I have been using Photoshop myself for most of the image editing stuff but in some cases its just impossible to live with it. Issues such as high RAM usage, long loading times and complexity of tools make Photoshop unbearable.

Today! what I have for you is probably one of the best free image editors for Windows. It launches instantly, uses a very negligible amount of RAM and provides easy yet powerful image editing tools. Its Paint.NET.

Paint.NET features an intuitive and innovative user interface with support for layers, unlimited undo, special effects, and a wide variety of useful and powerful tools.

It is Free, it is powerful and above all it is supported by an active online community and plugins.

It is only 2MB and features the same power and ability of other famous image editing tools like Adobe Photoshop, Corel Draw and GIMP.

Download Paint.NET

Aperture to Picasa Web Albums makes it easy to transfer photos from Aperture to Picasa.

One of the most useful export plugins for the Apple Aperture photo management software has been updated for performance. Aperture to Picasa by Ubermind makes it simple and easy to copy collections from Aperture into Picasa as Web Albums that can be uploaded to the internet.

What Aperture to Picasa Web Albums does

As the name of this plugin states, Aperture to Picasa Web Albums lets you export collections from Adobe Aperture to Picasa Web Albums. Many bloggers and photographers use Picasa to upload their photos to Picasa Web Albums; a photo-sharing web application similar to Flickr. With this plugin, you no longer have to waste time organizing photos on two applications because you can simply organize photos in Aperture and export them to Picasa.

Aperture? Picasa?

Apple Aperture

Apple Aperture is the Apple version of Adobe Lightroom. It works only on Macs but is a powerful image management software to keep your photos organized. This software is a must have for any photographers with a Mac.

Picasa

Picasa is a free image management software that’s not as powerful as Apple Aperture, but lets you upload images to Picasa Web Albums. Picasa Web Albums is a free and paid service that lets you upload up to 1 GB of photos for free or up to 400 GB with a paid membership. Picasa is available with Google Pack.

What’s New?

The new Aperture to Picasa Web Albums 1.3 update is all about performance. Exporting to Picasa is faster than ever before.

Pricing and Availability

Aperture to Picasa Web Albums can be directly downloaded from Ubermind’s product webpage for $24.95. A fully functional 30 day trial is also available.

They have got a good iPhone-Like icon look and can be best used on your blog for social bookmarking or you can use them on your desktop to make it look more web 2.0′ish.

Icons can be downloaded from the link below:

http://fasticon.com/freeware/index.php/web-2-icons/

Thanks to Hack Wordpress for the heads up. Don’t forget to take a look at our tutorial on How To Integrate Web 2.0 Social Bookmark Icons to your Blog.

Here’s why:

1. It saves you time

First and foremost, you need to be spending your time designing not fiddling with estimate forms. It’s tedious and it’s no fun, so why not make life easier by having a template around. Then you can just duplicate it, fill in new information, and be done with it.

2. It makes you look professional

Because, of course, you are professional. Sending an email like “Hey Bob, sure, I can do that website for ya, let’s say $2500.” just isn’t going to cut it. If someone asks you for a price on a website, an official estimate is what you should provide. This also can take the heat off of you in that initial conversation where you might feel obligated to start pulling numbers out of the air in terms of what a design might cost. Just say “let me work up an estimate for you and get it to you in the next couple days.” This forces you to be professional, do some research, and write up a quote that you feel comfortable with.

3. It gets all the legal verbiage out of the way

There are some things that are just uncomfortable to talk about on the phone or even through email. Stuff like “if you don’t pay this within 30 days of completion, I’m going to have to charge you an extra 10%.” If you use an estimate form, you don’t ever need to say it, the legal information is right there on the document. You wrote it, they’re going to see it, everyone is covered. This is also a good place to mention sales tax. Many states charge zero sales taxes for purchases where the goods are “100% digitally deliverable”, even for in-state sales, make sure to look into that for your own state. You may wish to retain legal rights to the artwork files you create, the estimate is a good place to state that as well.

4. Eliminates any uncertain terms

Based on your conversations, you should get as good of a feel for what the design project will entail and include all that information on the estimate. Say you are working on a website design and all the sudden your clients asks you to put in a “store” section where they can sell their product directly through the site. If you had no idea this was coming, now you’ll be able to point back to your detailed estimate and note that no mention of eCommerce was made. Time is ultimately what is important here. A client is not entitled to 30 rounds of edits at the estimate price because they just can’t decide on a color. For this reason, you may want to include explicit details about this. Perhaps you could state how many hours you estimate the project to take that you’ll warn them if the project starts to exceed that. Perhaps you could allow only 3 rounds of edits before an hourly rate applies. Either way, you should let them know that the estimated price may vary by some small percentage but that their approval will be required for anything beyond that.

DOWNLOADS

Download PDF
Download Adobe Indesign File

Most houses look boring, these fascinating (albeit strange) designs are not. From the Piano-shaped home to Tunnelvision (above), you’ll find it here. Continue reading to see them all. Click here for first picture in gallery.

Piano

If you’re a music lover, then this life-sized piano (violin is elevator) house, located in China, is definitely a sight to see.

[Source]

Toilet

This interesting toilet-shaped house — located in Seoul, Korea — boasts two bedrooms and four deluxe toilets. At the flip of a switch, the toilet will “produce a mist to make users feel secure.”

[Source]

Tunnel

Dan Havel and Dean Ruck managed to turn convert an otherwise normal house into a work of art, basically a “funnel-like vortex running between the two that ends in a small hole in an adjacent courtyard.”

[Source]

Popmatik – Freelance web designer Rob Leach uses a unique layout for his portfolio site. The site uses a background image of a bottle and the content of the site appears to be on the label of the bottle.

Digitalmash.com – Digital Mash is the home of Australian web designer Rob Morris. What makes the layout unique is the background image of Rob holding the content of the page.

Melissahie.com – A portfolio site with a different twist, MelissaHie.com leads the visitor through a series of different sections of one page that include links to websites in a portfolio, a brief bio, and contact information. As you click on links, you will slide to a different section of the page.

Evanescenceuk.co.uk – The British website of American rock band Evanescence uses a horizontal layout and a navigational scheme similar to MelissaHie.com, where the visitor slides across the site when using the navigation rather than being taken to a separate page.

Sitotis.hr - The background image for Sitotis is a binder that contains the content of the page. Tabs in the binder are used for navigation.

Mussatto.com.br – Mussatto uses a long, horizontal layout that doesn’t require vertical scrolling as opposed to the standard, tall layout.

Basil Gloo – Web Developer Basil Gloo uses an interesting layout on his homepage that separates the page into a left and a right side. The left side contains his personal information and the right side his business information.

Danviv.net – The portfolio site of Dan Viveiros uses a unique layout and several images of cassette tapes.

CraigEarl.co.uk – Photographer Craig Earl uses a layout that features four tall and narrow images that link to different categories of photos in his portfolio: everyday, landscapes, bands, and people.

JeremyCowart.com – Another interesting photography portfolio site, JeremyCowart.com places all of the emphasis on the pictures by taking you straight to the photos in the portfolio. Rather than making you click a few links to get to the photos, they are right there, one on top of the other. What’s most unique is that to get to any content other than photos you can visit the contact, news, and project links.

Huge – This design company uses a large image on the left side of the homepage with the primary navigation and content in a narrow column on the right.

Interview Magazine – Another horizontal layout, Interview Magazine presents a different visual impression than other online magazines.

The Horizontal Way – As a gallery of horizontal websites, The Horizontal Way naturally uses a horizontal layout itself.

Swiths.com – This website uses a large background image of a wood floor and a guy’s feet. The content of the site is on a piece of paper and a notepad laying on the floor.

Davor van Eijk – The homepage of Davor van Eijk places navigation in the center of the page on an angle. The content of the page is in the lower right hand corner.

Ribbit.com – This layout features a large background image of a man sitting on the grass. The sky in the picture becomes the background of the page. The picture and how it interacts with the layout is really what give the page a unique feel.

BootB – This site uses a black background and some drawn clouds at the top of the page. The center of the page contains navigation in a circle that is part of an image of a hot air balloon that is about to float to the clouds.

Vesess – Vesess uses a simple header that includes navigation and then goes into an image right at the focal point of the page. If you scroll down you will see the use of a few columns for some basic information. While it is maybe not as different as many of the sites on this list it is still a break from the norm.

Dinulovic.com – The Dinulovic homepage contains no real content. It uses an image at the center of the layout with navigation on both sides.

StoryAbout.net – The homepage of Hansol Huh’s portfolio site uses a large image that says “Life is Random” in dots. Below the image is a link to the portfolio.

�1 eps&ai vector

download link
http://rapidshare.com/files/80519838/SS__7681579.rar

over 300 Walt Disney Cliparts in .wmf

http://rapidshare.com/files/7447203/disney_clipart.rar

Description:
DVD Cover & Label Template: for u to label and neatly package ur Christmas Holiday home-made films…
The template is easily customized using Photoshop…

DownLoad:

http://rapidshare.com/files/73384768/tmpl_dvd-cover_label-xmas01.rar