Best of Tuts+ in February 2012

Samuel · Mar 2, 2012

Each month, we bring together a selection of the best tutorials and articles from across the whole Tuts+ network. Whether you’d like to read the top posts from your favourite site, or would like to start learning something completely new, this is the best place to start!
Psdtuts+ — Photoshop Tutorials

Create a Baseball-Inspired Text Effect in Photoshop

Applying texture to a text effect can be a lot of fun. In this tutorial we will explain how to create a baseball-inspired text effect using layer styles, patterns, and brushes. Let’s get started!
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Create a Mini Planet Using Photoshop’s 3D Capabilities

When most people think about Photoshop, they probably don’t think about 3D. What most people don’t realize, however, is that Photoshop CS5 Extended includes some powerful tools to help you render your artwork in 3D. In this tutorial we will demonstrate how to create a mini planet using Photoshop’s 3D capabilities. Let’s get started!
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Create a Coffee Cake Photo Manipulation – Tuts+ Premium Tutorial

In this Tuts+ Premium tutorial, author Stephen Petrany will demonstrate how to take pieces from multiple photos and seamlessly blend them into a "coffee cake" photo manipulation. This tutorial will also explore unique ways to work with paths and smart objects. If you are looking to take your photo manipulation skills to the next level then Log in or Join Now to get started!
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Nettuts+ — Web Development Tutorials

The Largest jQuery Class in the World

A couple weeks ago, Tuts+ Premium launched a free new real-time course, called “30 Days to Learn jQuery.” After signing up, each member receives an email, linking to a new video lesson for an entire month.
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How to Customize Your Command Prompt

Lately, I’ve been getting this question a lot: “how did you get your terminal to look the way it does?” If you’ve noticed my terminal and are curious about how I set it up, this is the tutorial for you! Of course, what you learn here will be enough to get you started on creating your own custom command prompt, as well!
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Attention Developers: NewRelic is your Secret Weapon

While the title of this article may sound like a cliche, hatched in the bowels of PR hell, I’m serious when I say that NewRelic is your secret weapon.
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Vectortuts+ — Illustrator Tutorials

How to Create a Vintage Type Postcard

Follow this in-depth look at the process of designing type for a vintage style postcard in Adobe Illustrator CS5. Harken back to an era when postcards were all the rage with this friendly type style. The tutorial will delve into clipping masks, using bitmap images, working with layers and type effects.
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Create a Block Game Interface in Illustrator

In the following tutorial you will learn how to create a block game interface in Adobe Illustrator CS5. Vector game graphics allow for versatile artwork. The workflow presented in this tutorial will teach you how to create game graphics in Illustrator. These techniques can be applied to multiple interface design and game design projects. It’s time to jump in, learn to create these shapes, and give them colorful graphic depth.
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Illustrator Tutorials for Creating Vintage Graphics and Retro Illustration

If youre looking to improve your vector design skills, learn how to use Illustrator on a deeper level, and discover how to create vintage vector graphics, then you’ve landed on the right article. We’ve assembled a collection of tutorials that show you how to create vintage illustrations, and retro graphics using Illustrator effects and a variety of professional workflows.
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Webdesigntuts+ — Web Design Tutorials

Principles for Successful Button Design

There are a thousand ways to design and create buttons today and you only need to spend a small amount of time looking through work on dribbble to get a sense of them. A great deal of these examples are exactly the same, but occasionally there are the odd few that feel like they’ve had a little more care and attention in their making.
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Orman Clark’s Vertical Navigation Menu: The CSS3 Version

Next in the Orman Clark’s coded PSD series is his awesome looking Vertical Navigation Menu. We’ll recreate it with CSS3 and jQuery while using the minimal amount of images possible.
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Coding the SimpleAdmin Theme: Login Page

It’s time to translate our admin layout into a working template. We’ll begin by setting out the markup for our Login page, then we’ll hit the stylesheets..
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Phototuts+ — Photography Tutorials

The Stock Market: Exploring Stock Photography

Creative professionals all over the world frequently require high quality images, but often don’t have the budget to hire a photographer for small projects. Enter stock photography: an industry where awesome photographs are out there and ripe for the using. Today, we’ll be taking a look at the wild world of the stock market – stock photography, that is.
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Lightroom 4 Beta: Packed with New Features

In six short years, Adoble Lightroom has changed the way many photographers manage their images. With powerful cataloging and developing features, Lightroom offers photographers the ability to customize their photo management workflow and manage the thousands of images more efficiently than ever before. Adobe’s innovation continues with Lightroom 4, which is currently in Beta. Today, we’ll be taking a look at some of the new features of the latest iteration of Lightroom.
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A Primer to Digital Medium Format Camera

Over the last few months, I’ve observed a trend among several well known photographers. No longer satisfied with crop factor cameras or even 35mm equivalent full frame digital cameras, more and more photographers are jumping to digital medium format. What are the advantages offered by digital medium formats, and will you be using one anytime soon? Read on to find out.
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Cgtuts+ — Computer Graphics Tutorials

Achieving 3D Realism: Reception Area Render With 3D Studio Max & V-Ray, Part 1

The following tutorial is based on a real project. This unique tutorial will take users through the real process of creating shaders with bespoke physical properties and applying textures based on real photo references.
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Create And Render A Still Life Scene In Blender, Using Cycles

Today, we’ll have a brief introduction to Blender’s new rendering engine – Cycles. This tutorial will cover modeling a small and easy still life scene, setting up different types of materials used in cycles and then finally lighting and rendering the scene.
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An Introduction To UVMapping In 3d Studio Max Using The Unwrap UVW Modifier

So UVMapping… you hate it, I hate it. But unfortunately it’s a necessary step in the process of completing most cg projects. In this tutorial we’ll look at creating uvs using the ‘Unwrap UVW’ modifier in 3D Studio Max, and discuss what uv mapping is, why it’s necessary and some ways to approach it.
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Aetuts+ — After Effects Tutorials

Create The Amazing Spider-Man Title Sequence Entirely In After Effects

Nancy will show us how to create the title sequence for the Amazing Spider-Man entirely in After Effects using ShapeShifter AE. She shows us how to combine Shape Layers + Layer Masks to model and animate Spideys symbol. Download the free project file and follow along. You’ll be amazed at how easy it is to create!
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D Transforming Text With ShapeShifter AE

In this tutorial, we will be taking a look at how to build this 3D transforming text animation using Mettle’s ShapeShifter AE plug-in. We will also be enhancing some of the elements using 3rd party plug-ins such as Trapcode Shine (CC Light Burst alternative), Frischluft’s Out of Focus (Lens Blur alternative), and RE:Vision RSMB (CC Force Motion Blur alternative).
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Create An Awesome Array Of Shattering Strings

We’ll be starting in Cinema 4d to create text fragments and use XPresso to export the Mograph positional data to After Effects. From there, we’ll jump over into After Effects and use expressions to connect 3d nulls to 2d data points… We’ll also be using a macro in Microsoft Word to edit multiple lines of expressions. It doesn’t matter if you’re a Cinema 4d user or strictly an After Effects user, today’s tutorial should be something helpful for everyone!
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Audiotuts+ — Audio & Production Tutorials

The 15 Minute Mix

Consider this your challenge for today. Take a song that you just recorded, or have been working on and mix it in 15 minutes. Shut off everything, pull the faders up and follow the following tutorial. Use a stopwatch to keep track of time and when you should be switching tasks.

If you don’t have any sessions to try, you can use any of these 50 different multi-tracks.
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Audio Tutorial Sites That Will Keep You Learning

The reason you’re here on our site is because you’re interested in audio tutorials. I think we do a great job: we have a huge number of excellent tuts – both free and premium. But we know we haven’t cornered the market. There are an amazing number of audio tut sites out there, and the number seems to grow every year. Here are 35 of the best.
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Quick Tip: Creating Skrillex Style Tech Basslines in NI Massive

This series of quick tips will outline how you can use the ever powerful NI Massive synth to create techy basslines used by artists such as Skrillex. In this example I have used Cubase but the same principles will translate to pretty much any other DAW. Here is an example of the kind of sound you can expect to end up with at the end of this series:
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Activetuts+ — Flash, Flex & ActionScript Tutorials

Review: Construct 2, a Drag and Drop HTML5 Game Maker

Construct 2 is an HTML5 game making tool that doesn’t require any programming knowledge. You just drag and drop items around, add behaviors to them, and make them come alive with “events”.
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Number Systems: An Introduction to Binary, Hexadecimal, and More

Ever see crazy binary numbers and wonder what they meant? Ever see numbers with letters mixed in and wonder what is going on? You’ll find out all of this and more in this article. Hexadecimal doesn’t have to be scary.
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Understanding Affine Transformations With Matrix Mathematics

Inspired by Prof. Wildberger in his lecture series on linear algebra, I intend to implement his mathematical ideas with Flash. We shall not delve into the mathematical manipulation of matrices through linear algebra: just through vectors. This understanding, although diluting the elegance of linear algebra, is enough to launch us into some interesting possibilities of 2×2 matrix manipulation. In particular, we’ll use it to apply various shearing, skewing, flipping, and scaling effects to images at runtime.
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Wptuts+ — WordPress Tutorials

Creating a Filterable Portfolio with WordPress and jQuery

Learn in this tutorial how to make a filterable Portfolio with jQuery integrated with WordPress, remember that this portfolio kind can make a big difference on your themes!
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How to Include JavaScript and CSS in Your WordPress Themes and Plugins

Knowing the proper way to include JavaScript and CSS files in your WordPress themes and plugins is very important for designers and developers. If you don’t adhere to best practices, you run the risk of conflicting with other themes and plugins, and potentially creating problems that could have been easily avoided. This article is intended as a reference for playing nicely with others.
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How to Create a Simple Post Rating System With WordPress and jQuery

There already are many post rating system plugins out there. Surprisingly, no one fits my needs, they either are too complicated or with too many built-in options. So, in this tutorial, you’ll learn how to build your own simple post rating functionality, directly within your theme files. There’s no need for plugin!
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Mobiletuts+ — Mobile Development Tutorials

Getting Started With RenderScript on Android

RenderScript is a scripting language on Android that allows you to write high performance graphic rendering and raw computational code. Learn more about RenderScript and write your first graphics app that leverages RenderScript in this tutorial.
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PhoneGap From Scratch: Twitter & Maps

Want to learn how to use PhoneGap, but don’t know where to get started? Join us as we put together ’Sculder”, not only a tribute to an excellent science fiction TV series, but a fully-fledged native mobile application for the believer in you!
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Supplementing iAd Placement with AdMob

Click-based advertising within a mobile application is a great way to make some money off of your free or inexpensive applications. While there are many choices out there, many iOS developers tend to go with the iAds platform for a variety of reasons including simplicity, aesthetics, and a high CPM.
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