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It’s that time of year again where Tim Cook et al take to the stage in California (this time in the new Steve Jobs Theatre at the Apple Campus 2) to tell us about the new iPhone. We’ve seen two new iPhones announced in recent times, but this year we’ve been treated to three – the iPhone 8, iPhone 8 Plus and, most interestingly, the iPhone X (or ‘ten’). Availability and pricing We'll cut to the chase. The iPhone X is available for pre-order from 27th October, with the 64GB version costing a jaw-dropping £999. The 256GB version costs £1,149. The iPhone 8 is available for pre-order on 15th September and costs £699 for the 64GB version. The 8 Plus is available the same date and will set you back a pound less than £800. iPhone X: new design and tech Hit the image to read our sister site TechRadar's hands-on review of the iPhone X So let’s start with the iPhone X, then. Coming 10 years after the original iPhone, the iPhone X is the most radically different iPhone – in terms of design – ever. Gone is the Home button. There’s a very minimal bezel. And there’s a new edge-to-edge 5.8-inch ‘Super Retina Display’. The front and back of the iPhone X are glass – the most durable glass ever, according to Apple – joined together by stainless steel. Spec-wise, the OLED screen looks pretty impressive, with 2,436 x 1,125 dpi resolution at 448 ppi. It’s HDR, and features Apple’s True Tone technology to adapt the screen to your surroundings for viewing comfort. Screen aside, possibly the most interesting thing about the iPhone X is Face ID. The long and short of it is you can now unlock your iPhone with your face. It’s apparently pretty accurate, too – and the company has gone to great lengths to make sure it can’t be fooled by a photo of your good self. Oh, and you can also use it to create talking 3D animal emoji. If you like. The iPhone X is powered by Apple’s A11 Bionic chip – which no doubt enables you to perform super-human feats with your smartphone. It’s splash, water and dust resistant and, even though it’s got a whopping 5.8-inch screen, comes in at a very svelte 5.65 inches (h) x 2.79 (w) x 0.3 (d) and weighs just 174g. Oh, and there’s also wireless charging, thanks to the iPhone adopting the Qi standard. The iPhone X comes in space grey and silver in 64GB and 256GB configurations. iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus TechRadar are at the Apple EventThe iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus are much more familiar – with a similar form factor to their predecessors. The difference is there’s a new glass front and back design, with an ‘aerospace grade’ (who cares?) aluminium band. Like with the X, we recommend getting a case. The last glass-backed iPhone was the iPhone 4 – and this writer managed to drop and shatter his on day one. DAY ONE! Of course, glass tech has moved on since then – and like the iPhone X, Apple says the iPhone 8 features the most durable glass ever on a smartphone. The iPhone 8 comes in silver, space gray and gold, and like the iPhone X, in 64GB and 256GB models. Like the iPhone X, the iPhone 8 and 8 Plus are powerful smartphones, with 4.7- (1334 x 750 pixel at 326dpi) and 5.5-inch (1920 x 1080 pixel at 401ppi) screens respectively. The iPhone 8(s) also feature the same A11 Bionic chip, wireless charging and water resistance as the X. The cameras OK, let’s talk about the stuff you’re really interested in: how can the new iPhones up your Instagram game? Both the iPhone 8/8 Plus and iPhone X feature significantly upgraded cameras. And both feature some neat new portrait tools to make your shots better quality than ever. iPhone X camera Let’s talk about the iPhone X’s front camera first. This is the camera with facial recognition – and Apple is calling it, in true hyberbolic fashion, the TrueDepth Camera. This is the camera that scans your noggin to log you in. It’s also a 7MP snapper with a new Portrait Lighting feature (also found in the rear camera) enabling you to dynamically alter the lighting of your subject’s face as you shoot. So whereas Portrait Mode creates a depth map and separates your subject from the background, Portrait Lighting analyses the lighting on your subject’s face and enables you to flick between presets – not filters – as you shoot. These include Natural Light, which puts your subject’s face in sharp focus against a blurred background; Studio Light, which gives you a clean look with your subject’s face brightly lit; Contour Light – giving you dramatic highlights and lowlights; Stage Light – your subject’s face spotlit against a black background; and Stage Light Mono – like stage but in black-and-white. Turn the smartphone over and you’ll see a vertical 12MP dual-camera setup – like the iPhone 7 and 8 there’s a Wide-angle and Telephoto lens for optical zoom within the Camera app. There’s dual optical image stabilisation here, as well. In terms of video, you can record 4K at 24, 30 or 60fps and 1080p footage at 30 or 60fps. And of course it supports the new Portrait features. There’s also a new Slow Sync flash for better uniformity in low-light, more filters and Apple’s new image signal processor, which detects elements in a scene, such as people, motion and lighting, and promises to optimise your photos according to the subject matter. iPhone 8 / iPhone 8 Plus camera Image courtesy of TechRadar The iPhone 8 doesn’t feature the new Portrait Lighting option – as it doesn’t have a dual camera setup. The 8 Plus does, on the rear camera only. Aside from this, camera specs in the 8 and 8 Plus are pretty much the same as the X as far as we can tell. ARkit: what you need to know During the unveiling of the iPhone 8/Plus and X we saw a demo of some pretty cool AR games. Developers will be able to take advantage of the faster A11 Bionic chip, the three-core GPU and enhanced camera to create some amazing augmented reality experiences. It’s going to be fascinating to see what games devs do with the new power of the iPhone 8 and X – so watch this space. Related articles: The 30 best iPhone apps for designers 9 iPad Pro apps that make the most of Apple Pencil iOS 11 preview for designers: release date, news and specs View the full article

Microsoft fixes 25 critical vulnerabilities including one zero day under attack and one tied to the high-profile BlueBorne attack vector. View the full article

Adobe fixed eight vulnerabilities across three products, Flash Player, RoboHelp for Windows, and ColdFusion, as part of its September Patch Tuesday updates. View the full article

https://blog.cpanel.com/keep-email-abuse-off-your-machines/ … View the full article

http://thehackernews.com/2017/09/blueborne-bluetooth-hacking.html … View the full article

Researchers warned Monday of two remote code execution vulnerabilities in FreeXL that could let an attacker execute code with local user privileges. View the full article

https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2017/09/12/why-are-redditors-ripping-images-from-instagram-because-they-can/ … View the full article

Internet sensation and IFX favourite Lois van Baarle, aka Loish, has launched a brand new Kickstarter project. Her new fan-funded book, The Sketchbook of Loish, allows you to delve into her personal sketchbook and see first-hand how she brings her iconic works to life. Check out Loish's new Kickstarter pageLoish has worked as a concept artist and illustrator for the likes of Lego and Coca Cola and her unique designs and self-styled career pathway has proven a major influence on the digital artist community. Loish has worked as a concept artist for global giant, Coca ColaLast time the visual virtuoso launched a book on Kickstarter, she surpassed her target by hundreds of thousands of pounds and has since become one of the most followed artists on social media. Loish revealed via her official Facebook page: “There will be a limited number of signed copies and prints, as well as special prizes and stretch goals. These ran out very fast during my previous campaign!” The campaign goes live today, so if you want to be in for a chance to win any of her exclusives, head over to Kickstarter and get backing her without a moments notice! Related articles: Adobe launches revealing video series by artists Cult YouTube illustrator launches exciting Kickstarter 5 Kickstarter projects worth watching View the full article

Mobile painting app Procreate is quickly becoming the go-to digital sketchpad for both professional and hobbyist designers and artists. That's why we've curated this selection of the best free Procreate brushes – as well as the best premium options – for you to bookmark. Review: Procreate 3.2Winner of the 2013 Apple design award and ImagineFX Editors Choice, Procreate is more than just a quick drawing tool. The iPad app transforms your iPad into a drawing tablet capable of the level of artwork previously only possible on a desktop or expensive graphics tablet dedicated to digital design. There's an unlimited library of brushes available, meaning you can have every style and stoke available at your fingertips. So which ones do you want? Read on for our pick of the best downloadable Procreate brushes to add to your collection… 01. Petra's Procreate Brush Box Vol. 1: Handlettering Price: Free Petra (StudioBurg)’s collection is an essential package, offering a selection of brushes that should suit most basic illustration and graphic design needs. She covers various pen and pencil styles as well as paint brushes, making it easy to pick your desired signature. O2. Ian Bernard's Flat Brushes Price: $5 We all have that favourite brush used time and time again for lettering, and this particular collection is directly inspired by artist Ian Bernard’s old faithful. The brushes are varied from solid to textured to give you plenty of variation for your own work. 03. The Will (Elder) Comic Ink Brush Set Price: Free Perfect for those budding comic illustrators out there. Georg’s tribute to American comic book illustrator Will Elder, who helped launch MAD comics back in the 50’s includes both inking brushes and SFX additions. The perfect addition to any illustrators Procreate repertoire. 04. Pencil and Charcoal Procreate Brushes Price: $6.46 Swiss designer Kim (aka MiksKS) has a whole host of brilliant brushes to offer. Her pencil and charcoal collection make it easy to sketch on the go, with clients or just capture a moment in a coffee shop without wasting paper. 05. Dearest Dotty Price: Free Designer, Missy Meyer has a plethora of free Procreate brushes available on her website that are all brilliant for creating graphic script. The great thing about Dearest Dotty is it’s versatility and the unique retro vibe it helps give off when used for hand lettering. 06. Flora: Vegetation brushes Price: Free Matthew Baldwin’s vegetation brush set makes light work for concept artists. Set the scene instantly and master that painterly effect digitally. Baldwin has captured every style of stroke seen by the concept masters. 07. Lisa Bardot’s Gouache brushes Price: $14.40 Bardot has a few brush packs available on her site but her gouache one is particularly unique. Emulate the classic Disney illustrative magic of Mary Blair digitally, and add depth and personality to your graphic design caricatures. 08. Summit Avenue’s Shimmer and Confetti Price: $16.80 Designing event flyers? Wedding invites? Summit Avenue have got you covered with a set of 12 confetti brushes and 24 foil and glitter textures to add a touch of sparkle to your designs. 09. Procreate Paint Box Price: $14.40 Ben Lew’s paint box has a brilliant selection of brushes, from wet pencil to bristly and his go-to watercolour brush, “gwosh”. Lew has now updated the set with his 4 pastel brushes from his “Pastellesque” set. 10. Nitty Gritty Price: $3.60 Jamie Bartlett’s Nitty Gritty texture brushes are brilliant for adding fine grit texture and an instant ageing effect to your designs. 11. Bistro Marker Price: Free As you can see from her Instagram, Leftyscript’s brushes can create some truly beautiful hand lettering designs that speak for themselves – no further illustration needed! Her bistro marker is a brilliant freebie pen that allows you to capture a hand-written signage type-face perfectly. 12. Vintage Engraving Price: $7.20 Another MilksKS brush set, this one allows you to capture the look of a black and white engraving, adding that extra special touch to your illustrations or design project. Combine a few for a classic crosshatching effect, and pick from a worn-out or clean cut style. 13. Hand Drawn Ornaments Price: $19 Calligraphy artist, Nicole Mauloni’s Hand Drawn Ornaments Procreate Brush Kit includes over 100 brushes to adorn digital calligraphy. Perfect for creating a design stamp with flourishes, shapes and motifs. 14. iPad Lettering Set Price: Free Get back to basics with this freebie set of three essential brushes: original calligraphy, rough edge calligraphy and round edge calligraphy. Sometimes simplicity is beautiful. 15. Rad & Happy Price: Free Rad & Happy founder, Tara, often gets asked what brushes she uses for her designs, the answer? These. And she’s made them downloadable, completely free of charge! Next page: 15 more awesome brushes and brush packs to download to your Procreate app 16. Studio FabianFischer’s Brush 1 Price: $1.19 Fischer created this brush out of a LYRA tip and has edited it into a fully functional, pressure sensitive Procreate brush. Create realistic hand drawn lettering with ease! 17. Thin Ink Price: $3 (AUS) Sasha Hickson, aka Peachface’s ‘Thin Ink’, is a popular brush for making quirky and modern designs. Easily replicate delicate thick and thin strokes and quickly add those feminine flourishes to your designs. 18. Monoline Price: $3 Designer at Hewitt Avenue, Sarah, makes all the brushes she uses for her own designs available to download. Her Monoline brush is a versatile addition to your brush collection and perfect for the newbie letterer. 19. Chalk Letterer Box Price: $12 Forget the dusty hands, Guerilla Craft’s brush set lets you create your chalked masterpieces on the comfort of your own clean, digital iPad. With a selection of wet chalk, smudge chalk, round chalk, flat chalk, gritty chalk and more, you’ll be hard pressed to find a better selection. 20. Dry Marker Price: $15 Everyone loves the effortless scribe of a dry marker and Bec Ralec’s (aka Pixelcolours) collection of add on brushes gives you 15 different marker pens to choose from. Ralec has also kindly included an original calligraphy brush for all your graphic needs! 21. Fat Ink Price: $3.60 Thin ink is great and all, but what about when you need that fat, bold brush to really make your lettering stand out? Sarahtypes has you covered with her super smooth brush, giving you an extreme contrast between thick and thin strokes. 22. Midcentury Illustrators Kit Price: $14.40 Go full-on retro with Lisa Bardot’s latest premium brush kit, designed to help you master that quirky 60s graphic, texture rich commercial design style with ease. 23. Matty B’s Hatch Effects Price: Free Another fantastic free brush pack from MattyB, perfect for the budding or professional illustrator. Lines, dots, scribbles, marks, you name it – it’s in the pack! 24. Lettering Brush Pack Price: $18 Ryan Hamrick’s selection of 14 custom Procreate lettering brushes allows you to produce high-end, professional lettering work on your iPad. A Beautiful selection of his own favourite brushes, there’s little you can’t do with this pack. 25. Nikko’s Brushes Price: Free Well respected Procreate digital artist, Nikolai Lockertsen, has made his own five favourite custom brushes available to download. Just check out his site to see what he had achieved with this small set of tools, it’s nothing short of phenomenal. 26. Blackletter Price: $8 Created by Boston-based calligraphy artist, Jake Rainis; the artist says he’s downloaded almost every set on the market to see what works and what doesn’t in order to produce this, his own extensive brush set. 27. The Parchment Pen Price: $3 This pressure sensitive brush mimics the look of an Eighteenth Century quill, making it perfect for calligraphy but also great for black and grey line drawings. 28. Whiskers Price: Free The Inky Hand’s Whiskers brush is a fantastic little brush, perfect for creating a unique hand-drawn, scratchy effect. Great for rough sketches and adding a touch of originality to your images. 29. Dizzy Tara’s Sketch and Ink Price: $2 A fantastic little package of inky brushes to use while sketching. DizzyTara’s 9 brushes include a variety of shaped ink pens and a board marking brush. 30. Watercolor Brushes Price: $21.60 A very comprehensive set from graphic designer, PicByKate, allowing you to master the watercolour effect in digital format. Unfortunately this collection only works in Procreate 3 and earlier, but the artist is updating it for Procreate 4 soon. Related articles: Review: Procreate 3.2 9 iPad Pro apps that make the most of Apple Pencil 6 best digital art tools of 2017 so far View the full article

You're reading Adobe’s Photoshop Has New Tool for Drawing Curves, originally posted on Designmodo. If you've enjoyed this post, be sure to follow on Twitter, Facebook, Google+! Photoshop is probably the most popular tool when it comes to retouching images or photographs. It’s also a good package for a lot of other tasks. Drawing curves, however, is not a strong point. If you have an Adobe subscription, the latest Photoshop update has a few goodies in the pipeline, including the “curvature pen” […] View the full article

Icons are a critical element of UI design and as important a part of your web project as web fonts, but creating custom icons for each project is rarely practical as it's so time-consuming. On the other hand, finding those hidden treasures in a pool of tens of thousands of free icons also takes time. That's why we've stepped in to help out – we've picked out a great selection of free icons, and hopefully you'll find at least a few sets that you can put to good use in your own projects, whether personal or commercial. 85 brilliant Photoshop tutorials01. 30 isometric icons These isometric beauties aren't just for accountantsThis set of 30 isometric icons has been created with the accounting industry in mind, but there are some fab pieces in there that could easily be turned towards more general use if you're so inclined. 02. iconmonstr You can easily download free icons at iconmonstrThe iconmonstr website is a great place to find black and white vector icons. They’re available in various sizes, and you can download them either in .PNG or .SVG format. 03. Find Icons Find icons at Find Icons - it doesn't get simpler than thatFind Icons helps you track down everything from flat black and white icons to colourful 3D icons. Uncover what you're looking for by searching by colour, background colour and even style. 04. Icon Archive Icon Archive's rating system will help you decide which free icons to downloadAt Icon Archive you'll have to sort the wheat from the chaff to a certain extent, but you are able to sort icons by colour, background colour, size, style and category, and download PNGs in four different sizes. 05. Icon Gallery Icon Gallery is literally a gallery of great free icons. Hence the nameIcon Gallery offers you with a simpler filter option to help you find the icons you're looking for. Icons are available in several sizes to download in .PNG or .ICO. 06. The Noun Project The Noun Project offer free icons devoted to a similar aestheticGaining more and more traction and use, the aim of The Noun Project is to provide free icons that all have a similar and consistent aesthetic. It’s like a 'free icon set' that's been juiced up with a search area, a beautiful UI, and some fantastic icon designs. 100 amazing Adobe Illustrator tutorials07. IconToucan IconToucan enables you to drag, drop, and download whatever free icons you likeThe primary benefit of IconToucan is convenience. The site enables you to quickly view the transparent, PNG icons and then drag and drop them into a drawer on the right side of the page. Appearing underneath is a list of those icons you’ve chosen and with a single click you can download all the free icons you've selected at once in a ZIP archive file. 08. Minicons Minicons provides 210 free icons for web design and wireframes to choose fromMinicons offers a clean set of 210, vector-based free icons with a few hidden gems. You can download all of them in a single click, and they're are free for both personal and commercial use. If you’re feeling frisky, you can open the wallet and pay $59 for the complete package of 1,500 vector icons. 09. Fontello Create your own webfonts of icons with this easy composerThis site lets you create your own free webfonts of icons. You basically select the 'glyphs' of icons you want in your font from a few different (really nice) collections. You can change the pixel sizes, customise the file names, and download your webfont bundle. Everything is generated on through the site and ready for publishing on yours. 10. Socialico Socialico offers a package of 74 free icons for social media useSocial media is everywhere these days, and the number and variety of social-based sites is increasing all the time. Every website designer seems to have the need for some good social media icons, and this collection provides some of the more common ones (Facebook and Twitter) to more niche ones (Dribbble and deviantART). The free icons come as a font, with the icons both in a circle holding shape and without a circle. Next: 10 more free icon sets 11. Modern Pictograms Modern Pictograms comes with a selection of free iconsAn OpenType font for download, this free offering provides an attractive selection of free icons. The designs were created with simplicity and competence from the folks at The Design Office and is available on the popular free fontssite, Font Squirrel. (The icons apparently look good intermingled with Helvetica.) 12. FlatIcon FlatIcon has over 184,000 icons on offerIf you need lots and lots of flat icons, then this project by FreePik will sort you right out, featuring 2,979 icon packs for free, adding up to over 184,000 free icons for both personal and commercial use. 13. Free vector icons: Retro Volume 1 Get retro with this icon set, and don't forget to grab Volume 2This set of 120 vector icons by Vietnamese designer Min Tran presses all the right retro buttons. If you want more you can find Volume 2 right here, and there are plenty more icons to be found on his Dribbble page. 14. Free UXPin icon set UXPin's free icon set is ideal for building UI prototypesUXPin's a collaborative wireframing app that's perfect for building prototypes quickly and easily, and to help out with the process the UXPin team has made this beautiful and diverse suite of over 80 icons, designed for web and mobile UI design, available to use for free. 15. Icons8 Icons8 is a comprehensive collection of 19,700 free flat iconsPromising any icon in any format, size and colour in 20 seconds, Icons8 is a comprehensive collection of 19,700 free flat icons. With categories business, clothing, food and more, Icons8 lets users download icons as both a Mac App or ZIP file. 16. Freepik Freepik's shaded vector icons are perfect for businesses and independent projectsThis vibrant collection of shaded vector icons from graphic resource Freepik is just one of the many sets they've curated. Perfect for businesses and independent projects, these icons are free for both personal and commercial use. Each set can be downloaded in an .AI, .EPS and .SVG format. 17. Iconfinder These black and white icons mix functionality with emotive ideas.Rendered in simple black and white, this set of crisp vector icons mix functionality with emotive ideas. Besides standard icons for security and messaging, such as padlocks and envelopes, this collection from Iconfinder also features hearts and eyes to give your designs that personal touch. 18. Modern UI Icons Over 1000 handcrafted flat icons for Windows, Android or iOSHere's another fantastic free resource if you're looking for modern UI style icons for your Windows, Android or iOS app. Download the pack and you'll get over 1000 handcrafted flat icons including app bar icons for Windows phone. 19. 350 pixel perfect icons These pixel perfect icons are perfect for apps and websitesAn awesome set of 350 pixel perfect icons that are perfect for apps and websites. You can use then for both personal and commercial use and scale them to any size you need. 20. 80 mini icons Need something tiny? These mini icons are small but perfectly formedFeaturing 80 pixel perfect mini icons available in both PSD and Icon Font format. These clean and elegant icons are perfect for any project. Next: another 10 free icon sets 21. Simple and practical web icon vector graphic This is a great mix of eye-catching and useful iconsA variety of extremely useful icons that can be used for both personal and commercial projects. 22. Free flat icons How much more flat could these be? None. None more flat.Fantastic set of flat designed icons that feature icons for calendars, emails, clocks, maps and more. 23. Mono icons This minimal set features 108 unique icon designsA beautiful, minimal set which includes 108 unique icon designs that are available as a PNG at 32x32px that you can customise as you see fit. 24. Metrize icons Here's a free collection of 300 metro-style icons for apps or web projectsHere's fantastic resource for designers and developers - a free collection of 300 metro-style icons that you could use for your apps or web projects. They're all free to use in both personal and commercial projects and the download includes not only the PSD, SVG, ESP and AI but also the web font. 25. Chunky Pika Icon Set Go Dutch with these chunky iconsCheck out this Pika-style vector icons released by the Dutch designers at Dutch Icon. The set includes 42 chunky pixel-perfect icons that you can use for your next personal or client project. 26. 44 Shades of Free Icons 44 minimal icons, no messingNeed some simple icons for your next client project? Here's a set of 44 icons you can use. They're in a PSD format, enabling you to easily edit and adapt them. 27. Token icon set These icons come in all the sizes and in light and dark variantsToken includes 128 unique icon designs, available as an ICO bundling of 16x16px, 32x32px and 256x256px icons, or as a PNG at 128x128px. Each icon has both dark and light variants, and comes along with a PSD which includes the layer styles for each resolution. 28. Flat icons (PSD) Last lot of flat icons not flat enough for you? Try these instead.Colourful flat icon set that you can download in a PSD format, allowing you to change colours and adapt each icon so it integrates perfectly into your new project. Check them out. 29. Free 32px icons set This set includes just about every icon you require on your new siteHere's a complete icon set that includes just about every icon you require on your new site. Starting from Skype, Facebook and Twitter icons to RSS, coffee, like/unlike and many more. 30. 48 flat designer icons Icons don't get any flatter than thisIf you're a fan of minimalism then this icon set might be perfect for you. It consists of 48 free icons for office, social and travel, all supplied in AI and PNG formats, fully scalable and in full colour and monochrome coral. Next: our final six free icon sets 31. Plex icons set Over 100 icons, covering pretty much all your needsThis set includes over 100 icons for calendars, antivirus, clocks, email, Microsoft Office applications, social media networks and more. Check it out! 32. Vectory mini free This set of over 1000 icons is great for when you're designing a new siteVectory is a huge collection of more than 1000 icons created by Icojam, all in PNG format. Great for when you're designing a new site as you can use them freely for both personal and commercial projects. 33. Eldorado mini free So is this little lotYet another large collection of mini icons from Icojam with over 1200 40×40 pixel icons that you can use on your site or on client sites. Free to use for both personal and commercial projects. 34. 2600 Flag Icon Set Never find yourself stuck for the right flag icon ever againThis epic set contains 2,600 flags in several sizes along with 2 variants – flat and glossy. 35. Social icons These monochrome social icons are designed with simplicity in mindFeaturing 150 monochrome social icons designed with simplicity in mind, this set consists of a variety of fully scalable icons provided in AI, EPS, PNG and SVG formats. They are completely free to use in both personal and commercial projects. 36. Free Furry Cushions Social Icons Set Pimp your furry site with these fluffy delightsGot a furry site? Then these furry social media icons will be perfect for your site. Download the six icons for free and use them in your projects without any restrictions. Related articles: 33 stunning iOS app icon designs Create product icons in Illustrator How to create an app icon in Illustrator View the full article

Bluetooth attack vector, dubbed ‘BlueBorne’, leaves billions of smart Bluetooth devices open to attack including Android and Apple phones and millions more Linux-based smart devices. View the full article

Owners of Apple devices rush to update their iPhones and iPads as soon as a new version of iOS is available. You can be ready to launch your apps alongside the update by learning how to develop for Apple's mobile platform with the Complete iOS 11 Developer Course. Grab it now and start building your developer career – plus save an additional 11% when you use the coupon code IOS11 at checkout! Every version of iOS brings new and game-changing features that developers love to put to use. iOS 11 will be no different, and you can ready yourself to make the most of the update by grabbing the Complete iOS 11 Developer Course. In addition to preparing you for the latest version of iOS, you can also brush up the fundamentals of the operating system with the iOS Mastery Bundle, a collection of courses that will lay the foundation for building on Apple's platforms. You can get the Complete iOS 11 Developer Course and iOS Mastery Bundle on sale now for 97% off the retail price. This pre-sale will give you access to the iOS 11 course as soon as it's available, and immediate access to the iOS Mastery Bundle. Plus, you can take another 11% off when you use the coupon code IOS11 at checkout! View the full article

Animation on the web is here to stay. From the subtle movements that help bring our UI design to life, to fully animated Canvas experiences and WebGL experiments that are challenging what we once thought was possible in the browser. While the creativity of devs and the capabilities of browsers are increasing, animation on the web has long been a poor relation to video – something that the motion graphics community has approached with caution for years. Developers have relied on libraries such as GreenSock and Snap.svg to do the heavy lifting in reproducing animation through JavaScript. While these tools have given a lot of flexibility, they can't compare to the precision and subtlety of animation that can be achieved using After Effects' own timeline and easing graphs. From a web perspective, After Effects is very well suited to tweaking and trying out motion before committing it to code. Bodymovin: the magical 'render for web' feature Adobe forgotEnter Bodymovin, a groundbreaking extension for Adobe After Effects that exports animation directly from After Effects to JavaScript to be shown and manipulated in the browser. Created by Hernan Torrisi, Bodymovin removes many of the barriers between animator and developer. At its base level, the plugin acts as the magical 'render for web' feature Adobe forgot. At its most advanced it opens up new possibilities for interactive animation. Bodymovin is a link in the chain of new tools, plugins and systems rising to meet some of these new possibilities. Airbnb's Lottie and Facebook's Keyframes both build on these foundations – and they are finally bringing the most powerful animation tool to the web. Why use Bodymovin? SVG has taken over the internet and brought with it the expectation that everything should be high quality, light and scalable. Bodymovin renders everything in your composition to beautifully crisp SVG that keeps its vector quality at any size. No more compromising to lighten up that GIF or forcing your users to load bloated video files. As well as simplifying the process of exporting your animations, Bodymovin opens up way more potential for developers to get creative with new interactive experiences. Check out CodePen for some of the fantastic ways the extension has been used – from interactive IK rigs to animate-as-you-type interactive text. Everything is rendered to a web-friendly SVG that's both crisp and lightExported animation can be manipulated in the browser like any other element, enabling us to think of animation as an interactive and experimental tool within web design. And now because of Bodymovin, bringing your animations to the web has never been easier. In this tutorial you'll learn how to export an animation from After Effects and create a simple looping animation that responds to the user's click. How to prepare your After Effects files Support for After Effects features has improved greatly over the last year and you can expect to get pretty good results straight out of the box. That being said, your fancy flying 3D layers won't play nice so be aware of the limits before you get started. Before you begin a project – always download the latest version of Bodymovin and check the GitHub page to see which features are currently supported. Don't be too hasty to move onto the fun part… tidy files make a tidy mind. In this case they'll also help take some of the extra work away from the browser and give you silky smooth playback. Firstly, you'll want to make sure that your content is in After Effects shape layers for full vector power. To convert any Illustrator file to shape layers you can simply right-click and choose Create Shapes from Vector Layer. Any layers that aren't shapes at this stage will then be converted into images and they won't be rendered as vectors. Next, have a check through your layers and sublayers; there's a good chance you can simplify the contents of the shape without sacrificing anything. Try to cut down the number of groups, paths and fills to just the bare essentials. Take care with masks Masks are an easy way to slip up at this stage. Be aware that alpha masks will work with the SVG renderer but won't show up should you choose to switch to Canvas. Masks can be expensive in performance so use them efficiently. Rendering Bodymovin works in two parts – an After Effects extension that converts animation data to a JSON file and a Bodymovin.js player to include in your webpage that can interpret this file and render it in the browser. Think your files are good to go? Open up the Bodymovin extension through Window > Extensions and then Bodymovin. Once you hit refresh, you'll see a list of all the compositions in this After Effects project. Select your chosen comp and then pick a destination folder inside of your web project. When you're happy just click render and watch the magic happen. When it's done you'll get a 'finished' message. Congratulations! You've just exported a JSON file with all the information that the player needs to re-create the animation. Check your layers – it could be an unsupported feature or an expression used in After EffectsTo test your newly exported animation, click on Preview > Current Renders and remember to scrub through the timeline as you might spot something that looks a little different to what you'd expect. If you do spot any problems jump back and check your layers – it could be an unsupported feature or an expression used in After Effects. Some After Effects plugins such as Rubberhose now support Bodymovin. Rubberhose makes use of guide layers and hidden layers. To activate these, just click on the settings cog next to your chosen composition and tick the features you need. If everything looks good, there's just one more thing you need to do before you leave After Effects behind. At this stage you should have a fresh data.json file describing your animation, but no Bodymovin player to interpret it. In the extension, click the 'Get the player' button in the top right and save it with your JSON file. Load the animation Now you have everything you need, let's jump straight into the code and lay down the basics to get your animation showing on the page. First make a new container #anim_container to hold your animation. You also need to include the bodymovin.js file before the closing body tag. Next tell Bodymovin everything about your animation and load it into the new container. Let's walk through the setup step by step: You need to define all of the parameters for the animation. Tell Bodymovin the container you want the animation to load into and then tell it to render the animation as SVG elements. Next, tell the animation to play as soon as it's loaded and that you want it to loop back to the start when it's finished. The path property tells the Bodymovin player where to find the JSON data file for the animation. Due to the cross-origin resource sharing policy (CORS), the technique you'll be using for accessing the JSON file will only work if you are on a server or local server. To work locally, you can make that data.json into a JavaScript file that assigns the object to a variable. In that case your setup might look like this: Refresh the page and your animation should be playing inside the container! Select with your dev tools and you'll see that each element in the animation is now contained in <g> tags, and is being transformed in real-time. Looks amazing right? You should now have a beautiful, crisp animation showing in the browser (without a wretched video tag in sight…). The animation will always scale to fit its container, so go ahead and blow it up! Bodymovin has a range of powerful methods for controlling the animation after it has loaded. Calling a method like anim.pause() or anim.setDirection() will enable you to manipulate playback in different ways. Let's look at some examples: anim.setDirection(-1) will play the animation in reverse anim.pause() and anim.play() will start and stop the animation anim.setSpeed(0.5) will play the animation at half speed Add interaction In this next step you'll explore a few of the different ways to add interaction to your animations through JavaScript. In this example we export an After Effects animation with two sections: section A and section B. Section A uses frames from one to 20 (triangle is holding its pogo stick) section B uses frames from 20 to 40 (triangle is jumping up and down on a pogo stick). Now, you want to play section a on a loop then (only after the user clicks) play and loop section B. You can make use of the playSegments property to split animations up in this way. This method will take two arguments – an array with start and end values and a second Boolean – isFrame. Setting this to true will tell the animation to read the start and end values as frames, whereas false will tell it to read these values as time. Adding this tells Bodymovin to pause at the first frame and play just the animation from 0 to 20 frames. As you set up your animation with a loop: true property this will continue to play Section A again and again. Let's set up the whole example. You'll be using two segments of an animation for this example, so you'll create two functions: Way to go! Now your animation will keep looping until the user clicks on it, then it will start the second loop. The only problem now is that a jump like this is very abrupt and it can ruin the smoothness of the animation. An ideal situation is to include a third section to the animation, one that transitions from holding the pogo stick to jumping on it. Now your structure will look something like this: firstLoop – frame 0 to 20 transition – frame 20 to 30 secondLoop – frame 30 to 50 We want your animation to stay in the first loop until it's clicked. At that point you will want to wait for the end of the loop you are currently in and move onto the transition. After the transition is done move to your second loop. This sounds complicated but stay with me! Here's your code in full: On click, you're using a loopComplete listener to wait until you reach the last frame of the loop, then run your transition() function. Here you remove the last listener, play the next set of frames and then do the same again. After the transition is finished it will call secondLoop(). That's it! You've worked with a few of the features of Bodymovin today, but if you're interested in learning more about the plugin, you can find a load of information on the Bodymovin GitHub page. For more examples, check out the ever-impressive Bodymovin CodePen collection. Hopefully this tutorial will have given you an idea of the different kinds of ways that you can combine the use of After Effects and Bodymovin to produce some supercool animation for the web! A separate section for each part of the animationYou can now set up animation to be exported for the web, bring your exported files into the browser and make your animation responsive to click. Think beyond the MP4 files that you were previously utilising and look to Bodymovin for creating much richer web experiences in the future. Being able to involve animators closely in the development process is becoming more and more important, and the field of web animation is moving incredibly fast. With an ever-growing collection of new extensions, plugins and frameworks, animators and developers can expect this process to get easier and better over time. I for one can't wait to see what the future holds. This article originally appeared in net magazine issue 295. Buy it here. Read more: 5 steps for mastering web animation A beginner's guide to designing interface animations Create storyboards for web animations View the full article

“It’s great to create,” said doodleman Jon Burgerman at a recent talk at thread, a series of creative talks in Bristol run by the folk at Fiasco Design. If that’s not enough to convince you, he gave five reasons why creating is so good: It’s fun It opens up new ideas It exercises our brains It makes us happy Sharing is caring But how should you go about the creative process? Where do you start? For Burgerman, creativity isn’t about making elaborate plans or thinking ideas through before putting pen to paper. "If you don't have a plan, then you can't go wrong,” he said. “Throw away your map, and then you'll just be there." Start experimenting To create his bright and fun characters, Burgerman just starts, and finds out what he’s going to draw as he goes about drawing it. “Doodling is thinking and making at the same time,” he said. He also doesn’t believe that you need a lot of tools for creativity, and states that once you strip back all the things you think you need to create, all you’re really left with is the need for restrictions and time. “That’s why so many rich people make bad stuff, because they’ve got no restrictions,” he laughed. Imagination is also important. "Allow your imagination to be your raw material,” he advised. “It's not about what tech you have." Don’t be too precious Talking the audience through his range of quirky jokes, experiments with Photoshop and Instagram stories, Burgerman reminded attendees that once you put something out there, you don’t know how it’ll be received or what you’ll end up doing with it. “What starts as a gag becomes a little collection,” he said, talking about a series where he put his image next to those of celebrities, lined up as if he was part of the photo. “I put them online and didn’t think much of it and then it started to get picked up a lot. Once you start making something, it can take on a life of its own.” #jonsfamousfriends took off on Instagram And of course, what’s popular in one place may not be popular elsewhere, as he found when he drew doodles over images of people on the subway in South Korea. He received a lot of comments saying that taking pictures of the public was illegal, which only served to impose another restriction on him and make him come up with new ways to do his project. “You make one thing in one place and then you take it to a different place and it can be reinterpreted,” he said. In recent years, Burgerman has been experimenting more with animationBurgerman uses Instagram a lot. “It’s like a digital sketchbook that anyone can look at it.” He finds that Instagram Stories are particularly good, “because they’re just you experimenting, and a day later they’re gone. They teach you not to be too precious,” he said. And Burgerman is proof that seemingly small experiments can lead to big achievements. His “stupid pointless stories” have even made it to the Tate Modern. Keep adapting your work Burgerman has been a freelancer for 16 years now, and describes every day that he’s not doing “a proper job,” as a good day. But he also knows that developing and changing your ideas is key to survival in an ever-changing world. “To be freelance, you’ve got to grow and develop,” he said. “Move with the times: some things are popular for a while, and then they’re not.” New opportunities are constantly arising for Burgerman, who has recently been asked to ‘Instagram Story’ an event. “If you keep changing what you’re doing, you can invent new ways to make a living,” he said. So keep on experimenting, and putting your work out there, and perhaps one day you’ll be paid to doodle over people’s heads. thread is a series of creative events. The thread team are also organising new festival Something Good, which takes place on 6-7 October in Bristol. Tickets are available now from www.somethinggoodbristol.com. Read more: 20 top character design tips 5 key trends in character design 18 illustrators to follow on Instagram View the full article

Getting web performance right isn't easy; typically designers will want the best-looking site packing all the latest tricks, while developers are focused on ensuring that everything performs well, and it's hard to find an effective compromise. You can learn some great ways of balancing looks and performance at Generate London next week, on 21 September, where Patrick Hamann will share how to create a faster, more resilient experience for our users. If web performance matters to you, book your ticket now. And to further boost your knowledge, we asked Patrick and six other experts how they approach web performance. Read on and learn. 01. Create a culture of performance "I help people and organisations understand that performance isn't just a technical best practice, but rather an essential design principle," says Brad Frost. "Everyone needs to prioritise performance in their workflow, from business owners to managers, designers and developers. While establishing a culture of performance is much harder than applying clever developer techniques, it's a much more worthwhile endeavour that pays dividends in the long run." 02. Set a performance baseline You can't optimise what you can't measure, notes Guy Podjarny. "Start by running a WebPagetest test against your key pages," he suggests, "and record your favourite speed and weight numbers as a baseline. Then repeat these tests in your build system, and break the build if you've deviated from your baseline too much. With this line in the sand, you can gradually take on optimisation initiatives to raise the bar." 03. Establish a performance budget For Katie Kovalcin from Vox Product, web performance is something that should be approached by all team members from the very initial client conversations. "As a designer, I like to start by working with the developer to establish a performance budget before I begin designing, so I'm aware of the constraints I have to work within," she tells us. "We'll set a number, then have frequent internal check-ins as I design to make sure the choices I make are aligning with the project's holistic goals. If a certain pattern is compromising those goals, we'll discuss it and come up with other design solutions that will be faster but still display the aesthetic I want to achieve." 04. Inline critical CSS "We set ourselves budgets for our core performance metrics such as Start Render and Speed Index at the beginning of the project," says Fastly's web performance engineer Patrick Hamann, "and use a combination of tools such as speedcurve.com, WebPagetest and our own RUM monitoring to ensure we never break them each time we deploy. Our biggest improvement to these metrics was to inline our critical CSS into the <head> of our pages, which decreased start render times by over two seconds." At Generate London, Patrick Hamann will discuss best practices for loading assets in the browser 05. Balance aesthetics and speed The team at Etsy approach web performance by understanding that it's a major part of the overall user experience. "We find it's important to balance aesthetics and speed, and to work toward understanding the business impact of both as much as possible," explains senior engineering manager Lara Hogan. "We run A/B tests that measure design changes as well as performance changes to ensure we're building the best user experience possible for our members. We work on keeping performance top-of-mind throughout the product design process by making it easier to test and measure." 06. Lock down your frame rate "Most people just prioritise loading performance," notes Chrome developer relations advocate, Paul Lewis, but he notes that while it's important, you also really need to measure how quickly your site responds to user inputs, and whether or not it hits a solid 60fps for scrolling and other animations. "Knowing your frames per second, and how much time you're spending in JavaScript, styles, layout, paint and composite is crucial, because users really notice when frame rates dip, or things lock up. Become BFFs with your developer tools and regularly profile your projects during development. If you've never profiled before, check out this guide to optimising your sites and apps." 07. Get everyone involved "I approach web performance as a holistic, team-wide task," says frontend developer Harry Roberts. "Performance is everyone's problem, and should not be treated as one team or sprint's responsibility. I get involved with key product and design decisions as early as possible to ensure that everything is done in the best interests of the performance of the project; design treatments, feature requests and the code itself all contribute to the performance of the product. It is a fundamental, not a feature." Apart from web performance Generate London on 21/22 September will also cover animations, UX strategy, prototyping, user research, product design, adaptive as well as conversational interfaces, and loads more. There are also some tickets left for the workshops on Wednesday, 20 September. Reserve your spot today! This article originally appeared in net magazine issue 268. View the full article

The Vice President of the Apache Struts PMC says the attackers likely used an unknown Struts zero day or an earlier announced vulnerability. View the full article

D-Link router model 850L has 10 vulnerabilities that could allow a hacker to gain remote access and control of device, according to researcher. View the full article

There's no reason for you not to have a web presence. It's absolutely essential, whether you're just looking to attract an audience or trying to build a business. Even if you don't know how to code, it's easy to get your site online with Blocs 2 for Mac. You can get this app on sale for just $39.99 (approx. £31). Blocs 2 for Mac is the easiest way to get a website online quickly, without sacrificing features. This app is easy to pick up for anyone, even if you have zero experience building websites. All you have to do is pick the parts you want and drag them into place. It's incredibly intuitive and easy to use, yet you'll still be able to get all the functionality you need out of your site. It's the perfect tool to get yourself online. You can get started setting up your own space on the web with Blocs 2 for Mac for just $39.99 (approx. £31). That's a saving of 50% off the retail price for an essential app, so grab it while you can! About Creative Bloq deals This great deal comes courtesy of the Creative Bloq Deals store – a creative marketplace that's dedicated to ensuring you save money on the items that improve your design life. We all like a special offer or two, particularly with creative tools and design assets often being eye-wateringly expensive. That's why the Creative Bloq Deals store is committed to bringing you useful deals, freebies and giveaways on design assets (logos, templates, icons, fonts, vectors and more), tutorials, e-learning, inspirational items, hardware and more. Every day of the working week we feature a new offer, freebie or contest – if you miss one, you can easily find past deals posts on the Deals Staff author page or Offer tag page. Plus, you can get in touch with any feedback at: deals@creativebloq.com View the full article

When it comes to developing a brand, logo design is king. The power of a logo to elicit an emotional response can have a resounding effect on the way customers and potential customers view a particular product, service or company. A powerful logo may look simple but there's nothing simple about creating effective logo shapes. Get Adobe Creative CloudBe aware that the logo shapes used to portray the most visible brands in our culture have not been chosen by chance – there are some powerful psychological forces at work. In this article we'll take a look at how the informed use of shapes can be used to give your logo the desired resonance. 01. How humans view logo shapes There are few more recognisable logo shapes than Nike's Swoosh, but what does it do?Our subconscious minds respond in different ways to different logo shapes. Straight lines, circles, curves and jagged edges all imply different meanings and so a skilled logo designer can use shape to infer particular qualities about the brand. Think, for example, of the Nike Swoosh: the combination of curves ending in a sharp point offers a strong suggestion of movement. Particular logo shapes send out particular messages: Circles, ovals and ellipses tend to project a positive emotional message. Using a circle in a logo can suggest community, friendship, love, relationships and unity. Rings have an implication of marriage and partnership, suggesting stability and endurance. Curves on any sort tend to be viewed as feminine in nature. Straight edged logo shapes such as squares and triangles suggest stability in more practical terms and can also be used to imply balance. Straight lines and precise logo shapes also impart strength, professionalism and efficiency. However, and particularly if they are combined with colours like blue and grey, they may also appear cold and uninviting. Subverting them with off-kilter positioning or more dynamic colours can counter this problem and conjure up something more interesting. It has also been suggested that triangles have a good association with power, science, religion and law. These tend to be viewed as masculine attributes, so it's no coincidence that triangles feature more prominently in the logos of companies whose products have a masculine bias. Our subconscious minds associate vertical lines with masculinity, strength and aggression, while horizontal lines suggest community, tranquillity and calm. The implications of shape also extend to the typeface chosen. Jagged, angular typefaces may appear as aggressive or dynamic; on the other hand, soft, rounded letters give a youthful appeal. Curved typefaces and cursive scripts tend to appeal more to women, while strong, bold lettering has a more masculine edge. 02. How to apply logo shape psychology Three examples of simple logo shapesBefore you start designing a logo for your client, write down a list of values and attributes that the logo should convey. (This is one of the reasons you need to get to know your client and their business as well as you possibly can.) Ask your client to compile a list of corporate values or take a close look at their mission statement. Once you have a feel for the message the logo needs to disseminate, you will be able to look at how to match this up with not only logo shapes, but also colours and typefaces as well. Use these three elements in combination to your advantage: for example, if you pick a strong shape but find it too masculine, then introduce a colour or colours that will tone down the male aspect. 03. Gestalt theory The World Wildlife Fund logo uses the closure principle of Gestalt theory to describe a panda, even though the shape is not fully closedTo extend your use of psychology to a deeper level, brush up on the Gestalt theories of German psychologists from the 1920s. They hold that the human brain unifies the visual elements it sees to form a whole that carries significantly more meaning. People form patterns out of similarly shaped objects, while objects that differ from the group become a focal point of the image. Another Gestalt principle, closure, is often used in logo design; this is when an object is incomplete but there is enough detail for the human eye to make the whole picture. A good example of this is the panda logo used by the WWF, shown above. The logo shapes you incorporate into your designs become an intrinsic element in the message they will convey to the company's customers and the wider public. Once you understand the psychology behind logo shapes you will be able to use this knowledge to create powerful brands for your clients. Related articles: Get to grips with the golden ratio in this easy guide 5 ways to use shape psychology in logo design Check out these great examples of negative space View the full article

Use social media platforms right and you can boost your profile within the industry and get your work in front of entirely new audiences. These quick-fire tips will show you how to network effectively in the digital realm. 01. Create a strong profile
 Make it easy for your audience to find your social channels Make sure your profile is complete by providing as much professional information as possible. Make sure you include your name, expertise, website, online shop or Patreon page, and links to all social media and creative communities, such as deviantART. 02. Share engaging content Share good quality images, including quality works in progress Always post crisp, high-quality images of your work – a low-resolution, grainy image can make even the best creations look rubbish. Engaged followers are best, so share relevant, valuable content that will hook your audience in. Establish trust by keeping an eye on your messages and replying quickly to enquiries. Remember, the more comments a post has, the more it’ll be shared. 03. Post frequently Keep active on your social media accounts How often you'll want to post depends on your audience and what you have to say. The ideal frequency of posts also varies between different platforms, so experiment – engagement rates on Facebook are 18 per cent higher on Thursdays and Fridays, for instance. Never post for the sake of it, though. Keep it meaningful, or your audience will lose interest. 04. Cross-promote Ross Tran uses his Facebook page to funnel people towards his popular youTube channel Different platforms have different strengths, so use them in tandem for the biggest impact. Want to increase your YouTube subscribers? Do what Ross Tran did and create a teaser video to upload natively to Facebook. Looking for more Patreons? Share a tutorial on Instagram and link to Patreon. It's a little more work, but it's worth it. 05. Ditch the hard sell ... but do make it easy for those who want to buy to do so The best way to increase sales is not to actively sell. Don’t turn people off. Grow your audience organically and, as long as there’s a clear link somewhere to your work, sales will follow. Help your followers spread awareness for you by giving them what they want: visual eye candy and engaging conversation. Do make sure those people who want to buy your work can see clearly how to do so though. This article originally appeared in ImagineFX issue 147. Buy it now. Read more: 10 digital artists you need to know about How to craft a standout portfolio 14 fantasy artists to follow on Instagram View the full article

You're reading 12 Best Color Scheme Generator Webapps for Designers, originally posted on Designmodo. If you've enjoyed this post, be sure to follow on Twitter, Facebook, Google+! Smart designers know it’s a waste of time to reinvent the wheel. And with so many free resources online it’s easier than ever to find tools that’ll save you time. Color selection is a big process and often requires a lot of tweaking to get just right. You can save time by using color webapps […] View the full article

It’s time to pack your lunch, do up your sneakers, brush your teeth and get back to design school. And we’ve rounded up the best tech, gadgets and productivity tools that will help you get through the toughest of assignments. From bags to cameras, laptops to printers; welcome to Creative Bloq’s back to school equipment guide. No talking at the back! Bluesmart S2 laptop bag This laptop bag comes with a built-in chargerLet’s face it, you’re going to need a decent laptop bag to be carting your MacBook or Surface (or whatever you go for) to and from your place of design education. And the Bluesmart S2, whilst pricey at 200 Euros, is pretty damn good. Why? Well, for a start it has built-in Bluetooth tracking – so if you misplace it, just pull out your phone and you’ll be able to see its location. What’s more, if you’ve lost your phone, there’s a button in the bag that rings your blower so you can find it with ease. And, let’s not forget that it comes with a removable battery (which takes 2.5 hours to charge) that enables you to juice your gadgets on the go. All this tech and it looks the part. Samsung Galaxy Note8 The Note8 sports a 6.3-inch ‘Infinity Display’If you want to make lecture notes but don’t want to lug around an iPad or use a laptop, the Note8 could be the perfect phablet. Its excellent S Pen enables you to scribble and sketch away on the incredible 6.3-inch ‘Infinity Display’ (which is basically an edge-to-edge screen with very little bezel), making notes, annotations and even doodling in Photoshop Express if the lecture takes a downward turn. When you get home, plug it into the DeX station (free when you buy a Note8) attached to your monitor and it becomes a powerful desktop PC. It’s an incredible smartphone and, unlike the Note 7, it probably won’t explode in your pocket. If you're umming and aahing about whether to go for the Galaxy or hold out for the new iPhone, you'll find everything you need to know about the iPhone 8 here. Dell XPS 13 This compact, touchscreen laptop won't weigh your bag downThe XPS 13 is a super-compact touchscreen laptop with a stunning 13.3-inch edge-to-edge display. Powerful enough to run your Creative Cloud apps on when plugged into a monitor on your desk (the base model has 8GB RAM, a Core i5 CPU and a 256GB SSD) and portable enough to throw in a bag and take just about anywhere, it really is a fantastic choice for design students. BeoPlay E8 headphones Intuitive touch controls enable you to change tracks or take callsCompletely wireless earphones are the new thing, and the ever-stylish B&O Play has just got in on the act, releasing the uber-cool E8s. Slot them in your ears, pair with your phone and you’re away. Transparency Mode enables you to let in some of the noise from the real world, while the companion app lets you fine-tune your sound. Want to change tracks or take calls? Just use the intuitive touch controls. Oh, and you’ll get four hours of play before you need to put them back in the charging case. This kind of quality comes at a price though – the B&O Play E8s will set you back somewhere in the region of £259. Epson Expression Photo XP-960 Illustrators and graphic designers will need a good quality printerAlthough we do most things digitally nowadays and it could be tempting to soft proof everything, if your course is based around illustration or graphic design, you’re going to need a high-quality, yet good value printer for hard proofs. Check out the Epson Expression Photo XP-960, which offers A3 photo printing and enables you scan and copy up to A4. A touchscreen makes it simple to use, and of course you can print wirelessly. And it gives highly professional results. Our colleagues over at Techradar gave it five stars – check out the review here. Sonos PLAY:3 The Sonos speakers are small but pack a punchYou’re not gonna be able to work without music, right? The Sonos PLAY:3 is a small speaker that packs a real punch. With Spotify Connect, Apple Music, Amazon Music and more services all integrated (and of course you can stream your own music library using the excellent Sonos app) you’ll never be without a banging tune – whether on your desk or moved into the living room for a party. Don’t like it? Return it before 100 days for a full refund, no questions asked. Want to spend a little less or have smaller digs? Check out the slightly cheaper PLAY:1. IKEA JYSSEN wireless charger A little DIY and you can add a wireless charging port to any deskWe love IKEA’s range of wireless charging lamps, but the idea of being able to turn any piece of furniture into a wireless phone charging dock is ace – just find a cool (and cheap!) desk in a bric-a-brac or charity shop, then using the £4.50 FIXA saw set you can pop the JYSSEN wireless charger in it – meaning as long as you have a Qi-enabled phone (if you don’t you can buy an adapter case from IKEA) you’ll be able to pop it on and charge without any wires. Olympus OM-D E-M10 This retro-style camera packs in plenty of high-end featuresYou’ll undoubtedly need a camera for your creative studies – even though smartphone snappers are incredibly good nowadays they can’t compare to the control you get with an interchangeable lens system. One of our favourite CSC cameras is the Olympus OM-D E-M10. Sporting retro styling with an all-metal body but packing a load of high-end features (such as 4K timelapse, a tiltable 3-inch touchscreen and the ability to remotely trigger the shutter via your smartphone, for instance), you can pick up a kit including the body and 14-42mm and 40-150mm lenses for a bargainous price. Dell S24 18HN This monitor gives you a lot of screen real estate for its sizeYou may live on your laptop during the day, but when you need to really get into a project you’re going to need a bigger display. You’re obviously not going to have a lot of space to play with, so we reckon a 24-inch model will be more than big enough. The Dell S24 18HN is a great option for students (and will pair nicely with the XP3 13), its InfinityEdge Display having virtually no bezel – and thus saving space whilst giving you a load of screen real estate. It’s not 4K, but for the price you do get a very good Full HD (1920x1080 pixels) monitor. Wacom Intuos The Intuos range of pen tablets is superbA graphics tablet is pretty much a necessity nowadays – even if it’s just to avoid RSI. There’s no denying a stylus will give you a much more intuitive and natural working environment, and the Intuos range of pen tablets is superb. They come in a number of different sizes – and for different applications (such as drawing, photo-editing and 3D). So pick the one that agrees with your discipline and budget. Logitech Craft keyboard A built-in dial gives you extra control over your Creative Cloud programmesYes, we know it’s a lot to spend on a keyboard, but if that student loan is burning a hole in your pocket you’ll get something really special with this new Logitech number. Like the Microsoft Surface Dial, the ‘Creative Input Dial’ built into this keyboard enables you to adjust brightness in Photoshop, change stroke weight in Illustrator, zoom in in InDesign and more – all with a twist (after you’ve installed Logitech’s extensions that is). Related articles: How to get into design without a degree 15 things they didn't teach you at design school Hands on: Surface Studio View the full article

With a major new release of Creative Cloud coming later this year, Adobe has dropped a sneak peak of a new and improved version of Illustrator’s curvature tool for Photoshop CC, which is designed to make your job a heck of a lot easier. Get Adobe Creative CloudA short video posted on Adobe’s official YouTube channel shows Photoshop's new Curvature Pen tool in action. The pen will be accessed under the current Pencil tool, and will enable you to click to add points that automatically form a smooth, curved shape. Easily draw designs that are 'outside the box'You won’t need to swap tools or remember shortcuts: just click, double-click and adjust your lines for the perfect shape. The new Curvature Pen tool looks to be a godsend for digital artists and photographers alike, allowing you to create paths more easily than ever before. The Curvature pen will be accessible from the main sidebarPreviously, if you wanted to select a soft or irregular shape, you’d be tirelessly working with minuscule straight lines, adjusting and readjusting the curves to create your path. Now, you can easily and quickly make a clean selection of your desired item, allowing you to move and remove aspects of your photograph or design in minutes. Check out the sneak peak below. Although there is no set date for the launch, it appears the Curvature Pen tool will be one of a whole host of new features coming to Photoshop by the end of 2017. Related articles: 95 top Photoshop tutorials The 60 best free Photoshop brushes 100 amazing Illustrator tutorials View the full article

Creating 3D art can be expensive. But thanks to creatives developing free open source software, like Blender, everyone can get involved. In this article, we've rounded up the best step-by-step Blender tutorials from around the web. Improve your modelling, animating, rendering and compositing skills as you follow the projects and pick up tips from leading 3D designers in these video and text tutorials. We've grouped these Blender tutorials into three sections, so that as well as browsing the whole list you can jump straight to the guides that are most relevant to you (use the drop-down menu above to navigate to the page you want). Blender tutorials for beginners 01. Introduction to Blender for beginners Get started with the basics of Blender with this free video tutorial series from Blender Foundation-certified trainer Jonathan Williamson. Boasting around 13 hours of learning, the tutorials are broken down into sections. Section one is all about learning to create and manipulate objects; section two looks at how to bring your new creations to life with movement; and section three covers how to render to share your creations and add finishing touches in the compositor. 02. Blender basics: shading and lighting Before you start creating anything in Blender, you need to master the basics. This 20-minute video tutorial will walk you through Blender's shading and lighting features, and shows you what you can do with them. 03. Making sense of the 3D production pipeline This Blender tutorial unpacks the 3D production pipelineYou don't need to master the entire 3D process to create impressive art in Blender, but it is at least helpful to have an understanding of the 3D production pipeline so you're aware of what the various elements are and can communicate with people who work in other parts of the pipeline. Get a helpful overview of this here. 04. The basics of realistic texturing Blender expert Andrew Price, aka Blender Guru, reveals the secrets of realistic texturing in Blender in this detailed video tutorial. In this tutorial, Price shows you how to take a texture and creating some variations of it, using Photoshop or a Photoshop alternative, then putting them into Blender. Price has a whole host of excellent Blender video tutorials on his YouTube page. 05. Character animation toolkit Learn the basics of character animationIn this series of lessons, Blender artist Beorn Leonard explains all the fundamentals of character animation in Blender. Highlights include working with timing and spacing, overlapping motion, animation walk and run cycles and understand IK and FK. 06. Lighting and baking workflow Get to grips with the complete workflow for setting up lighting for an outdoor scene. In this tutorial you'll learn how to bake light for a blazing fast render, taking 14 seconds per frame rather than eight minutes. 07. How to create realistic reflections Getting the reflections right is key to a realistic renderNot all surfaces have the same reflective characteristics, and if you want your renders to look realistic then you'll need to ensure that they reflect light properly. In this tutorial from 3D World, Pietro Chiovaro talks through how best to create realistic reflections in Blender. 08. Greenscreen masking for VFX Add some Hollywood flair to your projects. Here you'll learn the basics of masking and chroma keying in Blender – just the thing for mixing real world footage with CG via a bit of green screen action. 09. Introduction to rigging Lee Salvemini is kind of a big deal in the Blender community. He worked on Sintel, Elephants dream and spent two years on Star Wars video game titles for LucasArts. In this free video tutorial for Blender Guru, he presents a complete beginner's introduction to rigging. The video above is part one of the series, with parts two and three available on the Blender Guru site. 10. Introduction to camera tracking Blender comes bundled with an awesome feature called Camera Tracking. Camera Tracking is a process that involves using real footage and tracking its motion so that 3D elements and VFX can be added to it. This tutorial, again from the brilliant Blender Guru, gives you a complete beginners introduction to what this tool is and how to start using it right now. Next page: Cheatsheets for creating objects and scenes 11. 17 top tips for modelling a complex 3D city scene Creating a city scene is hard work, but these tips break the process downCreating a detailed city scene is no small undertaking, and requires a significant amount of repetitive, and sometimes boring, modelling actions. Rather than just enumerating point by point what he's doing, in this 3D World tutorial Mateusz Wielgus breaks down his workflow into pieces and presents them as a series of general steps and tips that you can easily follow. 12. Create a morph between two shapes Morphing an object from one shape to another smoothly is an impressive 3D trick to be able to pull off, and in this quick tutorial from Blender Nation you'll learn not one but two different techniques for creating an amazing shape-shifting effect. 13. Create a low-poly abstract scene A low-poly look is an on-trend aesthetic to aim for, and this tutorial from Blender Skool will teach you everything you need to know about creating a striking low-poly abstract scene. To help you along it includes a finished .blend file to work with, and photo editing nodes. 14. Create a spaceship In this two-part video-based Blender tutorial from Blender Guru, you'll learn how to model a concept spaceship; how to use your own sketches as reference; and how a combination of modifiers can aid you in modelling. The Blender Guru site also has concept sketches and the finished .blend file to help you get to grips with it. And you can find part two here. 15. Create a 3D cup of coffee In this complete video project by Oliver Villar on Blend Tuts you'll learn some modelling tricks, and how to create simple and not so simple node materials in the Cycles render engine. 16. Create a realistic planet Earth This tutorial uses several textures from NASA to create a realistic planet Earth using Blender Cycles. The tutorial from Blender Guru shows you how to create easy texture mapping for spheres; how to use maps to make more convincing materials; how to create a realistic sunflare entirely in Blender; and how to add glow, colour grading and a warp effect in the compositor. 17. Make a Minion This video tutorial from Blender for Noobs is for intermediate Blender users, and covers the modelling process to create a simple version of a Minion character from the Despicable Me movies. After modelling the Minion, you'll see how to set up the camera, backdrop and lighting to finish off with a render. 18. Make realistic bread In this easy-to-follow tutorial, discover how to make tasty-looking bread in Blender, using displacement, subsurf scattering and more. 19. Box model a sperm whale See how you can use box modelling to create complex shapes. Box modelling is a staple technique for every 3D artist. Learn how to model a sperm whale suitable for use in animation or games work in this simple step-by-step guide. 20. Model a low-poly T-Rex Create your own Jurassic Park with this easy to follow tutorialThis hour-long beginner tutorial walks you through how to model, uvmap and texture a low-poly T-Rex in Blender. 21. Animate a flame using materials Follow this technique to create an amazing flame animationIn this superb Blender tutorial, Bassam Kurdali shows how procedural materials and the software's compositing tools can create movement. 22. Create a Tron-inspired light cycle effect C'mon, who doesn't love a Tron light cycle?Tron: Legacy reignited an interest in the original, ground breaking 1982 movie, which saw geeks everywhere wowed by Tron's CG light cycle sequences. Filmmaker, animator and all-round Blender tutorials supremo Bassam Kurdali shows you how to create your very own light cycle effect in this walkthrough. 23. Create an energetic fire and water scene Blender tutorial guru Andrew Price returns to show you how to simulate real-world flame and fluid effects. His digital weapons of choice? Enter Blender's fluid and smoke simulators... 24. Create a realistic off-road scene Learn to create a realistic terrain for a rally carTasks that not so long ago would have taken a long time to learn are becoming much easier to administer with a single click or a dedicated plugin as 3D software becomes more advanced. One of these is moving a car along a predefined surface geometry. In this amazing Blender tutorial, Mike Griggs demonstrates how to create a realistically rough terrain for rallying. 25. How to enhance a game level environment In this video-based Blender tutorial, 3D expert Christopher Plush shows how to create low-overhead in-game effects that won't tax your players' machines. 26. How to make metallic text Create attention-grabbing text with this Blender tutorial3D typography has a big place in the industry. In this tutorial, discover how to create a big, bold, attention-grabbing title. Next page: Essential pro techniques 27. Create stunning tileable textures Make your own tileable textures with the Dynamic Topology systemBlender's Dynamic Topology system is, amongst other things, a great tool for creating nice-looking, tileable textures. In this tutorial, Pierrick Picaut explains how to create stylised wooden and stone tileable textures from sculpted surfaces. 28. Rig a 3D vehicle This vehicle rig makes the most of bone constraintsDiscover how the rig for this futuristic combat jet was created with this expert animator's insights. You'll learn how a bone constraint works in Blender and how to set it up, and also how a bone constraint affects the animation skeleton. 29. Create a realistic water simulation This Blender tutorial by Andrew Price shows you how to create realistic fluid effects and render it using the new Cycles rendering engine. 30. Make animal fur with cycles and particle hair Jonathan Lampel demonstrates how to use multiple particle systems to add realistic hair to an animal and how to easily set up a great looking fur material using Cycles' new hair shader. 31. Create a photo-real render using cycles Create jewellery that's photo-realisticIn this series of six in-depth video-based Blender tutorials, pro 3D artist Alex Telford shows you how to create a realistic render of some jewellery. Watch as he takes you from concept to final image with the software's Cycles render engine. 32. Photorealism explained "If you're a CG artist hoping to work in the industry, photorealism is the most important skill you can focus on," says Andrew Price on Blender Guru. "It not only helps you to learn and understand how real life looks (a crucial step for creating cartoonish exaggerated styles), but is also highly in-demand for Hollywood, gaming studios and new industries." Price's guide lasts for nearly an hour, but is packed with helpful tips and tricks. 33. Roll a 3D object on its edge Use the curve editor to roll objects on their edgeThis is one of the quicker Blender tutorials in this list, where you can learn how to roll objects on their edge using the curve editor. Bassam Kurdali talks you through the technique in 10 easy steps. 34. Animate a circular swipe Bassam Kurdali's video explains how to set up a clock face-style swiping action using the popular open-source 3D package. You can also download the accompanying project files for this tutorial. 35. Camera mapping Here, Andrew Price explains everything you need to know to do camera mapping using Blender. 36. Fun with rigid bodies Bring the destruction! Andrew Price demonstrates how to go wild with Blender's rigid body simulator, making a chain, a wrecking ball and a load of stuff to destroy in an entertaining manner. 37. 13 brilliant Blender tips from the pros Experts offer 13 insightful tipsMake Blender part of your professional pipeline with this set of workflow tips and tricks from the experts. Ian Hubert (Project London), James Neal (Red Cartel), Jason van Gumster (Hand Turkey Studios), William Reynish (an animator on Big Buck Bunny and Sintel) and Nathan Vegdahl (freelance), all spill the beans. Related articles: 30 inspiring examples of 3D art How VR is revolutionising the creation of 3D art 8 of the best animated shorts View the full article