As expected, a massive upgrade to the iPod touch was announced earlier today at Apple’s special event. Although the most outwardly impressive revisions come by way of front and rear facing cameras and the retina display, perhaps more significant was the announcement that the device would house the same chip capably powering the iPhone 4 and the iPad — the Apple A4.

The A4 mobile ARM processor is of particular importance when considering Apple’s mobile future. With today’s revelations that Apple has sold 275 million iPods and that 1.5 billion games and entertainment titles have been downloaded on the iPod touch alone, it’s not a stretch to see why Game Center was a cornerstone of the presentation.

While Nintendo and Sony have both been busy manufacturing dedicated mobile gaming platforms, Apple has seized control of over 50% of the worldwide mobile gaming market with multi-function devices like the iPod touch. Although Apple has the market share, the more dedicated game design houses have, for the most part, stayed, in the Nintendo and Sony camps. For Apple to maintain market dominance, it’s going to have to start catering to more serious gamers, and that’s exactly what Game Center is all about.

A cornerstone of the presentation was codename Project Sword. Developed by Chair Entertainment, makers of the Xbox Live hit Shadow Complex, Project Sword will utilize the Unreal 3 engine, making it undoubtedly CPU-intensive. Despite all of that, let’s not sell its surface features short.

The A4 might be the linchpin of the device, but Apple has historically pushed more units based on looks than outright performance. The addition of a front facing camera to the iPod touch will put FaceTime in the hands of millions of new users, which could be enough to tip the scales toward actual usefulness.

Graphic design is very popular nowadays and so many graphic design blogs born from day to day. In this article, i will summarize about 15 important factors to consider to make high quality graphic design blog based on several famous graphic design blogs around the blogging world. I wrote these tips based on my blogging experiences.

I’m not telling you to do all of these advice, but some of them may be handy for you consider & apply them on your blog, so that your blog will be better on visual and non-visual functions.

1. Images on Every Post

Consider adding images on every article Remember, you have graphic design blog, right? The main difference between graphic design blog & the others are images. Even if you write article which doesn’t require any images, just add at least one image related with current article. Without images, visitors will surely be bored with your article. Images will makes visitors stay on your blog & get to know what content they are reading about.

2. Buysellads

Almost all graphic design blogs signed up at Buysellads as one method of money making. Buysellads limit their ads selling to several categories include graphic design. By signing up at Buysellads, you can easily make money if you have enough traffic. Consider to lower your CPM on any banner advertisement. Most of famous graphic design blogs set their CPM below 0.5 which makes their ad spaces sold out. When you are still new, don’t expect to get much from Buysellads. Wait until you get some constant traffic to your blog.

3. Advertisement Banner Position

Most famous graphic design blogs use 125 x 125px banner on their top sidebar. Most of sidebar width is about slightly more than 250px which makes two 125 x 125px banners on a row.  The number of their ads varies from six to ten spaces. Consider not placing too many ads because almost all visitors don’t really like to see ads everywhere they scroll on your blog, right? Place your banner advertisement spaces wisely, which doesn’t reduce visibility of your main content.

4. Unique Logo Design

Most famous graphic design blogs have their own logo design. If you are competent on using graphic design software such as Adobe Photoshop & Adobe Illustrator, consider to make your own logo design. It will increase your brand image among other bloggers & visitors, especially if you managed to design a very unique logo which represents your blogs perfectly.

5. Better Buttons Design

Buttons are one of the most important elements on graphic design blogs nowadays. Most famous graphic design blogs have their own unique button design. Consider to design your own RSS subscription button, Email subscription button, twitter button, and even all of your social media buttons. This will also increase your brand image among blogger & visitors.

6. Image Usage

If you have colored background on you blog, try to use .png image format with transparent background. Png is the only format that enables you to make transparent background, so that you can do more creativity than just using .jpg images which is less flexible. I love to use .png image type when making icons with rounded corner. With .png image type, there shouldn’t be placing them anywhere despite the background color.

One more thing – consider to set all of your image with small amount of padding and border, just to make sure your images looks nicer. Do you see nice image on this post?

7. User links/Community News

Community news or user links are very popular nowadays in graphic design & web design blogs. By placing community news submission form, you will get more traffic from other bloggers who wants to promote their articles for free. But my main concern is that you get more information from other bloggers so you can learn from another blogs, even get new information & knowledge. Consider to put community news on your blog. You can use TDO Mini Form or Contact Form 7 which are very popular.

8. Social Media Buttons

Social Media is one of the most important things on blogging nowadays. They enable you to promote your articles to others people quickly.  Place social media buttons correctly, so that visitors can easily find them & share your articles without any effort. The best place for placing social media buttons is right after the end of article. So visitors can instantly share your article after reading the content. Speckyboy did great job on placing his social media buttons correctly.

9. Width of Your Single Post Articles

Consider to make your width of single post articles at least 500px or wide enough for your single post width.  With wide enough space for your image, you can provide better image to explain your articles better. Consider to have a fixed standard image width for your blog. Some blogs use their whole width for their image, while some blogs don’t. I prefer to use both method for better result depending on what I’m going to share.

10. Author Box or Info

Consider to place author box or info after the content of your blog. This will make visitors know who you are and your competence, whether you are a graphic designer, photographer, web designer or anything that related with your current job. Make sure that visitors will know who you are by reading author profile.

11. About Page

Consider to have a good about page that explains about you more detail. Basically, it’s the same as author box. But you can write more detail about you and your team (If you have one). Consider to place your photo on this page. If you don’t want to place your photo, just place your icon or something unique representing your blog just like I did.

12. Contact Page

This page is very important! Sometimes visitors want to say hi and it will be better if you give them your contact information. Make it at least give your email address, but if you want, give all of your social media contact information such as digg, stumble upon, mixx, etc.

13. Only Show Excerpt on Homepage

Consider to show only excerpt with only one or two paragraph of your article on your homepage. This will raise your page view and also make visitors curious about your complete article. Also try to add interesting image to make visitors click on your article!

14. Search Box

Place your search box on the top of your homepage. Sometimes visitors want to search something on your blog without wasting their time. Don’t make tour visitors look for your search box that place on the bottom of your homepage. This will waste their time and very annoying. If your template doesn’t have its default search box, you can place it on your sidebar with default wordpress widget, or simply use adsense for search. You can also use wibiya toolbars to show search box at the bottom of your monitor just like what I use now.

15. Footer

This is very optional, but most famous graphic design blogs make a good use of their footer. They often place categories, contact info, tags, and evenadvertisement space! As you can see on my footer, there is Facebook Fan widget there. You can do anything with footer, but make sure it will be useful enough.

Here is the collection of some most beautiful and awesome HDR photos you have ever seen before. HDR photography can make the unattractive photos look more appealing and attractive; and if taken properly, HDR photos would seem to be captured from a different perspective. In HDR photography, all the images are properly exposed and this is the reason why HDR photos look so appealing.
In this post, we have gathered stunning HDR photos. Hope, you’ll like this post and share it with your friends.

The Golden Embrace

A Medieval Legacy

Greece is the word…

Let there be light

Going Curvy and Crazy :: HDR

In your face2

Dramatic Moco – hdr

St Patrick’s Cathedral, Melbourne (III) :: HDR

Nikon D700 HDR

Eiffel tower, Paris, France :: Fisheye

Kreuzberg – Berlin – HDR

HDR

Dranesville Tavern

HDR breakfastroom

Church at Night HDR

HDR-DENEMELERI

Converse HDR try

They are coming!!! – Helix Nebula Over Paris DRI

Catedral de Malaga 2 (HDR)

Ruins at the cemetery

Devil Hotel (have fun LOL)

University College

HDR River

Resolve my vision

Sicak Bir Hosgeldin

on the streets of bolsena

In this Adobe Photoshop tutorial, we’re going to look at how to quickly and easily add a soft focus and glow effect to a photo, which also happens to do a nice job of boosting the image’s contrast and color saturation. I’ve been using this technique with my photos for years and it’s still just as popular today. Whether you’re a wedding photographer, nature photographer or you simply enjoy taking photos of family and friends, give this effect a try and see if it doesn’t make your images look a bit more magical.

Here’s the photo I’ll be working with in this tutorial:

And here’s how it will look after adding our soft glow:

Not what you’re looking for? Check out our other Photo Effects tutorials!

Want an easier way to follow along with our tutorials? Download them as printable PDFs!

Let’s get started!

Step 1: Duplicate The Background Layer

With our image newly opened in Photoshop, we can see if we look in our Layers palette that we currently have one layer which is the Background layer. The Background layer is the layer that contains our original image:

We need to duplicate this layer, and the easiest way to do that is by using the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+J (Win) / Command+J (Mac). If we look again in our Layers palette, we can see that we now have two layers - the Background layer on the bottom and a copy of the Background layer, which Photoshop has automatically named “Layer 1″, above it:

Step 2: Change The Blend Mode Of “Layer 1″ To “Overlay”

With “Layer 1″ selected in the Layers palette (the currently selected layer is highlighted in blue), go up to the Blend Mode option in the top left corner of the Layers palette. It’s the drop-down box that’s currently set to “Normal”. Click on the down-pointing arrow and select the Overlay blend mode from the list:

If you recall from our Five Essential Blend Modes For Photo Editing tutorial, the Overlay blend mode is part of the Contrast group of blend modes because it boosts image contrast, and it also tends to boost color saturation as well. If we look at our image now after changing the blend mode to Overlay, we can see that sure enough, the contrast and color saturation have both been increased dramatically:

Step 3: Apply The “Gaussian Blur” Filter

Believe it or not, we’re almost done! We can now add our soft focus / glow effect to the photo. With “Layer 1″ still selected, go up to the Filter menu at the top of the screen, choose Blur, and then choose Gaussian Blur. This brings up Photoshop’s Gaussian Blur dialog box.

At the bottom of the dialog box, you’ll see a slider bar which controls the Radius value. The higher you set the Radius value, the more blurring you’ll apply to the layer. Drag the slider towards the right until the Radius value is somewhere around 8 pixels. You may want to set the value a bit higher if you’re using a high resolution image. The best thing to do is to keep an eye on your image in the document window as your drag the slider to see what effect it’s having. Make sure you have the Preview option checked in the top right corner of the dialog box. If you set the Radius value too high, the soft focus effect will be too subtle, so try to stick with lower Radius values:

When you’re happy with the effect, click OK to exit out of the dialog box, and you’re done! Here’s my photo after applying the Gaussian Blur:

Step 4: Lower The Opacity Of “Layer 1″ (Optional)

If you find that the effect appears too strong, try lowering the Opacity of “Layer 1″. You’ll find the Opacity option in the top right corner of the Layers palette directly across from the Blend Mode option. Here I’m lowering the opacity to around 60%:

The soft focus effect now appears less intense:

Step 5: Change The Blend Mode To “Soft Light” (Optional)

Another easy way to reduce the intensity of the effect is to change the blend mode of “Layer 1″ from “Overlay” to Soft Light:

The Soft Light blend mode is also part of the Contrast group of blend modes, but its effect is much more subtle than what the Overlay blend mode gives us:

And there we have it! That’s how easy it is to add a soft focus and glow effect to an image with Photoshop!