lot of sites that seem poor because they don’t have any kind of texture. Despite of be an almost imperceptible detail, makes all the difference.

Create a new layer and name it “Texture”. Ctrl + Click on Base layer thumbnail to bring up the selection of circle. Fill this new layer with color #282828. Press Ctrl + D to deselect. With this layer still selected go to Filter >> Noise >> Add Noise. Set the Amount to 46% and Gaussian to Distribution.

Now change the Blending Mode of this layer to Luminosity and the opacity to 5%. In order to understand better the very slightly difference between flat and textured button look at this image below:

Step 11

It’s time to give the impression of volume to our button. Duplicate “Grey border” layer, name it to “Volume” and bring it to the top of layers. Clear the layer style of this layer, set the foreground to #FFFFFF and apply new styles following the images bellow:

For default, Gradient Ovelay comes from the center to borders. But we want to simulate the light coming from left top area, so still on the Gradient Overlay window take the cursor to your shape and drag the effect to top left portion. Change the opacity of this layer to 60% and you will have this result:

Step 12

Finally we will add brightness to our button. Duplicate “Volume” layer and name the new layer to “Brightness”. Clear the layer style of this layer and apply new styles following the images bellow:

But the brightness should not be as long as it’s right now. So we will have to erase some parts.

Right click on Brightness layer and select “Convert to Smart Object”. Again, right click on this layer and now select “Rasterize Layer”.

We just want the light coming from top left portion of the circle: blue area in image below. So every part out of the blue area can be erased with a soft brush.

Voilà! Now put all these layers into a group called “bt_triangle”, for example. Duplicate the group three times and finish changing the shapes of the buttons. I decided to do an app icon with these buttons, and the process of doing that was quite similar to do the buttons.

X frame step

Last, but by no means least, how to do the X shape. Set the Foreground color to #FFFFFF, so our shape will be white. Grab the Rectangle Tool (U) and open the Geometry Options window. Select Fixed Size, and then set width to 4 px and height to 44 px. Click in anywhere of your workspace and this setting will automatically create the rectangle. Create another rectangle inverting the settings: 44px X 4 px.

Now you have rectangles with two directions: vertical and horizontal. Activate Move Tool (V), select both layers and use the align bar to get a cross shape. With the cross still selected go to Edit >> Transform >> Rotate and set the rotation to 45°. Now you have your X frame. Before you put it inside the button, remember to apply the Gaussian Blur.

Applying these techniques wisely you can achieve awesome results without the help of a web designer. I hope this tutorial helps you to improve your skills!

Source New Playstation Portable Realistic Buttons

Basically the design of your website is probably the most important factor. You should not disregard the truth that the face worth of your web page will determine whether the people will be reading your article or not. This is why designers are very important assets of companies who are into the best web designs, companies can pay competitive wages as long as they can see that the web designer is really someone who will be able to make every content seem unique and exciting to read and have one of the best web designs. Because of this , in designing your website page, you have to always take time and be patient to be able to get the best web designs however not too expensive.

Here are a few details that you could use in looking for and selecting the most affordable still best web designs there are. Coloration is an important aspect in the design of the web site. With the appropriate colors you will make your page look more attractive and appealing. There are several cases where the colors used are boring or quite bright for the eyes. Bear in mind the readers would be looking at the web page for several minutes and their eyes must always be relaxed when they are browsing through your web page. Text color and sizes are also important to decide on, there are several web pages where the texts cannot be seen or read due to the nature of color and text size. People will never waste their time reading through an article when it is tough to read. So make sure that the texts are readable in terms of sizing and shades. Images, animated pictures and videos add-ons are other ways to design and style your website well. You can always use images, animated clips, and videos which are related to your topic to add design to the website page. Beneficial thing with these designs are that many of these are free sources found anywhere in the internet that can just be uploaded on to your site.

By browsing through different internet sites in the internet, you can always find the best web designs or themes for your web site. The main goal is to find the least expensive yet the best web designs. In looking for it, you must never settle for anything that is just right for your page, you must always look for and choose the best web designs. If you are dealing with games and posting several comments on it, be sure that the design of your web page is inclined into video games. It is not right to put ebooks and English grammar on the web page since it would look awkward and really not attractive to the audience that you want to appeal to.

To conclude, there are a lot of small details that needs your attention in designing your web page. It is not just as simple as applying colors, themes, and photographs then presto, your blog is already finished. Creating a web page takes time and critical designing skills to boost up any content that you want to be shown in the web.

Constantly seek more and thoroughly to find the most inexpensive yet best web designs that is proper for your web page

One easy way of designing a website is by using the best web design software. This not just ensures that the job is made simple and fast for the web designer. But it also results in an attractive website that has the ability to entice more visitors into reading his website. Today, there are tons of really great design software that can help a designer or web owner build a really functional site within hours or even minutes. There are software that help the designers add more and better features in a convenient fashion with the indeed of enhancing its appeal all the more.

Indeed, gone were the days when web designers used to create sites from scratch, making the job a daunting one, short of being a day-to-day burden. Today, with the assistance of some of the best web design software applications, it is now much easier and faster to create and own websites. In fact, while there are web designers who utilize such software, site and blog owners now also use them, even those without any technical knowledge on web designing. This is because most software products are easy to use and apply, what with the easy-to-follow instructions made available for the user. Add to this is the fact that there are now a number of free software that can be used by those with access to the Internet and want to create their own websites.

The best web design software definitely assures great features that likewise make it easy to use by even the novice designer. One important feature is that it must possess WYSIWYG applications for web building. Such tools help the user see how his website takes shape as he works on it and adds more and more features.  It is a must that design software has even the most basic features in order to make sure that it meets the requirements of a web owner or designer in the creation of a website.

On the Internet these days are some of the best web design software that can help in the building of sites. These software products are required especially by those who have little or no designing skills in building a website. Likewise there are free software that anyone can avail, particularly people with limited budget and cannot afford to get the services of a website designer. Indeed, these software programs are a great way of coming up with an interestingly designed site that can reach the target market, increase its visitors and improve total sales.

Here are some of the best web design software:

Web Plus is design software that is easy to use. It offers a number of media tools such as You Tube and Flash and even has helpful tutorials and free hosting.  Web Plus also offers templates, albeit there are many others online which are deemed to be more appealing. Likewise, HTML is necessary and so this is best for those with knowledge on it.

Another website design software is the Coffee Cup Visual Site Designer, which is quite popular for its ease and convenience of use. One does not have to be a coder in order to take advantage of this software. It comes with an easy-to-understand manual that’s very handy even for the non-technical individual. What’s great about Coffee cup is that it even has an FTP client, making direct changes in the site easier.

There are indeed a lot of impressive software that can be used to build a website. And because of their great number online, their prices are competitive, making it more affordable for people to buy them. However, one must remember that the best web design software is not necessarily most inexpensive. Instead it must have all the required features and functions to make sure that the design needs are met and a professional yet attractive website is created.

So after trying all this ” best web design software ” and you want something professional you can contact me for a quote

Written by Tom Doyle

It’s over a year since I wrote a similar article to this one on what it costs to design a website. Surprisingly, since that last post and with all the turmoil that is happening with the global and Irish economy, little has changed in terms of pricing. What has changed however, is the number of small web design companies popping up all over the place offering cheap web design solutions. I personally take no issue with these companies, unless of course they start comparing their work to the work a professional web design agency.

The problem with web design cost is that generally speaking, most people don’t actually understand what it takes to design and develop a website. I know from even my circle of friends, they would expect the building of a website to be something that can be done in a few clicks of a button. Of course this is a possibility and one of the reasons there are so many cheap and nasty web design companies in the market today.

We regularly get people telling us that we are “much more” expensive than other quotes they have received. In this case we always ask them to provide us with the proposal from the other company to see where the difference in price lies. In most cases, they are comparing apples with oranges. The service we offer is far superior to the cheaper alternatives. There are of course the exceptions when I can’t even contemplate why a company is going in so cheaply.

Like with every professional service, I think it’s best to look at things in context when discussing pricing around a service you require. Hopefully this article will open most peoples eyes into how a professional website is cost-ed and why.

Web Design Cost

When we get a call from someone looking for a website designed, the first thing we ask for is an idea of other sites that the client is trying to emulate for their own business. This isn’t to plagiarise their ideas, but for us to get an idea of what the clients expectations are. Our next question would be related to the websites functionality, e.g. do you need to sell anything online, what level of interactivity do you want with the client etc.

Generally speaking, the answers provided will lead us two ways, one needing more questions answered or two, in a position to put together a proposal for the costs involved in the project. With the information received from the client, we can the plan the time we feel is required to deliver a finished website based on the clients brief. If it’s a complex project, it can take quite sometime to put together time-frames expected.

Time Required to Build a Website

Let’s take a simple brochure type website, with a Content Management System as an example of the time  required to deliver such a website.

1. Design. Design is a strange procedure that can’t be timed to an exact time-frame. There’s a massive level of creativity required and therefore, you can’t rush it. A typical design can take anywhere from 2-3 days to meet the initial design brief and at that stage, you will probably have one or two ideas developed.In all our projects, we work with our client to get a design that they are 100% happy with. If they don’t like what we have delivered, we will keep working until we get exactly what the client wants. Luckily enough, in most cases we don’t have a problem with it going beyond the 2-3 days allocated.Total Days: 2-3
2. Design preparation for CMS integration
   Once the design has been fully signed off, we move onto preparing the agreed design for the CMS integration. This means developing the necessary HTML, CSS and JS code etc. This can take up to 1 day to complete.Total Days: 1
3. CMS Installation & Design Integration
   As soon as the design has been cut up and is ready to be integrated, we start the process of installing the CMS. Depending on the CMS chosen and the complexity of the design, this can take anywhere from 2-3 days to fully integrate. At this stage, we also look after any functionality issues, such as forms, login systems etc etc.Total Days: 3-4
4. Content Insertion
   The final build stage is the insert the content provided by the client. Typically we do a maximum of 15-20 pages of content for a client and then train them up on how to use the CMS to insert their own content if they require more.Total Days: 1-2

So there you have it, that’s a typical example of the time required to build a very basic website with a CMS. I haven’t included the time required for meetings, design briefing or testing. The basic nuts and bolts of building the website will take at least 7-10 days, yet it generally takes 4-6 weeks before the whole process is completed.

We charge per project basis. It’s not easy for me to give a set figure for the cost of the design and development of a website because requirements differ so much from client to client. Typically speaking, we would be charging anywhere from €2,500 – €3,500 +VAT for a typical brochure site with CMS.

To some that sounds quite expensive, but let’s break that down further to see where the costs come in.

a) Web Designer / Web Developer

A good web designer/developer’s annual salary will be anywhere from €30-40k per annum depending on experience. Since we need two people working on your website design, let’s take a mean salary of €35k per annum.

It costs the employer just over €790 per week (accounting for holidays) to have someone working on the project. The total cost for a 2 week project is therefore €1580

b) Project Management / Meetings
With any project, there is a certain level of project management required. Project management means meetings. As much as we can, we try to have meetings on-site, but most of the time it makes more sense to meet with the client in their offices. This obviously takes someone’s time and costs money for travel etc.

c) Rent, Calls & Other Misc.
A necessary evil of running a business, but we need to put a roof over our heads and buy PCs, phones broadband connection etc etc. Without all this, we wouldn’t be a web design company.

You can throw your own figures at b and c – but even with the lowest level, you can see there is very little margin in the costs charged for designing a simple website.

Cheap Web Design Cost

So now that you’ve seen what the costs involved in developing a typical website, let’s look at how a cheap web design business operates. I say business as opposed to “company” because a lot of these businesses are one man operations run by self employed individuals working from home with little overheads etc. Other cheap web design companies will outsource their work to cheap labour countries such as India, Pakistan or China.

1. DesignGenerally speaking, most of these companies do one of three things when it comes to the design aspect of a website.a) Download  and use freely available templates from the Internet. They then do some basic customisation of the design such as include your logo and other graphical material.b) Purchase already created designs from Templatemonster.com or similar websites. Again, there is a certain level of customisation required in this case.c) Outsource off-shore – absolutely nothing wrong with this, but the quality tends to be pretty poor.
2. CMS Integration
   The majority of the cheap web design cost companies use one of the many freely available CMS solutions such as WordPress,Joomla or Drupal. Apart from being really easy and quick to install, there are thousands of online resources where they can download free templates to use for their website theme.

Typically speaking, someone could put together one of these cheap websites, that will potentially look like thousands of other websites across the Internet in less than 2 days. If it takes them longer than this, either you are a nightmare client that is expecting too much or they don’t know what they are doing!

The bottom line is that if you want your website design from a professional design agency, expect to spend anywhere from €1,500 to €4,000 for a brochure type website. If you want to go the cheap route, don’t spend more than €500 – otherwise you are being ripped off.

I hope all the information above gives you a good idea of the complete disconnect between cheap web design and professional web design. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing to use a cheap web design company, but before you start comparing apples and oranges make sure you completely understand what you are getting from your web designer.

Source How much does a web design cost? Real Web Design Costs

Written by Susan Bean

When you go to web sites and are looking around, all the different things you see from the layout to the pictures are created by a web designer. A web designer career means you are able to take a client’s visions and make them a reality on their web site. No matter what product or service the client may be offering it can be successfully communicated to the consumers on the web site.

Before a web designer can actually build the different pages they need to meet with the client and decide on a concept. After the concept is agreed upon the web designer is ready to start gathering different things that will be shown on the pages. This would include any writing along with images. All of the information for the page is done with different kinds of coding. The main source of code that will be used is HTML. This lets the designer tag items, change colors, bold wording, and set up paragraphs, add animation, etc.

When making websites the web designer is also going to have to know how to make clickable items. This means if a consumer needs to ask a question there will be something that might say contact us. The consumer will just click on the link and will be able to send an email to the company. In order for this function to work the designer will have to know how to work file transfer protocol, FTP.

When you are working for a client you have to keep in mind that not all clients have the same servers they are working with. With that in mind you will need to know how to work on all the different servers to have a successful web designer career.

As with any job, in your web designer career,  you will have deadlines, you will be under a lot of pressure to make things work properly within the time frame, and the client might change the demands in mid stream. This is going to be one of the more stressful jobs on the market but, the final outcome is well worth it all.

Not everyone starts out as a web designer right away. Many web designers started their careers as a graphic designer and worked their way up the ladder. Many things that a graphic designer learns can be used as a web designer. They are both about taking a vision from a client and making it a reality just in a different form.

In order to have a successful web designer career you will need a degree and hands on experience. Depending on how serious you are about your work, will decide if you go to college for two or four years. You will need knowledge of the fine arts along with courses in computer science. Many web designers teach themselves the necessary computer skills and HTML. As the Internet grows in leaps and bounds there will be a need to have web sites created by knowledgeable web designers

So after reading this I wish you a lot of success in your
web designer career

One way of obtaining ideas is by seeing other designs. Such ideas are important inspirations in order for him to work efficiently on a new job. Indeed, the website designing design trend is changing rapidly. This only means that ideas for design of websites should conform to such changes, especially those influenced by today’s new technologies and waves on the Internet such as the style dominating Web 2.0.

Indeed, the latest fashions when it comes to web site design seem to change fast. And with the new high technologies that are being discovered, this only means that there are easier and faster way of accomplishing the same things. This is the same with web design, the tasks of which have become more convenient, quicker and even more appealing to the people. Anyone is sure to remember that just few years ago, the ordinary person would have been greatly impressed and satisfied with a picture from Photoshop placed on his webpage. Nowadays with all the appealing and high tech web pages on the web, it takes a lot more to impress him. What a reader is looking for in a website is the latest in design trends. And this makes the work of the web designer more challenging.

For the individual who is fairly new in the designing world, the job of getting the freshest website design ideas can be difficult to do. More often than not, it takes more than just some motivation and inspiration. It can be a great boost if he checks on the varied and oftentimes unique style and design of websites that are available on the internet. Some are simple yet enticing for the readers to delve further into the site. Others are outrageously loud in their design yet exude cool and fresh appeal to the juvenile readers. Indeed, many existing web designs on the Internet bring out one’s creative juices to come up with his web design ideas. He will even be surprised that some of his ideas, when finally applied will result in a finished product via a professionally done website.

One of the most effective website design ideas when it comes to enticing more people into a site involves having a big photograph that serves as a striking background on a web page. Once such image is used as backdrop, it becomes an interesting part of a website and so makes a good impression on its visitors. However, for it to be effective, a web designer must make sure that the photograph is relevant to the content of the website. Definitely if the picture has no connection with the topic discussed in the website, even if it looks great as background, it will just be useless as visitors will just be left wondering why an unrelated photograph is used at the site.

Another one of the most interesting website design ideas involves colors. The main idea is not to overdo the use of palettes on website pages as the design will come off as something that’s overly done. It is best to cut down of color, limiting it to the three primary ones. He must likewise avoid using white or black as they can set off the site as something that’s bland.  The designer can use a few shades of the primary colors just to make sure that the website stands out.

In the end, when designing sites, website design ideas are indeed helpful to a designer whose overall objective is to make the site interesting and appealing to the reader. Likewise the design must complement the site itself, especially its content, which is definitely one of the hallmarks of a good website.

Indeed, a unique web design is a great way of enticing more visitors to any website so go and find some interesting website design ideas

The absolute very first thing you should know is that starting as a freelance web designer you are bound to make mistakes. You will be learning and it’s a process. You’re going to get burnt. It’s unavoidable. I want to assist you so you can stay away from much trouble.

1. Taxes

There’s a false impression that in the Unites States a freelance web designer needs license. As a graphic freelancer and freelance web designer you are in essence selling a thing that isn’t tangible. What I highly recommend you is get a checking account for your freelance web designer business and an EIN (Employer Identification Number). To get the EIN it will take literally five minutes if you do it on the internet. They will give you a document that has the EIN listed. You want to use the Employer Identification Number when you set up your checking account and when you do business with clientele since that is what you should be putting on your W-9. You can have one W-9 that you give to clients. Having the EIN on it saves you from listing your Social Security number. Make a spreadsheet for Advertising, Supplies, Utilities, Legal costs, etc. Most major items you buy for your freelance web designer business are depreciable. If you have a home office, you can write off the utilities and rent/mortgage or the percent of that space in relation to your house. So if you plan on buying a house, keep in mind that having a small workplace isn’t always beneficial. Make the most of what you have while you get it. Your place doesn’t even need to be dedicated for business. You could put a computer in the family room but you can only write off that section of the room used for business.

2. A Contract

Don’t leave “home” without one as a freelance web designer. If you think there are a potential clients and you might meet them, you could have a temporary NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement) that they may sign. I have one that has saved me from several clients I spent a long time in meetings with, did a couple of comps for, and then they never followed through with the project. It says I receive money a certain hourly rate just for seeing if the project is worth the client investing in any further. Anything discussed is confidential and if they don’t want to go forward they have to pay me for my time and they receive nothing.

A bigger contract for a project when they get to the point you know you’ll be working one is a necessity. You should list the rights, an rough deadline, what’s included in the fee, what happens if they don’t pay off, what happens if they terminate the project, what the client must provide you with, protecting your tush in case your computer gets torched ( Force Majeure ). Also consider having a limit on concepts and revisions and ask for more when the client exceeds them. AIGA ( [link] ) provide very good guidelines and even working contracts for when you need to be on a retainer. Make sure you include where the jurisdiction is in case of a breach of contract or if the customer is late on payment.
Even if your customer wants you to do a little mockup, have a contract or an NDA. Even if it’s a client that you’ve been working with for a long time as a freelance web designer.Make sure you get a deposit and the contract BEFORE you start on anything.

3. Your brand

Before you start looking for clients as a freelance web designer, you should probably have at least something in your portfolio so people can get an idea of who you are and what you do. It is best to come up with an identity for yourself. Get a logo  (and yes, it really is so much harder branding your self as a freelance web designer than clients), get a business card, and have a site. You’ll need something to be able to hand out because you never know when you’ll come across someone that wants a freelance web designer. You always want a card on-hand to give out in these situations. You also need a website. A website is a quiet salesman that works 24/7. If you aren’t that good in website design or coding, you can hire a freelance web designer to do if for you. If you don’t have any work to show as a freelance web designer, make some projects up. It’s better to have something that isn’t for a real client than nothing at all. Usually, people are more interested in what your work looks like, not who you do it for.

4. Working the Network

Starting as a freelance web designer you won’t have a client foundation. It’s not always simple to have one. Consider LinkedIn for local networking groups outside your industry. That’s where you are likely to more easily pick up freelance web designer customers. Attend the conferences, get involved, and carry around those business cards I told you to have. Customers that send other customers are good business. There is by now a trust built up from the recommendation seeing that they already know at least one of your references. Shortly you’ll be working for clients of clients. If you are at an ad club meeting or event, you’ll find business owners of those businesses or people who work there in high positions and talk with them. Ask them for a portfolio evaluation or maybe if they are searching for a freelance web designer. Having some work through a design firm may help build your freelance web designer portfolio (may sure you ask for permission – there might be some confidential content and ownership issues) and provide some nice steady cash flow for a while (especially if you occasionally work on-site for them – just keep in mind they work around your availability, don’t let them exploit you).

5. Pricing

Don’t be afraid to charge appropriately for your time and efforts as a freelance web designer. Don’t be afraid to ask for for consulting, meetings, calls, research and brainstorming either. That’s time you can’t be working for another client or enjoying time to yourself. Be sure to charge enough to have a good profit margin and be able to pay your expenditures. FreelanceSwitch has a great calculator ( [link] ) that will help establish your hourly rate as a freelance web designer. If you would like flat-rate a project then you can take your (hourly rate) x (estimated time) x 20%+. The more experienced you are, the bigger the rate you can impose.

6. Billing

There are lots of billing options available for a freelance web designer. You can create your personal invoice and mail them a Word/PDF and provide them with a Paypal address or let them pay by check. You may send invoices with Paypal/Google Checkout. Feel free to use QuickBooks and other money management programs.

7. Getting Paid

For a reinforcement: make sure you receive the deposit BEFORE you start work. If you give an online way of payment additionally traditional methods, generally the customer will pay online because you can start on the work faster. You may include a warning of interest for delayed payments. If your client hasn’t paid you on time then initial write an e-mail clearing up the problem and don’t be harsh. They may have forgotten about it, accounting may have not gotten the documents, etc. If they don’t give you an answer, send a letter through the mail. If that isn’t replied to, send a letter through certified mail (and retain a copy of it and the receipt) informing you will seek legal action in X amount of time (at least 7 days). Suing is a last resort. You don’t want to burn a bridge. If it’s in the small claim amount then you don’t need a lawyer. You need to have send the certified letter first to sue. You will have to show that to the court. They will issue a court date and send a letter to the customer. You then meet in court. You show the judge that you haven’t been paid and the work has been done and you provide the contract. The judge will allow the customer to defend. If the client doesn’t have funds you can put a lien on their organization assets. If they are an individual you can get a lien on their personal possessions or garnish their wages if they also have a full time job separate from the business. It’s not necessarily something that is always easy to do but occasionally it is required to be done as a freelance web designer.

8. Keeping in Touch

You might consider sending out monthly emails to customers, offering discounts some times, letting them know about a new service, etc as a freelance web designer. This will not only keep them up to speed on you, but if they haven’t done business with you in a while, it might make them consider getting in touch with you about an idea they’ve got.

But the best advice that I can give is just go and be the best freelance web designer