Tool kit: Adobe ImageStyler :)

[ChrisLM2001]

For advanced and budding vB designers, there is whiteboard (layout) help for you.

Adobe ImageStyler 1.0 (Adobe ImageReady's original ancestor).

This little proggie makes laying out forum designs (let alone buttons) a breeze, and comes with a rich pre-set filters to apply effects. No longer do you manually have to add affects by hand, and drag out Photoshop for those little design tweaks and text effects. Layout is vector based (but the end result is raster -- layers are saved only in .ist format, exports are merged), so you can make all sorts of template shapes and presets for future work as well.

Best of all, it's now FREE...

http://www.download.com/Adobe-ImageS....html?sb=1&v=1

So add it to your toolkit and go make a better forum style.

BTW, been using it since 1999 and it's a main art program I use for web art, as it's easy to use (has little learning curve compared to the big apps); it makes layouts so quick it's like paper; and it's quick filters allow interesting designs at no production cost to you.

Chris