TONI ZOVA

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A Design/Development/SEO blog with bits of randomness

Paint Shop Pro Brushes


Oh the agony, the horror. Posting this is going to be a traumatizing experience. In fact, it’s going to scar me for life. So I’m going to insert a quick disclaimer here.

Disclaimer: I, Toni Zova, in no way thinkg Paint Pro should be used by any professional in the design industry. I also never have, and never will use Paint Shop Pro in my life, so don’t judge!

Alright, now that I’ve gotten all that out of the way, let’s get right down to what this post is really about. Paint Shop Pro…Yeah. Truth is, so many people still use Paint Shop today and I’ve had friends admit they still use Paint Shop to this day (Yes, they remained friends after that despicable confession.) Anyway, they all feel weird, because there’s very little quality resources online for Paint Shop users, so I decided to oblige. (i’m going to hell after this post, not that I wasn’t before, now it’s a first class ticket, damn it…)

Below is a collection of some of the webs, dare i say, best paint shop brushes….enjoy?

psp splatter brushes
Download Paint Shop Pro Splatter Brushes

PSP Snowflakes brushes
Download Paint Shop Pro Snowflake Brushes

psp curly brushes
Download Paint Shop Curly Brushes

psp arrow brushes
Download Paint Shop Pro Arrow Brushes

psp blood splatter brush
Download Paint Shop Pro Blood Splatter Brush

psp spotty star brush
Download Paint Shop Pro Spotty Star Brushes

psp heart shaped brushes
Download Paint Shop Pro Heart Brushes

psp smoke brushes
Download Paint Shop Pro Smoke Brushes

Yeah, these are the best I could find online for Paint Shop Pro, but hey, I said they were the best I could find online, I never said they were any good :P Oh well, here’s to all you paint shop pro users, hope you put these brushes to good use ;D

Free Vcard Template


Alright, a quick post because i’m in a hurry. This was created by Trevor and he sent it me to share with you guys, it’s a VCard Styled website template, also works great on the iphone etc. It’s dark, minimal and right down sexy, if only sexy was a crime, this sucker would end up behind bars.

zova-vcard

Includes:

  • Home page link
  • Business card link
  • Direct Email To link
  • delicious.com profile link
  • dopplr.com profile link
  • emberapp.com profile link
  • flickr.com profile link
  • linkedin.com profile link
  • last.fm user link
  • twitter.com @profile link
  • also shows you latest tweet at the bottom of the page

So, a killer freebie for you lot to enjoy, I call it, (yes, vein is my style and i have an ego to look after), the ZOVA Vcard. Ha. Has a ring to it.

Here’s a Demo.
download vcardDownload the free vcard template files here (rar).
download vcardDownload the free vcard template files here (zip).

Free Photoshop Pattern Collection


Today I’ll be sharing 5 sets of patterned textures, 25textures in total, vintage/retro styled for all you pattern/texture addicts, so enjoy.

First off is this pack of large (740px * 740px) seamless Vintage Green textures in .jpg format as well as a corresponding Photoshop tileable pattern (.pat) set.

vintage green photoshop patterns

download freebies Download the Free Tileable Vintage Green Photoshop Pattern Set & JPGs Textures.

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Here’s a pack of large (1024px * 1024px) seamless Retro Autumn textures in .jpg format as well as a corresponding Photoshop tileable pattern (.pat) set.

retro autumn photoshop patterns

download freebies Download the Free Tileable Retro Autumn Photoshop Pattern Set & JPGs Textures.

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Below is a wicked cool pack of 9 free tileable blue retro like striped Photoshop patterns (.pat) and a corresponding set of seamless images in jpg format (.jpg).

retro photoshop stripes

download freebies Download this Retro Striped Photoshop Pattern Set & JPGs

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One of my favorite sets is this combo pack of large (740px * 740px) seamless Vintage Dot textures in .jpg format as well as a corresponding Photoshop tileable pattern (.pat) set.

vintage dot photoshop pattern

download freebies Download the Free Tileable Vintage Dot Photoshop Pattern Set & JPGs Textures

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Finally, this awesome combo pack of tileable grungy striped Photoshop patterns (.pat) and a corresponding seamless grungy texture pack (.jpg). The resolution for both textures and patterns is 740px * 740px.

grungy striped photoshop texture

download freebies Download the Grungy Stripes Photoshop Patterns and the JPGs texture Pack.

20 Photoshop Text Effect Tutorials


You probably know a lot of good text effect tutorials out there on the web and maybe  you already tried some of them and you have your own top list of best text effect tutorials.  In this post I’m showing you 20 of the best text tutorials I know and I really like, check them out as it’s possible you have  missed some of them:

1. How to Create a Richly Ornate Typographic Illustration

How to Create a Richly Ornate Typographic Illustration image

2.How to Create Eroded Metal Text with Photoshop

Eroded Metal Text with Photoshop IMAGE

3. 3D text effect - 2009

3D text effect 2009

4. Advanced Glow Effects

Advanced Glow Effects IMAGE

5. Retro Text

Retro text image

6.How to Create High Quality Metal 3D Text in Photoshop

metal 3d text image

7.Wood Inlay Text

wood inlay text iamge

8. Moon Shine Text Effect

Moon shine text iamge

9.Colorful Glowing Text Effect

Colorfull glowing text effect image

10. Awesome Grunge Text Effect

Awesome Grunge Text Effect image

11.Chain Text

http://www.flash-game-design.com/tutorials/chainedText-photoshop-tutorial-6.html

12.  Bubble Text

Bubble text image

13. Aqua Text Photoshop Tutorial

aqua text iamge

14. Oily and Shinny Text Effect in Photoshop

oily and shiny image resul

15. Vanity License Plate

vanity license plate image result

16. Add Fantastic Color to 3D Text

fantastic color to 3d text image

17. Cloudy Tex

cloudy image

18. Vibrant Pop Text Effect

vibrant pop text effect image

19. Wanted Sign Into A Piece of Wood

20. Creating the Sky Logo

sky image

With this post I am also saying Thank you to all these designers who have made these tutorials. And I hope we’ll see a lot of new and cool tutorials like this in future. Also thanks to T-P!

Guest Author: Andrey

Featured Photographic Manipulations


So, we have all seen our fair share of manipulated photographs and in all honesty, after a while they all start to seem the same. How many of you remember the first jumping ‘liquid’ dude manipulation spun into an ‘invisible’ dude manipulation then whatever else they could think of, most of these mind you are tutorials people play with.

After starting the jero design community it has slowly started to pick up pace though honestly I have yet to make it public other than that link up in the nav. Amazing content, work, threads have already gone up showing some truly creative talents, and I figured why go to other blogs and feature other designers when there are tons of creatives right here on jero.

So this week, I want to feature someone whos style, technique and work is just outstanding, one of those people who have some manipulation pieces to their name that one can really be proud of, unique, one of a kind really and executed with great precision and quality. (everything below this point is 3ncryptabl3_lick’s work and discriptions etc.)

Featured Designer: 3ncryptabl3_lick

headFan:
headFan
HeadFan took a couple of days. I wanted the effect to be as clean as possible since the whole shot is right in your face and not subject to any type of shadowing or obfuscation. All the details would be clearly visible and it was important to be careful how far I took them so they didn’t come off as too fake, like the tattooing for instance. I think it worked out well enough, though could definitely still be tweaked.

NicFit and PunchIn
punchin
NicFit and PunchIn where shot within a few hours of each other for the ‘Faceless’ series. Over all, PunchIn took the most time to shoot and to build, probably a day or so with the merging of half a dozen images elements into the one - so lots of cutting and lots of post work like the dark masses from the hands, skin blending etc.


More from 3ncryptabl3_lick:

The devil is indeed in the details. I think each piece has to have that one detail that places the content or concept within it’s environment.

With HeadFan, I think its the plug. With NicFit, its the blood on the chest, with PunchIn, its the hand stuff - the black root’like stuff, the blood smudges. While none of those are the focus, they tie into the concept and root them into the environment.

I’m not sure where my inspiration came from - I can say that I don’t spend a lot of time looking for inspiration. I figure if I can at least come up with one idea, not necessarily a good one, I can at least ‘amp’ it up somehow. So I guess it’s really just about taking what’s already been done and twisting it a little to make it my own.
NicFit
nicfit
NicFit was really just about composting three main elements, the base body, the new face (which is the back of my head) and the arms with the cigarette and lighter - then blending - to get all the elements to match (or at least match closely enough)

To follow the photo manipulation thread check out his thread, Couple of manips in the jero design forum.

The History of CSSDrive


I’m going to take you on a journey, a ride through time to see what CSSDrive once was, how it evolved and what it has now become. You will experience a great deal while reading this article, everything from nausea, thanks to the 2005 March redesign, to joy when George decided to bless us with a somewhat minimalistic redesign around February of 2006. Lots of highs and lows, and highs and lows, and some more lows thanks to this latest redesign, but all that aside this just shows you how much CSSDrive has done for us a readers, as a community.

Let’s start off with the 2004 CSSDrive design…early September (is the earliest I could get a hold of), while George the owner of CSSDrive was constantly attempting to find new members, sometimes offering ‘free gMail accounts - those were the good ol’days’ - this popped into existence;

css drive redesign

Yes, I screamed out in horror the first time i saw it too, but it really does bring a smile to my face. George is a great guy, and to think he came from that, to having a site that now ranks among the top 12,000 sites in the world on alexa is great, just inspiring. But, with every high note there’s a low one and when you thought that CSSDrive could only get better, ouch. It somehow managed to shake that year or so of online evolution and sink back down to an all time low…with this monstrosity;

css drive redesign

I know, so it wasn’t as bad as made it out to be, at least he had a proper navigation now, and…this just meant that CSSDrive could only do better here on in! And they did, it only took George around 8 months or so to realize the crime he had committed against humanity was unacceptable, and after having bricks thrown though his window, his mothers pet cat lit on fire and their homes chimney stuffed with 4week old diapers, he got rid of the hideous design, and came out with this soon after;

css drive redesign

Things were starting to look, as much as they could, and it looked like CSSDrive was slowly but surely picking up pace, growing, evolving into what would come next;

css drive redesign

and then shortly after;

css drive redesign

Which might honestly be one of my personal favorites. CSSDrive should have stopped evolving right there, and instead, gone on to adapt to the changes, it didnt in my opinion need another overhaul, I mean look at it. Simplicity at its finest. Sure it might have needed a new logo or at least a cleaner one, nip and tuck here and there but it looked solid. And I can’t say it got much worse, but in late 2007, yes, CSSDrive went ahead and transformed, again;

css drive redesign

At this point, you have got to stop and think, bloody hell, it’ll looking alright but it’s had far too many face lifts, or has it? 7 or 8 in all its years of being online can’t be too much, right? Well, Jocelyn Wildenstein wouldn’t think so either. Today, this is what CSSDrive looks like;

css drive redesign

That screen cap does it justice. Anyway, I’m not even going to get into what I personally thing of the redesign, as you can see, I doubt it will be the last, I just hope George gets it redesigned before his chimney starts filling up with 4week old diapers eh? ;)

Oh and I found this along the way, I have no idea what year this is from but I don’t think it was up for long;

css drive redesign

Ive been a loyal reader of CSSDrive for years, a loyal contributor for a few years too, and I will remain a friend to George, and a loyal member to CSSDrive for years to come. Ride is over, get gone now, that’s it.

Warning Shot


Today’s post is different, I want to expose designers that have plagued the design industry as a whole. To expose those that piggy back ride on others hard work. To do all that, without naming names, without pointing fingers, without ruining careers. Maybe this will act as a wake up call for all those fuckers.

I guess today may as well go down in logo design history as the day everything was set to change. But first a disclaimer, I really don’t care much about what the logo design community has to say, but this is for those that are genuine, that still have morals and ethics, that still love what they do.

Disclaimer: This article is intended as a warning to many that I know read this blog, to those that dislike me for my brutal honesty and for the fact that I am a real logo designer, genuine, and passionate about what i do, while they’re just fakes, never-will-be’s. This article is not intended to offend those still in love with the industry, those who care about the industry and value it and appreciate it.

It’s disgusting you know? What’s happening in today’s design industry. Designers claiming to know it all, running around with a chip on their shoulder…What do they have to show for it? Honestly, probably a couple mortgages. But you know, I’m not going to base success on how much money they’re making, that wouldn’t be fair. After all, thanks to their none-existent marketing knowledge, business knowledge and for the most part none-existent common sense, it’s not hard to see why many of them would resort to cooking up work for pennies.

It doesn’t even surprise me that popular well known designers have now started to feel the pressure and slowly began to crack. High expectations mixed with envy drives these weak designers to that point, that little point where nothing makes sense and their judgment becomes clouded where there’s no sense of right and wrong.

No matter how smart you are, no matter where you get inspired from, how deep you dig to find it and think no one will find it, a rip, a plagiarized piece of work will always surface. You’ll be caught, remember that. It doesn’t matter who you are and how many you’ll have backing you that day, it doesn’t matter if you deny it or claim that due to your long years in the industry as one of the top designers that there’s no way YOU were inspired. It will not matter if you say you came up with the idea first or if it was a coincidence. There will not be an excuse strong enough, clever enough or legitimate enough to save you. People that forge someone elses signature in real life can end up in jail. Just because this is the internet and you’re ripping a couple graphics does not mean the law of conduct ceases to exist!

Here’s the thing, while many of you feel like reading this bit of drivel is a waste of time, I see it as a clear message, a statement. There are legitimate designers still in today’s industry, and we don’t like what we see. I’m personally gunning for you if you’re one of those rotten fucking apples, I have spare time in my day to find joy in tracking you guys down and exposing you. Even if this remains a one mans hobby, whether or not I find help, I’ll slowly but surely call you all out. That’s a promise, no matter who you are.

Why am I even bothering with all this? Because on some skewed level I feel like I owe the design community. I owe it to myself to be honest and true to the industry I work in, to not stand for the crap that goes on no matter what. If that means calling out fake designers, so be it. If it mean calling out poor design community webmasters, so be it. If that means calling out money hungry design services, that care less about a designers real worth, so be it.

MyBB Theme: JERO


This MyBB Theme has been a long time coming, I know. I started working on this back in 2008, Nov 14th actually, so yeah (been busy, life, work, Asian girl called Luanne…long story there), I know a LOT of you want to download and use this baby. With over 19,000 views to the original thread and over 150 comments it’s finally done!

jero

A few things before you download it and run around woooping for joy, it’s got a couple bugs I just don’t have the time right now to fix, tiny bugs, nothing that will actually effect your use of the theme or make it unusable. I’ll try to get to these next week but can’t put off publishing the theme for people to use any longer, so consider this Jero V1.0

There will be a Jero V1.1 very soon with sexier effects to navigation, no bugs and some other nifty stuff here and there, I’m also preparing to work on a ‘light’ version of JERO, so stay tuned for that. It will be delicious as a white macbook pro, lame but yeah it’ll be hot.

So without further mombojumbo, download away!
JERO MyBB Theme Download
Here’s a Demo of the JERO Mybb Theme (offline atm for an hour due to update)

SIDE NOTE: A huge thank you to labrocca of MyBB Central and all the great members there who provided me with valuable feedback and constant support! Without you guys I honestly would not have bothered to complete this theme…so thank you.

Update: Buttons etc will be customized in the next update too, thanks for pointing that out. Also the rounded corner bug will be fixed

My Social Media Icons


So I’m slowly redesigning parts of this blog, soon it’ll be the icons/some of the graphics, then later the header, then the nav and probably the footer etc.

So today I spent a few minutes knocking up a few social media icons for myself to use, but…butttt i’m a nice guy and gonna share them with you buggers to use. Nothing at all unique, very basic and goes with where my blog design will be headed.

free papercut icons

There’s 7 icons, I’ll be updating the package fir 8 others when I have time tomorrow or something so if you like them in the first place and want them, check back some time. For the sake of making these into a pack i’m going to come up with a name for them, a really lame name mind you, PAPERCUT ICONS. Woohooo right? I know, I’ve got to get out more. So, enjoy…

Click the following link to >> download the free Papercut Icons

Must Have Add-ons for All Designers


If you’re a web designer then you know how bloody annoying and time consuming it can be to do some of the most simple things like tweaking the CSS, editing little typos in your code, measuring stuff and then slipping the figures into your style sheets etc. I mean, we waste so much time doing little bits and bobs that it’s ridiculous, but I, as perfect as I am, don’t waste a second. I use Add-ons to make my life easier while coding and you should too.

I’m going to go through a list of the Add-ons I use and explain what each does, trust me, at first, once you have a good 5-10 or even 15 Add-ons strapped into your browser, you might be a little overwhelmed, but trust me, it’s worth it and you’ll get used to utilizing these extra browser features!

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firebug add-on
One of my all time favorites is the Firebug Add-on. Quoting them right off the source;

Firebug integrates with Firefox to put a wealth of development tools at your fingertips while you browse. You can edit, debug, and monitor CSS, HTML, and JavaScript live in any web page. Firebug gives you full control over the CSS, HTML and JavaScript of any page that you choose. Inspect and edit HTML, Tweak CSS to perfection, Visualize CSS metrics, Monitor network activity, Debug and profile JavaScript, Quickly find errors, Explore the DOM, Execute JavaScript on the fly, Logging for JavaScript. Best of all, every change that you make is done live and instantly, so you can quickly test out different changes and see the results of those changes instantly.

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css validator addon
Another great Add-on is the CSS Validator/HTML Validator Add-on.

CSS Validator is a Firefox extension which Validates a page using the W3C CSS Validator. Adds an option to the right-click context menu and to the Tools menu to allow for easy validation of the CSS of the current page. Opens the results in a new tab. Will only work on pages that have a CSS file associated. For example it will work with http://www.w3.org/ as the URL has a CSS file. When using the HTML Validator, you can choose to validate directly in the browser (where any errors are shown as a status bar icon), show the source with explanations of errors after the validation or a validation with proposed solutions to any errors.

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browser window resizer addon
For those annal about screen resolution etc, here’s one that will make your day, the Browser Window Resizer add-on. As simple as this add-on is, it’s def a nice help to quick check out your site in dif screen resolution settings.

The Browser Window Resizer is useful tool for testing different screen sizes. It accurately resizes your browser so you can test to see if the web page you’re working on looks right in all of the standard resolution sizes. This will allow you to see if your design is going to look good to visitors who aren’t using the same resolution as you. The best thing about this add-on is that if you are using it in conjunction with the other add-ons in this list (specifically Firebug), when you see that something isn’t displaying properly, you can instantly make adjustments to your code and see if that fixes the problem, all without ever leaving your current browser window. Browser Window Resizer add-on resize your Firefox window to 640×480, 800×600, 1024×768, 1280×1024 and 1600×1200 resolution sizes.

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css viewer addon
Here’s a nifty Add-on for you guys, the CSSViewer Add-on!

With this extension you can view CSS properties of related page elements. Very handy, when You got large CSS file with styles overlapping each other, to analyze why something is not displayed in the way You wanted.

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I also suggest you take a look at the JavaScript Debugger, FirePhp and the Palette Grabber Add-ons. There are tons of others so feel free to drop by the FireFox Add-on Archive.

And I know, a short list but I hope this is more of an introductions to FireFox Add-ons for you, really, step out of that plastic bubble ok? Smell the fresh air and see what all the big boys are playing with ;)

A Quik Disclaimer

I can't get in trouble for anything posted on this site, even if I do post it myself knowingly breaking any law. This is a disclaimer; so really, you can't sue me, because I'm stating so, here, in my disclaimer.

Also, if I use you graphics, quote you and don't give you credit, post naked pictures of you drunk at some party or call you out on something, cry me a river, you should be honored I bothered with you in the first place.

Of course, it goes without saying that I curse a lot, so if you're fucking offended by words like shit, or fuck then you need to leave.

Some Stats:

Note:

If you're looking for passwords to some of the posts, don't. If you don't have the password then I prob don't want you reading the post, sorry.