May 27, 2008
Did you know that while using the Move Tool (V) in Photoshop, you can press 1-0 on your keyboard to control the opacity of the current layer?
1 = 10%, 2 = 20%, 0 = 100%, etc….
If you’re fast enough you can even type a specific number (like 23) and it will assign that opacity to the layer.
Thought i’d share this tip for anyone who doesn’t know.
May 16, 2008
As promised, here’s a walkthrough on the process that Michael Sigler and I came up with for making smooth screenshot layouts that are non-destructive. It takes a bit of work, but it pays off with some amazingly beautiful screenshots.
Continue Reading →May 12, 2008
Lets say you want to simply change the fill color of a layer in Photoshop from white to black. The typical process is not very effective:
Fortunately there is a quick and easy method that does respect the transparency of your layer, and it’s also a lot quicker:
Simply select the layer you want to change colors for, make sure you’ve got the new color in the foreground and hit: Option-Shift-Delete. This tip also works for shape layers and text layers as well!
Thanks to Brian Zeitler for teaching me this trick a while back!
April 29, 2008
This is another post about interfacing with the control panel in Expression Engine and a number of people have requested it after my previous post (Creating an Admin Bar for Expression Engine).
It’s actually not too complicated. I’ll help you get set-up with some syntax for the blog homepage and your blog comments page. Let’s get started.
Continue Reading →April 20, 2008
A while back I got tired of now having a way to access the control panel from the front-end of my site. I decided to investigate the best way to create this type of functionality. I had no doubts that ExpressionEngine contained a way, since it’s such a powerful system, but I wasn’t sure how. Here’s what I found.
February 12, 2008
I can’t believe I did not notice this sooner! Apparently, by double clicking on the date pane you can show a third pane with your iCal events displayed. Cool!
February 8, 2008
In the process of making very large icons, it’s increasingly important to use vectors (shape layers) to design icons rather than raster layers. Ever since i’ve been introduced to this feature I have not been able to go back to “ye olde raster layer” days. One feature that I’ve missed dearly since converting is the Select → Modify features. Using this feature, you can expand or contract your marquee selection by a certain number of pixels. This allowed for all sorts of possibilities such as making your own strokes, and consequently being able to style those any way you like. Today I’m going to show you how you can do this with vector shapes.
Continue Reading →January 29, 2008
Have you noticed some sites using custom fonts and font weights without resorting to images or flash? You may have noticed this in Panic’s beautiful Candybar website (see above). This is a great effect for certain fonts such as Helvetica Neue that are included by default with OS X that have additional weights other than “Regular”, “Italic” and “Bold.” Here’s how you do it:
Continue Reading →December 19, 2007
I often work in vector when I design in Photoshop, and those of you who also work in vector know what I mean when I say it can be an absolute pain to make shapes line up exactly on a pixel. A friend of mine recently showed me a great tip that I have been using pretty consistently that has really saved me a lot of time with this!
Continue Reading →December 13, 2007
I wanted to share a little tip with my readers. Since most of my work is over the internet, I get a ton of mail every day. I have old emails that I can’t just delete because they are useful for reference in the future, and it takes a long time to go through all of these and process them. So basically, my inbox is clogged with hundreds (or maybe thousands… I lost track) of emails. Here’s what I did recently to solve the problem.
Continue Reading →
I am Josh Pyles, owner of Pixelmatrix Design. I live in beautiful Portland, Oregon with my wife Olga. I enjoy technology, great design, Apple stuff, and life in general.
