Best of Tuts+ in October

Each month, we bring together a selection of the best tutorials and articles from across the whole Tuts+ network. Whether you’d like to read the top posts from your favourite site, or would like to start learning something completely new, this is the best place to start!

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Psdtuts+ — Photoshop Tutorials

• Photo Effects Week: Create a Fantasy Miniature World in Photoshop

  This week we are celebrating the launch of PhotoDune, Envato’s new stock photography website with a series of photo effect and photo manipulation tutorials that showcase the images from our new marketplace. In this tutorial we’ll demonstrate how to create a miniature world using some interesting techniques. Many of the photos used in this tutorial are available for free for Psd Premium Members. Let’s get started!

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• Photo Effects Week: Create a Cutout Photograph in Photoshop

  This week we are celebrating the launch of PhotoDune, Envato’s new stock photography website with a series of photo effect and photo manipulation tutorials that showcase the images from our new marketplace. In this tutorial we will demonstrate how to create a cutout photo using simple selections and advanced transformations. The photos used in this tutorial are available for free for Psd Premium Members. Let’s get started!

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• Create a Stitched Text Effect for an iPad Wallpaper

  In this tutorial we will show you how to create a custom stitched text effect for an iPad Wallpaper. Let’s get started!

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Nettuts+ — Web Development Tutorials

• Stop Nesting Functions! (But Not All of Them)

  JavaScript is over fifteen years old; nevertheless, the language is still misunderstood by what is perhaps the majority of developers and designers using the language. One of the most powerful, yet misunderstood, aspects of JavaScript are functions. While terribly vital to JavaScript, their misuse can introduce inefficiency and hinder an application’s performance.

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• The Intro to Rails Screencast I Wish I Had

  Isn’t it funny how most “introduction to Ruby on Rails” screencasts are overly simplistic, and rely on generators like scaffolding? The teacher typically follows up the tutorial by stating that most Rails developer don’t use scaffolding generators. Well that’s not much help then! I’d like to give you the tutorial I wish I had. Along the way, we’ll also rely heavily on test-driven development to build a simple app.

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• The Best Way to Learn PHP

  Learning something from scratch is almost always an arduous affair — you simply have no idea as to where to start, or not to start, to kick things off. I loathed learning about the idiosyncrasies of C++’s syntax when all I wanted to learn were some darn programming concepts. As I’m sure you can agree, this is a less than ideal situation.

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Vectortuts+ — Illustrator Tutorials

• Free, Vintage Graphics: Flourish Vector Ornaments

  Wow, if you’re looking for high quality free vector graphics, then you’ve landed on the right article. We’ve roundup up a massive collection of free vector flourishes. These graphics are composed of a wonderful mix of vintage elements, floral ornaments, swirly design mixes, and are all made of beautifully curved vector art.

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• Beginners Guides to InDesign

  InDesign is a powerful design program with so many tools and features it can a bit tricky to find a topic to begin with. With this in mind, we’ve put together a collection of beginner guides on various InDesign topics like the best way to create a new document, how to import text and images and even useful advice on what to do when a document is corrupted and how to make comments and track changes.

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• How to Color a Cute Character using Graphic Styles

  Coloring a character sketch can sometimes take much longer than anyone expects. With a few layer tricks and Graphic Styles, I will show you how to create a character that is quick to ink, easy to edit and a breeze to re-color. Let’s get started!

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Webdesigntuts+ — Web Design Tutorials

• Design a Static Admin Bar in Photoshop

  Let’s whip up a simple, yet effective ‘static admin bar’ in Photoshop. We’ll take a selection of UI elements, and design their various states, ready for building in HTML and CSS.

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• A Smarter Twitter Page in Under 15 Minutes

  Today we’ll design a smart, vintage modern background to welcome visitors to your Twitter page. We’ll go over some layout considerations, then dive into Photoshop. Have fifteen minutes spare? Let’s go then!

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• Build An Innovative Portfolio Site Using Alternative UI/UX

  Paul J Noble’s awwward winning, uniquely designed portfolio site has caught the eye of many people, and not just clients either. Today he’s going to follow up on the design stage of this tutorial, and demonstrate how it’s coded up.

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Phototuts+ — Photography Tutorials

• Strapping Up: A Look at Camera Straps

  Ever stop to think about what is holding your camera when your hands aren’t? Lots of photography tutorials focus on cameras, lenses, and lighting. Even bags and filters get a lot of press. However, there is one important piece of equipment that gets neglected and choosing the wrong one can be a literal pain in the neck. So, we’re going to take a look at various camera straps and how they indirectly impact your photography.

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• Fantastic Photos of Reptiles and Amphibians

  Today’s photo collection is a tribute to all things scaly, slimy, or perhaps even both. We have gathered one hundred impeccable examples of reptile and amphibian photography. Whether these creatures are swimming in ponds or slithering underfoot, numerous talented photographers have found them to be the perfect subjects for many beautiful compositions.

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• Finishing Your Photographs: Picking Your Medium

  Photographers spend a great deal of energy capturing the best image possible and ensuring the image or print is faithfully reproduced. We may not, however, spend as much energy thinking about how to finish a photograph – print, frame or store it – and archive the image.

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Cgtuts+ — Computer Graphics Tutorials

• The Making Of “Yuki Machi”

  This is a walk through from start to finish of how I made my “Yuki Machi” scene. This tutorial is intended for beginners and students who are making the switch from creating and building assets to creating whole scenes and environments. Ill take you through the processes and techniques I use and show you the challenges l face when making larger sets.

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• Freebie: An Amazingly Detailed Dodge Tire Model

  Need some sweet rims for your next vehicle model? Well you’re in luck! Because Ivan Momchilov is giving away this epic Dodge tire model, complete with a set of highly detailed brakes. For you 3d Studio Max users out there, Ivan has included scene files for 2010,2011 and 2012! And for the non Max users, we have it available in .obj format as well, making it super easy to import it into your software package of choice. This model’s free to all, so download it today!

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• Modeling and Animating An Xpresso Driven Clock In Cinema 4D

  Today we’ll take some time (did you get it?) to model and animate a clock in Cinema 4D using only Xpresso. We’ll model the clock from a basic cylinder and add some simple materials and lighting to the scene. Once we have the model complete, we’ll begin animating the clock with Xpresso and add some user data to have more control over our final animation.

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Aetuts+ — After Effects Tutorials

• How To Create And Rig A Realistic Puppet Overview

  This is a quick overview of Aetuts+’s “How To Create And Rig A Realistic Puppet” Series. We will be posting a new chapter every day or so for the entire month of October. There are 17 parts total so check it regularly!

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• Use Real Lights To Motivate Simulated Lights in After Effects – AE Premium

  This demonstration is about shooting a translucent object, in this case a crystal illuminated by a match, and compositing that object with stock footage of dramatic fire. Finally, we’ll be simulating similar lighting effects in After Effects to reveal a logo.

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• Create And Composite A Mobile Phone App Demo Template

  In this tutorial you will learn the workflow on how to set up a scene for an animated pack shot of a phone in CINEMA 4D and composite it in After Effects. Perhaps you have developed a revolutionary iPhone app that you want to show off to the world, or maybe you just want to learn the basic workflow of compositing 3D passes in After Effects. Either way I hope this tutorial will help you along the way.

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Audiotuts+ — Audio & Production Tutorials

• Of My Current Favourite iOS Apps

  As you may have already realised Im a pretty big fan of all things Apple. Not only do I utilise Apple computers in my production process but I also lean pretty heavily on IOS-based devices in the studio.

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• Vocal Loop Effect in Reason

  In electronic dance music, DJ’s often loop tracks to cheer up the crowd. In your music productions, you can also use this effect to create an uplifting effect for what’s to come. This tutorial shows you how to create such a loop effect on vocals, using Reason 4.0.

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• Adding Flavor to Chords – Major and Minor 7ths – Basix

  Today we are going to cover how to add some flavor to your chords and compositions using 7ths in both major and minor. It is surprising how many people know how to play them but do not really understand how they are built and function (guitarists I am talking to you!).

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Activetuts+ — Flash, Flex & ActionScript Tutorials

• Create a Flexible XMPP Chat for a Member-Based Website With Flash and PHP

  We’ll be looking at how to create a XMPP chat application that can be used in many different scenarios. You’ll learn how to integrate an external database with Ignite Realtime’s Openfire Jabber Server and how to use the XIFF library to create custom XMPP extensions that can be used to send custom data across a network.

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• UI Design for Developers: Introduction

  Designers vs. developers – it is an argument as old as computers. The truth is, though, neither can live without the other. A brilliant UI design is as worthless without functionality as is the best piece of code with an ugly, unusable frontend. In this first post on UI Basics for developers, I am going to try and lay out some simple ground rules that devs can follow to make sure their apps, templates and prototypes are as beautiful as the code itself – and usable to boot.

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• AS3 101: Events – Basix

  For this chapter of AS3 101, we will be diving into the mechanics of the Flash event system. If you’ve been following along so far, you’ll have seen events in use, dating all the way back to the first episode of the series. The editor and I felt that it was time to write up something to be formally included in the curriculum, so if you’ve ever seen those lines of code about adding event listeners or dispatching events, and not quite caught on, then this is the tutorial for you.

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Wptuts+ — WordPress Tutorials

• WordPress Cheat Sheets: Theme Anatomy Model

  Next in line for our WordPress Cheat Sheet series, The Basic WordPress Theme Anatomy Model! If you haven’t seen the first posts in this series, this is a new batch of these quick pocket guides that you guys n’ gals can download, save to your phones for a fast reference, or even print out and keep next to your desk while you’re working on customizing WordPress to do your bidding.

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• WordPress Theme Development Training Wheels: Day One

  Ready to learn how to make your first WordPress theme? This tutorial series will take a step by step approach, making use of a "learning theme" affectionately known as WordPress Training Wheels, to help teach the subject. This series will take the absolute WordPress newbie through the basic steps necessary to convert any HTML template into a fully functional WordPress theme.

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• WordPress 3.3 is On the Horizon! Beta 2 Release Notes

  WordPress is evolving quite faster than ever, and every update gets all excited (especially those who make a living on it). WordPress has released it’s 3.3, Beta 2 version just 2 days ago for testing. This update is focused on more improvements, refining and making things faster and better. Today, we’re going to round up what’s coming in the next big version.

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Mobiletuts+ — Mobile Development Tutorials

• First Look: iOS 5 SDK

  iOS 5 has been officially released, and iOS developers are eager to begin making use of the many new features available in the iOS 5 SDK. In this article, industry gurus Brandon Trebitowski and Collin Ruffenach reflect on the opportunities, efficiencies, and most exciting features of the latest SDK. This post is a must read for all iOS SDK developers!
  

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• iOS 5 for Web Devs: Safari Mobile Updates

  Native iOS developers aren’t the only ones with something to be excited about when it comes to developing for iOS 5. A new version of Safari Mobile was released alongside the latest operating system, and mobile web developers now have many new features to experiment with. Get up to speed on the changes in this article!
  

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• iOS 5: Fixed Positioning and Content Scrolling

  Two of the most celebrated enhancements to Safari on iOS 5 are fixed positioning and content scrolling support. This tutorial will teach you how to take advantage of this change and what the implications are for stop-gap JavaScript libraries like iScroll.
  

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FreelanceSwitch — Articles and Resources for Freelancers

• Keys to Setting Your Rate Based on Experience

  There is no one set strategy for setting your rates, which is why the process can be so confusing for freelancers. Basing your rates off regional competitors’ prices is a very smart tactic, but I think many freelancers forget about something important when putting together rates, and that is their value.

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• 5 Rarely Remembered Rules for Building Your Freelance Brand

  Having a strong brand can be a game-changer for your freelance business.
  Good brands command respect and establish a reputation. They establish your presence in the marketplace. When questions arise like “where can I find a good freelance writer” or “where do I go to get my website redesigned” … strong brands immediately come to mind.
  So how do you build your brand? What rules of branding should you follow?

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• 7 Ways to Tell a Client He’s Wrong

  Telling a client that he is, in fact, wrong can be the hardest thing you ever have to do in your freelance career. It’s not something that we generally consider to be a healthy step: it can lose you a client pretty quickly if not handled properly.
  Even if a client accepts that he is incorrect about something, it may still be harder to work with him in the long run.

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