You create and manipulate your documents and files using various elements such as panels, bars, and windows. Any arrangement of these elements is called a workspace. When you first start Photoshop, you see the default workspace, which you can customize for the tasks you perform there. For instance, you can create one workspace for editing and another for viewing, save them, and switch between them as you work. You can restore the default workspace at any time by choosing the default option on the Window > Workspace menu.

Photoshop workspace elements:

A) Menu bar: organizes commands under menus.

B) Options bar: displays options for the currently selected tool from the tools palette.

C) Tools palette (Toolbar): contains tools for creating and editing images, artwork, page elements, etc. Related tools are grouped together.

D) Document window: displays the image you’re working on. It’s possible to have more than one document window opened.

E) Panels (Palette): used to help you monitor and modify your image. Some panels are displayed by default, but you can add any panel in the Window menu. Panels can be grouped, stacked, or docked.

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I’ll start my tutorials with the basics (to help some of my beginner friends) as I am exploring Adobe Photoshop CS3. I learned Photoshop 7 at school (Learned previous version by myself before school as well), worked with Photoshop CS for 3 years and I am now in front of Photoshop CS3 which was a huge, but happy shocked for me. I must admit that I was a big Photoshop user before school, but since work I have more interest in Illustrator. ^_^;

My basics tutorial will cover the basics of how to use Photoshop to work with your digital images. and introduce you to the concepts in Photoshop. The best way to develop your skills is to experiment it, but a good base is a must.

So I’ll start with some definitions to be sure you know what I’m talking about.

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Now anyone can have a website and they don’t need to know anything about HTML. That’s why we we see more and more blog, social profile, … and what came right after them : widgets. Widgets are third party items that can be embedded in your web page. There is also Desktop widgets and Mobile widgets, but we’ll only talk about Web widgets.

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One of my happy finds this past weeks are colors websites. You can make good design or drawing, but if the color doesn’t match, you won’t have a great result. Plus it’s always good to see what’s the color trend.

Kuler by Adobe is a website where you can get inspiration for colors themes. Not only you can get inspiration and share your color with others, you can create/edit them with a tool and download the swatch to use it directly in your CS2+ application! I’m not sure if there is a way to use it in an older version of an adobe application, but you can always copy the RGB or hexa values and save in your Swatches palette.

Kuler works in a 5 color schemes with a base color and four related color. When you change your base color by moving the color marker (little circle), Kuler with calculated the related color for you by following 6 different rules: analogous, monochromatic, triad, complementary, compound and shades. There is also a custom options where the colors markers don’t change by themselves. This impressive system can also be found in Illustrator CS3. I’d like to see if we’ll be able to link lot of theme, to make a bigger theme. Maybe we can already and I didn’t know. Hehe. Anyways, I suggest you to see Kuler Flash tutorial for more info on how to use the website and their many features.

For developer, it is possible to develop an application/website colored by kuler, using the kuler APIs. There is also a cross-platform kuler desktop which required to have Adobe AIR installed.

Another great website in the same kind is COLOURlovers which have color themes, but also patterns. They also have an interesting tool to create the colors and patterns. You can download the color, color themes and patterns in various formats: ase, ai, psd, cs, html, zip. They also have nice sections for website and magazine trends, articles, interviews… everything to keep you up to date! COLOURlovers website seems to have a bigger community and interaction compared to Kuler, it’s not surprising since they were online 2 years before Kuler!

Both website are essential for any amateur or professional designer!

Welcome to Cute World: Design. This is a new blog about design with tips, tutorials and freebies. For the pasts months I’ve been visiting a lot of blogs, tutorials and other design resources since I upgraded to CS3! I learned a lot of new stuff so I thought I should do my own blog and contribute to the community as well!

A little about myself. I’m Bobbie, 28 year-old asian female living in Montreal (Canada) and working as a graphic designer for 3 years now. I want to specialize in web design and vector illustration.

I hope this blog with help a lot of people and feel free to comment whatever I say.