Effects

High Dynamic Range (HDR) images can really take your photography to the next level.

But creating compelling HDR images, whether through fake HDR techniques in Photoshop or multiple exposures and tone-mapping, can be tricky.

Creating portraits can be even trickier, because human subjects are often less forgiving in HDR photos.

But you can do a few different things to get better results with your HDR portraits every time.

Below are 20 examples of excellent portraits representing a variety of HDR techniques.

Tom Straylight says: Love it or loathe it, HDR suits some situations better than others. The obvious choice for an HDR image would be a shot that...
Design

You often hear designers say, “Good designers copy. Great designers steal.”

Well, anyone who says this is one of three types of designers:

One who copies, one who steals or one who admits that not copying and stealing is hard but still tries not to anyway.

For some reason, a lot of web designers believe that there’s nothing truly unique left to create and that there is no such thing as originality.

I disagree, or at least I don’t want to accept that notion. You shouldn’t either.

Jason says: I like the idea of the "design[er] pyramid", as you put it. This suggests a progression from the bottom to the top. "You've got...
Best Of

Every week we tweet a lot of interesting stuff highlighting great content that we find on the web that can be of interest to web designers.

The best way to keep track of our tweets is simply to follow us on Twitter, however, in case you missed some here’s a quick and useful compilation of the best tweets that we sent out this past week.

Note that this is only a very small selection of the links that we tweeted about, so don’t miss out.

To keep up to date with all the cool links, simply follow us @DesignerDepot

Bass says: I'm from New Zealand so I've seen that NZ air ad over and over again. :P The origami and pixel-to-paper tweets look inspired...
Design

Coffee or Latte art consists of the pouring of steamed milk into a shot of espresso generating a pattern or design on the surface.

The barista becomes a true designer and is able to create beautiful creations with the most common form being the “rosetta” pictured on the left.

Latte art is a hot topic and there are even several competitions around the world showcasing this unique form of art.

In this article, we’re showcasing 50 beautiful – and certainly delicious – coffee designs that will make you drool…

James Morrish says: I stumbled across this post at 5am - I've woken up early and have been thinking about making a coffee but can't in fear of waking...
Blogging

If you’re a power blogger, or someone who blogs regularly, across multiple blogs, with detailed, in-depth posts, a desktop blog editor can make your life infinitely easier.

At least when it comes to the blogging aspect of it. There are a lot of blog editors out there.

Some are browser-based, some are standalone. Some work across different platforms while others are only for Windows or Mac OSX. Some are paid while others are free.

The main thing they all have in common, though, is their ability to streamline your blogging process.

Below are more than 20 great desktop blog editors. There are options for every budget and every platform. Some even let you blog without blogging software.

John says: Hi, Do you know any wordpress desktop client for windows that similar to blackberry wordpress app where we can create...
Freebies

Today we bring you a set of 50 free and exclusive Twitter icons that you can use for your websites.

The icons are provided in both raster and vector formats: The transparent PNG versions are 256×256, and we have also included Illustrator files so that you can resize the icons as needed.

The icons are completely free for personal and commercial use and they’re being released exclusively to all our readers.

If you’d like to share these icons, please refer your friends to this page so that they can download their copy from here.

Below you’ll find a full preview of all icons included in this set. The download link appears at the bottom. Enjoy!

Ankara saç ekimi says: Artists in a Half-Shell iPod Announcement Five Years age Johnny veryy Extremely Beautiful Collection of Twitter Icons, I have...
Inspiration

Polar panoramas, also known as stereographic projections or ‘little planets’, are spectacular images that are created out of panoramic photos.

While the effects are quite stunning, these images are actually very easy for anyone to produce.

The basic principle is to take a panoramic photo, make some easy changes to it, and finally apply a Photoshop filter (Distort > Polar Coordinates) to complete the effect.

For detailed instructions, please follow this easy tutorial.

Here are 50 dazzling examples of polar panorama photography.

Kevin Hoover says: When I made my photographs the process was still a bit of a mystery. Stereographic projections were being done by a handful of...
Branding

The logo is the face of any brand — the very first impression — so its design is extremely important.

When executed correctly, a logo is a powerful asset to your client’s brand.

However, creating an effective visual representation of a brand requires much more than just graphic design.

Like any line of work that involves a set of specific skills, logo design requires plenty of practice and experience for it to be successful; knowledge is definitely power for any graphic designer.

For this reason, we have outlined 12 essential rules to follow in order to design an effective logo.

Melody Welton says: Great tips for beginners who is studying to be a graphic designer. I recently had my logo done with Logo Design Creation, and the...