Monday 28 January 2013

How to Create Contact Form Validation in Dreamweaver

First Create the form with your required fields.
When your form will be ready then go on Window Menu and select Behaviors from there. A window will be appear on your side panel there will be some other tabs like "Attributes", "Tags" and "Behaviors". Now select the Submit Button and click on "+" sign under the Behaviors tab. A window of behaviors will be open and you will find different behaviours which you can use for different tasks. Select "Validate Form" now.

Select required validations for fields
This dialog will be open when you will select Validate Form behavior. Here you will see all text fields which you have used in contact form. Now select one by one field for validation and apply checks from under the "Fields" area. Here you will find following checks.

Value Required: Check this if you want user must enter this field
Accept: Here you will see different radio buttons with captions
  1 . Anything: User can enter anything.
  2 . Number: Only numbers will be entering.
  3 . Email address: This check will be for email validation
  4 . Number from: You can specify range of numbers.
After you have applied the Validation that you require, Save the Document and test it by not entering in anything into the fields. You should get a pop up box like this.


Friday 25 January 2013

Tutorial for Photoshop Fire Effects

I will show you how to use a fire brush in Photoshop.

Start with a Background layer filled with color black; the fire brushes look better on dark backgrounds. Download my set of fire brushes or any other set of fire brushes that you like. Set the foreground color to white and pick one of the fire brushes and use it in another layer than the background. Let's call this layer Fire layer.
As you can see in the image above, the flames look more like smoke brushes instead of fire brushes. To change that I will add some layer styles to the Fire layer; so add Outer Glow, color #ff0000, Color Overlay, color #ffda0c and  Inner Glow, color #ffff00 with the following settings.



So after adding these layer styles this is the result. You can clearly spot the difference between the before and after image of these Photoshop flames.

Now it starting to lok like a realistic fire but to make it look better we will add two adjustment layers. The first adjustment added is a Brightness/Contrast which will make the flames more vibrant. Remember that this adjustment is nt always necessary, depends on the quality of the brush and the result that you want to obtain.

You can also add a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer if you want to change the saturation and the color tone levels.

So that is all, this is how I use fire brushes in Photoshop. I suggest you to save the Fire layer style so that you can use it quickly when you need it. This is my final result for fire flames made from scratch in Photoshop.


Thursday 24 January 2013

To install New Fonts in Photoshop

Here we go....

Here is how you can install a new font that will be available in most of the Software Programs that you have installed, like Photoshop for instance.
Download the Font
Let's say you have found a new Font on the internet that you want to use. There are many Font Websites, many of them free for peronal projects, so plenty to choose from. First you have to download it.
Extract Files from Archive
Most of the Font files come in an archive like .zip or .rar. After you downloaded the archive, press right click and choose Extract Files. You will see that the archive contains a TXT file and a .ttf file that is actually the font file.
There are other extensions for Fonts for example .otf or .fon. They all have the same installing process.
Install a New Font
Now the file is on your computer but in order to install the new font you have to make the following steps. If you have Under Windows 7/Vista all you have to do is Right Click on the .ttf file and choose Install.

If you have other Windows version, you have to go to the Fonts Folder. On my computer is in C:\Windows\Fonts but it can also be on C:\WINNT\Fonts it depends on the Windows version.

While being in the Fonts Folder open the File menu and click Install New Font. Or simply Right Click on the window and choose Install New Font. You will have to browse the folders to find the path where you saved the .ttf file.
If as a result your new font is added in the Fonts Folder that means the install process was successful.
If the process went well, when you will open the Photoshop the new font will be in the Type Tool fonts list, ready to be used !

Create a Polished 3d Gold Text Effect in Photoshop

Please create new document. You can do this by pressing Ctrl+N.
Use dark grey for a background. To do this press Shift+Backspace, and from the drop down menu choose color.


Select Horizontal Type Tool and type what you want, with desired font. Font I used is New Athletic M54. Color of the type is not important for now.

We will use Layer Styles to style the layer.
Inner Shadow:



Outer Glow:


Inner Glow:


Bevel and Embos:


Gradient Overlay:


Satin:

This is how it should look so far.

Now right-click on text layer and choose Convert to Smart object.

Then right-click on layer and choose Rasterize Layer

Create 3 copies of your layer by pressing Ctrl+J 3 times. Name them as follows.

Next choose Layer named “bottom” and while holding Shift press Down Arrow twice, then choose “middle” and again while holding Shift press Down Arrow once.

Now with “middle” selected go to Filter -> Blur -> Motion Blur




After this still while “middle” selected press Ctrl+J 15 times, then select all copies of middle layers (you can do this by pressing “middle copy 15″ and while holding shift scroll to “middle” and click on it) then press Ctrl+E to merge these layers. Now again you will have three layers.




Please select “top” layer and apply Drop Shadow:

Select “middle copy 15″ layer and apply Layer Styles:
Inner Shadow:

Inner Glow:

and Color Overlay:



Select “bottom” layer and apply Drop Shadow:

and Inner Shadow:

Final image....



Wednesday 23 January 2013

How To Create a Dropdown Menu using css

HTML

The secondary sub-menu is nested under the “Web Design” option of the first sub-menu. These links are placed into another unordered list and inserted into the “Web Design”

CSS Styling
nav ul ul {
display: none;
}
nav ul li:hover > ul {
display: block;
}

Let’s begin the CSS by getting the basic dropdown functionality working. With CSS specificity and advanced selectors we can target individual elements buried deep in the HTML structure without the need for extra IDs or classes. First hide the sub menus by targeting any UL’s within a UL with the display:block; declaration. In order to make these menus reappear they need to be converted back to block elements on hover of the LI. The > child selector makes sure only the child UL of the LI being hovered is targeted, rather than all sub menus appearing at once.


nav ul {
background: #efefef;
background: linear-gradient(top, #efefef 0%, #bbbbbb 100%);
background: -moz-linear-gradient(top, #efefef 0%, #bbbbbb 100%);
background: -webkit-linear-gradient(top, #efefef 0%,#bbbbbb 100%);
box-shadow: 0px 0px 9px rgba(0,0,0,0.15);
padding: 0 20px;
border-radius: 10px;
list-style: none;
position: relative;
display: inline-table;
}
nav ul:after {
content: ""; clear: both; display: block;
}

We can then start to style up the main navigation menu with the help of CSS3 properties such as gradients, box shadows and border radius. Adding position:relative; will allow us to absolutely position the sub menus according to this main nav bar, then display:inline-table will condense the width of the menu to fit. The clearfix style rule will clear the floats used on the subsequent list items without the use of overflow:hidden, which would hide the sub menus and prevent them from appearing.


nav ul li {
float: left;
}
nav ul li:hover {
background: #4b545f;
background: linear-gradient(top, #4f5964 0%, #5f6975 40%);
background: -moz-linear-gradient(top, #4f5964 0%, #5f6975 40%);
background: -webkit-linear-gradient(top, #4f5964 0%,#5f6975 40%);
}
nav ul li:hover a {
color: #fff;
}
nav ul li a {
display: block; padding: 25px 40px;
color: #757575; text-decoration: none;
}

The individual menu items are then styled up with CSS rules added to the <-li-> and the nested anchor. In the browser this will make the link change to a blue gradient background and white text.

nav ul ul {
background: #5f6975; border-radius: 0px; padding: 0;
position: absolute; top: 100%;
}
nav ul ul li {
float: none;
border-top: 1px solid #6b727c;
border-bottom: 1px solid #575f6a;
position: relative;
}
nav ul ul li a {
padding: 15px 40px;
color: #fff;
}
nav ul ul li a:hover {
background: #4b545f;
}

The main navigation bar is now all styled up, but the sub menus still need some work. They are currently inheriting styles from their parent elements, so a change of background and the removal of the border-radius and padding fixes their appearance. To make sure they fly out underneath the main menu they are positioned absolutely 100% from the top of the UL (ie, the bottom).
The LI’s of each UL in the sub menu don’t need floating side by side, instead they’re listed vertically with thin borders separating each one. A quick hover effect then darkens the background to act as a visual cue.


nav ul ul ul {
position: absolute; left: 100%; top:0;
}
The final step is to position the sub-sub-menus accordingly. These menus will be inheriting all the sub-menu styling already, so all they need is to be positioned absolutely to the right (left:100%) of the relative position of the parent .

How To Create a Glow Text On Hover using css

First the HTML which is a basic html anchor tag with text inside it.


First we style the standard links
a{
font-size:16px;
color:#FFF;
-webkit-transition: all 0.3s ease-in; /*Safari & Chrome*/
transition: all 0.3s ease-in;
-moz-transition: all 0.3s ease-in; /* Firefox 4 */
-o-transition: all 0.3s ease-in; /* Opera */
text-decoration:none;
}

Now we add the styling when we hover over the link.
a:hover{
-webkit-stroke-width: 5.3px;
-webkit-stroke-color: #FFFFFF;
-webkit-fill-color: #FFFFFF;
text-shadow: 1px 0px 20px yellow;
-webkit-transition: width 0.3s; /*Safari & Chrome*/
transition: width 0.3s;
-moz-transition: width 0.3s; /* Firefox 4 */
-o-transition: width 0.3s; /* Opera */
}

Monday 21 January 2013

Create 3D Glass Text effect in Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop

We will start from creating shattered text look in illustrator and applying 3d effect to it. Then we will move to Photoshop where we will give our text a glass style and finally giving it a 3d shattered glass look.

To begin with we will first work in Adobe Illustrator.
Open Illustrator and create a new document of size 2 x 2in.
Using Type Tool write any text. Here I am using “GLASS” as my text.

Convert the text to Outline by going to Type>Create Outlines and give it color #BFBFBF

Now using Pen Tool create a random shape as shown in the image.

Using Pathfinder hit Divide. This will shatter our text and will create many shapes.

Now ungroup the entire thing. Goto Outline mode by pressing Ctrl+Y and delete the lines outside the main text intersection.

Come back to the preview mode by click CTRL+Y again.
Now move the parts randomly one by one to give text a shatter look.

Copy and paste few more parts from the text itself to give it more shatter look.

We will now apply 3D effect to our text. Goto Effect> 3D> Extrude & Bevel. And enter the values as given in the figure.

Click on more option and adjust the lights. Drop the Ambient light value to 0 and creating two more lights and sending one to back of the object and adjusting them accordingly. This will give more depth to our text.

Expand the appearance of the object by going to Object> Expand Appearance.

Ungroup the object entirely. Select the entire object and using Pathfinder select Trim.

Ungroup the objects again. Now select all the top layer object of our text and group them. Remember not to include any extruded shapes in this group.

Now group the remaining objects.

Scale the text bigger and export our Illustrator work as Photoshop PSD. Save it with the default settings.
Remember to scale the text bigger or else it will pixelate when scaled in photoshop.

Open Photoshop and create a new document of size 800x800px. Set the background color to #021919.
Create a new layer and using soft brush paint it giving soft light effect.

Open the main text effect file (“Glass Shatter Text Effect.psd” in this case) and drag and drop in the new document which we have created. Rename the layers to Top & Bottom as shown in the figure.

Duplicate the “Bottom” layer and turn the eye off of both “Bottom” layers.

Now we will give our text a glass look. Select the “Top” layer and set the value of Fill to 0, double click the layer to add a Layer Style to it. Use the setting as shown in the images.









Here we get the glass effect for the top layer.
Now we will apply layer style to the “Bottom” layer. Set the Fill of this layer also to 0
Set the values as shown in the images below.







Now Select “Bottom copy” layer and change the blending mode to Color Dodge with opacity to 25%. It will give some 3d depth to the “Bottom” layer. You can see the little effect

Final Image.....