Like many other incredible events this year, due to Corona, this year’s Adobe MAX event will be held online.

This may seem like bad news, but there is a good side to it.

This year’s Adobe MAX event will be free for everyone to attend!

If you’re unaware of what an Adobe MAX event is, let me explain.

What is Adobe MAX?

Adobe MAX is a creativity conference where they tease their state-of-the-art experimental technologies for the creative world.

It includes three full days of luminary speakers, celebrity appearances, musical performances, a global collaborative art project, and 350+ sessions — and all at no cost.

That’s 56 hours worth of non-stop inspiration and learning.

Typically, Adobe hosts their events at a single venue, which means that there are limited spots and also, many of us can’t travel to the event.

So, what I’m about to tell you is actually great news.

This year the event will be held virtually for the first time in their event’s history, and most importantly, it’ll be free. But that doesn’t mean that it’ll be lacking in any way, shape, or form.

Who will be speaking at the Adobe MAX 2020 Conference?

If you attend this year’s virtual conference, you will have the amazing opportunity to hear from incredible people like Ava DuVernay, an Academy Award-winning filmmaker, the creative Annie Leibovitz, the amazing Keanu Reeves, The Futur’s founder, Chris Do, recording artist Tyler the Creator, and so many other creative luminaries and celebrity speakers.

When will the Adobe MAX conference take place this year?

Adobe MAX 2020 will be held online on October 20-22, so you better get your tickets now!

How do I sign up for the Adobe MAX 2020 Conference?

The answer to that question is simple.

All you have to do is sign-up is go on this website and register to participate.

That’s literally it. Go ahead and sign-up now before it’s too late!

Are you guys pumped to attend this year’s Adobe Max event?

Have you ever been to one in the past?

Let us know your experiences in the comments below and see you there!

With the release of Creative Cloud 2015, Adobe has continued its tradition of generating a buzz in the tech sector.

In addition to major updates on their programs like Photoshop and Illustrator, Adobe has also released a new platform named Adobe Edge Web Fonts.

Edge Fonts is a stunning font foundry that web designers can use 100% free for all design work.

If you’re familiar with Adobe and the creative cloud platform then you know about TypeKit.

This is Adobe’s premium font service which costs money.

But with the release of Edge Fonts Adobe now provides an alternative to TypeKit, offering web designers over 500 different font-families to choose from.

I’ll give you an overview of Edge Web Fonts and why designers should be excited about this amazing collection of typefaces.

Worth the Wait

In the recent past Google has dominated the web font game. Simply put, no other service provided an extensive collection of web fonts for free.

There is no denying that Adobe TypeKit is extremely popular among web designers. But the price of TypeKit often caused people to stray from using it.

Because Edge Web Fonts is free to use commercially, Adobe now provides an alternative to the once unrivaled Google Webfonts.

Edge Web Fonts aims to provide a free service that is easy to use.

Just like Google Fonts, a person does not need any sort of account to utilize Edge Fonts library (Scroll down for an update on this).

In addition to being easy to use, Edge Fonts is powered by the TypeKit font service.

Users can expect high-end performance and stability for their web fonts.

Edge Web Fonts User Interface

In the image above you can see the interface Edge Web Fonts provides for choosing fonts.

For those of you who’ve used Typekit in the past, you’ll notice the Edge Fonts website is strikingly similar to that of TypeKit.

As a TypeKit user myself I think this is pretty important to note.

The user interface was one of the main reasons why I continued to use TypeKit, and now Adobe is providing this to web designers for free.

In the example above I’ve narrowed the choices down to only serif fonts in order to show you a basic example of how Adobe’s interface works.

Although this may not seem very powerful, it allows you to sift through font faces that are alike in some way.

Edge Fonts also allows you to search fonts depending on whether they will be used as a heading or paragraph text.

This interface is much easier to choose the most appropriate font for whatever environment you’re designing.

Google Fonts is indeed a tremendous font foundry for web designers, however, sifting through the extensive number of fonts can become a problem.

It seems Edge Web Fonts has a leg up in this regard.

Adobe Edge Web Fonts – 2020 Update

In 2018, Typekit was finally and officially renamed as Adobe Fonts.

And that was great for all of us. With this new name came many new, much-needed updates.

For example, there are no more web-only fonts, no more desktop sync limits, and no more pageview limits.

And now instead of only having 500 fonts like there were when it Adobe fonts was first released, there are now thousands of fonts for you to choose from.

Adobe Fonts is free to use IF you have a subscription to any one of their products.

It is no longer a standalone product like it was when it was Typekit.

That is a bummer, but hey, you gotta do what you gotta do.

And chances are, you probably have a subscription to Adobe.

So you should be good to go.

The great thing about Adobe Fonts is that you don’t have to worry about finding the rights to any font you fall in love with, as Adobe takes care of all of that for you!

All fonts are free to use for personal and commercial use.

This means that once you find that perfect font for your project, that’s literally it.

No more contacting the owner and buying the rights to it.

That’s right, you just get to keep the perfect font.

Isn’t that amazing?

Top 10 Adobe Fonts Designers Use

Before we end our time together today, I want to show you my top 10 favorite fonts from Adobe Fonts.

If you’re not convinced that you need to be using Adobe Fonts yet, well, after this, I’m almost certain you will be.

1. Acumin

2. ITC Avant Garde Gothic

3. Orpheus

4. ITC Benguiat

5. Plantin

6. Minion

7. Franklin Gothic

8. Proxima Nova

9. Baskerville

10. Mrs Eaves

Conclusion

In order to truly grasp the power of Edge Web Fonts you’ll have to check it out for yourself.

Not only does it provide an extensive number of fonts, it also makes the process of finding them quick & easy. Also you should remember that Edge Web Fonts provides premier performance for your font styles by utilizing TypeKit!

You’ll surely not be disappointed when you see what has been given to web designers with the incredible Edge Web Fonts service.

I believe I speak for everyone when I say that I love to find amazing, high-quality design resources for free.

 Sometimes, when you’re in the middle of a design process, you find that you’re about to have to invest more money than you originally intended. You should save money when you can and you should spend money on things that require investment. 

That’s why I came up with the ultimate collection of free design resources for you to check out. 

Whether it’s free vectors or mockups, or free images and presets you’re looking for, I have it all right here in one incredibly comprehensive list for you, so you don’t have to search all around for your answers. Everything is right here, in one place.

Now, let’s get into it.

Free Stock Images

Photography has been and will always be a key piece of design. Stock photos are no longer what they used to be, luckily. No longer will you be seeing just those awkward group photos of people laughing or two businessmen shaking hands. 

No, there are so many stock photo sites for you to choose from with quality work from real photographers. Check out these 10 awesome free stock images websites!

Unsplash

I want to start this list off with a bang. Unsplash is my personal favorite free stock image website. I use it for everything from article writing to making designs. Unsplash has a huge collection of images, consisting of over 110,000 high-quality free stock images. Just type in a keyword and see hundreds of images that can suit your needs. All images are released under Unsplash’s copyright policy.

Stocksnap

Stocksnap has hundreds of new high-quality free stock images added to their library every week. They have stock images to fit just about any occasion you can think of. From website building to brochure making, they having everything you need. You can find any image you need by typing in tag words, and you’ll be presented with hundreds of images that will be perfect for you. All images are free for you to use! 

Pexels

Pexels has one of the most beautiful stock images website interfaces I’ve ever seen. Pexels provides tons of high-quality stock images that are free for you to use under their license. With hundreds of thousands of beautiful free images of you to choose from, surely you’ll find what you need here. 

Reshot

“Reshot. Uniquely free photos. Handpicked, non-stocky images. Yours to use as you wish”. That’s a pretty self-explanatory and sweet tagline. They work hand-in-hand with amazing professional photographers and give them a great place to display their work and be discovered. Find amazing free stock images on Reshot!

Pixabay

Pixabay has loads of free photos, but not only. They also have art illustrations and vectors. All images, art illustrations vectors, etc are released under Creative Commons CC0.

Life of Pix

Next up, we have Life of Pix. Free high-resolution photography for everyone. Besides having loads of amazing photos to choose from, they also feature a new photographer of the week. Find new photographers whose work you love every week and in turn, have tons of stock photos to choose from! 

Foodiesfeed

Foodiesfeed is for the foodie at heart. Which gorgeous, appetizing stock images that look so delicious that you can almost smell them just by looking at them. If you have a food blog or just need some inspiration, check out this awesome stock image site. 

Gratisography

Gratisography is for the non-mainstream person. If you’re looking for the complete opposite of the classic boring stock photo, this website is for you. You truly won’t find photos like these anywhere else.

Foca

FOCA is a great stock website if you’re looking for a little more than just some stock images. They have everything from free photos to videos and templates! 

Kaboompics

Kaboompics is so aesthetically pleasing, it hurts. The amazing blog pictures are everything. According to their about page, Kaboompics is one of the most popular sources of free images for lifestyle, interior design and specialized bloggers in the world. 

Free Vectors 

Creating your own vectors can take up so much of your precious time, and that’s why finding perfect vector art or vector icons can be a major time-saver, but finding them for free is like finding treasure. That’s why I picked out my 10 favorite free vector websites. Check ‘em out.

Vexels

Vexels has great free vectors for you to use for personal and commercial use. What I really like about their vectors is that many of them are editable. You can get everything from icons to backgrounds and designs that are ready for print. Give them a try!

Vector Stock

Vector stock has over 300,000 vectors for you to choose from. With such a wide variety of vectors, surely you’ll find something that’ll suit your project and save you loads of time. 

The Noun Project

The Noun Project can be summed up in icons, icons, icons! They have over 2 million royalty-free vector icons for you to use. And what’s better? You can edit them. That is insane, people. Don’t sleep on the noun-project. They have all those quality things you’re looking for.

Vector 4 Free

Vector 4 Free has vector art for everyone. Their goal is to share vector art created by professional designers with everyone. They have all sorts of formats, such as .ai format, but also .eps, .pdf, .svg, and even .cdr. All of their vectors are free for personal use, but for commercial use, you have to check each artist’s terms of use, as they all differ. 

Freepik 

Freepik has over 708,000 free vectors for you to use for personal use and also for commercial use. The styles vary as far as feminine and elegant-looking invitations to vectors that are perfect for backend technology promotion. You’ll find every style you could need here, and you can download everything in .Ai and .EPS formats.

Free Vector

Free Vector is full of fun and colorful cartoonish vectors. They are basically a world full of free vector art that is simply at your fingertips. Type in your keywords in the search bar to find vectors that suit your style, or scroll to the end of the page and find tons of categories to browse through.

Vecteezy

Vecteezy has thousands of gorgeous vector art for you to use. Everything is copyright free, so you never have to worry about that. There are tons of free vectors for you to use, or you can upgrade your account to a pro account and have access to everything at your fingertips. 

Flat Icon

Flat Icon is the largest database of free icons that are available in PNG, SVG, EPS, PSD, and BASE 64 formats to date! With a free account, you can access thousands of free icons, or you can upgrade your account and get millions of icons for free. 

Pngtree

Pngtree has wonderful vectors for you to choose from, and with a free account, you have access to 2 daily downloads. Get royalty-free PNG images, vectors, backgrounds, templates, and text effects from Pngtree. 

Free Mockups 

Showing real-life visuals of your work to your client is a vital selling point, and that’s one of the huge reasons that mockups are so crucially important. Here are 10 free amazing mockup websites for you to use for your next project.

Placeit

Placeit is a site where you can visualize all of your designs on products within seconds. Not only can you just upload your images, but you can also make designs on the platform, and create videos. Create your own design, or try out one of their 32,938 smart templates! 

Smart Mockups

Smart Mockups is the fastest web-based mockup tool out there right now. It’s user-friendly in the manner that advanced designers and beginners alike can use and understand their product. You can use a free account and create 200 mockups and use basic features, or you can upgrade your account and have access to all mockups and features. 

Mockuuups

Mockuuups will generate tour product mockups in literally a second. The tool is easy to use, as it is drag-and-drop based. Download the app to your computer to start using. You can use a free account and still have access to lots of features and mockups, or you can upgrade your account to have access to everything! 

Mckups

Mckups has a beautiful, minimalist interface and beautiful, free mockups for you to use. The mockups are hand-crafted by professional designers and are just waiting for you to use them. 

The Mockup Club

The Mockup Club is absolutely free and that might just be my favorite part. It’s a one-stop shop with loads of free mockups for you to use to showcase your lovely designs. 

Psd Repo

Psd Repo has every mockup imaginable. From key-chains to shorts, to t-shirts, to protein powder packaging, I think I can safely say they have it all. The mockups are made by talented designers who want to share their work with you for free. Download your favorite mockup as a PSD file and get to designing! 

Mockups Design

Mockups Design is an easy-to-use website where designers can find professional mockups for free to use in their next design project. From DVDs and CD to letterheads and brochures. They have lots to choose from.  

Good Mockups

Good Mockups can be summed up about something like this: High-quality, hand-picked, premium mockups for all to use. They strive to have mockups to fit everyone and every design. With an entire list for you to go through, I believe that they are truly well worth your time. 

Mr. Mockup

Last but not least, we have Mr. Mockup. They have a team of professional and creative designers working to mockups for everyone. With a vast experience in designing just about anything, you can count on them to find beautiful mockups for your next design project.

Wrapping up 

I hope you guys found this ultimate collection of free design resources helpful! Let us know in the comment section below what sites you’ll be using in the near future, or tell us about a website you know that you think is worth mentioning.

Until next time, 

Stay creative! 

Seeing all the time, effort, emojis, drawings, and true works of art put into an Insta story, we know for sure stories are not what they once were. They’re no longer just pictures and videos shot in real-time. Stories have become a true marketing platform, with intensely strategic moves behind each piece of content published. Every Insta story most likely has a cool (maybe expensive) story app that was used to produce the content.  

With Insta stories looking more polished and aesthetically pleasing than ever, as a designer, you have to be on top of your game. But to what end and to what cost? 

I’m here to help you save a good buck. I’ve got the 10 best free Insta story apps for you to use to improve your Insta stories game without breaking the bank. Without further ado, let’s jump right in.

10 Best Free Insta Story Apps

1. Unfold

Unfold is an amazing Insta story app that is free, but also has in-app purchases if you fancy a certain look and template theme. With many texts and elements to choose from, and themes spanning from elegant or retro, there’s something for everyone.

Try it out today for free: https://unfoldstori.es/

2. Jane

A very underappreciated and not talked about enough app, in my opinion, is Jane. The app is free and has very many free beautiful templates for you to use to spice up your stories. They are quite girly and are perfect for maintaining an elegant or playful story vibe. Create amazing videos with royalty-free music and amazing visuals. Again, this app is free but has in-app purchases. 

Try it out free today: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/%E7%AE%80%E6%8B%BC-jane/id891640660

3. Canva

Canva is hands-down one of the best online CMP’s out there. It’s great for beginner and advanced designers alike. With tons of templates to choose from and customize, you’ll surely find the one that suits your style best. The mobile app is free and has in-app purchases, although you can totally rock with all the free elements and templates and just tune them to your liking.

Try out this app out for free today:https://www.canva.com/app/

4. Hype Type

With a vast and wide collection of fonts, you can do some serious designing with this app. Hype type is absolutely killing the font game. If you’re focused on spreading a message, then this is absolutely the app for you. The app is free with some paid features, but it’s up to you to decide if they’re a necessary buy. 

Check out their app now: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/hype-type-moving-text-photo-s/id1152687277

5. Cut Story

Another great app for managing your stories is Cut Story. Cut Story’s is an amazing video editing app where you can create engaging videos and add music, texts, elements, your logo and more to your video. There are special features that you can buy to enhance your UX, but only if you deem necessary.

Try out their free Insta story app now:https://apps.apple.com/us/app/cutstory-for-instagram-stories/id917630934

6. Mojo Story Maker

Mojo is the way to go for Insta stories because they have 100 templates for you to choose from! Customize your stories with text to create relevance, engage with your followers and make them feel what you feel, and share the message you want to portray with them. A huge plus to this app is that you can share your new and improved story directly to your Instagram and also your Snapchat!

Try this Insta story app now: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/mojo-stories-editor/id1434861974

7. InShot

For all my influencers out here, Inshot is the app for you. We don’t always have time to film, import, and edit our footage on our laptops or computers, so having this app will be a valuable asset for you. Edit all your video content in a single app on your phone and import it directly to your Instagram. This app is truly a gift to all of us creators out there.

Give it a try if you haven’t already: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.camerasideas.instashot&hl=en 

8. Adobe Spark Post

Adobe, king of all things editing programs, in my own personal opinion. Adobe has great editing programs, from video-editing to photoshopping images, and when they saw an opportunity to create an app to help you create amazing stories to tell your followers, well, we all know they wouldn’t pass that up. With this app you can do more than edit stories photos, you can also edit video and image posts. The app is initially free and then they offer you the chance to upgrade if you end up falling in love with the app.

Go ahead and give this Insta story maker a go: https://spark.adobe.com/features 

10. Over

And last, but not least, we have the app called Over. I love that when you visit their webpage, it’s just absolutely inspiring. It inspires you to be different, to stand out, the influence others. A great app for you to use to for free to make your Insta stories more engaging for your followers and for you to really create a brand name and grow your recognizability.

Stand out of the crowd and try this amazing app free today: https://www.madewithover.com/

Now that you have 10 new and fresh apps for you to choose from to start stepping up your Insta story game, it’s time for you to hop on it. Download any one of these apps and tag us in any of your Instagram stories for a chance to be featured on our stories. Our Instagram handle is @webdesignledger.

Don’t sleep on these amazing free Insta story apps! Try them out today. 

Until next time, 

Stay creative.

We’ve put together an amazing list of Photoshop manipulation tutorials that we hope every designer, beginner or master, will find it useful. 

There are several essential skills that make a designer successful. Every single one is crucial and has a lot of power when used appropriately. A skillful desinger:

• knows and operates with the notions UI and UX;
• understands how responsive design works;
• gets familiar and applies common design pattern into your work;
• acquires basic graphic design knowledge;
• sharpens his/her typographic eye;
• understands the importance of color theory;
• has great communication skills;
• manages his/her time wisely;
• knows how to use a design software.

Adobe Photoshop is one of the most potent design softwares in the world and one of the most popular. And there is a reason for that. With Photoshop you can create about anything your mind can come up with.

You can retouch a photo, apply filters, design a logo or website, use Photoshop actions and edit a bunch of images at once, crop the picture, and much more. In order become super knowledgeable and to create design in a no-time, you have to practice daily. What better ways for doing that than following a step-by-step manipulation tutorials?

In this list, we have shared 25 fantastic manipulation tutorials which will stretch your creativity and help you think out of the box. You are going to create hologram effect, create a melting camera, build a surreal landscape and make a fantasy deer.

1. Add a Hologram Effect to a Photo Using Photoshop

2. Digital Painting Lesson: How to Create a Photo Realistic Portrait

3. How to Make a Melting Camera Scene

4. The Ultimate Guide to Adjustment Layers – Gradient Map

5. Photoshop tutorial: Advanced compositing techniques

6. How to Digitally Add Shallow Depth of Field

7. Create a Colorful Out of Frame Animal Composition

8. How to Create a World Under the Sky using Photoshop

9. How to Create a Stunning Surreal Landscape

10. Create an Epic Beach Disaster Scene

11. Design a Conceptual Album Cover in Photoshop

12. Create a Devastating Tidal Wave in Photoshop

13. Create a Surreal Smoking Photo Manipulation

14. IMAGE DESIGN: NOW YOU CAN CREATE A SURREAL BOTTLE OCEANSCAPE

15. Photo Manipulate a Surreal Sky Station Scene

16. Amazing Light Photo Manipulation Tutorial

17. Learn How to Photo Manipulate the Colorful Portrait ‘Transcendental’

18. Create a Fantasy Deer Photo Manipulation in Photoshop

19. How to Create an Amazing Watercolor Artwork in Photoshop

20. How to Turn a Photo Into a Beautiful Painting in Photoshop

21. Create a Coffee Cake Photo Manipulation

22. Create a Surreal Rock Formation in Photoshop

23. Human Scarecrow – Manipulation Tutorial

24. Making Your First Photoshop Manipulation

25. How to Make a Fish Jump Out of Water

If you found this tutorial list helpful, share it with your fellow designers so that they can benefit from it, too. You never know whose designer’s life you are saving just by sharing an article.

Would you like to share your tutorial with us? Drop us an e-mail at webdesignledger.blog@gmail.com and we will make sure it reaches to other designers.

If you’ve been using Adobe’s Business Catalyst (BC) or Muse to build websites, you’re in a bind. Adobe announced that they are shutting down Business Catalyst and Muse after years of operation.

Typically, agencies that use Business Catalyst also integrate Adobe Muse into their workflows to streamline the development and management of websites. So this end-of-life announcement came as a shock to the thousands of businesses using the tools, as both platforms are getting squelched at the same time.

For Business Catalyst, Adobe gave the final deletion date to be March 26th, 2020 (although they later shifted it to March 26th, 2021 after some of their customers requested that the timeline be extended). The company also stated that users have until June 18th, 2018 (later extended to August 27th) to upgrade trial sites to paid, while new trials will no longer be available after June 18th, 2018.

For Muse, the shutdown process already commenced with the final feature improvement release on March 26, 2018. Adobe said they will continue to offer technical support to all active Creative Cloud customers until March 26, 2020. It seems the company will likely deliver compatibility updates for Mac and Windows OS, or fix any bugs that might crop up when publishing Muse sites. But it’s obvious that service quality will fall drastically after Adobe stops support for the software.

For the record, Business Catalyst is an all-in-one Content Management System (CMS) for building and managing websites. It integrates sales, ecommerce, content, and marketing features and was acquired by Adobe in 2009.

On the other hand, Adobe Muse is a website builder that allows users to create fixed, fluid, and adaptive websites without having to write any code. It was launched by Adobe in 2012.

Now, following this imminent shutdown, businesses and web design agencies that are using the platforms would have to find alternatives before the deadline. In fact, it’s recommended that you do ASAP.

One reason being that, migrating a site could take longer than anticipated — budgeting, planning, execution, fixes, etc. — especially for businesses with multiple websites and/or a huge amount of data; thus, you don’t have to wait until the last minute.

Another is that this announcement could mean the two tools are only going to attenuate in performance and customer service going forward, until they’re finally snuffed out.

Even Adobe encourages customers to download their data and migrate to other systems well before the deadline. They said all BC servers will be taken down (on March 26th, 2020 2021). This means the data of all its customers will be deleted and won’t be available for download after the service end date.

This is why you should find a new solution immediately.

But wait, what great alternatives are out there?

As a web design agency looking to provide a phenomenal service to your clients, you need a design and development platform that’s equally phenomenal to support your vision. Adopting a less than stellar platform can only result in unnecessary pains for you and your clients, which can ultimately kill your agency’s brand reputation. And so to help you find your next web builder, we’ve looked into why Duda could be your best shot for replacing Business Catalyst and Muse.

Introducing Duda

Duda is a software suite for creating optimized websites, primarily for small and medium-sized businesses. It offers responsive website and mobile builders, with the flexibility to access scads of cutting-edge web design tools you won’t find on platforms like Squarespace or Wix.

Instead of focusing entirely on the site building experience, Duda also provides digital agencies the technology needed to incorporate branding into their projects, initiate team collaboration, automate certain workflows, and streamline client communications.

In a sense, Duda could be everything a web design agency will ever need to build beautiful sites at scale.

How huge and trustworthy is Duda? It’s currently being used by over 12 million websites at the time of writing this, and has partnered with companies such as Google, AT&T, Yahoo!, Intuit, and OpenTable.

How Duda stacks up against Business Catalyst and Muse

While Muse is built specifically for creative designers who need a “design-focused” platform for building sites, Business Catalyst is designed primarily for agencies to build fully functional and scalable business websites.

It’s safe to say that both Business Catalyst and Muse pack some of the most useful features for web design agencies.

However, Duda does measure up pretty nicely against the two tools when it comes to features that are game-changers for agencies.

To help determine if Duda is right for you, let’s drill down into some key features of each platform and also compare to see how they stack up against each other:

Business Catalyst’s features are built around its core areas of offerings, which are content management, eCommerce, events, digital marketing, blogging, customer database (CRM), membership site management, etc.

With these features, agencies can create different types of sites for their clients, including blogs, event websites, membership sites etc.

Also, without the need for custom coding or configuration of third-party systems, BC allows agencies to build online stores clients can use to sell both physical and digital products, with integrations for billing, shipping, discounts, vouchers, referrals, and automated recurring orders.

These sites can be managed from anywhere, as BC allows access to its Admin Console on any device.

On the other hand, since Muse is specifically aimed at professional designers, its features are typically design-based.

In short, if you’ve used any related graphics software like Photoshop in the past, you will find Muse’s UI convenient and intuitive because of their similarities.

Muse is open-ended. This means you don’t get any ready-to-use templates or themes, but are provided with a blank canvas. With that, you’re free to design your website from scratch, anyhow.

Muse also has an integration capability for styling a blog from any popular blog service, including Tumblr and WordPress.

Compared to Business Catalyst and Muse, Duda packs a bunch of features which any web design agency will find delightful. Here’s a run-through of some of them:

• Optimized communications: After publishing a new website with Duda, you can easily push a “Welcome Email” to the respective client to notify them that their site is live. If you want the client to manage the site from their end, you can also include the login credentials in the email. Also, Duda’s “Statistics Digest” tool lets you schedule regular analytics reports to your clients, which helps your agency to be perceived as a detail-oriented team that delivers value.

• Fully white label-able platform: With Duda, you can incorporate custom branding elements into your backend’s admin interface. Some of the elements include the logo, text colors, buttons, and background images. This alone can boost brand loyalty and impress your clients, as they’ll be working with a team that “has its own custom-made proprietary platform.”

• Smart content collection tools: One area web design agencies find themselves struggling is appropriating existing assets from clients; they’ll often have to chase after clients for files and content. Duda solves that problem with its “Content Collection Form,” making it effortless for clients to submit images, files, and important business details in an expedited process. You can also import assets from another website by using the “Import Content” module.

• Access control and permissions: Duda offers a unified tool for managing account permissions for both clients and team members. Business Catalyst has a similar feature, which allows administrators to set and control each admin user’s level of access.

• Repackage and sell your custom-branded Duda portal: Duda goes beyond helping you build a masterly web design environment to letting you repackage the platform as your own resellable self-service web design portal.

• Widget builder ecosystem: Duda comes with a built-in, drag-and-drop widget builder which you can use to add custom interactive experiences for users.

• Assignable, dynamic, modular sections: Duda provides dynamic modular content ”Sections” that serve as the building blocks of your website.

Of course, these aren’t the only features/benefits Duda has. In fact, there are a wealth of them. These ones are specifically handy for web design agencies, even though Duda also supports digital publishers and hosting companies.

Conclusion

The news of Adobe’s impending closure of both Business Catalyst and Muse may pose a threat to your business, if you’ve been using their systems. But the end of life for those tools doesn’t have to spell the end of your business.

If you make the right decision, not only can your business pull through the challenge, but can also thrive as it emerges on the other side.

Using the information provided, you should be able to determine whether Duda makes a great alternative for the soon-to-be-defunct platforms.

Creating a Hover Slideshow in Adobe Muse. No Coding Skills Required.

Hey, what’s up Muser! In this video tutorial, I go over how to create a unique hover slideshow using the new responsive composition widget in Adobe Muse.

The steps are as follows:

1. Go to Object > Insert Widget > Composition > Blank.

2. Delete all triggers and targets except one.

3. In the composition widget options set ‘Show Target’ option to ‘On Rollover.’

4. Enable the ‘Triggers on Top’ option to make sure the triggers are above the targets.

3. Add text to the trigger and make the background filled with the trigger blank.

4. Add an image to the target by selecting the target and then going to the ‘Fill’ option in the upper control bar. You can then fill the target with an image and set the image fitting an image position for the target.

5. Place the trigger to the left of the target.

6. Create a new trigger and target by selecting the trigger and clicking the plus symbol below it.

7. Repeat process for as many triggers and targets as you’d like.

8. Done!

For more video tutorials and widgets for Adobe Muse visit http://museforyoushop.com.

Happy Musing!