3 Photoshop Tutorials

The first tutorial I chose was "3D Studio Design in Photoshop". I was so excited to read it and learn all I could about it but when I clicked on it, it would not work for whatever reason.  I was very disappointed because this is something I am and have been extremely interested in since I did my very first Photoshop assignment and have yet to really been taught anything up this ally.  So I went on to the next one, “Design a Grungy Website Design in Photoshop”. I initially chose it because I like paint splatter and bright colors. I like this tutorial because while the end result looks chaotic and time consuming it is actually a really easy design to do and only takes a short time.  It gave good detail in its step by step instructions.

http://www.talk-mania.com/web-layouts/37893-3d-studio-layout-portfolio-layout.html

http://www.hv-designs.co.uk/2007/10/10/web-design-layout-2-tutorial/

Next I chose “real estate template design”.  This is a confusing tutorial! It is very time consuming and full of detail and step after step after step!.  I like the way they explain everything and I if were wanting to design a real estate website they offer very valuable information.  It I definitely a tutorial I would not attempt if I were a beginner in Photoshop however.

http://bwebi.com/real-estate-template.html

The third and final tutorial I chose was “Design a cool photography portfolio”.  I liked this tutorial. It gave step by step instructions along with pictures to show you exactly what you should be doing.  Again it is a very time consuming tutorial, but to get to the end result sometimes it takes many little steps unlike the first tutorial where you had to do a few clicks, type a few things and BAM, your cite was created. 

http://dzineblog.com/2008/07/best-photoshop-layout-design-tutorials.html

Brief summary of the website development process

No matter the size of your website or the purpose of it, they all include 7 basic steps:

1.       1. Conceptualize and research

2.       2. Create and organize content

3.       3. Develop the “look and feel”

4.      4.  Produce a working prototype

5.       5. Test it

6.      6.  Launch the site

7.      7.  Maintain

These steps do not have to be done in this order, but in some way they will all be utilized. In the conceptual and research phase you lay the basic idea out on the table. You decide the purpose of the website, like if it will be used for personal as in displaying a family photo album, to sell items, or anything the customer wants.  This is where you write/sketch everything and anything the customer says because you never know what you will end up using in the end.  The more information you get the better!  The next step, create and organize content, you will need to get all the content from the client that they want on the site.  Once you have the content, organize it and put it into an easy to follow yet unique and eye catching design.  After you have gathered the content and organized it is time to develop the “look and feel” of your site.  Sketch it out on paper or however you feel comfortable doing a rough draft of the overall look, just make sure to come up with 2 or 3 different ideas that you will take back to your client. After you have showed the client their choices and you have worked out what design you are going to go with you need to produce a working prototype.  This is my favorite step of the process because you have all the information you need and a basic idea of where the client wants you to take the design.  Now you get to run free with it and put your own signature on it.  Now, after the client has seen the working prototype and approved it is time to test it. Go through a few simple yet effect steps to make sure all the content is there, are there any typos or grammar errors, do all the links work, are all the images showing, is everything functioning properly? Also you should check how it will look on other browsers or even function on other browsers, what happens if you resize the page really large or small, can you use it on a text-only browser or with the graphics turned off?  All of these things need to be checked before your site goes live.  An effect way to check all of these things is to give it user testing.  Have people go through and click on everything little thing make sure it all works and there are no hidden glitches or errors.  Once you have gone and looked over everything and double checked it all works you are ready to launch your site. It is a good idea to do one last test just to make sure nothing got over looked at the end.  If everything is good to go you are “finished” and I use quotation marks because even though everything is complete and you are live there still needs to be site maintenance done to it regularly.  Keep up on any updates, information changes, is the site a limited time only site and needs to be shut down after a certain date such as a promotion site for an event.  The website development process is very interesting and I look forward to putting these basic steps to use in my own development processes.