Hi there, welcome to the 2nd volume of the “Inspirational and Creative Web Links From PSD Vault Facebook Fan Page” series! In this post, I hand-picked 15 Inspirational and Creative Web Links From PSD Vault Facebook Fan Page, out of hundreds of links I collected in the past few months.

Meanwhile, If you wish to get more, simply join the PSD Vault Facebook Fan Page. Fresh Photoshop and design links are added everyday.

For your convenience, I have put those links into 3 categories: Photoshop tutorials, Design inspirations and other Photoshop resources.

Here goes the list, hope you enjoy them and find them useful!

Photoshop Tutorials

Creating Retro Folded Typography Using Photoshop

Create Blood and Milk Typography Poster in Photoshop

100% Non-destructive manipulation: Create a glamour scene in Photoshop

How to Break an Egg in Photoshop

Making a Book of Magical Playground Scene

Design Inspirations

40 Creative Advertisements With Unexpected Ideas

33 Amazing Examples of Monochromatic Photography

40 most breathtaking landscape wallpapers to adorn your desktop

Triangle Poster Design Inspiration: 35 Mind-Blowing Examples

25 Beautiful 3D Abstract Artwork

50 Informative and Well-Designed Infographics

Other Photoshop Resources

The Top 30 Text Effect Tutorials for Awesome Results

40 Handy Photoshop Custom Shape Sets: Save Time

35 Basic Tutorials to Get You Started with Photoshop

15 Awesome and Creative Fonts to Download

That’s it for this post! Hope you enjoy this collection and find those links useful. If you wish to get more, simply join the PSD Vault Facebook Fan Page. Fresh Photoshop and design links are added everyday.

Cheers and have a great day!

We all know Photoshop is a tool that can produce practically any effect you want with images. However in order to produce the effect you want, you will need lots of practices and the right guidance. Luckily in this information age, there are lots of free Photoshop tutorial around to teach you how to achieve some amazing effect via Photoshop.

In this post, I will showcase you 15 Fantastic (fresh) Photoshop Tutorials from the Design Community. Hopefully they will be of use to you and inspire you in whatever you’re trying to make.

Here goes the list, enjoy!

Create A Dynamic Shattering Text Effect

Floral 3D Text Effect

Colorful Plexi Text Effect using Photoshop

Create Stylish Pinky Portrait in Photoshop

Photoshop & Illustrator Tutorial: Add vector flair to model shots

Create an Explosive Abstract in Cinema 4D and Photoshop

Create an Awesome Funky Text Effect

How to create retro sunflower poster in Photoshop

Creation of “Get Digitised” – Photoshop CS tutorial

Photoshop Tutorial: Create gorgeous photomontages

How to create Fantacy Woman in Amazing Photo Manipulation

Create a Falling Fantasy Photomanipulation using Painting Techniques

Making of ‘City Of Angels’

Photoshop Tutorial: Create fashion-inspired photo illustrations

Create Jungle Text  in Photoshop

That’s it for this post! Hope you find it useful and inspirational. Remember if you like those tutorial, drop a comment to the authors and let them know :)

Until next time, have a nice day!

Photoshop is an amazing tool that can do almost everything you can think of with an image – but it is also very tricky to learn from scratch if you’re beginner. Therefore, it’s vitally important to form a few good habits right from the start and as a result, you will find yourself better positioned for any future Photoshop work you may encounter.

In this post, I will show you 5 Good Photoshop Habits You Must Form Right from the Start. Personally I think it will be quite beneficial for you to try and adopt those good practices, especially if you consider using Photoshop as a working tool and be professional with it.

The version of Photoshop I use here is CS4, but the points mentioned here should apply well for older version, too.

Habit 1: Get Your Workspace Setup Right, and Memorise Keyboard Shortcuts

Have a comfortable workspace setup for your Photoshop can make your life much easier in terms of the various task you’re trying to achieve in Photoshop. Have the right arrangement window position, layer palette layer, brush panel setup can get you a long way.

In the case of CS4, you will find a list of pre-defined workspace in window > workspace:

You can also drag and drop windows to your desired position:

and save them as your own favourite workspace setup for future use:

Give your workspace a name:

Another feature is Keyboard shortcuts – you can define them here:

this will bring up a list of shortcuts and you can make changes there:

You can also summarise them by pressing the “Summarize” button:

This will ouput a .htm file – I suggest you print this out and hang them somewhere easy to see:

I don’t have to mention the benefit of using shortcuts – after all, they are “shortcuts” to the art of Photoshop.

Habit 2: Don’t be lazy, Name Your Layers

OK, everybody is lazy in some way. But no matter how lazy you’re, name those layers you created in Photoshop! It has two major benefits:

• You will remeber what you did to your design, 15 days ago. Because the layers are named and structured.
• It will help others to understand your design better, and avoid abusive comments (especially if you work in a collaborative environment)

For instance, the screenshot below doesn’t make any sense:

We can give the layer some meanful names:

The named layer will help you remember what you did in the past, and help others understand your layer structure better.

Habit 3: Use Layer Blending Options Wisely

Layer Blending Option are used quite frequently by designers. It is quite a powerful feature where you can apply lots of effects to one layer:

Obviously, as a beginner, you tend to add on as many blending options as possible to make your design “POP”:

Sometimes, it is better keep things simple:

and the result may be better:

So use those blending options wisely :)

Habit 4: Learn Pen Tool, and Master it

Yes, Pen Tool is probably one of the trickiest tool in Photoshop to learn. I’m sure some people may choose to ignore it and use other tools instead.

I’m not sure how many people here have used Pen Tool (the icon with a little pen) in Photoshop before, but personally I think it is quite a useful tool when it comes to outlining and creating custom shapes.

In the beginning the Pen Tool can be a bit awkward to use, but once you practice and get used to it it will become a very handy tool for you, especially when you are trying to outline objects with complex lighting and backgrounds.

Here are some tutorials I found on the web covering the use of Pen Tool in Photoshop:

How to Use the Pen Tool in Photoshop: A Tutorial on Outlining Objects

Pen Tool Tutorial – Creating Selections With Photoshop’s Pen Tool

Photoshop Pen Tool (Video Tutorial)

You may find once you master the Pen Tool, you can use it to create a lot of elegant effects and make precise selection for your objects. Definitely worth the trouble.

Habit 5: Use Layer Mask More Often

That’s begin this part with a scenario:

You have an image (a flying bird in this case), and you decide to erase some parts of the bird so it looks like something else. But after a few hundred steps later, you found you probably overdid the image a bit:

Naturally, you seek help from the history window, try to reverse a few actions:

But often you find the list isn’t long enough to record your messiness, even if you go to the very top:

And you may have to start over again from the original image:

Worse still, you have a bunch of unnamed layers and objects mixing together, and you don’t even know where to begin:

So, to avoid the above frustrations, add a layer mask to the layer you want to modify – in case, you’re erasing some parts off the bird:

And you realise you made a mistake and erased the wrong part, or change your mind, you can simply right-click the mask and delete it:

And you can have your bird back just like that:

Put it simply: layer mask gives you extra protection against accidental mess-ups and save your time by not having to go back to the very beginning.

That’s it for this post! I hope this would help beginner learn something useful and try and form those habits before it’s too late. After all, you will be the one who benefits from it, eventually.

Till next time, have a great day!

Hi there, welcome to the 1st volume of the “Inspirational and Creative Web Links From PSD Vault Facebook Fan Page” series! In this post, I hand-picked 15 Inspirational and Creative Web Links From PSD Vault Facebook Fan Page, out of hundreds of links I collected in the past few months.

Due to time limitation I can only select 15 best, and most popular links from the fanpage. So if you wish to get more, simply join the PSD Vault Facebook Fan Page now. Fresh Photoshop and design links are added every day.

For your convenience, I have put those links into three categories: Photoshop tutorials, Design inspirations and other Photoshop resources.

Here goes the list, hope you enjoy them and find them useful.

Photoshop Tutorials

Create a Realistic Landscape from Scratch with a Graphic Tablet

Combine 3D Shapes and Vectors for a Dynamic Composition

Sci-fi Environment Concept

Create a Dark Steampunk Digital Painting

How To Create A Grungy And “Sticky” Icon With Photoshop

Design Inspirations

Spectacular Photos of Crepuscular Rays

90 Creative Advertisements You Will Listen To

High Speed Photography : Frozen in Time

Examples of Amazing Animal PhotoManipulation

50 Beautiful Print Advertisements for Inspiration

Other Photoshop Resources

100+ Photography Enhancing Photoshop Actions

45 breathtakingly realistic CG Portraits of women + Tutorials

40 Best Photoshop Tutorials for Creating Fantasy Scenes

40 Outstanding Photo Manipulation Tutorials

30+ Free High Quality Gadget PSD Files

That’s it for this post! Hope you enjoy this collection and find those links useful. Cheers and have a great day!

Personally speaking, I love vintage textures – although we’re living in a high-tech society where everything is shining and glossy, sometimes we need a bit of old, ancient feeling to get a balance and taste the history. Not to mention if you’re working on a design project requiring the vintage touches, you will find those textures and Photoshop brushes extremely useful.

In this post, I will share my collection of 100+ Great Vintage Textures and Photoshop Brushsets to Decorate Your Design. Hopefully they will be of use to you and expand your own vintage collection.

Here goes the list, enjoy!

Textures

Pretty Things – icon texture 1 by ~manila-craze

Vintage III Texture Pack by =cloaks

vintage texture 1 by ~H-D-STOCK

15 textures: art + vintage by =jocosity

vintage diamonds by *DyingBeautyStock

Textures02 – Vintage Floral by ~crazymegan

Vintage Textures Pk1 by =inspyretash-stock

Cracked Wallpaper by ~AboveVintage

Vintage Grunge Texture Pack by =powerpuffjazz

Vintage Musk by ~AsunderStock

Photoshop Brushes

Old Postage Stamp Brushes

vintage grunge brushes by ~alex16

Vintage Images + Ephmera by ~akw04

11 brushes of vintage Harley-Davidson’s

1940 Cosmopolitan Brushes

Vintage Fractal Grunge Brushes by ~WebTreatsETC

Vintage Paper Brushes by ~fiftyfivepixels

Vintage Toys Photoshop Brushes by ~FidgetResources

Vintage Clocks-PS Brushes by ~fiftyfivepixels

Wanted Poster

Old Paper Brushes V by ~lailomeiel

That’s it for this post! Hopefully you will find those textures and brushes useful for your vintage design.

Until next time, have a great day!

If you have been following PSD Vault for a while, you will find a lot of my tuts and inspirational contents are grungy or abstract. As a result, I have collected tons of resources based on those two styles in my resource library and I thought I would share some of those with you :)

In this post, I included 25 Excellent Grunge Style Fonts Perfect for Abstract Design out of my collections of fonts, hope you like them and find them useful.

Inked God

28 Days Later

Rough Linen

Pulse Sans Virgin

Trashco

Broken Ghost

Gridlock’d

Times New Yorker

Soul Mission

Neo print

Laundromat

Jamai Stevie

Karabine

Grutch Shaded

Everyday Ghost

Desperado

Extravaganza

F-Rotten

Killed DJ

Rusted Plastic

That’s it for this post! Hope you enjoy it and find it useful!

Till next time, have a nice day!

Not sure whether you’ve heard of desktopography.net? If not, head over there and take a look – In my opinion, they have some of the most creative, high-end photo manipluation works you will ever see on the net. Although their collection is reletively small, the quality is absolutely top-class. Ipersonally visit them everyday and every time I can discover something new, especially when I need motivation and inspirational.

In this post, I will show you 20 awesome photo manipulative wallpapar from desktopography.net, hopefully you will enjoy them as much as I did and find them inspirational.

And by the way, here is an introduction of desktopography.net:

Designers and developers spend about 90% of their waking life in front of a computer so the most appealing genre for a wallpaper would be one that has beautiful design mixed with the all important aspect of being outdoors.

What we see everyday can affect our mood and state of mind, enhance your desktop with a wallpaper creation from desktopography and feel the essence of nature and the outdoor existence on your computer. Bring tranquility to your desktop, feel the wilderness and give your background a breath of fresh air..

Source: desktopography.net

Here goes the list, enjoy!

That’s it for this post! Hope you enjoy it and find it inspirational!

In terms of Icon design, people may think of Illustrator (or any other vector-oriented software) much more often that Photoshop. However, what happen if you just want to make some icons and the only tool you have is Photoshop?

Here I collected 11 Ultra Delicious Icon Design Tutorials Done in Photoshop to show you how you can create great icons with the drawing facilities available in Photoshop. If you haven’t already seen them, take a look! You might be surprised to see how Photoshop can do :)

Here goes the list, enjoy!

Custom Hard Drive Icon

In this tutorial il show you how to create a custom hard drive icon in various colors.

Create a Jaguar Style Folder Icon

In this tutorial, we will show you how to cover an object in a Jaguar style fur texture. In this example, we’ll cover a computer folder, but this technique can be used with any other object, like a CD cover, a mouse, or even a computer.

Adobe Photoshop CS3 Style Icons

In this tutorial I will show you how to create the Adobe CS3 style icons using some basic gradients and layer styles.

Computer Icon Tutorial

For all those who have been waiting for this, here’s the computer icon video tutorial I promised. I’ve uploaded it externally as the file is too large for deviantArt.

Wii Mote Controller Tutorial

Design a stylish Wii Mote Controller Tutorial in Photoshop. Take a look!

Create a High-Gloss Graduation Hat Icon Design

Photoshop is great to use for creating quality icon designs. In this tutorial, I will teach you how to make a professional, shiny, clean graduation hat icon. The techniques in this tutorial will help you graduate to the next level in icon design.

How to Create a Cute and Adorable Twitter Icon in Photoshop

Today I will show you how I made the Cute Twitter Icons which I released a day ago.  It’s really simple actually. In this tutorial, you will learn how to create a Cute and Adorable Twitter Icon.

Draw a Speaker Icon in Photoshop

This tutorial is contributed by Sohan Negi and will show you in every details on how we can create a set of speakers icon from scratch in Photoshop.

Simple Coffee Cup Icon Photoshop Tutorial

In this tutorial we’ll be going though creating a semi-photo realistic coffee cup, with some nice frothy coffee.

Nice ‘n’ Simple Subscribe Badges

In this Photoshop tutorial we’ll be making those cool supermarket-style badges, then we’ll be turning them into subscribe buttons for your website, a must-have for any blog!

That’s it for this post! Hope you enjoy this collection and find those tutorials useful!

Cheers and have a great day!

Textures are something every Photoshopper loves – great texture mean great design outcome. Plus you can combine different image adjustment tool to those textures to create unique, eye-catching effect.

In this post, I will share my collection 80+ of High Quality Free Variety Texture (Packs) for Your Next Design. Those are excellent textures I collected in the past and I personally think they’re absolutely great. The texture packs range from abstract, natural, metal to grunge. Hope you enjoy them :)

Light texture by ~SunnyGirl33

Package – Metal – 9 by #resurgere

08new2 by *masterjinn

Stained by ~SheisprettyStock

Water and ice by ~borysses

Merlin by ~dazzle-textures

Grunge Package by ~Etereas-stock

Vintage package 2 –exclusive by ~H-D-STOCK

Light Texture by ~Reila-is-Love

sky paper by =prigix

dark textures by ~awesomestyle

Grungy Textures by ~env1ro

ink acetate textures vol. 2 by #resurgere

light concrete texture- stock by =ninja-pi

Vintage III Texture Pack by =cloaks

Textures 04 – Stock Pack by =kuschelirmel-stock

Texture – Flustration Splatter by ~dom90nic

Bokeh Texture Pack 002 by ~regularjane

eljay icon textures set one by ~goodxriddance

nighttime cinema lights by *DyingBeautyStock

Cracks ‘N’ Peels : III. by ~ArtOfDecay-Stock

Canvas 01 by ~nighty-stock

Erupu_Red by ~azuremonkey

Light Flares IIII by ~gafanatik

That’s it for this post! Hope you enjoy those textures and find them useful :)

Until next time, have a great day!

I love space artworks – mainly because there is alway certain degree of mystery in them. After all, that’s a place far beyond our reach and most of us will never get to experience the real space.

Photoshop, on the other hand, give us the freedom to put our imagination into some sort of “reality”. By using Photoshop, we’re able to transform our thoughts about how space would look into digital artworks. And also we can combine different types of space element into our design and create surreal, fantasy effect with them.

In this post, I put in 100+ Brilliant Space Photoshop Brushes to Beautify Your Design + 6 Amazing Space Artworks to Inspire You as a designer. Hopefully you will find them useful and give you some inspiration towards your design.

Here goes the list, enjoy!

Photoshop Brushes

Deep Space by ~Scully7491

Starfield Brush Set by ~gvalkyrie

S.P.A.C.E. Photoshop Brushes by ~JaneDoeStock

Star Brushes by =DemosthenesVoice

planetrenderspack-2 by ~ocd1c-stock

Rabies Star Brushset by ~Rabieshund

Lost In Space Brushes – PS7+ by ~KeepWaiting

Starfield brush set by ~Sakura222-stock

Star Brushes 3 by *LadyVictoire

Moon Brushes by hawksmont Universe

Spacy 2 by ~Scully7491

Awesome Space Digital Artworks to Inspire You

That’s for this post! Hope you enjoy it and found it useful and inspirational!

Until next time, have a great day!

In this post, I will share with you 25 really cool, high-res abstract style Photoshop brush sets I have in my bookmarks for your next design project. Hope you like them and find them useful :)

Personally I love those abstract style brushset because I found them quite useful when you want to add a bit of finishing touches to spice up the image. Mixing them with colors and filters, you can produce very nice effects for your image.

Here goes the list, enjoy!

Xtreme Set by ~JavierZhX

Dreamy Fantasies 2 by *TreehouseCharms

Crystalline Brush

Abstract Brushes by ~Metal-CX

Wicked Abstract III by ~Graphix-Networks

Starry Grunge by ~Rhyme2k

Fractal Chaos by ~JavierZhX

Ardcor’s Rings

N-Q Abstract Brush Set 2 by ~N-Q

Dawn Brushes by ~differentxdreamz

Debris Brush

Dreamy Fantasies 1 by *TreehouseCharms

Lionheart Abstract Brush Pack by *Bleekster

Abstract Smudge Brushes by *FortuneGfx

Silky Lights

ZIAs Smooth Abstract

Abstract Brushset XV

Enigma Brushes

Raging Dawn Brushes

Abstract Brushes Vol 8

Abstract Brushes by ~kRAKOGRAFF

Rise Brushes

Comet Brushes

Euphoria Brushes

Burning Soul

That’s it! Hope you enjoy this collection and find it useful!

Until next time, have a great day and Merry Christmas!!

Silky Lights

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In my opinion, drawing effect has always been a vital part of Photoshop. The various tools and filters available in Photoshop provides designers pretty much endless possibility of creating realistic drawing effect. The good thing is to create those effect is not that difficult and everyone can do it – providing you put in some effort practicing :)

In this post, I will showcase you 10 excellent Photoshop Tutorials that I think can give you a boost to your drawing skills. I have personally tried out them in the past and I think the quality of them are quite good, and should give you lot of tips and tricks into the Photoshop drawing world.

For your convenience, I categorise those tutorials into three difficulty levels: 

Here goes the list, enjoy!

Beginner

How to Draw Badge Buttons in Photoshop

In this tutorial I’ll be showing you how to create your own shiny buttons that you can stick different pictures on.

Source: psdcore.com

Realistic Water Drops

In this Photoshop tutorial I will show you how to make basic water drops in three dimensional space using the elliptical marquee tool, free transform, duplicate layer and a few simple layer effects.

Source: pshero.com

Draw 3D Crystal Icon in Photoshop

This tutorial shows you how to draw nice and glossy 3D crystal icon. A beginner level tutorial however quite informative. Have a try!

Source: 10step.sg

Custom Sim Cards Tutorial

This tutorial shows you the steps to make this really cool, realistic sim card in Photoshop. Very simple yet effective.

Source: hv-designs.co.uk

Intermediate

Create An Old Envelope

I’ve had several requests since posting the Postage Stamp lesson for a follow-up on how to create the envelope used in that tutorial. Well today my Photoshop friends your prayers have been answered. Here’s the step by step to creating that cool old envelope.

Source: pshero.com

How to Make a Badass WordPress Logo

I was in a store the other day and walked by a sign with a logo that had an amazing shiny/metallic look to it. So, I whipped out my cellphone and took a picture of it. I spent a while trying to recreate the look but came up with something a little different. I applied that look to a WordPress Logo. This is how I did it…

Source: 3nhanced.com

Creating a Glass Ball

During the course of this Photoshop tutorial we’re going through 9 major steps to create a glass ball. The main goal of this tutorial is that you get an idea how to approach this. It’s not that important to remember all settings, but it’s more important that you understand what’s exactly happening.

Source: lunacore.com

Advanced

Faking the 3D look using Photoshop

The aim of this tutorial is to show you a different use of Photoshop other than image editing. It is my tribute to the original artist’s work. Besides, I wanted to break a tradition here. Most of the 3D work of animators is inspired from 2D work (sketch/painting/photo).

Source: 3dtotal.com

Create an amazing Ad in Photoshop

I’m a really fan of Peter Jaworowski aka The Hejz, I even wrote a tutorial for PSDTUTS showing an effect inspired by one of the Peter’s amazing works. Then last week, Cameron and Bobby, gave me some tips on how create those light streaks, and that is what I will share with you in this post.

Source: abduzeedo.com

Design a Vintage Radio Icon in Photoshop

In this Photoshop Tutorial, you’ll learn how to design an old vintage radio using simple shapes, gradients, patterns and textures.

Source: tutorial9.net

OK that’s it for this post! Thanks for reading it and I hope you found those tutorials useful for improving your drawing skills!

Till next time, have a great day!

I remembered when I first started learning Photoshop many years ago, there are many features I never knew how to use, or just don’t bother use them at all. Well, I was wrong, and I have since realised everything has their uses and they’re there for a purpose :)

In this tutorial, I will show you 5 Highly Applicable, Yet Easily Ignored Features in Photoshop -  and How to Best Use Them. Hopefully they’re of use to you as a starter, thus make your life as a photoshopper a bit easier right from the beginning.

Meanwhile, I guess even if you’re an experienced Photoshopper already, it nevers hurt to have a read :) Perhaps you’d like to share some tips and tricks too? Just drop me a comment below :)

Ok enough talk, let’s get started!

Turn on the Alignment Options in Move Tool

Let’s face this: you create a new document, copy and paste a new image onto the canvas, and try to position it to the center. If you’re a beginner, you may try to judge the center point by your eyes (I did it once). But believe me, your eyes don’t always tell the truth!

That’s when the alignment options come in handy. Simply click on the Move Tool (V), then you will see the alignment options appears on the top:

And let’s say you want to position an object in the center of the canvas, simply Ctrl + A to select the whole canvas, and you will see some alignment option become clickable:

And then you simply click “Align vertical centers” and “Align horizontal centers”, you will see the object is now positioned in the center of the canvas:

Also if you wish to align your object to a different spot, simply change the selection range instead of the whole canvas.

Image > Trim…

Ok, there will be time that you will face the following situation: you will have image sitting on top of a transparent or a single solid colour background, and you will want to get rid of all the background and leave just the image object.

Naturally you will want to use the Crop tool, however that can sometimes be tricky. So the Trim function can come in handy. (Image > Trim…)

What trim function does is that it lets you instantly crop your document’s canvas to the outer border of your image and clear out the rest of the image, as along as you have a transparent background or a solid colour background. Here is a demo: (I have a solid white background)

Before Trim

After Trim

Isn’t this much easier than cropping?

Unlock the Background Layer

Trust me, there will be time comes that you will want to unlock the background layer, for whatever purpose. To do so, simply double-click the background layer on the layer pallette, as shown below:

You will then be prompted with a new window, simply click “OK”:

And you will now see the lock on the background layer is gone, that means the background layer is now unlocked:

You can now drag this background layer up and down, just like all other unlocked layers.

An even quicker to unlock the background layer: (Thanks to dietoself86)

Actually the quickest way to unlock the background layer is to alt-double click on the layer.

Convert to Smart Object

Since Photoshop CS2, there is a new feather called Smart Object being introduced. We may know it’s there, however many of us may never use it until now.

This feature is available when you right-click the image layer on the layer palette, as show below:

I won’t go into great detail about the use of smart object here, however what I would like to talk about is that by converting your image into smart object, you can overcome the issue whan resize the image, it becomes blurred when enlarge back to the original size. Below is the screenshot of comparison:

Without converting to smart object, after resizing back to original size:

Converted to smart object, after resizing back to original size:

You can see by converting the image to smart object, it preserves the details and no matter how many times you resize it, it won’t go blurry.

More smart object options are available under Layer > Smart Object, as shown below:

Further Readings about Smart Object:

Photoshop Smarter: Smart Objects

Photoshop How-To: Get Smart About Smart Objects

A Word of Caution for using Smart Object: (Thanks to B. Moore for commenting this)

Using smart objects will increase the file size by a large amount. It all depends on size of the original piece thats was turned into a smart object. Using lots of high rez smart objects will make a HUGE increase to file size.

The Info Window

As a photoshop beginner, every now and then you will need extra information about the image you’re working on. And you may ask: How do I work out the size, colour and see extra information about the tools I’m using?

That’s when the info window come in real handy. To bring it up, simply go to Window > Info or press F8:

Once you have the info window open, it display some real handy information about the tool you’re using, and the size of the selection you’re drawing, etc.

Here is a example info window I have when I draw a rectangular marquee selection on a white canvas:

As you can see, it displays information about the rectangluar marquee tool I’m using, the size of the selection (in pixel) I’m drawing, the X/Y position of the selection, and the colour mode stats.

Those information would be quite useful especially when you need precise measurement, such as web graphic, prints, etc.

Ok that’s all for this tutorial! Hope you enjoy it and find those information useful. Cheers and have a great day!

In my opinion, landscape photo manipulation is probably one of the most interesting, however difficult to master Photoshop technique – especially identifying the light source, how to best merge a few stock images together, etc.

In this post, I will showcase 25 Absolutely Magnificant Landscape Scenary Photo Manipulation + 5 Great PS Tutorials Showing How to Make Them. Those images are hand-picked by me from deviantArt.com and I personally enjoy them very much. The tutorials are also part of my browers favourites and I hope they’re useful to you when it comes to produce great scenary photo manipulations.

Here goes the list, enjoy!

Tutorials  (From Basic to Advance)

Warm Golden Sunsets With Gradient Maps

When I think of the perfect sunset photo, my mind immediately fills with lots of warm reds, oranges and yellows as the sun gently sets across the water or beyond the hills. Sunsets are one of the most commonly photographed aspects of nature, and yet photos rarely manage to capture their intense beauty. What was once a sky filled with rich, golden hues often ends up looking cooler, less vivid, and ultimately less interesting.

- Source: photoshopessentials.com

Blending Two Different Natural Elements

Blending waterfall-castle-sky by =night-fate is an easy to follow tutorial aimed at those that are new to photomanipulation.In this tutorial night-fate explains to us just one of the many ways of how to successfully blend images together to make a seamless background for a dark an emotive scene.This is just one of the many resources she has to offer.

- Source: DeviantArt.com

Planet Integration Tutorial

In this tutorial, I won’t show you how to make planet or something like that, just how to integrate finished planet in to the photo.

- Source: DeviantArt.com

The Soft Sea Light

This lesson is about how to create by three pictures only a tender collage of sea-piece. A peculiarity of this collage is that we will do the effect of soft light. For work I took pictures from the Internet, to the authors – thank you.

- Source: psdtop.com

Add Dynamic Lighting to a Flat Photograph

In this tutorial, I will show you how to spice up a fairly dull and flat photograph. It’s very easy and fast! Go from flat photo to a uniquely lit style.

- Source: psdtuts.com

That’s all for this tutorial! Hope you enjoy this collection and find those tutorials useful. Cheers and have a great day!

Graphic River has launch their awesome re-design of their massive community site. Since the site is a great resource for all graphic designers, I went ahead and digged up some new features and functionality and compiled them into this post, hopefully you guys will find it useful!

For people who hasn’t across them yet, Graphic River is an extremely popular community site where you can buy and sell Layered Photoshop, Vectors, Icons and Add-ons. So if you need any stock files for your design, go ahead and check them out. Or, you’re really good at Photoshop, make some awesome designs and sell them the layered file there.

In this post, I will take you through some exciting new features and functions based on the re-design of GraphicRiver. Take a look, I’m sure you will pleasantly surprised :)

And by the way, Graphic River is an Envato MarketPlace, and here is a bit of intro for Envato:

Since coming on the scene only three years ago in August 2006, the Envato marketplaces have been growing at an unbelievable rate. They now boast highly active communities, have over 200,000 members worldwide, and are home for tens of thousands of digital items available for purchase.

- Source: Envato MarketPlace Press Release

The New logo

Yes, they made a new logo for Graphic River. I’m sure there must be heaps of meaning behind this redesgin (trying to link between graphic and … river, for instance). But I have to say the spotlight of this Logo is that Font – MgOpen Modata. I personally really like it and the best thing is this font is open source!

Also the designer of this logo, Kai Loon, has an interesting post on his blog talking about his experience in terms of the logo re-design, so take a look if you’re interest :)

Enhanced Search Engine

Everyone knows a good site search means everything, espeically for a massive community site like graphicRiver. So without a doubt, they have also greatly enhanced their search engine – as stated on their blog entry:

We have been working hard to improve our search and packaged in with the launch are the ability to search within categories, portfolios, collections, search by tags, search by attributes, search users, search the wiki from support and many other search improvements …

Source: The River Current

With the result page, the layout is clean and easy to follow, and you can sort your result by Relevance, Rating, Sales and Price:

Great, isn’t it? Oh, I forgot to tell you that you can search across multiple categories, too. Just tick all the checkboxes!

Recent Item from Author You Follow

Another awesome feature! Similar to Twitter, this feature allow you to follow your favourite authors and view their latest files on your homepage. Convenient eh!

There is no limit number of author you can follow. Plus, the author that you follow on other Envato marketplace site (e.g. themeforest) will appear on Graphic River, too. In regards to this new feature, here is what the designer has to say:

We’ve created this feature so our community can capitalize on all that social networking has to offer, and now that we’ve laid the foundation for this, we will be really building on it.

- Cyan Ta’eed

Forum Makeover

Yes, the forum also went throught a huge makeover. They’ve brought an all-new UI including first reply and last reply, better styles in the posts, email updates from forum threads, the ability to see threads and posts by a user, and a new recent threads sidebar. And they’ve linked up the marketplace blogs and forums so you can chat about blog posts on the forums as well as see the latest news and announcements from inside the community!

The MarketPlace Wiki

A comprehensive Marketplace Wiki has been added, where you can read articles on all kinds of topics, such as how users can increase their passive income through the marketplace referral program.

It contains tons of articles, tips and FAQs about not just Graphic River, but the whole marketplaces!

Ok that’s for this post! Hopefully you will find these info helpful and if you want to know more about those new features, simply hop onto The River Current – Graphic River Blog!

Ability to produce spotless, great-looking photo effect is something that every Photoshopper strives to achieve. We all know Photoshop is designed to help us make photo/image look great, however, because Photoshop itself is such as large-scale, complicated software, sometimes it’s difficult for beginners or even intermediate users to find the function and option they need to make such effect. That’s why many tutorials have been created to help overcoming this difficulty.

In this post, I will show you my collection of 11 Fascinating and Educational Tutorials Teaching You How to Produce Better Photo Effects. Those are tutorial that I came across months or even years ago, and until now they still reside in my firefox bookmarks. It’s a small collection, however I’m sure  you will find pretty much everything you need to make great looking photos, based on the techniques outlined in each tutorial.

Hope you enjoy them and learn lots :)

For your viewing convenience, I broke down the tutorials into three difficulty levels: Beginner, Intermediate, Advance.

Here goes the list, enjoy!

Beginner Level

Basic Photo Editing Tutorial

For this tutorial I will be showing you how I personally edit my photos. These are just the basics such as removing blemishes and smoothing the skin as well as making other general adjustment.

- source: thetragictruth-of-me.deviantart.com

Finding and Identifying the Light Source

Use Photoshop to create and add a dramatic ray of light to your photos. It’s easy, accurate, and fun! This tutorial shows you how to find and identify the light source for your photo. Fairly easy, have a try!

- source: photoshoptutorials.ws

Photoshop Tutorials: Turn A Photo Into A Collage Of Polaroids

In this Adobe Photoshop tutorial, we’re going to learn how to take a single photograph and turn it into a collage of polaroids, with each polaroid containing a small section of the overall image. You can use this effect with lots of different types of images, whether it’s a photo of one person or several people. It’s great for photos of family or friends, vacation photos, or even as a creative effect for wedding photography.

- source: photoshopessentials.com

Transform Photo into Watercolor Painting

This tutorial shows a quick and easy method to transform photo into watercolour Painting by using just a few steps. The great thing about this tutorial is that you can use it pretty much any photo of your choice. Have a try!

- source: 10steps.sg

Intermediate Level

Faking HDR in Adobe Photoshop

This HDR Photoshop tutorial shows quite easy way to fake HDR photos in Photoshop. You don’t need to shoot into RAW or take multiple photos – one JPEG file is enough.

- source: nill.cz

Lighting a Giant Elephant

If you’re like me, every now and then you find yourself needing to insert a subject image into a background where the lighting between the two doesn’t quite match. Your subject image may be flatly lit, while your background contains crisp shadows and highlights — and if you don’t correct the problem you run the risk of getting a load of critical comments.

- source: worth1000.com

Fiery Photoshop Space Explosion Tutorial

Illustrating scenes from the final frontier can make for some beautiful work. In this tutorial — the longest we’ve ever published — I’ll walk you through creating a spectacular space scene featuring two planets colliding. Strap yourselves in, Photoshoppers!

- Source: psd.tutsplus.com

Seamless compositing

Learn how to fake unbelievable fantasy images, like this giant warrior lizard, using some clever Photoshop trickery.

- source: digitalartsonline.co.uk

Advance Level

Create dynamic distortion effects

In the following steps, I’ll let you in on one of the most effective and easily mastered techniques that I use to make striking, dynamic distortions of subjects – in this case I’ve used a model, although the technique can be adapted to any objects that you wish to feature in your work, such as cars or trees.

- source: computerarts.co.uk

Matte Painting

This tutorial is actually a “making of” where I explain how I proceeded to achieve this matte painting. I use a Wacom Intuos² A4 board, if you don’t have any graphic board this is going to be hard but not impossible. At each step of the matte painting, useless to remind you to create a new layer so that the work will be easier and mistakes avoided!

- source: 3dtotal.com

Create a Powerful Mental Wave Explosion Effect

In this tutorial, I will show you how to create a crazy explosion, like a mix of Magneto’s ability with Peter Petrelli’s power. We will use images and filters to produce this wave explosion effect. Even though it may look like a difficult tutorial, it’s really not that hard.

And just by the way, this is the most amazing, comprehensive, absolutely beyond awesome tutorial I have ever seen so far on the interent.You’ve got to try this out.

- source: psd.tutsplus.com

Ok that’s it for this 11 Fascinating and Educational Tutorials Teaching You how to Produce Better Photo Effects post here on psdvault.com. Hope you enjoy this collection and found those tutorial interesting and useful.

Till next time, have a good night!

Abstract Effect, is basically design that does not have any specific purpose or meaning. I always enjoy them mainly because I feel they’re the ones that really give me maximum freedom, and particularly useful when it comes to adding some final touch-ups for any other type of design.

In this post, I will showcase 8 Elegant, Really Cool Abstract Photoshop Tutorials to boost your creativity and beautify your design. I personally have tried all these and I think they’re really well written and practical. Those effect can be applied to a wide range of works, including photo effect, web graphics and any other designs.

Try them out, and see if you can master them all :)

Enough talk, here goes the list, enjoy!

Photoshop Tutorial Abstract Light Rays

In this tutorial, the author shows a step-by-step guide of how to create a really cool abstract Light Rays in Photoshop. Very nice in my opinion, have a try!

Source: freephotoshop.ca

Abstract Lines Background

In this tutorial , the author describes the steps he took to create this Abstract Lines Background in Photoshop. Great desgin, should definitely have a go at it!

Source: tu-torial.com

Calculations And Colorization

In this Photoshop tutorial I’ll show you how to create an Alpha Channel using the Calculations dialog and we’ll use it to get a really great abstract colorized photo effect.

Source: pshero.com

Creating the new retro

The two keys to this tutorial are to experiment and to have fun. There is no single, linear way to achieve this composition when so many variables are at work, so each small alteration can throw other elements into flux. I will offer you some guidelines and pointers, but it will ultimately be up to you. So, throw on some Zeppelin and let’s get rockin’.

Source: www.computerarts.co.uk

Drawing an Abstract Lightbulb

In this tutorial, I want to cover a couple of techniques, namely Glows using layer styles, Stroking paths, Particles using brush dynamics,Bokeh effect.

Source: psdrockstar.com

Abstract lighting effects

Learn how to create a very colorful waves element with light effects in Adobe Photoshop CS4. Very Cool Effect, even if you don’t have CS4, this effect is still achivable.

Source: adobetutorialz.com

Space Lighting Effects in 10 Steps – Photoshop Tutorial

In this Photoshop tutorial I will show you how to create a space scene with some nice Lighting Effects in 10 Steps. This tutorial is simply awesome, really popular on the web, if you haven’t tried it, go ahead! You will learn so much from it!

Source: abduzeedo.com

How to Create Brilliant Light Streaks in Photoshop

Lighting effects have become quite popular, and are an effective way to add bright eye catching details to a photo or illustration. In this tutorial, you will learn a simple technique for creating brilliant light streaks which can be used in different ways to add motion and brightness to your designs.

Source: designreviver.com

That’s it for this post! Let me know what you think of those tutorials :)

Till next time, have a great day!

In this post, I will introduce 7 Highly Practical Photoshop Site Mockups I have came aross on the net from a variety of sources, plus 1 Amazingly Detailed Tutorial About Converting Them into Working Web Pages.

For the 7 mockup tutorials I have selected, although they all aim towards the same objective, the techniques used during the process can be seen differently, mainly because the difference in genre (e.g. corporate design v.s watercolour design). Interesting to see the methods the authors use to achive the end result :)

As for the convertion tutorial I included here, I personally think it’s the best and most detailed one on the net! I’m sure you will find it useful, too. Enjoy :)

Here goes the 7 Highly Practical Photoshop Site Mockups, hope you enjoy them and if you like them and find them useful as I did, give the authors/writers some applause!

Awesome Tutorial Portfolio Design

Hi dudes, our new awesome tutorial! I think this is most detailed and long web design tutorial on the web  with 175 screenshots!!! This tutorial include lots of  trendy photoshop effects.

- By PSD Themes

Create a Clean and Colorful Web Layout in Photoshop

In this tutorial I am going to show you how to create a clean corporate layout in Photoshop. The original layout was created by kuntiz from ThemeForest and I want to thank him for allowing me to write this tutorial.

- By Tutorial9

Corporate WordPress Style Layout

In this tutorial you will learn how to create a corporate wordpress styled layout. If you have any questions about this tutorial be sure to ask in the comments. Also, remember with all the tutorials, the psd is available for download.

- By PSDVibe

Create a Vibrant Modern Blog Design in Photoshop

Taking a closer look into the world of web design this tutorial will cover the process of designing a vibrant and colourful modern blog layout in Adobe Photoshop. Beginning with a blank canvas we’ll go through the process of creating the entire structure and effects from scratch.

- By Blog.Spoongraphics

Creating a Dark Layout Mockup in Photoshop

Welcome to tutorial 209, in this tutorial we’ll be creating a dark layout with some nice unique styling. We’ll also be making our very own custom patterns to go with the layout.

- By HV Designs

Create a Nice Web Portfolio Design with a Watercolored Background in Photoshop

In this step by step tutorial I explain how to realize a nice Web Portfolio Design with a Watercolored Background using two brush sets, a icon pack and some basic techniques.

- By pvmgarage.com

Graphic Design Studio Web Layout

In this tutorial i will show you how easy is to create a layout with transparent buttons. This type of layout was used lately a lot because it is the latest trend in website design.

- By Grafpedia

And here is the one amazingly detailed tutorial about how to convert your design into working page. I personally found it very useful, especially for beginners who have limited knowledge about HTML/CSS.

Converting a Photoshop Mockup

In this first-ever video podcast, I start the conversion process of an Adobe Photoshop mockup of a website, into a real live CSS based website.

- By Chris Coyier from css-tricks.com

That’s it for this post! I hope you find those links/articles useful, and good luck with the mockups :)

Till next time, have a great day!

Have you ever come across an amazing looking photo that has vibrant colour and huge depth, and you wondered how on earth could this image be created in the first place? If you have, you probably bumped into one of those HDR (High Dynamic Range) images.

In this post, I have included 30 Mind-blowing HDR Images + 10 Articles that I found useful on How to Generate Them. Hopefully those wonderful works would inspire you, and the articles can get you started on HDR image processing.

I would love to hear from you about the experience you have for this respective, simply drop me a comment below and we can all learn together!

Here is a bit of definition I found on Wikipedia about HDR:

In image processing, computer graphics, and photography, high dynamic range imaging (HDRI or just HDR) is a set of techniques that allows a greater dynamic range of luminances between light and dark areas of a scene than normal digital imaging techniques. The intention of HDRI is to accurately represent the wide range of intensity levels found in real scenes ranging from direct sunlight to shadows.

Here is the list of 30 Mind-blowing HDR Images from deviantArt.com (you can click on the image to view them on deviantArt.com and access the author’s homepage from there)

Got inspired and want to know more about HDR? here are some articles about HDR that I found useful:

How to Create Professional HDR Images

Photoshop CS2 has a little-known (it seems) built-in HDR assembler that, while lacking the “make my photo look like a bucket of saturated paints gone awry” tone-mapping features of Photomatix, is capable of creating extremely realistic or extremely surreal HDR images.

Simple Guide To HDR

HDR images are generated by taking multiple pictures of the same scene at different exposure settings and combining them digitally on a computer. Generally, the more pictures that are taken at different exposure settings the better the resulting HDR image will be.

High Dynamic Range (HDR) Photography in Photoshop CS2

High dynamic range (HDR) images enable photographers to record a greater range of tonal detail than a given camera could capture in a single photo.  This opens up a whole new set of lighting possibilities which one might have previously avoided—for purely technical reasons.

Adobe Photoshop CS3 Tutorial – HDR – High Dynamic Range

Contrary to popular opinion – what you see is not what you always get. You may be able to see the detail in those dark shadows and bright highlights when the sun is shining – but can your CCD or CMOS sensor? Contrast in a scene is often a photographer’s worst enemy. Contrast is a sneak thief that steals away the detail in the highlights or shadows (sometimes both).

HDR Photos and Photoshop

In the real world, the dynamic range far exceeds what our eyes are capable of seeing and what our monitors and printers are capable of displaying. With high dynamic range (HDR) images, you can create images that can store a larger dynamic range.

The Definitive Guide to Realistic High Dynamic Range Images

This tutorial will attempt to demonstrate how to make a realistic HDR, one that is virtually indistinguishable from a single exposure. The biggest goal is producing a tutorial that can stand as a standard by which anyone can learn to create a balanced HDR. Ultimately, the processing choices are yours.

Merge to HDR in Photoshop CS2

Everything has limits, and the technical evolution of photography during the past 150 years has largely been about overcoming the craft’s limitations. Dynamic range though is one of the limitations that hasn’t yielded much over the years to technology’s inexorable advances.

Photoshop HDR

This is an article about Photoshop HDR imaging. The following HDR workflow is explained in detail:

Merging photos to an HDR image
Processing the HDR image
Tone Mapping

Photoshop CS2 High Dynamic Range

Photoshop CS2, offers an intriguing new function for creating 32-bit High Dynamic Range (HDR) images. It offers the ability to combine multiple individual images with different exposures into a single 32-bit floating-point image with expanded dynamic range.

Learn how to create awesome HDRs

In this post, you’ll learn the steps you need to take to create cool HDR images. Find out how to select a great scene, and how to properly take the images.

That’s it for this “30 Mind-blowing HDR Images + 10 Useful Articles on How to Generate Them” post on psdvault.com. I hope you find this post both inspirational and useful for your learning towards HDR image processing. I would love to hear from you about the experience you have for this respective, simply drop me a comment below and we can all learn together!

“An action is a series of tasks that you play back on a single file or a batch of files—menu commands, palette options, tool actions, and so on. For example, you can create an action that changes the size of an image, applies a filter to the image for a particular effect, and then saves the file in the desired format.” – From Photoshop Help File.

The above says it all: By using Photoshop Actions, you can greatly improve your productivity and efficiency, especially if you would like to apply the same effect over and over again. I use it all the time

In this post, I have included 10 Highly Useful Articles (Intro + Roundups) that Talk About Photoshop Action, which I have in my personal collection for you to go through. Get ready for some actions!

An Intro to Actions and Photoshop Automation

Without actions you would have to walk through the process 30 times, taking hours or days to complete the task. If you had an Action script, you could be done in as little as 30 minutes, maybe sooner! Simply starting the action, typing your text, and hitting play again will create your effect.

- photoshopcafe.com

Using Photoshop Actions to automate tasks in Photoshop

Photoshop users often overlook Photoshop actions because of the misconception that this feature is difficult to master. But if you take a closer look at Photoshop actions, you will realize that they are easy to use and can in fact help you save time and increase productivity by automating things for you.

- bestdesignoptions.com

Complete Guide to Using Actions in Photoshop

Whenever you perform a repetitive task in Photoshop, you can save yourself time and effort by using actions. Helen Bradley’s quick-start guide explains what a Photoshop action is, how to find and play an action, and how to record your own.

- peachpit.com

Learn How To Automate Photoshop With Actions at Photoshop Essentials.com

In this series of Adobe Photoshop tutorials, we’re going to look at everything you need to know to get up and running with Photoshop Actions!

- photoshopessentials.com

Photoshop action to improve your photos instantly

With this Photoshop action you can quickly improve your photos without any hassle. Even If you’re guru at Photoshop, often you don’t have enough time to implement all your thorough knowledge and Photoshop tricks just to make some photos for your friends look more attractive and professional.

- garmahis.com

The Ultimate Collection Of Useful Photoshop Actions

Saving repetitive tasks as Photoshop actions can save you a lot of time, allowing you to automate your work and improve workflow efficiency. A Photoshop action is a recording of a sequence of commands and operations that you can save and access later on.

- smashingmagazine.com

400+ Time Saving Photoshop Actions

We have collected a handful of great (and free) downloadable PS Actions in this article and also included a nice tutorial on creating your own Actions.

- designreviver.com

Photoshop actions: 124+ Free Photoshop Actions to Boost Your Designs

An action is a series of tasks that you play back on a single file or a batch of files – menu commands, palette options, tool actions, and so on. You can create an action that changes the size of an image, applies a filter to the image for a particular effect, and then saves the file in the desired format. Nice, isn’t it !

- visual-blast.com

14 sites give away free photoshop actions

If you are graphics designer and need new type of action for your work then here is the list of download link of site which providing free photoshop action for you.

- piyadas-world.com

The ultimate photoshop resource list part 3: actions

An action is a series of tasks that you play back on a single file or a batch of files – menu commands, palette options, tool actions, and so on. You can create an action that changes the size of an image, applies a filter to the image for a particular effect, and then saves the file in the desired format.

- fuelyourcreativity.com

Ok that’s it for the list! Hope you find those article useful and get start using Photoshop Action! Trust me, it will make your life much easier :)