High Dynamic Range Photography In Photoshop CS3 - Step-By-Step HDR Tutorial

"In this tutorial we will take a look at HDR photography. HDRI (High Dynamic Range Imaging) was originally used in 3D and is now in full force in photography. Basically it's the process of taking multiple exposures and merging them together into a single 32 bit image. Read More and Try the Tutorial.

This Week's Tip: Find Your Inner Creative Rebel

As a creative, you’re a rebel by nature, but it’s easy to feel trapped under a boring, non-risqué cloud where it rains isolation and discouragement. iStock wants you to banish that stormy disposition with a furious hurricane of risk, creativity and exploration.

1. Take Risks – Rebels don’t follow rules, so start by admitting what habits you retreat to when you’re uninspired. Introduce alternatives to those habits, which will throw off your routine. Try a new cafe, change your haircut or leave your house more.

2. Invite Creativity – If you’re a photographer, take your camera somewhere unfamiliar. You never know what you’ll see on a trip to the dump or a walk through the neighbourhood on the other side of the train tracks (iStock’s HQ is on the other side of the tracks, for inspiration purposes, of course). If you’re more of an illustrator, take your sketchbook everywhere, from a garage sale to the aquarium, you just never know when inspiration might strike.

3. Seek Inspiration – Whose art baffles your mind or arrests your soul? Not sure? Well, now’s the time to find out. iStock’s Design Spotlight, Article of the Week and Artist of the Week are a good place to start. Branch out to the ultimate rock stars of your genre who you dream of one day competing with. Take a tutorial you've been avoiding.

4. Scrapbook it – No, not quite like your mother used to do. Gather artifacts like photos, ads, concert tickets, articles, lucky shoelaces or fabric samples. Whatever floats your boat and stirs your imagination.

5. Surround Yourself with Creativity – Pump up the volume on your stereo or iPod, rent that old Alfred Hitchcock flick or play a little music to get into that creative space.

5. Challenge Yourself – Test your skills in one of iStock's friendly competitions: Vector Challenge or Cage Match.

With creativity, those who add more risk and adventure will find more creative rewards. Now, go mix it up!

Uploading Files Using CGI and Perl

Would you like to give your visitors the ability to upload files to your site? Letting them upload content with their Web browsers can be very useful, and fun too! You can let them contribute pictures, sounds and other binary files to your site. And you can use a file upload facility on your own Website to update your site's content easily via your own Web browser. By Matt Doyle. Read More.

Clicking Submit to send the data to the server (click to view image)

Easy Rich Internet Applications With ColdFusion 8

The term Rich Internet Application (RIA) was coined by Macromedia (now Adobe) in 2002. An RIA is a web application -- it runs inside a web browser, but looks and feels more like a desktop application. Gartner analysts Mark Driver, Ray Valdes, and Gene Phifer describe RIAs as "the next evolution of the Web" (PDF, 56KB). By Scott StrozFigure. Read More.

2. A User Information window launches from the data grid (click to view image)

Portable Apps: A Mobile Office For A Desktop Computer

While portable applications have been available for quite some time, it was only recently that I realized how incredibly useful having a complete portable web development environment could be. The best part is that such an environment can be created quickly, easily and for free. All you need is a portable drive (I use a 4GB USB Flash drive, which you can pick up for under $30 these days) and a computer. By Joseph Ucuzoglu. Read More.
Figure 1: The PortableApps Suite (click to view image)