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» Favicons are an art alone!

Favicons are a true artform in and of themselves, they really are and it takes some skill to get them right seeing as they are so tiny in size. Smashing Magazine has been having a great series of articles on some really awesome favicon designs, all which works amazingly good. I urge you to head over and read the entire series as linked below.

• Episode 1: Inspire Yourself: 50 Remarkable Favicons
• Episode 2: Inspire Yourself: More Creative Favicons
• Episode 3: Creative Favicons: When Small Is Beautiful
• Episode 4: Creative Favicons: Tiny Artwork
• Episode 5: The Delicate Beauties
• Episode 6: Black, Abstract and Hand-Drawing

If you want to learn how to make a favicon, you can take a look at the tutorial here.

» It’s Thursday

 I couldn’t think of a good topic for todays post so, it is Thursday will have to do. Couple of tidbits for you today as always.

• Pro wedding photographer, David Ziser has a cool post series on his Digital ProTalk blog today that all deals with some business tips (every thursday is "Business Day Thursday" on his blog). 
   
• If you are a flash designer you’ll find this blog post from Smashing Magazine very interesting. It’s a showcase of some very creative flash preloaders that should get your creative juices flowing!
   
• Photographers also get another thing on the board today. If you haven’t already you should get to checking out the amazing and helpful community over at Photography Corner. It’s basically a photography forum where it all centers about the community spirit. With helpful members who are actively commenting on the photos in the feedback sections and helping out in the gear and help sections you just have to love the place. They also have two monthly contest, Contest Corner Challenges - where you are supposed to shoot a photo to match a specific theme; and also the Photograph of the Month - a contest where photos get nominated by members and then voted by members to which is the best photograph, every month!
  Really do check out Photography Corner!
   
• I’m working on a review of my new Eizo FlexScan S2201W and I think it should be coming in the end of the week!

» Birthday Tuesday

Today is my birthday and it is a tuesday, so naturally it is birthday tuesday here on the blog! I’m 16 years old today which really makes me able to start practise driving by the laws here! Pretty cool I think, can’t really believe it.

As for presents; I got a one year extension to my NAPP membership, a brand new 250gb internal HDD to replace my old one which I’m going to put in an external case and use as a backup drive I think, plus finally, a brand new 22" Eizo FlexScan S2201W screen, which was from me to me.

Lighting week over att Photoshop Insider

Scott Kelby over at his blog Photoshop Insider has pronounced this week a lighting week over at his blog where he will be going over what you need when you are starting with lighting. Yesterday was the time for the budget starter kit and you can read the post right here. Today was the time for a little step up.

 Interesting writing article on Copyblogger

In an interesting article over on Copyblogger, they are today asking us all to "say no to the three enemies of clear and direct writing". It’s a pretty nice read and we can all learn something from it.

Designing for smaller screens!

When we are designing today many think this way "most people visting my site has got a screen larger than 1024×768 and therefore I can skip the 800×600 compatibility". This is the time when you should take a look at how many is using a resolution above 1280×1024, because over that resolution comes the time where you don’t always have your browser expanded throughout the whole available screenspace and when you perhaps want to be able to view sites at 800 in max width! So be wary and think the other way around as well! As screens get larger, browser windows get smaller!

Anyway, now I*m off to continue copying over my old disk to my new one and to eat some more cake

» Webdesigner Thursday!

Since it’s soon going to be weekend, everyone should have time to update their websites (I hope). So for this post, I decided to share some different webdesigning stuff.

First link, will go to Smashing Magazine, that has an awesome article on how you can create a very successful portfolio.
Also we have the Astheria blog, that will give you even more tips on how to get a better portfolio.

And when you design a portfolio, colors is a must!
Therefore I searched for some sites that gives you some great palettes!
Take a look here, here and here.

And finally, Copyblogger has a great  article on how you can write better!
Check it out!

» It’s Design Monday

 Today is design monday and will feature some great links for, you guessed it, design! Today will be all about design, how to do it and what to think about! Also we’ll have some tips on getting started! Should get you prepared for "Tutorial Tuesday" tomorrow!

• Smashing Magazine, today had a great article about some of the cool and breathtaking typography and typographic posters. There are indeed some really breathtaking things in there so if you want to get inspired, then that is definately an article to read!
   
• A Web Design tip that kind of lines up with the article tip above is to really think about the typography when designing! Do think about the fonts you are using in the header and text and make them suit eachother and the theme and the site in a nice way, that goes for their colours as well! It’s perhaps one of the most vital things you have in your designing and it is what your goal is!
   
• Another tip; when you are showing a design to your client, make sure that you have it filled with sample text (Lorem Ipsum will do just fine) and sample images so your client will get a feel how it is going to look for him/her! That will greatly help to sell the site and perhaps convey the feeling of the site you’ve made!
   
• When entering the realms of designing and keeping in with the latest news you should definately be reading A List Apart! It’s a great site with a ton of very helpful and in-depth articles on coding, design and the general web production!
   
• Final tip; think your design through before making it! Outline on a sheet of normal paper with a normal pencil what you want on your site and where to best fit it in. What kind of navigation are you going to have? Are you going to have any columns? Will there perhaps be a large or a small header? Basically what you need and where to put it thought through before actually desgining it. And of course, do design things that are codeable!

Look back here tomorrow for the "Tutorial Tuesday" where I’ll be putting up a lot of brand new tutorials and a few cooler announcements regarding those as well!

» Learning Wednesday

 Today will be all about learning new things, whether it be Photoshop, Lightroom or web things, I have some learning links saved up for you for today!

• Kelby Training has released a brand new online class that is called "Retouch a portrait in 15 minutes" by Vincent Versace. It is a great class where you’ll learn the secrets to quick and good portrait retouches that is actually used in a workflow environment. I’ve watched the first few lessons in the class myself and I think it looks great! Not for the beginner though but for someone who knows their way around Photoshop.
   
• If you are planning on visiting Photoshop World coming up to Orlando, April 2-4 this spring you should note that the date of the early-bird registration closing is coming up in about ten days. It is a $100 saving, so if you are planning on going to Photoshop World, you should register soon (and to prevent it from selling out before you register!). 
   
• If you are looking to learn a little about Photography then you should go ahead and subscribe to David Zisers totally free newsletter. A new edition is just out and you can click here to subscribe. Also check out his blog, Digital ProTalk!
   
• Over at Smashing Magazine, they have today listed 45 more excellent blog themes. They’re some really good themes so if you are into design, it is a very nice read!

» Fast News Monday

 There have actually been quite a few happenings this time but I’ll only have time for a quick monday post. I’m writing this in the little spare time I’m having of this evening. Two tests tomorrow doesn’t make for a happy me and I just hope I’m gonna do good, it’s some hard stuff though. Anyway, onto the news here.

• Apple have gone ahead and released Aperture 2 that has some pretty cool features. I haven’t had any time to test it yet but once I do I’ll post a little review for you. Plus I’m looking forward to testing it and see how I like it in comparision with Lightroom 1.3.
   
• Incase you are not a NAPP member I want to share with you a recent sucess story of a fellow NAPP Forum member Lisa Sage who rediscovered her passion for art and started drawing in Photoshop (and might I mention, awesome drawings!!) and recently also got to do some drawings for a new hollywood movie that’s coming out soon! Way to go Lisa! Check out her amazing portfolio here.
   
• Finally go and have a look over at XHTML Challenge which is a cool site which lets you create a challenge between two sites based on the code and things, also the users of the site will be able to vote for their favourite as well. I create one between this site and XLD Studios, it’s close as of now. Very simple and yet very fun!

» Recapping 2007 - What’s happened

Very soon 2007 is past history and we are into the new year of 2008 before I’ve even begun to write this post I’ve already picked half of the categories that I post into because a lot has indeed happened. If you want to read some more what’s happened in ‘07, check out the posts by Scott Kelby and Matt Kloskowski, Scott covers Adobe, Photography and NAPP and Matt covers what’s been happening to Lightroom in 2007. Because there have been two lengthy and I must say great posts from them about that, I’ll not venture into that as much in my post but I will cover on how 2007 has been to me.

For me, 2007 has been a very good year with a lot of things kicking up to speed, especially in the second half. I’ve had the tough periods this year that I very much hope that next year won’t have with a lot of personal things happening although I finally do feel that they are easing off and I’m a more happy person now.

Beginning of 2007…I hardly remember much of it really except that I’d just gotten my Nikon D50 and was shooting a lot and I mean a lot of experimental photos and slowly but securely started to gear into landscape photography. Also my web design business, XLD Studios, started to advance a lot as I got quite a few clients, one that continues to approach me with new and great projects. I think the whole beginning of 2007 was very photo centric especially in march when I got to do work experience in a camera store, the store where I now even get called in when they need someone extra.

I can’t say a lot important for this post happened until after the summer, I mean, life rolled on and school rolled on and it was soon holidays. Now after the holidays things started to happen that is now reflecting me to who I am, I really felt my design business kicking of and especially my photography, mostly during the summer. I got several very nice shoots (if I may say so) that I’m happy with and what’s made my year is the fact that I’ve won four photographic awards, Image of the Week at NAPP, Editors Choice at NAPP, Daily Deviation at deviantART and Photograph of the Month for December at Photography Corner. I want to send a thank you to the NAPP staff for selecting those awards, to the folks at deviantART for their awesome support and especially thanks to Kev Lewis who featured my photograph with a daily deviation, also a big thanks of course goes to the Photography Corner community whom I’d been away from most of the year because I was very busy but now returned to and they are as awesome as ever, thank you for your ongoing support.

Now, there are some people I really must thank extra that I really can’t thank enough for their ongoing support;
First off, Tove, Ellen and Johanna, my three best friends in the world! You are just awesome, I can’t put more words on your awesomeness, because there are none in this world!!!

Secondly and this is where all the other folks come I need to thank extra, because I really do only have two steps, I want to thank Tim L. Walker for his support, trust and everlasting projects, it has been a fun year ; Susanna Cotter for her everlasting support and for being there all the time (and also for her apparently everlasting featured as well ;)) ; Juha M. Kinnunen for his so inspirational work ; my family, for their support and trust in what I do and for allowing me to continue doing it, finally also I want to extend a more general thank you to every viewer of this site whether you read the blog, watch my tutorials or watch my photography, an extra special thanks to those of you that find time to comment on the posts.

Finally I want to end with the current state of my sites and what I plan for them; Starting with XLD Studios, it is progressing very well and I have some great plans for the site that I will not reveal as of now because they are only in the planning stages, you will find out later on though This site, I’ll continue updating it with new stuff, blog posts, tutorials and some other resources that I will launch now in the new year as well, I hope this will be the year of this site, I will also continue to update the CST&T podcast but I do need to find another host site for it since it is currently draining all my bandwidth and thus I can’t update it right now. As some of you might be aware, I recently launched Bernskiold Photography, a new kinda site that is based on Smug Mug, where I won a years pro membership, now it has been awesome these weeks I’ve had it up and I will keep on using it for long so it is there you’ll find my full photo home from now on I’m also going to be continuing to be active on booth deviantART and Photography Corner as well, because I think booth communities are great (oh and Smug Mug as well).

So to all of you reading this and to your friends and families I wish you a very Happy and Prosperous new Year and that you will find nothing but joy this year and if you have any problems as of now, I hope they will solve as we enter another exciting year that will for me at least, be filled with a lot of new (and therfore scary) things but also a lot of wonderful and cool things as well!

HAPPY NEW YEAR

» It’s “Finally Friday”

Today is “Finally Friday” and I really mean it, I’m so happy it is Friday again and weekend because I’ve been so very busy during the week I’ve hardly gotten time to be on the computer. Anyway this was always going to be the most busy because it is the end of the term and yeah it is always most busy then. So here are the weeks hottest stuff

I won the contest I was nominated in…

I gotto start with some more self centered stuff eh, that’s all because I’m just totally psyched about it! If you remember I posted a little while ago that I had been nominated for Photograph of the Month over at the Photography Corner website and I’m stunned that I won the voting and my “Summer Memories” photograph became the photograph of the month of December over there, meaning it has now won two awards!! The prize was a one year pro account to SmugMug where I will be setting up a site where you’ll be able to buy my photos from! Cool eh

Wacom Cintiq 12WX

Wacom has announced a brand new tablet in their Cintiq lineup, it is a smaller 12″ tablet (active screen size) that works just like a regular drawing tablet, only it has a screen built right in. It looks super cool and the resolution is 1280×800. You can read more about it here!

Adobe News!

• Adobe has released Camera Raw 4.3.1 that addresses some bugs in the 4.3 release. You can download it for free here!

• Adobe has also redesigned their entire company website over at Adobe.com to match the new creative suite! To me I think the design is well organized and it looks very stylish, so go and explore and enjoy the interactivity as well! By just taking a quick look at the source it appears that they have used a couple of their own suite programs (apart from the design side) such as Dreamweaver (I see presence of DW Templates) which is pretty cool in and of itself!

» Monday News Tidbits

Today seems to be gadget day with most news being about some of the coolest gadgets available right now!

D3 and D300 Stuff, site + review

• Starting off in the camera news, brought to you by the amazing wildlife photographer, Moose Peterson is an entire little (or not so little after all) site about the D that has just been released with more stuff being added along the way according to Moose. So go and have a look at the D3 Site!
• Following the news of the cameras in Nikon’s latest release we have a great review by Terry White on the Nikon D300 camera posted today over at his blog! It’s based on his first impressions with using the camera for about a week now and he really seems to be liking it a lot. So if you are in the market for a D300 or just want to read up on it, go and read Terry’s review right here!

New Web Design tutorials coming!

So I’ve begun to write a couple of highly requested web design tutorials for the site here and the first one to be released is a tutorial on how to make a stylish portfolio header right in Photoshop that we’ll use to build an entire portfolio site, right in Photoshop! So go to the tutorial section and check it out!

Learn to polish up your vector art in Photoshop!

The amazing illustration guru, Nick La has posted up a very cool tutorial or article on how he uses Adobe Photoshop to polish up his vector art made in Illustrator. I found it very interesting and cool to read so if you are interested you should definitely take a look at it here!