Mac OS X comes with great and powerful tools pre-installed. The scenario is simple: you have coded your app and designed a great logo for it. How you create the OS X icon for your app? The answer is: very easily.

• First of all open the logo in illustrator if it is .eps file or in photoshop if it is in psd format.
• Save the image as .png after resizing to around 512×512 pixels.

• Open Icon Composer (it is in your Developer>Applications>Utilities folder in your Macintosh HD drive. Drag and drop the png file you saved in Icon Composer window and select “copy to all smaller sizes”

• Save the image, giving it the name you want.

• Open IconDroplet (it is available for free here). Drop the icon in IconDroplet (or choose File>Choose File.

• The output icon is placed in the same folder with the image you dropped in IconDroplet.
• Double click the icon and see it in your Dock like a running app.

Recently I bought a Sony Vaio laptop that runs Microsoft Windows Vista. When I try to open the Vista sidebar I get an error window saying that “Windows Sidebar is managed by your system administrator”. Even when I tried to run the sidebar.exe (that launches the sidebar) as administrator, I was still getting the same error message. Googling around, I found the fix, which is very simple and requires basic skills of registry editing.

1. Click Start, type regedit.exe in the search field and press ENTER
2. Navigate to the following path:

   HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SOFTWARE \ Microsoft \ Windows \
   CurrentVersion \ Policies \ Windows \ Sidebar
   

3. In the right-pane, delete the value named TurnOffSidebar
4. Repeat the same in the following path (if there is a sidebar value there):

   HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ SOFTWARE \ Microsoft \ Windows \
   CurrentVersion \ Policies \ Windows \ Sidebar

5. Exit Registry Editor

Finally Windows Vista sidebar is up and running as it should from the very beginning!

On this guide you will learn how to create a Web Photo gallery (Flash or pure HTML) in 5 minutes using Adobe Bridge and Adobe Photoshop. No Flash knowledge is needed!

1. Create a folder on your computer and name it as you like (here you will store your final files that need to be uploaded to your web site).
2. Open Adobe Bridge and navigate to the folder that contains the pics you are going to use. Using control (for PCs) or command (for Macs) select the images you want.

   

3. Click on tools -> Create Metadata Template. Fill in the fields you want and click save.
4. After the Metadata info is saved, click on tools -> Photoshop -> Web Photo Gallery.
5. When Photoshop loads, an option window opens. Choose in the first field any style you like (in the demo I used Flash-Gallery 2), but there are many. Previews are shown on the right.
6. On the “use” field in source images select “Selected Images From Bridge”. Select “include all subfolders” if your photos are placed in many folders.
7. Fill the”destination” field with the folder you created in step 1.
8. In options tab, modify banner, colors and image sizes as you like.

   

9. In the security option tab you can write something that will appear over your pics, to inform visitors that they are copyrighted and to ensure that they will not be usable in case of copy.
10. After filling the option tabs click OK to create your Photo Gallery. If you want a soundtrack to play on the background, choose a .mp3 file, rename it as “useraudio”.mp3 and place it in the folder you created in step 1.
11. Upload the folder (yes the one you created in step 1 ) to your server, navigate there and enjoy!
12. If you want to check your gallery locally, open the index.html file.

Note that if you use audio soundtrack, it is preferable that the audio file will be small to ensure fast loading times. Click here to see the demo galley in action.

Here is a video edition of our Web 2.0 logo creation tutorial that you loved. Video is streamed via youtube as it is 8 mins long and would be hard for our bandwitch to have it stored in our host. The quality is not the best, but it will help you alongside with the original detailed post. Remeber to use XHTML validated code when embedding youtube videos in your site

Here is a second tutorial (here is the first one) for creating a Web 2.0 logo like the one above using Adobe Photoshop. Create a new Photoshop file (File>New). I made it in a 4500x4000px file with RGB color and 300dpi resolution, but you can do it in a smaller one.

1. Create the talk bubble shape using the custom shape tool (if you cannot see the shape in the dropdown menu from shape tool, click the arrow and choose talk bubble shapes). Double click your shape layer and apply Drop Shadow, Inner Shadow, Bevel and Emboss, Gradient Overlay and Stroke effects as shown in the screenshots below.

   

   

   

   

   

   

2. After applying the effects, right click on the shape layer and select duplicate layer. Click on the duplicated layer and click edit>transform>flip vertical. Place the flipped shape exaclty below the original one. This shape will be used as the reflection. Double click on the duplicated layer and disable drop shadow and bevel, emboss effect and stroke. Leave Inner Shadow effect as it is and choose the Gradient Overlay effect tab and apply the following settings in the gradient. Set the duplicated shape layer opacity to 30%.

   

   

3. Choose Type tool and type anything you like in the original shape. Double click the type layer and apply Drop Shadow, Inner Shadow, Bevel and Emboss, Gradient Overlay and Stroke as shown in the screenshots below.

   

   

   

   

   

4. If you want to create an “i” like the one in my logo choose the custom shape tool, choose symbols from the shape meny selections and place the “i” on your logo. Then apply the same effects as in step 3.
5. Create a new layer above all the others and select the eliptical marquee tool. Create an eclipse that covers half the original shape logo and half the duplicated one. Fill the eclipse with white color using the paint bucket tool and drop down the layer opacity to 20%.

   

Color codes are printed on the screenshots. Your logo is now ready

It is much easier to create a skype-looking logo than you imagine. Create a new file in Photoshop (File>New) and type anything you want using the type tool. Apply Bevel and Emboss, Color overlay and Stroke as you see them in the screenshots below and your logo is ready. Note that stroke size depends on image size, so put any px you need to have a result like mine (or something similar). Color codes are written in the screenshots.

Few days before, I wrote a tutorial on how you can build a web 2.0 logo with Adobe Photoshop. Here is another one for adding the reflection effect in a logo (like mine above) using Illustrator, which makes the reflection more flexible and easy to scale and manage. Open your logo in Adobe Illustrator and follow these steps:

1. Duplicate your image by pressing alt (command for Mac) and clicking it. Drag it down (pressing the “shift” key while dragging helps for keeping your image aligned) so it looks like the one below.

   

2. Select the original object and click object>lock>selection to lock it.
3. Select the duplicated object and click object>transfrom>reflect. Choose horizontal with 0 angle. Move the duplicated logo exaclty below the original one.
4. Select the rectangle tool and draw a rectagle that covers the reflected image like in the screenshot below (color does not matter).

   

5. Fill the rectagle with a white-to-black gradient, set angle to -90 and point color points like in the screenshot.

   

6. Select the gradient rectangle and the reflected image by pressing control+A (command+A for Mac) as the original object is locked and apply a transparency mask by clicking on the arrow in the upper right of the Transparency tab.

   

   

7. Drop down the transparency opacity to 40-50% to make the effect more realistic and your reflection is ready!

   

Note that making the reflection with Adobe Illustrator has nothing to do with the background color (like in Photoshop). Follow the same steps for applying it on dark backgrounds.

Here is an extensive tutorial on how you can create a great looking web 2.0 logo (like the one above that I created for the tutorial). Open Adobe Photoshop and create a new file (file>new): 4500×4000 pixels at 300dpi is a nice resolution to choose if you want your logo to be printable. It will be nice to choose this resolution also for this tutorial to have the same output with stroke points and other blending options that are affected by image size.

1. Choose the type tool and type anything you want in uppercase (I typed Typpz as you see ). Duplicate the layer (right click on the type layer you created>duplicate layer).
2. Choose the new Type Copy layer (in my case Typpz Copy as I typed Typpz) and right click>blending options.
3. Apply Drop Shadow, Inner Glow, Bevel and Emboss (with Contour), Gradient Overlay and Stroke with the setting you see in the screenshots below.

1. Select the eliptical Marquee Tool and draw an eclipse like the one below. Create a new layer and fill the eclipse with white color (#ffffff) using the paint bucket tool. Set the opacity for the white filled eclipse layer to 30%.
   
2. Choose the Type layer (not the copy one that you were working on in steps 2-3) and click edit>tranform>flip vertical.
3. Using the move tool or your keybord bring the fliped layer exactly below the type copy layer, so letter ends are touching each other like in my logo and then right click on type layer>blending options and apply the setting for gradient overlay and stroke as you see them in the screenshots below. Set the layer opacity to 40%.

1. Now lets create the beta drop. Choose the type tool and select the Windings font. Type shift+s and then right click on this layer (its name should be “S”)>blending options and apply drop shadow, gradient overlay and stroke as you see them below.

1. Choose type tool and type beta (or anything you want) and place the layer inside the drop as in my logo. Change the text color to white (#ffffff).
2. Select the Type layer (the typpz layer for my tutorial-not the copy one!) and select layer>arrange>bring to front.

Your logo is now ready. Here you can download the .psd source file (lower resolution than the one I used for the tutorial because the default file was huge) to see the result and help you build something similar. The colors I used for the logo are printed on the screenshots. Here is the second part of Web 2.0 logo creation tutorials.

UPDATE: Video guide for this tutorial is available.

There are many cases that you have to include large fotos in your site, but you do not want others to download them and use them. The easy way to protect your work is to write your name in front of the photo, so it cannot be used, but it does not look nice, does it? The more professional and nice-looking option is to build a watermark in your photos. Your work will look like the card from our store above. Let’s see how you can build this watermark with Adobe Photoshop (7 or later).

1. Open the photo that you want to put the watermark on and choose the custom shape tool.
2. From the option panel, choose the shape thumbnail and choose the Copyright symbol.
3. Create a new layer on top from the others and press d to choose black as the foreground color.
4. Draw the Copyright Symbol on your photo (with the custom shape tool) and place it where you want.
5. From Filter menu choose, Stylize>Emboss and apply the filter with Angle=135, Height=3 or 5 pixels and Amount=100% .
6. Click the lock transparent pixels in the layer palette.
7. Go to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur choose radius=3pixels and click ok to apply it.
8. Now choose the layer with the copyright symbol from the layer pallete and change the blending option from Normal to Hard light to make the watermark transparent (like above). Play with the opacity, so the watermark looks nice to your eyes.
9. Choose the Type tool, write what you want under the copyright logo and right click on the text layer>rasterize type.
10. Apply the same effects to the text layer (step 5 to 8)!