Graphic Designing Solutions: May 2010

How to make an Human Eye

Create a new document of 1560 x 1040 px
Create 17 layers and name them as : layer 00, layer 01 ... layer 16

Abbreviation
L: Layer
SRB : use a soft round brush
W : Width
C : Color
O : Opacity
E : eraser
GB : Apply a gaussian blur

Layer00 . Apply the color #8d8d8d
layer16 . Draw the shape : SRB (C : black ; W : 15 px ; O : 100%)
layer01 . Color each part : SRB (W : 100 px ; O : 100%) C : #5a5a5a / black / #f2f2f2
layer01 . GB 7 px

layer 02 . SRB (C : #3a3a3a ; W : 100px ; O : 100%)

The skin crease is more marked in the upper eyelid than in the lower eyelid
layer 02 . GB (30px)
layer 02 . Erase if the shadow is too large : E (W : 100px ; O : 100%)

layer 03 . SRB (C : black ; W : 50px ; O : 10%)

layer 03 . GB (15px)
Hide L16

layer 04 . Continue to work on the shadows (don't forget the eyeball) : SRB (C : black ; W : 100px ; O : 5%

layer 04 . GB (30px)
layer 05 . Start to work on the lights : SRB (C : white; W : 65px ; O : 15%)

layer 05 . GB (15px)
layer 06 . Work again on the shadows with a different size of brush : SRB (C : black ; W : 200px ; O : 15%) & SRB (C : black ; W : 45px ; O : 15%)

layer 07 . Use this layer to work on the detailed lights (iris...) with a little brush : SRB (C : white ; W : 20px ; O : 10%)
layer 08 . Use this layer to draw the largest light : SRB (C : white ; W : 100px and 200px ; O : 10%) and adjust with E (W : 65px ; O : 100%)

Merge all the layers : layer 00+ layer 01+...+ layer 08

Use dodge and bum (expo : 4% ; W : 200px/50px) to correct shadows and lights as you want

Eyelashes : The eyelashes belonging to the upper lids and the lower lids vary from each other. The upper lid eyelashes are longer, tend to curve in an upward direction, and are more noticeable than the lower lid eyelashes, which are shorter and tend to be stumpy without much curve. There are two or three rows of eyelashes in the upper eyelid and one or two rows of eyelashes in the lower eyelid.

layer 09 . Draw eyelashes on upper lids : SRB (C : black ; W : 17px ; O : 100%)

layer 09 . Smudge the extremities of eyelashes : Smudge (W : 45 ; strength : 25%) and correct if it's too long with E (W : 65% ; O : 100%)

layer 10 . Use the same tools for eyelashes of lower lid

layer 11. Add some shadows with a big brush under the eyelashes : SRB (C : black ; W : 100px ; O : 10%)
layer 11. GB (25px)

Create a New Adjustment Layer : Gradient Map :

Black (0 %) #421706 (16%) # c18362 (44%) #ffdba3 (70%) #ffe2c8 (88%) white (100%)

layer 12 . Change the layer blending mode to Hue and its opacity to 70% and color the iris : SRB (C : #175769 ; W : 100px ; O : 100%)

layer 13 . Change the layer blending mode to Color burn and draw with a SRB (C : #cfc179 ; W : 100p x ; O : 100%)

layer 14 . Change the layer blending mode to Hue and its opacity to 80% and color the eyeball : SRB (C : #436d94 ; W : 100px ; O : 100%)

layer 15 . Change the layer blending mode to Multiply and draw the outline of the iris : SRB (C : #366561 ; W : 30px ; O : 15%) GB (8px)
Make any necessary corrections...

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial

7 Killer Stratigies for Unlimited Traffic II

Continue from previous

4. Video Marketing

Video marketing is one of the best ways to tap into the massive amount of traffic on sites like YouTube, Viddler, Veoh, and Google Video.
Create 3-5 minute videos that you can post to all of the top video submission sites.
Use http://www.tubemogul.com to automate your video submissions.
Send people from your video to your squeeze page. You’ll be surprised at just how powerful this technique can be.
Quick Tip: Create 2-part videos to increase click-through rate.

5. Viral Pushes

Once you have built an audience for your website and a list of subscribers, it’s now time to leverage that existing audience with some viral pushes.
This is where you do some extra promotion for the best articles on your blog. For this technique to work properly, you must be promoting a killer article that over-delivers on value.
Once you have a top-notch article, now it’s time to create a viral push!
You can do this in a number of different ways. One of my favorite strategies is to use StumbleUpon
Ads. StumbleUpon allows you to put your content in front of your target audience for just 5 cents a click.
Once people start coming to your site, they will give it a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down. By paying for this initial base of visitors, you can easily start a viral campaign that will spread throughout
StumbleUpon and onto many of the other popular social sites online.
Buying StumbleUpon ads is an excellent way to give your content the push it needs to get over that tipping point.
Another excellent strategy for giving your content a viral push is to ask your subscribers to tweet your article. Simply by asking your subscribers to do something specific, you will get a much higher response rate.

You can also allow your readers to automatically tweet your post using Tweet Meme.
Create at least one viral push every week and watch your traffic soar!

6. Ad Swaps

Once you’ve built a list of 1,000 subscribers, start using ad swaps to grow your list exponentially.
This is an extremely valuable technique that can add hundreds of subscribers to your list at a time.
Here are some places online where you can find other list owners who are looking to do ad swaps:
http://www.imadswaps.com
http://www.warriorforum.com/warrior-joint-ventures/

7. Paid Advertising Options

Paid advertising is another excellent option AFTER you have optimized your sales process. Here are some of the top paid advertising options for those in the Internet Marketing field…

http://paydotcom.com/advertise.php
http://www.probiztips.com/advertising.html
http://www.associateprograms.com/pages/Advertising-opportunities
http://www.clickbanksuccessforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=219
http://www.alexandriabrown.com/adsales.php
https://www.clickbank.com/advertise.html
http://www.bizweb2000.com/ads.htm
http://www.internetmarketingsecrets.com/ (Michael Campbell)

previous........ part 1

7 Kiler Strategies for Unlimited Traffic I

In this report, I’m going to share with you 7 killer traffic strategies for attracting thousands of visitors

to your website each and every week. They include:

1. High-Profile Article Marketing

2. Forum Marketing

3. Ebook Syndication

4. Video Marketing

5. Viral Pushes

6. Ad Swaps

7. Paid Advertising

These are the exact strategies I have used to build a mailing list of over 7,000 subscribers.So without further ado, let’s dive into the details…

1. High-Profile Article Marketing

As you probably know, article marketing is one of the best ways to drive highly-targeted traffic to your website. However, if you re-focus your efforts towards high-profile article marketing can generate 10x as much traffic.

Instead of submitting your articles to article directories, you submit them to the top websites and blogs in your market.

So, for example, if you have a blog about sports, you could submit your articles to

http://bleacherreport.com/ , one of the most popular sports websites online. If you have a website about weddings, you could submit articles to http://www.favorideas.com/submit-wedding-articles/

If you have a website about parenting, you could submit articles to

http://www.momsnetwork.com/submit-articles.shtml

If you have a website about finance, you could submit articles to

http://www.istockanalyst.com/article/submitarticle.html

Are you starting to get the idea here? No matter what market you’re in, there are very popular websites that you could be submitting articles to for massive traffic.

Here’s a list of very popular websites that I personally submit articles to. The list below is a gold mine for building a list of thousands of subscribers. If you published just ONE really good article every day to the following websites, and had a good call to action in your resource box that sent people to your squeeze page, then you would have a highly responsive list of AT LEAST 1,000 subscribers by the end of the month.

http://sitefling.com/blog/steal-our-traffic-be-a-guest-poster-today/

http://www.associateprograms.com/authors/register

http://www.site-reference.com/submit.php

http://moneymakerinfo.blogspot.com/2008/12/im-looking-for-guest-bloggers.html (This site ranks #2 for “make money online” and they are looking for guest bloggers!

http://www.tutorialized.com (Submit your articles in the Marketing or SEO sections. This site will send traffic directly to your blog or website. So you will need to have a website set up to submit your articles here. But they can drive hundreds of visitors to your site.)

http://mashable.com/writers/

http://www.searchengineguide.com

http://www.evancarmichael.com/Author/partnerLeads.php

http://www.isedb.com/db/pages/Contribute-Articles-to-ISEdb.com

http://www.netprofitstoday.com/blog/become-an-npt-guest-blogger/

http://www.imnewswatch.com

http://www.carlocab.com/get-featured-for-free/

http://www.bloggingtips.com/write-for-us/

http://www.sitepoint.com/about/writeforus

http://www.zeromillion.com/involve/

http://www.promotionworld.com/submit/submitcontent.html

http://www.lifehack.org/about/contribute

http://www.copyblogger.com (a very popular IM blog that accepts guest bloggers.)

The following is a list of sites where you can syndicate your articles.

http://www.instablogs.com/write_article.php

http://blogcarnival.com/bc/ (Submit all of your articles to blog carnivals for extra traffic.)

http://www.gather.com/

http://www.nowpublic.com/

http://www.scribd.com/

2. Forum Marketing

Forum marketing is another excellent strategy for building a list of subscribers and sending tons of traffic to your website.

Forum marketing is a highly underrated, but extremely effective strategy for building a list of

subscribers, driving highly-targeted traffic, and establishing yourself as an authority in your particular market.

Forums put you directly in front of your target market, making it a goldmine for driving thousands of highly targeted visitors to your website.

But keep in mind here that the key to successful forum marketing is to become an active participant in the community. Your first priority is to deliver lots of value. And that means posting highly valuable content in the forums and helping people with their questions.

Once you’ve become a trusted member and delivered some great value in your posts, people will

naturally want to learn more about what you have to offer.

This is where your signature link comes in…

You’ll want to use your signature link to send people to your squeeze page where you can build your list of subscribers.

Here’s an example of a good signature line:

“Find out how to get front-page Google Rankings in 24 hours with my FREE Google Domination

Video series… http://www.yoursqueezepagehere.com ”

The key here is to entice them with some sort of benefit to get them tocome to your website. Keep your signature file short and to the point.You should only be promoting one page in your signature file.

Don’t confuse people with multiple options.

Also keep in mind that it’s the value of your post that drives people to look at your signature. If you provide people with extraordinary value, then they will naturally want to check out more of your content.

So focus on providing value. One extremely valuable post is worth 10x

Tips & Tricks Session

TIP: Meet the Content Grabber

In the past, you had to do the Texas two-step to select a graphic in an InDesign frame: Double-click to get the Direct Selection tool, click again to select the image, double-click again for the Selection tool. Rinse and repeat as necessary. In InDesign CS5, you just hover over a graphic frame with the Selection tool and a viewfinder-like icon appears. (I call it the Donut.) Click, and--poof--you've selected the graphic, without even changing tools. To leave this mode and return to dealing with the frame, press Escape or double-click.

TIP: Clean Up Imported Word Documents

If you've imported a Microsoft Word document that's riddled with problems (for example, two hyphens instead of an em dash, or tabs instead of paragraph indents), don't repair your file line by line. Instead, use Edit > Find/Change and correct the problems with a single mouse click. In the Find/Change dialog box, on the Text tab, first define the scope of your search with the Search dropdown menu. Then use these Find What/Change To pairs to solve common problems:

Replace two hyphens with an em dash.

Find what: --

Change to: ^_

Multiple spaces after punctuation or used for indent.

Find what: [space][space]

Change to: [space]

Replace multiple tabs with a single tab.

Find what: ^t^t

Change to: ^t

Replace three periods with an ellipses.

Find what:...

Change to: ^e

Space before a carriage return.

Find what: [space]^p

Change to: ^p

Space at beginning of paragraph.

Find what: ^p[space]

Change to: ^p

Tab before a carriage return.

Find what: ^t^p

Change to: ^p

Tab after a carriage return.

Find what: ^p^t

Change to: ^p

TIP: Convert Spot Colors to Process Colors

To convert a spot color to process, double-click the name of the swatch in the Swatches panel and change the Color Type from Spot to Process. If you used the Pantone color library to define the color, first change the Color Mode to CMYK. You can also specify that all spot colors are automatically converted to process to automatically converted to process when the job prints. Choose Ink Manager from the Swatches panel menu. You'll see all the colors in your document. Click the All Spots to Process option and the spot color will be converted to process.

Welcome Back to Tips & Trick Session

TIP: Two Baseline Grids in One Document

When you want the first line in a custom baseline frame to always line up with the main baseline grid, follow these steps:

1. Set the baseline grid for the document (Preferences > Grids). Let's say the increment is 18 points.
2. Apply the paragraph command Align to Baseline Grid to force the text to align to the document-wide baseline grid.
3. Select the text frame that needs the custom baseline grid. Choose Object > Text Frame Options and click the Baseline Options tab. Set a custom baseline to, say, 12 points.
4. Set the Start of the baseline grid to be 18 points from the top of the frame. When the top of the text frame is positioned along the baseline grid for the main document, the first line of text in the custom text frame will automatically align on the document baseline grid. Then, the rest of the text aligns to the custom baseline grid.

TIP: Update TOCs

The easiest way to create a TOC for a long, structured document is to use InDesign's automatic Table of Contents feature: Create your document, assign unique paragraph styles to the paragraphs you want in the TOC, choose Layout > Table of Contents, and tell InDesign which Paragraph Styles to include in the TOC.

InDesign won't auto-update this TOC when your text or page numbers change, but that doesn't mean you have to resort to manually updating the content yourself. Just choose Layout > Update Table of Contents at any time, and InDesign will make it so.

TIP: Convert RGB Swatches to CMYK

If you import swatches, you may introduce quite a few RGB colors into your four-color print publication file. To quickly convert them, download and run the free RGB to CMYK script from InDesign scripting master Dave Saunders.

Note that the colors may shift significantly because many RGB colors can't be reproduced in CMYK. Also, the printed colors may not match what you see on screen. It's always better to pick CMYK colors from a current printed swatch book.