Smashing Magazine

Macro photography is the art of taking close-up pictures that reveal details which can't be seen with the naked eye. For example, while we can see the fly on the wall, our eyes aren't equipped to make out the fine details of the hairs on it's face. This is where macro photography comes in. It gives us a glimpse into the world of the very small, which goes largely unnoticed by us as we hurriedly shuffle through our day.

In this edition of our Monday Inspiration series we present 25 beautiful examples of macro photography. A round-up of some truly revealing and inspiring macro photographs which are sure to have you marveling at the world around you. You may check out the links at the bottom of this post for further resources on the subject of macro photography.

You may also be interested in the following related posts:

• 35 Beautiful Examples Of Rain Photography
• 45 Beautiful Motion Blur Photos
• Beautiful Black And White Photos
• (Really) Stunning Pictures and Photos

If you’ve ever collaborated with other people on a project, you know the frustration of constantly swapping files. Some do it by email, some through file upload services and some by other methods. It’s a pain in the neck, and every designer and developer knows it. Revision control is an excellent way to combat the problem of sharing files between workers.

Most web-developers have probably worked with some sort of revision control system, but designers may find it a foreign concept. The most obvious benefit of using revision control is the ability to have an unlimited number of people working on the same code base, without having to constantly send files back and forth.

But designers and developers can both benefit from using revision control systems to keep copies of their files and designs. You can instantly browse previous “commits” to your repository and revert to earlier versions if something happens.

This article reviews some of the top open-source version control systems and tools that setting up a version control system easy.

When used correctly, jQuery can help you make your website more interactive, interesting and exciting. This article will share some best practices and examples for using the popular Javascript framework to create unobtrusive, accessible DOM scripting effects.

The article will explore what constitutes best practices with regard to Javascript and, furthermore, why jQuery is a good choice of a framework to implement best practices.

Web designers and developers are getting an increasing number of requests from clients for custom theme development, and a growing number of designers are also building their own themes to distribute for free or to sell as premium themes.

With all of the WordPress development that is going on, there is a need for an organized collection of resources to educate, inspire and equip developers to improve the quality and efficiency of their work. This post provides all kinds of WordPress-related resources to do just that.

Street culture and graffiti are well-known for being provocative, appealing, bold and uncompromising. Originally used by gangs to mark their territory in some urban area, graffitis have now become a rich medium for unrestricted expression of ideas and statements. In fact, creative designers and artists across the globe use this form of art to deliver their message and showcase their work.

Probably the most prominent graffiti artist is Banksy, a famous pseudo-anonymous British artist whose works focus on topics such as politics, culture, and ethics. His art has appeared in cities around the world; it's worth mentioning that Banksy does not sell photos of street graffiti or mount exhibitions of screenprints in commercial galleries. You can explore Banksy's works in the Time's slideshow The World According To Banksy. However, many different artists explore graffiti in a variety of ways.

In this episode of Monday Inspiration series we are presenting a tribute to street art and graffiti — over 50 examples of beautiful and impressive graffiti artworks. Hopefully everybody will find some inspiration at least in some of the works showcased below. Feel free to explore the works of artists by following the links to their sites.

In our previous releases we focused on icons and Wordpress themes; however, there is a variety of further tools that graphic designers need on a regular basis; for instance, Photoshop brushes. You can find dozens of our other releases in our Freebies section. Today we are happy to release Health and Beauty Photoshop Brushes: a free set of 67 Photoshop brushes ranging in resolution from 69 to 2463 pixels. The set is compatible with Adobe Photoshop 7.0, CS, CS2 and CS3 (you can use it in Photoshop Elements, Paint Shop Pro, GIMP and Paint.NET, too). The brushes were designed by Silvia Bukovac Gasevic, the creative mind behind graphics-illustrations.com, especially for Smashing Magazine and its readers.

Developers and designers are using more and more JavaScript in modern designs. Sometimes this can be a hindrance to the user and take away from the simplicity of the design, and other times it can add greatly to the user’s experience. The key is a) adding the right amount of JavaScript, and b) using the right JavaScript techniques. We have already collected various JavaScript techniques in the past – now it’s time for a new portion of JavaScript.

Thanks to the Web’s widespread adoption of JavaScript, JavaScript libraries have sprung up to help make design and development easier. Here are a few of the major JavaScript libraries that developers use: jQuery, Prototype, Scriptaculous, mootools, Dojo. These frameworks have thriving communities whose members have developed countless plug-ins that can greatly add to the JavaScript framework.

However, sometimes we need JavaScript solutions that are a little more involved or specific. Here are 75 more handy JavaScript techniques that have made websites much sleeker and more interesting.

We love to release freebies. Every release helps to make the Web a nicer place, which is why we support designers and challenge them to release something for free in order to be featured on Smashing Magazine. And the results are quite often pretty impressive.

Today we are happy to release Cheers: a free set of 12 "social" glasses, designed by Helen Gkizi from Webtoolkit4me, especially for Smashing Magazine and its readers.

Three weeks ago we have encouraged our readers to participate in our <hr>-contest by designing beautiful and creative horizontal lines. It was necessary, since this design-element was slowly disappearing and was often neglected in web design. But it is going to change now. We have received 1290 images and source-files from 384 designers across the globe. The result is an impressive collection of horizontal lines that designers can use for free without any restrictions whatsoever.

Many entries contained not only images, but also source-files, mostly for Photoshop or Illustrator. You can use them if you want to modify a design for your projects. For this purpose we packed these files in one .zip-archive with all source-files (109 files, 25 Mb). Of course, it would be better to provide the link to a .zip-package next to each of the designs presented below, but it would take many hours of work which we can actually use in a more effective way. We can not guarantee that all images in the .zip-package are correct as we haven't tested all of them.

Unfortunately, some entries could not be considered for the contest. They didn't meet our requirements, were too big or unusable. It was important for us that these files could be used in projects beyond the scope of our contest.

It happened again. Today, Smashing Magazine celebrates its second birthday. We are two years old now and we are proud of what we have achieved over these years. To celebrate our anniversary, we could do any number of things. For instance, we could organize a huge giveaway—as we did one year ago—but, of course, bigger and more overwhelming. However, we won't do that; after all, we're giving away stuff every week and we have many contests where our readers can win truly smashing prizes. (New contests are already on their way.) Instead, we could share some insight about the highlights of Smashing Magazine over the last 12 months: an exploding number of page views, hundreds of thousands of backlinks, numerous testimonials and rewarding ad revenues. But we would probably sound like show-offs and we can't afford to do that; after all, we have only published 301 posts so far.

We love our readers. We respect the hard work of designers and developers across the globe. And we do our best to make the web design community stronger and the Web a little bit prettier. Therefore we ask talented artists and creative professionals to showcase their skills and release something unique and beautiful as a gift to the community.

We support them both financially and with a broad coverage on our magazine. And when designers agree, truly impessive works see the light of day.

Today we are glad to release Agregado Lifestream Theme — a free professional Wordpress-theme created by Darren Hoyt and Matt Dawson of Category4. The theme features a built-in lifestream module and contact form with custom control panel options. It is commissioned by Smashing Magazine and designed especially for Smashing Magazine and its readers.

Most photographers do not feel comfortable in taking photographs in bad weather. Yet bad weather sometimes presents the perfect opportunity to get most out of our skills. In particular, in the beginning of autumn rain can provide the perfect opportunity to capture wonderful photos.

Shooting in rain produces dramatic atmosphere and soft romantic scenes. Whether you are after lightning strikes or water drops, alone the incredible cloud formations can produce quite exciting and impressive photos. Reflections can occasionally produce mirrors or blurs of dancing colors, making the photography in rain beautiful and unpredictable.

Below we present over 35 beautiful examples of rain photography. This post is supposed to provide you with some inspiration for rainy motifs and is not supposed to be the ultimate collection of best photographs. There are definitely thousands of beautiful "rainy" photos &ndsash; feel free to share links to them in comments to this post!

All photos are linked and lead to the sources from which they were taken. Please feel free to explore further works of these photographers on their Flickr collections or their personal sites.

If you are one of those people who work with fonts on regular basis, then choosing, comparing and analyzing fonts is a serious business for you. Font management is not always as easy as a walk on the cake. Font management issues like installing and uninstalling fonts, handling missing fonts, taking care of font conflicts always keep graphic designers and typographers on their toes.

Also hundreds or thousands of fonts activated on the system can use up considerable amount of system resources which in turn reduces efficiency and productivity. Mac, Windows and Linux platforms have their own font management utilities, but these utilities are not sufficient in a specialized or professional environment. This is where professional font management tools come to the rescue.

Below we have reviewed 25 free/commercial font managers for Mac, Windows and Linux. Which one do you use and why? Your favourite tool is missing? Let us know in the comments!

We are always looking for creative and talented artists and designers. Once we find them, we ask them to cooperate with us and release something for free. We provide them with the full freedom to showcase their professionalism and express their creativity. You can find our previous releases in our section Freebies.

Today we are glad to release The DelliPack! icon set. This set of "delicious icons" contains 5 high-quality icons: a folder icon, a paint icon, a safe icon, a building icon and a printer icon which can be useful for both corporate and personal projects. The set includes a PSD-source file as well. You can use the set for free — without any restrictions whatsoever.

The icons are available in the .png-format in the resolutions 256×256px, 128×128px, 64×64px, 48×48px, 32×32px and 16×16px. This icon set was designed by Wendell Fernandes and is now released as a gift for Smashing Magazine and its readers.

Over the last months we have seen a strong trend towards more individual web designs. These designs often use realistic motifs from our regular life as visuals. However, apart from visual design elements one can also get creative with the layout of the site – its structure and the way the information is presented and communicated. To provide you with some ideas of how exactly it can be done, we have been collecting examples of creative design layouts.

In the showcase below we present 40 creative out-of-the-box layouts which break the boring structure of typical 2- and 3-columned, boxed layouts. We have collected pure CSS-designs, CSS+JavaScript-layouts as well as Flash-designs. Most designs presented below risk unusual approaches in the choice of site structure and content presentation. That's what makes them different. Hopefully you will find some creative ideas which you can develop further in your further projects.

We strongly encourage designers to break out of the usual boxed layout conventions, experiment with new approaches and risk crazy ideas. Show what you are capable of!