How To Start A Home Based Web Design Business

If you are unsure about how to start a home based web design business you are certainly not alone. In fact, thousands of talented people like you struggle with the idea of becoming a startup company, mostly because they don't know how.

More so than ever, web design is a sought after commodity in the service industry. The internet is busier than ever and more offline businesses understand the importance of being online to reach out to the highest possible customer base. If you are in fact quite the designer, then this is your cue to change your current situation by launching your own web design business now. There has never been a better time.

Before you start a home based web design business ask yourself the following questions:

• Do you have the experience needed to branch out by yourself, or would you be better served by working for an established web design company as an employee while you gain necessary experience?
• What will your core design services be? A home based web design business doesn't need to be limited to designing websites only. In fact, you could fetch more money by branching out into special fields such as PHP, Flash, CMS, HTML/XHTML/CSS or as a graphic artist.
• How will you deal with the workload if you get really busy?

Starting any home based web design business requires a sound business plan. Writing a business plan is one of the most important things you should do if you want to start a web design business. It doesn't matter if you don't know how to do this correctly, what matters more is your ability to clearly envision your plan.

It's a bit like traveling, unless you follow a road map you will get lost along the way. Any business should always be mapped out with the help of milestones. Think short term goals, mid term goals and long term goals.

What to consider before brainstorming your home based web design business plan:

Experience: Unless you are confident about your ability to pull this off with confidence you might have to gain more work experience elsewhere. If you live rural you could always consider doing a home study course in web design.

Council approval: Depending where you work you might have to get permission from your local council to run a business from home. If you rent, you might also need the approval of your landlord to get started.

Licensing: Find out whether your home based design business requires a license. Chances are you have to apply for a license to operate within the legal boundaries.

Tax file number: If you earn a certain amount of money per year you will need to pay tax. Find out how your new business will be affected by income tax laws in your country and prepare yourself accordingly.

Insurance: If you intend to welcome clients to your home to discuss their web design needs you might have to consider getting insurance to cover for any possible accidents.

Business/marketing plan:

• How will you structure your business and deal with clients?
• How will your business move forward?
• What will you do to attract more website clients?
• Where will you advertise your business, if all?

Portfolio site: If you consider attracting clients on autopilot it helps to have testimonials. These show potential clients that you can be trusted with the task at hand. A portfolio site is your best tool to convince these people to hire you without doing any hard sales.

Business templates: Do you have contract templates you can hand to your clients? Before you wonder how to start a home based web design business look into your business processes to avoid potential legal battles and disappointment because you are not protected with a contract.

Accounting: How will you deal with customer invoices, staff payment and tax?

The process of starting your own business requires a bit of thought. Many things should be considered before wondering 'how to start a home based web design business.' By preparing yourself for any eventualities you can start, grow and develop a sound web design business from the comfort of your home.

Best of luck to you.
 Start You'r Home Based Web Design Business here

Photoshop For Graphic Design Students

Competition for jobs is fierce for new graduates in graphic design. More and more qualified applicants are jockeying for coveted jobs, and it pays to stand out from the crowd. Students studying graphic design will enhance their chances of career success if they familiarise themselves with the standard software used in fields related to their own. Efficient mastery of Photoshop can help ensure success in any design related field.
Photo manipulation is not precisely part of the core skill-set that graphic designers develop. Usually, designers use tools that are more geared towards layout and presentation. Nevertheless, it is rare for a graphic designer to complete a project without needing to tweak a photo, so that it can be better integrated with their design.
Whether they are designing logos, print layout, advertising campaigns, or product packaging, skilled designers will make use of Photoshop's capabilities to ensure a polished end result.
Employers will often require that their employees are familiar with Photoshop. This familiarity will help keep large projects on schedule and within budget. Small design firms may prefer to do all of their photo manipulation in-house, and they may not employ someone specifically to do Photoshop work. In this case, designers will be expected to wear many hats. Students who think that they might like to work as freelancers will have to be the most flexible of all.
Many schools recognise the importance of teaching their students how to use Photoshop, and they offer courses in the subject. Oftentimes, at least one course that features photo manipulation will be required to in to become a graduate. If there are no required courses, it is a good idea for students to seek-out outside tutoring or make use of online resources.
Photoshop is a bit of an expensive choice of software for students. References and training can add to the cost. However, in the future, designers who have learned their way around Photoshop more than recoup the initial investment. Even a little bit of Photoshop knowledge can lead to jobs and opportunities. It is difficult to know what will spark a successful career, but any job is an opportunity to impress potential employers or clients.
The best way to master a piece of software is to use it which is why it would be a good idea for design students to purchase their own copy of Photoshop in order to experiment with it. Students should also be aware that there are places on the Internet which will give huge discounts on software such as Photoshop Extended edition to students and teachers. Students who are especially interested in finding out just how familiar they will need to become with Photoshop can do a bit of research to determine what skills are currently in demand. They may find it helpful to browse job listings similar to those that they will be applying for when they finish their studies. One way of getting insight into the current market is to seek out established designers to interview with specific questions about the skills they use to do their jobs. This knowledge can help a student focus on what is needed for success while they are in education.

We dedicate this valuable tutorial for students and designers. Click here to view it!

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/6443774

Why SEO is Important

Search Engine Optimisation is becoming one of the fastest growing marketing methodologies. As more businesses turn to the Internet to sell their services and products, it becomes very important for them to market themselves properly on the World Wide Web. Let us investigate how SEO can be the turn key factor for marketing your website.
A lot of businesses believe that a mere presence on the Internet is good enough to get more customers. However, the truth is very different. Traditional methods of marketing have depended on hard work of professionals who are champions in formulating strategies, having a solid plan - B and knowing their target markets. While the strategic bases of the traditional methods are similar to that of SEO, the mediums of marketing are very different. Let us discuss about the main differences.
A traditional marketing method like advertising on news papers or magazines reaches a limited audience due to various factors such as readership, popularity, business markets and so on. Moreover, tracing back to an advertisement can be very difficult after a period of time. Also, the cost can be a very big factor in some cases as limitations are imposed on the size of the text or pictures. Such limitations can hardly paint the full picture of the business and hence the chances of losing out on a customer are high. Now, let us see how doing SEO on a website can be an advantage. The website can hold a lot more information about the business. Putting it at the top of Google in itself acts as a measurement of credibility, which can have a positive psychological impact on your audience. That fact that the website is at the top of the pile speaks volumes about its excellence and goes a long way in creating good will. Thus, it can be instrumental in giving your business a boost. With SEO a wider audience can be reached and the needs of the customers can be measured. This can underpin future strategies to market a website. With tools like Google Analytics, goals can be set and achieved and success rates can be measured.
To market your business, you can resort to call calling, telesales and so on. However, with SEO the scenario is completely different. When a website reaches the top of the pile, it is automatically found by customers looking for the service, when searching on different search engines. Hence, the probability to get business is a lot more.
If a business considers its website the engine which moves it forward, then SEO can very well be considered the engine oil. A good SEO expert can act as the mechanic in this context.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/4507128

Good Links: 7 guidelines how to improve usability

How you write and design your links is crucial to your visitors clicking them or not. Write them badly and they leave, write them well and they stay. Who knows, they might even do exactly that what you created your site for. Following are 7 guidelines how links should be written to improve the usability of your site.


Do it consistently
Visitors learn for example how a website marks the links or where the "related-content box" can be found. Consistently adhering to these established "codes" will make it easy to navigate and read the site. Breaking these conventions will interrupt the flow. Such distractions might be enough for the user to leave. When creating a site it is important to define all the conventions and rules that are used. Consistently following them is essential for giving the user an easy time when visiting.

Don't mislead the visitor
Although links can look however the screen-designer decides, certain standards have developed and find widespread use. Underlining a text for example is a common indicator. It is good practice not to underline text, marking it blue or putting an arrow in front, if is not a link. Visitors might construe them to be clickable.
The same applies to images. Many users will try to click on a graphic or any other image. Very rarely, they will find an active link - a tiny, but nevertheless negative experience. Captions have proven to be effective to add that little bit of content that users need in order not to click on an image. And if a link is present, it can be placed in the caption itself.
 
Show used links
Marking which links have been visited is very valuable. It helps to quickly "tick off" when going through a site or helps in finding this piece of information from a previous visit. Unfortunately, a great many sites do not use this very basic feature. If the "visited" feature should also extend to the navigation is debatable. On very deep sites it might be useful. On the other hand it might confuse the visitor. The navigation should be a constant and change only minimally.

Match the destination with the linkClicking on a link can be compared to following road signs in a city never visited before - you are very happy if you get confirmation that the choice you just made was the one intended. Same thing applies to links - if a link reads "find out more about our services" the page that it relates to should show the words "Our Services" somewhere prominently in the title. It confirms the action taken. Well written titles indicate clearly what the main topic is on the page. This is very useful, especially considering that a lot of traffic directly dives deep into the page.

Embedded links used to their full advantage
Links are visually different than the surrounding text. Color, a markup or other cues denote a link. Something maybe even happens before you click - mouse-over effects or an overlay, displaying the title. Everything is designed to draw your eyes away from the surrounding text. If you embed links within a sentence, readers will very likely notice the link first and only later read your content. On first thought that is unfortunate, but it can be turned into an advantage.

Since reading online involves lots of scanning, the eye is always looking for visual cues. They can be provided by using subtitles or in this case descriptive links. By creating a meaningful link, finding the relevant information on a page is made easier. "Click here" is less effective then "View a list of articles about usability".

How to link to files
When linking to a file it is likely that another application is opened and that the visitor is drawn away from the site. Not something that should be done lightly.

A great many times websites link to related documents, very often PDF files. What exactly can be found in the file, the visitor needs to figure out from the link itself. The first step in creating a good link to a document is to summarize the content. That gives the visitor information how he wants to proceed.

The second step is more basic by asking why the document cannot be created as a webpage. If it is worth to be put onto the site, it surely is worth the effort to make if searchable, fully integrated and less work for the visitor. Using for instance PDF-files can make sense. Very often however, it is simply easier for the developer to put it onto the site - but not easier for the visitor to use it.
 
Mark the external links
An internal link refers to a page or file within the current domain, an external link usually points to a site, housed on a remote domain.
Although technically there is no difference in how the code for the links is written, it is common usage, even a w3.org recommendation, to inform the user if an external site is accessed by a link.

The rationale behind this is not to confuse the visitor who is getting used to the layout, navigation and architecture of a particular site. An external link can either be declared by stating it in the text, by a specific icon (like for instance Wikipedia does) or even by using the "title" tag of a link.

Whether the new site is opened in a new browser-window or replaces the current content could depend on the kind of information the visitor will find. It could be argued that sites with related content or sites who delve further into a topic might best be opened in a new window. The visitor can more easily relate back to the original site. In that case not only the external link, but maybe also the fact of a new window opening should be placed with the link.

Creating good links is vital for creating a good site. A link for instance is the only possibility an e-shop has to have users put products into the shopping basket. If that link should be badly written or confusingly placed, many users would give up before buying. That would be like not accepting money from a client standing right in front of you.

Web Design and Hosting for South Africa

Like most of us when coming home we scroll thru the mail and have a look at all the specials. Or is that the way it used to work? Market research has shown that more and more people surf the net for what they are looking for.
Here is a few quotes I found on whiles investigating this.

"More and more people are turning to the internet as their preferred source for news, research and business transactions. Traditional advertising is simply not enough if you want to capture the attention of today's modern audience."

". If you are not advertising on the internet today, you are losing a large percentage of the audience you may have reached a couple of years ago."

With this in mind we also did some market research on owning a Web site and the pricing. This is obviously the best way of advertising on the World Wide Web.

We at WebSites4SA are determent to get the small to medium companies on the World Wide Web. Our target market is basically for the South African market.

WebSites4SA gives a professional and affordable service to our customers which include, Domain registration, Wed site design, maintenance and hosting.

Starting Your Own Web Design Business?

Thinking of starting your own web design business, or already established in your freelancing business and maybe just looking to make more money?

Then great! You have come to the right place.

This web design business startup kit was essentially put together for freelancers like you that are looking to either start up a web design business for the first time or enhance your existing business with some knock out strategies, contracts, document templates and a no nonsense "how to" complete step by step business guide.

My name is John Roberts and I've been freelancing since 2001. I work from my home office here in Brisbane, Australia. In the last 9 years, I've been exposed to some of the toughest, nastiest, nicest, friendliest and weirdest clients you could ever possibly imagine! Some clients that I wanted to hug, others that I wanted to strangle! Projects that I've made a lot of money out of, others I've made an absolute fortune from.

In March 2001, I quit my full time job and decided to start my own business - I had absolutely no idea how, or if it would work, but it sure has -- and its been awesome! The experiences I've encountered since then have been interesting to say the least. At time's it's been a wild ride of ups and downs, and uncertainty -- however one thing has remained constant -- I've continually made a lot of money doing what I love - designing websites.

I'll admit, I may not have a flash office, with an expensive leather chair, or 20 staff running around, and a personal receptionist -- believe me, I dont want the stress. But what I do have is a successful freelance web design business, that has grown from building websites for my friends and family and just half a dozen clients to turning over $160,000 per year, every year since I started. And what's best of all is that I am my own boss!

So how have I acheived this?
With lots of hard work, thats how!

Okay I lie. I've worked SMART not hard, and I've followed a methodical and systematic approach to each and every web project I get involved in. Unlike a lot of other freelance web designers who either get burnt on the first job, lose money, or give up and go back to their old jobs, I've been successful because I've followed a smart business system.

If you're just starting out, the best way to fastrack the whole process and start making good money straight away is to find someone else doing exactly what you want to do and ask them how they do it. Get a freelancing expert to show you exactly what to do, what NOT to do, how to make it work, and how to improve your business!

I mean, wouldn't it be great if you could sit with an expert that has been doing freelance web design from home as a self employed developer and ask them what works, what to do, and what mistakes to avoid??? How much money would that save you? How much time would it save you? How much more confident would you be in starting your own business? I know it would've helped me out big time.

And this is exactly where I can help you.

I remember thinking when I first started my business, .."What do I include in my web proposals? How do I find clients? What do I charge? How can I promote my business? Where can I find good web contract documents and templates? How can I make sure I'll get paid...?"

These questions and concerns eventually led to the creation of the Web Design Business Startup Kit, which you can use and implement within your very own freelancing business. The information in this kit has allowed me to build a freelancing web design business that has absolutely exceeded my expectations! I'll admit, it was a lot of work to put this kit together, but in return I get to help out other freelancers, just like you, who are stuck where I was all those years ago!

So if you want to secure more clients, and follow a more professional and methodical approach with each project and eliminate all those doubts and worries, then you really need to consider this package. Dont waste valuable time and money getting burnt by clients who dont pay, or losing out on contracts, simply purchase and download this comprehensive kit that will not only save you time, but improve your chances of establishing a highly lucrative freelancing web business.

Simply download and go - this kit consists of a comprehensive business step by step guide and over 67 document templates ready for immediate use. All you have to do is fill in the blanks - its that easy!

How To Create 3D Effects Using Corel 10

CorelDRAW's tenth edition software, the CorelDraw 10, is an upgraded combination of CorelDRAW and Corel Photo-Paint with new features and a unified interface. It has added features from Corel R.A.V.E., a vector based animation suite that introduced the popular Micromedia Flash animations and movie format best suited for web content. It also offers more fonts, clip arts, option palettes, filters, toolbars, and a graphics powerhouse to help you create print and web graphics design. All tools used in this software are those tools you see in Photo-paint or R.A.V.E.
CorelDRAW 10 allows user to import and export formats because it has a customizable interface. It offers controls for photo manipulation such as blemish removal, color corrections and red-eye reduction you can use in photo retouching. It provides additional controls even for complicated tasks such as mesh-based fills or extruding a three-dimensional object from a two-dimensional object.
If you want to make 3D image follow these steps. First, draw the image using the basic shapes and elements. Turn off strokes. Select an object, a part or component of the image, and fill it with color. Click copy and open a new page in Corel Photo-Paint. A window will open and will ask some parameters. The color mode is set for 24-Bit RGB, Background is enabled and the page will be larger than the object. Click paste, then press CTRL+A and select "Center of page" to bring the object to the center of the page.
Use Paint Bucket for your choices of color. Add noise to give texture to the object and to hide imperfections, especially during printing process. Select EyeCandy 4000/Chrome or Bevel Boss filter on "Effects" to add border around the object. Click Setting and select Chrome Border. Select the effect of your choice. If you're done with the object, save it in Photo Paint's native file format. Import the image from CorelDRAW. Repeat these procedures until all components are arranged. If you want to edit the image you don't have to go back to Photo Paint, Corel 10 offers tools for image editing. If you want to put a shadow effect on the image you can use the Interactive Shadow. Click "Convert to Bitmap" to combine all the objects.
Corel 10 is more reliable because of its combined features. It eliminates the problems users encounter with the other software and lets you create a better slide, web page and other graphics. It's a CorelDRAW, Corel Photo-Paint and Corel R.A.V.E. rolled into one.

By Blur Lorena

Basic Toolbox

What is an object?
In CorelDraw, an object is any item you create or import into your document. It may be a rectangle, a circle, text, a photograph. All work in CorelDraw is done through selecting an object. Various effects can be applied to an object depending on the type of object and the tool you have selected. For this tutorial, choose the Rectangle Tool and create a rectangle. (See Rectangle Tool tutorial in this series.)

Pick Tool Selection
Choose the Pick Tool from the Toolbox and click on the rectangle. Note the 8 square "handles" that surround the square. These handles indicate that the object is active. You can resize the rectangle proportionately by clicking and dragging on the corner handles. The side handles resize only in one direction.

Move Object
Click and drag anywhere on a filled object, or on the outline of an object that has no fill to move. Release mouse button when object is in desired position. Click anywhere off the rectangle to deselect.

Rotate Object
Double click on the rectangle. Note how the handles change to double-ended arrows. This indicates that the object can be rotated or skewed. Click and drag on corner handles to rotate. Press the CTRL key while you rotate to constrain the rotation to 15 degree increments. Note the target-like icon in the middle of the rectangle when the rotate selection is active. Click and drag this icon to change the point of rotation. Click off the rectangle to deselect.

Skew Object
Double click on the rectangle and the double-ended selection arrows will appear. Click and drag on one of the side handles to skew the rectangle. Release mouse button when desired effect is created.

Shape Tool Selection
Delete the distorted rectangle. Draw a new rectangle. Choose the Shape Tool from the Toolbox and click on the rectangle. Note the selection now appears as four corner handles and dotted lines. This indicates that the object is active with the Shape Tool. Click and drag on one of the corner handles. Note how the corners become round. The Shape Tool and Pick Tool have very different functions with objects. 

Node Selection
Choose the Freehand Tool from the Toolbox. Click and drag to create a curved line. (See Freehand Tool tutorial.) Release the mouse button. Choose the Shape Tool. There should be three or four blank squares along the line. These are nodes, and can be moved individually. Click on a node. Note how it becomes black, indicating that this node is active. The dotted lines coming from the node control the shape of the line (see next step). Drag the selected node a short way. Note how the line shape changes.

Controlling Curves
Click and drag the handle at the end of the dotted line coming from the node. This is a control point. As you drag the control point, note how the shape of the line changes. The blue line in the sample above shows the progression of the line shape as you drag the control point. Release the mouse when you have the shape you desire. 


Source : www.webreference.com

Design Your Website to Maximize Sales

One of the most important resources that can be provided by an IT services unit in any company is web design. It goes without saying that if your company has a presence on the web and it is not used to its fullest potential, then you are missing out on huge volumes of business. As you are probably aware, the Internet abounds with hundreds of millions of websites and, depending on your business, there is an increasing number of competitors entering your market every day around the world. But you might be surprised to discover that many websites fail to capitalise on their potential by not adhering to principles of good design and visitor usability.
It's easy to draw a parallel with a physical store in that if you don't display your goods properly and have a welcoming entrance, you are unlikely to attract even the most casual passerby. It is the same with a website: you have to provide an easily navigable entrance and grab a visitor's attention immediately to entice them further.
Design is not simply a thing of beauty, it is a matter of functionality and, unfortunately, many Web designers fall into the trap of producing a beautiful design which falls short when it comes to ease of navigation.
It is important to get the blend absolutely perfect in order to maximise your online sales and there are some important issues which need to be covered.

• Apart from having an in-depth knowledge of code, a good web designer will build a site with a simple architecture. This means that your page will load quickly and that visitors will be instantly presented with an easy to understand interface that enables them to find what they are looking for as quickly as possible. It doesn't matter whether you have a huge variety of products or not, you must think of your design in terms of how well it serves the needs of your visitor.
• Layout is the next most important thing that any business needs to consider. In keeping with the principles mentioned above, your site needs to be logically laid out and colour-coded so that visitors are left in no doubt as to the range of products you have available which can be easily found through a simple menu system.
• Navigability is something which many web designs sadly lack. The navigation of your site should be prominently placed either at the top of the page or easily seen in a sidebar so that visitors can logically detect the layout of your site and go straight to the area they wish.
• Most importantly perhaps is the element of content. It should be a no-brainer but your content must be written for both human visitors and for search engines. This means you have to strike a neat balance between using keywords that allow search engines to understand the content of your site and so rank it accordingly, as well as providing information which is relevant to web surfers so they can find the information they were seeking.

These few tips are only the start and your IT services department should be given full rein to provide a design that satisfies every criteria.

By Sam S Patterson

Learn Photoshop Now - Beginner Photoshop Tricks

Selecting Colors from an Image Quickly To turn any color into the foreground color Press I to activate the Eyedropper Tool and then click on any color in your image. To turn that color into the background color, press the ALT Key and click on any color in your image.

Change Brush Tip Sizes Quickly With a brush selected, simply Press the Right Bracket Key "]" to increase the size of your brush tip, or Press the Left Bracket Key "[" to decrease the size of your brush tip.

The Move Tool & the Arrow Keys Getting in the habit of activating the Move Tool through the keyboard is a timesaver; you can do this using the shortcut, "V". Once you have the Move Tool activated you can use the keyboard arrow keys to push a layer or selection in 1 pixel increments. You can speed things up by pressing the Shift key along with the arrow key to nudge in 10 pixel increments.

Hide Your Palettes Press Tab once to hide all your palettes. Press Tab again to bring them back. Press Shift Tab to hide all your palettes except the toolbar.

Zooming In & Zooming Out You can zoom in on your image by pressing CTRL and the plus sign " " (Mac: Command and the " " sign). Conversely you can zoom out by pressing CTRL and the minus sign "-" (Mac: Command and the "-"sign).

Navigating In Magnified Images If you have lost your bearings when zooming in on a large image you can jump quickly to specific views using the following shortcuts: To set the view to the top left hand corner of your image press the Home Key. Press the End Key to set the view to the bottom right hand corner of your image. To move the view one full screen down press the Page Down Key. Press CTRL Page Down (Mac: Command Page Down) to move the screen view one full screen to the right. Press CTRL Page Up (Mac: Command Page Up) to move the screen view one full screen to the left.

Selecting Just The Pixels On A Layer An easy way to select an object that is on a transparent layer is to Press the Command Key (PC: Control key) and click on the layer with the object in the Layers Palette. This makes sure that only the opaque pixels (the pixels that are visible) will be selected with the marching ants, instead of the entire layer.

Tile Images for Better Visibility When you simultaneously open a bunch of files in Photoshop they automatically cascade, and it can be difficult to select individual windows within all the overlapping files. To eliminate this problem choose Window> Arrange> Tile and all of your open files will rearrange themselves to be visible all at once. When you're ready to close the windows you don't have to spend time closing them individually, instead use the Close All shortcut Control Option W (Mac: Command Alt W).

Getting Rid Of the Welcome Screen - And Bringing It Back When you first open Photoshop CS you will probably see a Welcome Screen that has links to Tutorials, Tips and Tricks, and a set of Color Management Help Files. At some point you might want to stop this screen from coming up. You should see a check box at the bottom of the screen that you can click to hide the screen at startup. Later on, if you change your mind and decide that you want to have it show up again, you can temporarily bring the screen back by clicking under the Help menu and choosing Welcome Screen.

Cycle Through All Of Your Open Documents Sometimes you'll want to find one of your open documents that is hidden, but navigating using the Window menu won't help because you can't recall the name of the file. Instead press Control-Tab repeatedly (MAC and PC) to cycle through all of your open documents.

By David Martin Peters

Simple Photoshop Tricks For Newbies

Photoshop is an excellent piece of editing software that allows you to edit, alter, and enhance digital images and photos. Photographers that use this Adobe system will soon become extremely creative and will be able to produce some really awesome looking photos, so much so that they could quite easily be mistaken for a professional and could even end up making money from the edited digital photos.

Although using Photoshop can be fun as well as productive, there are still a few essential tools, tips and tricks that must be mastered before you can reach the stage of actually making money from your digital photos.

First you need to understand just how you can turn any color into the foreground color. So let's get to business and first you must press "I" which will activate the eyedropper tool. Proceed to click on the color on the image, which will turn that color into the foreground color before your very eyes. If you want to turn that into the background color, just press the ALT key while clicking on the color in the image.

With Photoshop you can also change the brush size, which is an essential tool for improving the quality of any image. The quickest way to perform this editing action is to just press the right bracket key "]", which will increase the brush tip size and the left bracket key "[" will decrease it's size.

Shortcuts will save you so much time in editing and the move tool can be activated by pressing the letter "V" on the keyboard. The keyboard arrow keys can also be used to manipulate the layer or selection by 1 pixel increments. By pressing the shift key along with the arrow key, you will increase it to 10 pixel increments. This Photoshop trick works well when using layers and will certainly help you to save a lot of time and effort to create the results you are looking for.

By Dave Martin Peters