AVINASH 2.0

Giving Your Pictures HDR Look Using GIMP

Before I start writing this article, I’ve to admit that I’m a big fan of HDR photography. HDR photographs are so full of magic but all this magical goodness comes with a price. Not everybody is equipped with high-quality photography gears. Cams that support HDR photography are usually very costly. Realizing that the majority of amateur photographers can’t afford high-end dSLRs, I decided to write a short tutorial that tries to achieve HDR-like effect using GIMP, the freely available open source Image Manipulation program.

Here are Before and After shots just to show what you’ll be achieving using this technique:

Before:

After:

Should we start? I’m assuming that GIMP is already installed on your systems. In case it isn’t already installed, get a copy for your OS and complete the installation procedure. Once you’ve got it installed, download the original image. Open it using GIMP:

Now, go to Colors >> Auto and apply Color Enhance a few times:

After repeating the previous step 4-5 times, the picture should start looking like this:-

Now, before we can proceed further, I’ll suggest you to download the Fx-Foundry Scripts Pack. You can install it via EDIT >> Preferences >> Folders >> Plugins:

After downloading the script, extract it in its own folder. While on the Plugins window, click browse and select the directory of the download script. After adding the directory path, go to Filters >> Script Fu and select Refresh Scripts. A new menu “Fx-Foundry” should appear on the menu bar. In case you still can’t see it, just restart GIMP.

Now go to Fx-Foundry >> Photo >> Effects and select “LOMO effect…“.

This is it. Did you come close to something like this?

You can download the finished version here. If you liked this technique and applied it on your own photos, please post your versions in the comments.

Why Have a Custom Designed Logo?

In today’s world where graphic design tutorial sites are mushrooming up in every nook & cranny of the World Wide Web, nobody seems to like a template-based design. It’s a complete no-brainer if someone decides to take the template-route. The reason is pretty simple: template-based designs look fake, repeated and boring to say the least. This is one of the reasons why you see those “How to Design a ________ Yourself?” kind of articles becoming so popular nowadays. Now a few questions might have started appearing in your brain: If not template-based designs then what else? Should you design the logo yourself or hire someone to design it for you?

Well, you should design yourself only if you are really good at it because logo design is one of the most complex craft to master — one that requires lots of research & patience along with talent. If you think that you’ve enough patience and time required for designing a professional, unique design, go for it. You’ll be saving tons of money & time. Not everybody is equipped with all the qualities of a good logo designer so the only option left for them is to hire a freelancer or an agency to do the hard work for them.

One may think that selecting a freelancer or a design agency is an easy process but the truth is far from it. Because of the overcrowded nature of design industry, there are many questions that automatically start popping up in the head when we start thinking of hiring someone to design the logo for our product/brand. Here is one question that I find many people asking way too often? Whom should I hire?

Now that’s a pretty complex question to answer if you realize the risk involved. It’s pretty important for you to make the right decision at this point. Failing to do so may affect your business presence – both online & offline.

It’s important to note that there are thousands of designers already working in the industry and if picking a designer for your project already wasn’t difficult, all those mushroomed-up DIY graphic design tutorial sites have added too many novice designers into the mix. These kind of people learn using a read-try-fix approach and usually lack originality in their work because of lack of experience in the said industry.

Often, you’ll find that logos designed by novice designers, although looking good, lack professional quality. I’ve even come across a few logos designed by them that were completely out of order. For example, a logo that makes an IT company look like the company was selling makeup items! Now that’s pretty embarrassing. As I’ve already mentioned, novice designers lack industry experience. Because of being new to the industry, they don’t seem to grasp every aspect of a logo design process. They just launch their portfolio sites and wait for someone to fall in their trap, just like a fish falls in the trap of your fishing gear.

You certainly don’t want to see yourself falling in this kind of trap. In today’s fast-paced world, the majority of people don’t have time to sit and search for a genuine logo designer. Everybody wants to get it done as soon as possible – as if the myth of year 2012 was turning into reality.

To help you assist in your search for a good, talented designer for your projects, allow me to introduce Logobee, a multiple award-winning logo design company. Why Logobee? Because they have been in existence since 2000 and over these nine years, they have designed wonderful, attractive logos for their clients. Just take a look at these beautifully-crafted logo design images:

Every single one of these logos is designed in order to reflect their company’s field of business and possesses a unique and memorable identity.

Here are some of the advantages of hiring Logobee’s highly creative & professional design team for your logo design projects :-

• Unique custom logo designs
• ONLY 2* days for the initial logo designs (with selected packages only)
• 6 to 8 different logo design samples
• 2 to 4 in house designers per project
• Unlimited changes*
• FREE 500 business cards printed* (Now, Isn’t that cool?)
• Unlimited colors
• Money-back guarantee*
• Fast and efficient turnaround time
• Project coordinators assigned to each logo design project individually
• Complete logo design kit including vector and common file types
• Lifetime logo design and stationery file support

I don’t know what you’re thinking but all the above points definitely make them worth a try. Oh, I almost forgot to say. While you’re at it, do check out their logo design blog that has truck load of amazing content filed under topics like Logo Design, Branding and Marketing, Web Design & Development, Web Fundamentals, etc.

Track your mouse activity on a heat map

Yesterday I came across a really interesting tool while stumbling upon visual design sites over at StumbleUpon. It’s a simple Java applet that allows you to track your mouse pointer activity and although it’s only available for Windows & Mac, I tried the Mac version on Linux and it worked well. Pretty cool if you wanted to see just how many miles you make that mouse pointer travel in a day. ;)

Here is a saved file of my 1hr (approx) activity using the StumbleUpon toolbar:

Is your site globally accessible?

What we, as designers, usually do? We design websites, buy domains for them, host them on one of the fastest web servers. Then we optimize the site so it loads faster even own slower connections. To make it easily discoverable in search engines, we spend hours learning and applying SEO techniques. We even add a good translation plugin to our CMS scripts so people from different countries can be able to translate the site content for their own needs.

That’s for our normal content — the content that is shown to visitors when your site is in good condition. But what about such a situation when you need to put the site down for maintenance? What do you show your visitors/users during the maintenance period?

Are your error messages or temporary site-maintenance landing pages really understandable by your global user base?

Fix ‘em, if they aren’t.

Choose Python!