UI stands for User Interface and it's a vital concept in the design of any web site or application. In this episode, we explain what UI is, why you should care, and how you can use it to improve your web experience. We are joined by Dave Seah (http://davidseah.com/) who brands himself as an "Investigative Designer", helping his clients improve how they interact with their media.

If you love classical music as I do, check out this new - long awaited release by a good friend of mine, Constantine Finehouse.

Backwards Glance

Although CSS is generally considered a simple and straightforward language, sometimes it requires creativity, skill and a bit of experimentation. The good news is that designers and developers worldwide often face similar problems and choose to share their insights and workarounds with the wider community.

This is where we come in. We are always looking to collect such articles for our posts so that we can deliver the most useful and relevant content to our readers. In this post, we present an overview of useful CSS/jQuery coding tips, tricks and techniques for visual effects, layouts and web form design to help you find solutions to the problems you are dealing with or will have to deal with in future.

We talk a lot on the podcast about web hosting.  So, I thought I would give you a link to this month's top 25.  You might be surprised who is on the list and where they rate.  Lots of good information for you to make a comparison and a smart decision for your next hosting provider.

With all my talk about databases and the power Lightroom has utilizing database technology with picture handling, I thought I would lead you on a little head start with your discovery of smart collections in Lightroom.  Smart collections are just one of the many tricks to learn that utilize the power of a database.

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Those of us that have been using Lightroom since the onset can’t even think about the program without the Library Module coming to mind, even when you’re pondering another issue.  Most tutorials on Lightroom often start at the Library Module, as they rightly should.  As I have often said before, the database capabilities of Lightroom are by themselves, more than worth the price of admission.

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The public viewed a fleet of 40 tall ships in Boston Harbor and Winthrop in July as a part of Sail Boston 2009.  Of course I had to be there with my DSLR.  The 40 featured ships came from around the world for a visit from July 8 - 13, 2009. The fleet stopped in Boston before it continued to Halifax as a part of the Tall Ships Atlantic Challenge 2009.

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Another new release (update) for Camera Raw, version 2.6 for Lightroom and 5.6 for Camera Raw and Photoshop CS4.  Quite a few more camera models added Including the big dogs Canon EOS 1D Mark IV & Nikon D3s.

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, why buy it…  I Have Photoshop and Bridge After All?  The reasons at least all serious photographers should run out and buy Lightroom right now are extensive.  Since Adobe’s 2007 release of Photoshop Lightroom Version 1.1, named only “Lightroom” at the time, the program has had somewhat of an identity crisis amongst the general population of photographers.  Personally, I was confused myself, and asked a lot of questions before obtaining a copy.  I am sort-of the curious type about software of this variety anyway, so I really wanted to see for myself.  The Adobe engineers built it to fill a gap in the Photoshop family of products (Photoshop CS3 and Photoshop Elements being the other two family members), not to mention its ultimate overshadowing of the professional level cross-platform asset management solution - Bridge.   But many amongst the photographic community have not been able to identify its primary task to make it the must have product that Adobe hoped it would become for all digital photographers.

To add interest and help unify the colors of an image, try additing a gradient map adjustment layer.  Here's how.

From its first publication, "A Christmas Carol" has charmed and inspired millions. There have been scores of editions and translations, and many stage, TV and film adaptations, making it one of the best-loved stories of all time. Less well known is the fact that this little book of celebration grew out of a dark period in the author's career -- and, in some ways, changed the course of his life forever.

Well, for those of you who are lucky enough to have a white Christmas, it's good to know just a small trick or two about how to make your pix come out the best they can with all that extra light-bounce going on all over the place.

Okay, it’s Christmas, and I know everyone is going to be running around with their little point and shoots (even more than usual) and taking just tons of shots.  With Flickr, Facebook and Twitter, to name a few, this is actually an epidemic, albeit a good one.  I am quite happy most of my good friends have these micro-cameras in their pockets and can get a shot at a game or party and hit a few buttons to have that photo posted across the planet in seconds, how cool is that anyway?

This is my first blog post on Adobe’s Photoshop Lightroom, at the time of this writing, in Beta 3.  I’m going to gradually lead into Lightroom over the coming months.  It won’t take long to see I—like many of the Adobe people out there talking Lightroom—am a true Lightroom evangelist.  I have been using Lightroom since their first Beta, and there hasn’t been a day yet I wouldn’t have paid three times the asking price of the full version, to keep it.  The funny thing is that so many people run out and buy Photoshop, and never even aspire to possess the degree of proficiency that’s necessary to justify the retail price of that program.

So many options when working with layers, especially when duplicating, copying, flattening and merging.  Which one to use and why... that's often the question.  Here's a good tip that covers most occasions.

Yeah, I don't spend too much time doing "reviews" on the 73,792 models of digital cameras out there these days, I mean wouldn't I have to start including cell phones now too?  Just crazy--that's all.  But, when I come to you guys with something, it is really worth looking at.  So, find enclosed here a review on a really, really awesome camera, that comes from a company that normally has automobile price tags on their camera bodies... but this one is actually aimed at a wider - "prosumer" market.

Presentation is everything! No, we're not all 'perfect', but unfortunately, it's the tiniest of details that can make you look unprofessional and a mess. Because our web visitors and customers are very particular, writing good and well structured content is key to making sure your site is one step ahead of the competition. Learn how you can write better yourself,  as we speak with Laura Anderson, author  of the Around Town Blog, copywriter, and columnist.

Good writing isn't an easy task for all of us, even for... get rready for it, Stephen King! This article he wrote in 1988 describes how he learned to write and started his career. Enjoy his 12 tips that will teach you to write like a King in ten minutes.

No, it's Smoke and Apples actually.  This one is going to shock some, anger others, and leave still others just shaking their heads.  Either way, it's bold and very interesting.  Read on to hear all about Apple and their new stance on people who buy their computers, and smoke.

One of my favorite little tricks for Photoshop, that actually works for many programs from many vendors in the graphics world is color sampling from anywhere on your screen, and this is most often done with the eyedropper tool.  Here is how it’s done.

PPC, or Pay per Click advertising has revolutionised direct marketing. Since the great cash of last September, Google, the one who popularized the concept, was the powerhouse in the industry. But it appears that Bing's PPC program is blowing past Google. In fact, it looks like many other search engines are. Maximize your profits by advertising with the right sites!

Exporting 3D to After Effects

For those of you out there "still" using Bridge, pre-Photoshop - that haven't switched to Lightroom yet, this is a little tip to skip Camera Raw on import when you want to view or go straight to edit in Photoshop.

Grace Elizabeth turns 5 today!

Photo shoot with Constantine Finehouse, October 2009

www.cfinehouse.com

The way you and I “see” light is not necessarily how the camera sees it,  or more to the point, records light.  But the overall objective is to produce images that correspond to the experience of our eyes.

In early August of 1991 at the “CERN” research lab—situated in the northwest suburbs of Geneva—something called a “NeXT” workstation, known to some as Primo II sat in silence as it processed it’s little heart out.  Affixed to the contraption was a posting that asserted the beholder was witnessing a “wide-area hypermedia information-retrieval initiative aiming to give universal access to a large universe of documents.”  Within this machine was nothing short of the world’s first website.  It would be only three short years before the world would be hearing about Netscape and Windows 95!  As a side-note, Some 6,500 scientists, over half the world's active particle physicists, use CERN facilities.

The witching hour is every hour on halloween day up in Salem, Massachusetts. Being the birthplace of the legends of witches, I visited Salem this October 30 and competed with Richard using my crappy Kodak EasyShare C653. With a little photoshopping magic, and some witchcraft, I bring you Halloween in Salem, 2009

I often begin with my photography students, even the ones I tutor in Lightroom or Photoshop, by saying that in photography, image making—photographic or electronic—”its all about the light.”You are important to the image creation, the camera is important, to a lessor extent, and the lens is important… but nothing is as important as the light.

Even if you elect to have your website built by professionals, someone who has “a little” practice messing around with web architecture, or one whom has at least done so before… or yes, even that niece or nephew that learned how to build complex, extensible, dynamic, e-commerce content mangment systems - last night on UTube—Sate University… it’s still a good idea to have at least a rudimentary understanding of the core concepts going on.  This information will help you tremendously with the basic and creative desires and aspects of your website—that only you can address to your designer.  So, what is a web page anyway?