Useful Stuff for Layout Designers

[Triscopic]

I thought it might be cool to start a thread where we can post useful things for people who want to build layouts. It goes without saying that we're talking (a) free in terms of money and (b) free in terms of copyright.

My Top Tips:

• Gimp 2
  Free & powerful graphics editor
  I've used Gimp for ages now. It does take some getting used to if you're coming from Photoshop or Paintshop, but unlike them it's totally free.
  http://gimp-win.sourceforge.net/stable.html
  
  
• dafont.com
  Thousands of fonts, many freely available
  dafont is a great resource of fonts, most usefully with the ability to enter preview so you can easily compare all the fonts.
  http://www.dafont.com/
  
  
• Notepad++
  A powerful text editor
  One of several text editors I use regularly, Notepad++ is a very useful tool for delving into the raw XML of a layout. Warning: mucking around with the raw XML is a good way to ruin the layout. It can be useful for debugging stuff though, or just making sure all those damn sliders have exactly the same value.
  http://notepad-plus-plus.org/
  
  
• famfamfam.com Silk Icons
  A set of totally free icons so beautiful... you see them everywhere!
  I discovered these many years ago and I use them everywhere. The status icons in my Eos theme are based on these (all are from this collection except the N/A icon which I made based on them - in fact I used gimp to colour shift and merge a few icons to create it)
  http://www.famfamfam.com/lab/icons/silk/preview.php
  
  
• Smooth gradients on the G19 Display (thanks to Ender)
  Overcome the limitations of the G19's colour spectrum with science Photoshop!
  The G19 has a problem rendering certain shades of colours. You can see this when ever you try to have a gradient filled object using LCDHost's native gradient fill. Ender has however worked out a way to get beautiful, perfect gradients in images. The full method is located here.
  

Any one else got any tips or resources they care to share?

[Ender91]

Hmmm good idea, I can add few addresses for those who are using PS.....

[littlemixi]

jap...good idea and I can add also some web pages who uses PS.

[Triscopic]

SR, sticky?

[Ender91]

Ho don't forget that...: http://forum.linkdata.se/lcdhost_layouts/how_display_smooth_gradients_251.0.html

[Triscopic]

added.

[Ender91]

Woap, you're attempt to create an hyper-link has failed.....

[Triscopic]

D'oh. Fixed.