March Madness - watermarking your work

It's been a while since a newsletter and I apologize. In my defense, I've been in the process of publishing a novel! Being a web-designer makes designing a website and book cover very handy!

So, today, we are going to learn how to watermark your work in PSP.
Lesson here
If you'd like to check out my book, go to www.theemeraldtalisman.com

Making Glossy Mouse-Over buttons

I apologize for missing last month's newsletter, but to make up for it, I'm showing you today a really cool mouse-over trick and how to make the buttons (which does not show work in blogger but you could use on your other sites)!

Imagine mousing over the blue button, and it changes to purple.

You'll need paint shop pro, and Eye Candy 5 - Impact to do this tutorial. VIDEO HERE

If you want to learn more about adding them to your web page, and configuring them, please go to www.designbybrenda.com/classes and take advantage of my Fall special for HTML classes.

Hugs,

Copyrights and the law

I was just a victim of copyright thievery.

I bid for a job on Craigslist for a cigar shop and the owner wanted a "mock-up" before hiring a designer to make their website. Well, that should have been my first clue that the guy wasn't a honest person because normally, a designers work should stand for itself and someone should hire you based on that work. But I was hoping to get the job and hoped he was honest. So, after several hours of hard effort to make a great layout, I submitted to the owner for review. No word back... nada, nothing. So I figured he'd went with someone else, oh well, right?

A few months later, I looked up the shop to see what design beat me out, and low and behold, there was an almost dead-on look-a-like of my design staring back at me from his site. I was pissed! (and flattered because I DID HAVE THE BEST DESIGN). Anyway, I proceeded to confront the owner telling him he had no right to use my design concept without my permission and if he didn't pay me, I'd go to his ISP. He said he'd received many designs that looked like the one I submitted, and went with another designer (Yeah right). So, I did what I threatened to do. A design is like a signature. We all use the same letters, but they look very different from one another.

I'm happy to say, Yahoo agreed with me, and took down the site. It felt very good to have justice served and now he's going to be getting a letter from my lawyer! I will be paid for my hard effort.

If someone takes your work and claims it as their own, and you can prove it. You can take it to their Internet Service Provider (which can be found from their domain registration on WHO IS) and complain through the proper channels.