On the left is a sample of what you will learn.

This simple animation combines the two most common animation techniques in Photoshop: Turning layers off and on, and using the Tween command to animate the movement of an object on a layer.

For a quick hands-on tutorial on creating animated GIFs in Adobe Photoshop, we’ll walk you through creating the following animation

Click here for the full tutorial.

Pick of the month:

This is not a working example, since the site isn’t using the page as a working 404 error page. Nevertheless it’s quite funny: the characters are talking, and as you might suggest, they are talking about 404 errors! Click to see in Action.

This person is really sorry you found their 404 page. See it here

Renet-web.met offers recent posts and a search box.

A couple of other interesting ideas.

Have fun with your 404 pages

Tucson-based E-junkie is one of many shopping cart providers, but it distinguishes itself in the market by automating delivery. The shopping cart is an integral part of an e-commerce site experience; choosing the right one for your business takes time and research, but will make purchasing an easier experience for the customer.

E-junkie particularly well-suited for do-it-yourself artists and creative freelancers. For tangible goods, its system can automatically determine what size and shape packaging works best for each product in a vendor’s inventory. For digital products, it streamlines file storage and instantaneous delivery. Prices vary depending on the services selected, but start at $5 per month for 10 products.

TrialPay is a particularly unorthodox payment option. It pairs merchants with advertises to boost sales for both and offer consumers a chance to get products they’re looking at for free.

Here’s how it works: Merchants enlisted with TrialPay give away their products for free when a shopper completes an offer from one of TrialPay’s client advertisers, who then pays the merchant a bounty that equals or exceeds the product price. The system works best for software and online services vendors that can offer instantaneous digital delivery.

TrialPay has worked with more than 2,500 merchants. You can see it in action at WinZip and Skype. Vendors can use TrialPay’s shopping cart system or integrate it with any other existing shopping cart.

“Once you get the set-up done, it’s all hands off,” says Rick Trefzger, vice president of sales at Boynton Beach, Fla.-based iS3, which sells StopZilla anti-spyware software. “TrialPay’s reporting is great — you get a link that tracks each campaign and TrialPay will track it in real time.”

I have been using 2 checkout for years and find them a great service and very responsive. They pay into your account every week if you reach the thresh hold and this can be great for cash flow.

“I knew I had to start accepting credit cards on my online site or my company wouldn’t grow,” says Troy Godshall, owner of APlusTemplates.com. “I had poor credit at the time and knew I wouldn’t get a merchant account, but 2Checkout.com allowed me to accept credit cards without all the paperwork.”

2Checkout.com processes credit cards and checks while monitoring for fraud and ensuring data security. The site has about 50,000 active vendors and signs up 1,500 new clients every month. For each transaction, there’s a 5% rolling reserve for 90 days. Vendors with an existing shopping cart system can integrate their platform with 2Checkout.com or chose to use 2Checkout’s own shopping cart.

2Checkout.com has a one-time setup fee of $49.00 and takes a 5.5% commission plus $0.45 for each sale. “My product is about $30,” says Godshall. “So the commission isn’t bad, considering the headache I avoid, not having to deal with fraud issues.”

Digital River, based in Eden Prairie, Minn., has worked with 40,000 online stores to build e-commerce functionality, starting with basic shopping cart features. Understanding that each business has different needs, Digital River can implement new features as its clients grow, such as multi-currency support for overseas expansion or integrating “try before you buy” options. Best selling point: Digital River does not hold sellers’ money and will take the hit if a product needs to be returned.

“Digital River understands that small business owners need that cash immediately,” explains David Heath, CEO of Matrix Games, a computer game company that has worked with Digital River for three years.

Digital River has no up-front cost and won’t charge until the first sale. Then, its fee is based on performance, beginning at 2.9% plus a $1.00 transaction fee.

“Our cost analysis shows that it would be foolish for us to try alone what Digital River does,” Heath says.

Alternative 1: AlertPay
AlertPay.com

AlertPay founder Firoz Patel saw a problem: PayPal and other payment processing companies catered well to mainstream merchants, but fell behind when it came to less serviceable markets.

“We saw this particularly with multi-level marketing,” he says. “Some clients simply need more time and attention when it comes to payments.”

In 2004, Patel launched Montreal-based AlertPay to make online payments easier. AlertPay.com simplifies bank transfers, bank wires, direct deposits and other payment methods – everything except cash. AlertPay’s team of 25 works to ensure extra security for all transactions. Back-end flagging services alert banks to security breaches, and automated fraud-tracking tools lock down accounts when activity is abnormal.

The introductory rate for AlertPay is 2.5% per transaction. But if your company is off the beaten path and requires more service, be prepared to pay 3.9%.

Here I’ll show you a very fast and simple way to do this.

A quick tip on the way:
Plain text and very simple graphics: save as gif.
Photographs and beveled images: save as jpg.

Ok – when you have finished the work on your design in PS you have to drag out som Guidelines to show where you want to slice your image.

To do this you have to have the “Show Rulers” option active (View – Show Rulers).

Activate the Move Tool and then just click on the horizontal/vertical ruler and drag out the guidelines and position them where you want them.

Now click on the “Jump to Image Ready” button .

Once your image has opened up in Image Ready go to Slices – Create Slices from Guides.

Your image should now have a number on each slice like shown in the picture to the left.

Then choose if you want to save your images as jpg or gif – and how much you want to compress the images in this window:

(If this window doesn’t show just select the whole image file and it should appear…)

Now you’re actually ready to save all your slices at once in just one step!

Go to File – Save Optimized As – and then choose if you want just the images saved, the HTML + images saved or just the HTML.

If you choose the HTML + images option Image Ready takes care of putting it in a table for you.
If you want your table to be aligned to the center insted of to the left you just add the align=”center” to your code like shown below:
<TABLE WIDTH=300 BORDER=0 CELLPADDING=0 CELLSPACING=0 align=”center”>

Then you’re actually finished! Now that didn’t take much time – did it?

Just a few words at the end:

In Image Ready you can select individual slices and then in the Optimize Palette on the right hand side you can select file formats (.gif, .jpg, .png etc.) and select compression ratios or in the case of .gif the number of colors. This allows full control over each slice.

Creating a speech bubble shaped path in Photoshop

In this step we will create a path with the shape of a speech bubble, we will use the Ellipse tool and the Pen tool.

Start out by selecting the Ellipse tool in the tools menu. Now the options bar for the Ellipse tool should be visible above your work area.
The important settings here is to select paths mode, you can see my settings below.

Now you should draw an Ellipse that looks something like the one I have drawn bellow. Adjust the size of the Ellipse to match the content you want to have inside the speech bubble.

Now it’s time to add the part of the speech bubble that indicates the origin of the speech. For this task we will use the Pen tool, select the Pen tool in the tools menu and in the options bar set the mode to paths mode and set it to Add to path area.

Below are my settings for your comfort.

Draw a triangle like I have done in the image below and make sure to connect the third dot with the first by clicking in it.

Time to style our speech bubble
Now we need to fill the path with a white or whitish color.
First create a new layer, then go to the tools menu and select the Path selection tool. Click the ellipse path, hold down shift while clicking in the triangle path, now you have selected both paths. Right click anywhere in the work are and select Fill path in the menu.

The Fill path dialog in the image below will appear, in the drop down select color and the Color picker will appear, select the color you want.

Now we can start applying layer effects to style the speech bubble.
Right click the layer you just created and select Blending options, now apply all the settings that I have used in the images bellow.

And that how you use photoshop to make a speech bubble.Below is my final result, remember since we have used paths you can resize the path without getting jagged speech bubbles.