Design Oahu

Whether you call them radials, rays, or bursts this technique is a great way to make your design pop. Unlike the sun which you are not suppose to stare at, you cannot help but focus on the center of a radial which makes radials a great addition to a design. Radials can range from mild to wild. If you want a subtle addition to your website header perhaps a burst that uses transparent gradients can help you add depth. If you want to draw attention to a specific element such as a logo, or a product for an advertisement you can use a brightly colored radial in the background with the product in the center. This adds depth and provides a faux 3D look.

Before you start to create your radial, plan out the colors, gradients, thickness, center, and shape you wish to achieve. The radial will be created in Photoshop by defining a pattern, filling a canvas with the pattern, then adding a Polar Coordinates distortion filter. Before applying the Polar Coordinates filter your canvas should be filled with vertical stripes. The top of your vertical stripes will become the center of the burst.

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I’ve been seeing a lot of the dog ear element lately. The dog ear looks as if a page is being curled up or peeled back. If used correctly it can add depth to a flat design. The best ones I have seen are usually really subtle. They are applied to boxed elements or headers to make it look as if it is slightly peeling off the page. This element has been used in flash advertisements to make it look as if the website is being peeled back. I have also seen sights that use this in a corner of the site with text such as “Designed in Photoshop” or something similar. Here is a quick and dirty way to create this effect with Photoshop in 5 easy steps. Read the rest of this entry »

If you have been to Design Oahu in the past you will notice that the design has been revamp. The design was created as a WordPress Theme. I have been working on the design for quite some time, and have gone back to it several time without completely finishing it. Well I know there are still a bit of bugs that need to be worked out, but I thought what the heck, let me just go ahead and launch it. I currently do not have any plans to make this design publicly available, but if enough people are interested in this theme I will put the finishing touches on it such as make it widget friendly, adding the screenshot and all that other good stuff. Read the rest of this entry »

This is a quick tip for Photoshop users that want to level out the horizon in a photo, most likely you shot without a tripod. This will not help to improve your blurry picture from your shaky hands, but it will quickly get the horizon perfectly horizontal. I rarely shoot with a tripod, as I just take casual photos, which means that a lot of the time my pictures are tilted. Originally I used the Image->Rotate Canvas->Arbitrary and would just keep trying new rotations until I got it as close as possible. Then I figured out that I can just Transform (Ctrl+T) and eyeball it out, however I now make use of the Lens Correction Filter which will make the horizon perfectly level. I use the highest quality setting on my camera (5.1 Mega Pixels) which gives me a 2580 x 1932 image. Do not scale it down to the size you want just yet as you will need to crop the image to compensate for the blank corners when the image is rotated. After that you can scale down your image to the size you want. Here is our original image at the top of the hill at Waimea on the North Shore of Oahu.

Now go to Filter->Distort->Lens Correction. I prefer to uncheck the default Grid that appears at the bottom so I can see the image more clearly. Select the Straighten Tool (A) on the left sidebar. You do not need to mess with any of the settings on the right. Now click right on your horizon reference point on one side and drag to the other side.

When you let go the image will be repositioned correctly with the correct amount of rotation.

Now you see what I mentioned earlier about the corners missing after the rotation. Just click on the Rectangular Marquee Tool (M) and select the portion to keep.

Select Image->Crop and you have your newly level image.

It is really easy to take any photograph and created a weathered look with some simple Photoshop adjustment layers. I took this picture on the south shore of Oahu right near Sandy’s Beach. I am going to try and make it look like a picture I would find at my Grandparents’ house. Read the rest of this entry »