Colorate – Create colour palettes from images
This one gathers colour information from an image or swatch and generates a pallette using the colours it finds. Neat, does what it says on the tin!
So for all you colour geeks out there ‘av a look!
Abduzeedo – Great Blog, Great Tutorials…
Hey all,
Just thought I would point you in the direction of Abduzeedo, a great blog with tips, tricks and tutorials for photoshop, fireworks and (my fav) Pixelmator…
Some of the effects covered are stunning. I just made the ones below in 3 minutes…..and I know NOTHING!
Opacity – Amazing Graphics Editor
Watching the video on the website of this application blew me away. For a couple of projects I needed to design an application icon, it wasn’t easy and the results weren’t particularly awe inspiring.
Opacity is so cool, it has built in effects and has many vector tools, best of all, however, is the built in ‘factories’ that allow you to export the graphic as icon presets and many other file types, even directly into your website via FTP.
I sincerely suggest watching the video on the homepage to guage the true value of Opacity.
Picturesque – Make stunning images for your website etc…
Picturesque is an image editor tailored to those who want some of those snazzy mac effects such as reflections, 3d perspective and rounded corners etc.
It is not free like most of my posts but because of its ease of use and general coolness I thought I would post it anyway…
Wix – Embed widgets, gadgets, gizmos and thingameebobs on your site.
Apologies to all those who I have preached the usefullness of wix to but here I go again.
Wix has enabled me to do things with my website that I would never have thought possible without coding knowledge and expensive software. It really does allow a complete novice the ability to create content, whether its an mp3 player, a book with pages that can be turned or a bopping Obama doll (dont ask).
I cant praise it enough and, athough at times geared towards the younger user, can be really useful for adding those finishing touches to your websites.
iWeb iFrames – Embed other websites on your iWeb Pages…
This rocks…..some spriteful monkey out there on MacOSXhints.com has published a way of getting websites displayed within your iWeb website….
The page explains the process for embedding mobile me galleries into your iweb page, but to embed any other page you just replace the address between the ” ” with the address you want to display. Check out the article by clicking below…
CompFight – Search thousands of FULLY FREE images…
Compfight is a search engine that references FLICKR but only returns results from images that have CREATIVE COMMONS licenses. This means that you can (mostly) freely use the images for your own purposes without feeling the wrath of an IP lawyer!..
It has a really nice and simple interface and works relatively quickly. Check it out.
Graphic Generators – Automated Graphic Generation
I have been working on a few of my websites lately and have come across a couple of very useful tools that are not only free but very cool.
The First is BGPATTERNS, this website allows you to generate a tileable image, useful if you need a website that loads quickly with a seamless tiling background. Try it, you might like it!
Next up is the TARTANMAKER, which similarly allows you to create a tileable image but this time of a tartan of your own design….
heres my feeble attempt…
Lastly there is the great selection of generators at subblue, my favourite being the Guilloche generator (see my attempt below)…
Wufoo – Create Glorious Forms for your site…
Wufoo is stunning.
It allows you to design and deploy detailed forms that can be used to gather inforamtion, as a contact me page, for research, maintaining a mailing list and much much more.
What is extra spiffy about wufoo is that it will generate reports on your responses for you that you can also export as excel etc. Also it will host and generate the code for you to link to or even embed the form on a website made with iWeb via HTML Snippets, as well as myspace etc.
On top of that there is a theme designer which means your forms can look great and appear branded (by uploading your own logo or image)
A free account will give you up to three forms and up to 100 responses with premium accounts starting at a very reasonable low sum….Most people, however, shall probably never need more than the free service (unless its for business etc).
I use this one alot……enjoy!
Color Expert – Colour library in your pocket!
This one is a pretty contentious issue. Can one truly work with colour on an uncalibrated screen.
Well despite my initial misgivings, yes you can and quite succesfully. Its never going to be perfect but if your a designer, work with textiles or simply want to re-decorate your kitchen you cant really go wrong for £5.99. This web app works like a charm and despite being used on a typically saturated screen, the colour matching actually isnt that bad, and goes a long way to helping choose those oh so inmportant hues.
I love that you can email the swatched you create to yourself or others as it generates a lovely image of the colours to include in the mail as well as the colour details.
