Well, since almost everyone is on it these days, I decided to put PSD Vault on Facebook as well! In fact I have never used facebook before (ridiculously, isn’t it), so I guess there are many things I need to learn :)

I’ve made a fan page for everyone to join – on there I will post the latest articles from PSD Vault, plus all sorts of design tips and tricks (particularly Photoshop related!) I found across the internet. So if you’re interested,  click here to become a fan right now!

See you all on Facebook!

Hello all, it’s been nearly 10 months since I officially launch PSD Vault! This is my first blog ever and to be honest, I’m totally shocked that right now, my blog ranked 36,925 according to Alexa! I never thought I could even have a blog with such ranking, and all this just can’t be achieved without you. I’d like to thank you for all your visitor, comment, criticism and feedback you gave me. After all, I’m only a Photoshop Hobbist :) and love sharing my finding with everyone.

To a New Home

I’m currently migrating PSD Vault to a new home (server), because with the increasing amount of traffic this because unavoidable. And I do want to continue to expand and put more features on the site, so to give you a better learning experience. After all, photoshop should be fun to learn and play with!

So in the next 48 hours, the website maybe a little bit unstable, I do apologise for that. Everything should be fine after this period.

Ok onto My Future Plans

• I’m going to build a forum on PSD Vault, for everyone loves Photoshop and like to learn more, exchange ideas and so on
• I’m going to make PDF version of all PSD Vault tutorials, so you can read them while you’re offline.
• More freebies, interviews and tutorials are on their way.

Be Part of PSD Vault

If you want to contribute your tutorials, freebies or inspirational articles, just contact me. I will get in touch with you right away.

Thank you and have a great day!

As many of you may have already noticed, PSD Vault had a bit of problem with bandwidth in the past three days and resulting pages being inaccessible.

I have done a hosting package upgrade (at double the price of what I’m paying now) with my interent service providers and hopefully similar issue won’t occur in the future.

I would like to offer my sincere apology to all visitors came to my blog in the past three days and sorry for any inconvenience this has caused.

To be honest, the growth of PSD Vault has gone far beyond what I have anticipated 4 months ag – which is good however I guess I need to be a bit more prepared for it.

Once again I thank you for all the support you have given me and PSD Vault and I will continue writing Photoshop tutorials as usual and keep fresh contents from coming in each week.

If you would like to support PSD Vault, you can buy me an orange juice :) all help will be very much appreciated!

Cheers and have a great day!

Time to do a nice roundup of the tutorials here on PSD Vault! If you have been a good old friend of the site, you might still remember some of those tutorials. However, if you are new here, this post would come in handy when you try to dig up something extra on PSD Vault.

I would also like to announce that PSD Files for each tutorial from PSD Vault are available for just $2 per file, via Paypal, and the Freebie Section will be up very soon.

Some forewords …

It has been a big four months since I launched the site back in Mid November, 2008. The site has grown from 10,000 pageview per month to 10,000 pageview per day on average. Despite the traffic increase, the focus of PSD Vault remains the same: To provide quality Photoshop Tutorial, Resource and inspiration to all levels of designers.

No doubt there is still plenty of room for improvement here and I receive a lot of feedbacks for the tutorial/site design through comments/emails. I will certainly try my best and I thank you for all the constructive comments/feedbacks you have made.

Last but not the least, I would like to say a big THANK YOU to the wonderful site sponsors – thank you so much for the support!!

Ok enough talk, here is 10 tutorials I chose for this roundup, enjoy!

Tutorial Roundup

Create a Realistic Volcano Eruption Scene with Lava Effect in Photoshop

Create a Diablo III Inspired Grungy Text Effect

Bring Colour and Light out of Ordinary Image

Design a Dark and Crimson Forest Scene in Photoshop

Translucent Text Effect with Sky and Cloud

Easily Transform Your Photo into a Watercolour Painting in Photoshop

Create an Realistic Dark Ocean Text Effect in Photoshop

Render a Far Cry 2 Inspired Golden Sunset Scene in Photoshop

Create a Realistic Weedy Text Effect in Photoshop

Give Your Photo a Shining and Metallic Effect in Photoshop

Hope you enjoy this roundup and learn to the maximum!

$2 PSD File Download

I would also like to announce that PSD Files for each tutorial from PSD Vault are available for just $2 per file, via Paypal. You should now see a big red $2 button on the right sidebar, click on it and you will be re-directed to Paypal payment page.

Just one thing to remember:

When you buy the PSD files, please specify the name of the tutorial in “Add special instructions to the seller” in the Paypal payment page, so I know which file you’re after.

I will send the PSD File to your Paypal Email within 24 hours once payment is received.  You can Contact Me if you have any further question.

In the future I will make this system fully automated so you will get the download link straight away. Monthly membership here on PSD Vault is also on its way, so please watch out :)

Freebies, Freebies, Freebies

Yes, I will have a freebies section setup very soon, where you can download stock photos and texture for your own design purpose. There will be no restriction for those images and you can use them whenever, wherever, for whatever.

Hope you enjoy this post and those roundups and have a great day!

If you happened to bump into PSD Vault between 10:00PM 31/01/09 to 14:00PM 01/02/09 Australian Eastern Standard time, you will see an extremely unfriendly message says:

“This account has been suspended, please contact sales/support immediately.”

Trust me, I nearly got a heart-attack when I saw this message myself this morning.

Thank goodness now everything is back to normal. But please allow me to offer my sincere apology to any inconvience/unhappiness this may cause, and let me explain the mystery behind psdvault.com’s 16hrs downtime.

1. Ok firstly I tried to install this plugin (no offence to the designer of this plugin, but it just doesn’t work for me) for PSD Vault, however the installation was proved to be fatal and resulting the crash of my database.
2. Then the whole server got affected and my hosting company has to act quickly and suspend my account. This is a reasonable action of course, but I started to think about
3. I manage to contact the technical support and was granted temporary access to my site (only for 30 minutes), however it was enough to remove deactivate that plugin and reinstall Wordpress.
4. Problem solved and the site went back on!!!!

Well that was it, I guess it’s just part of life, hopefully I won’t have it again :)

Btw, I’m wondering how many of you have been through this sort of problem before?

Yes, the PSD Vault Flickr Group is finally UP – After two months and 300,000 page views. So if you would like to join in, simply click here.

It doesn’t matter whether you’re just starting design or a guru with a magnificant portfolio, you’re all more than welcome to join and share your work and inspire others.

Your work will be displayed in the right sidebar and visible throughout the entire site (for a set period but, depending on the amount work being submitted).  I’m sure you will gain a good level of exposure with the daily 3,500 unique visitors I have here on PSD Vault.

I will also periodically feature inspirational works within the PSD Vault Flickr Group and if you have a homepage or a website, I’m also keen to help promoting your on-line presenece by linking the work to your own homepage/website.

Looking for Guest Writers

Yes, I’m looking for some guest tutorial/design article writers for PSD Vault.

At the moment I won’t be able to offer you any payment, but what I could offer is a free platform you could publish your idea and your work to 3,500 unique visitors I have right now here on PSD Vault :)

Of course you will have full credit and several links back to your website if you have one.

Interested? Feel free to contact me.

Lastly, I would like to say sorry for some of the late response to your emails/comments. I do work Full-Time so time can sometimes be a bit tight for me :)

Dear PSD Vault visitors, I would like to wish you all a very happy Christmas and may all your wishes come true!

PSD Vault is 5 Weeks Old!

PSD Vault is now 5 weeks old and so far it has enjoyed continual growth – As of 23/12/08, I had over 120,000 page views from 154 Countries and Territories around the world. Average daily page view has increased from around 1,500 in November to 3,500+ in December!

All these can not be achieved without your support, and for that I thank you!

What’s New in 2009?

For the New Year, I would like to do three things here on PSD Vault:

1. Create a freebie section where I will periodically publish some free texture/stock photos created by me, and you will be able to download them for your own design use
2. Set up a Flickr group for PSD Vault where you could join and share your design works and inspirations with the rest
3. Hold Seasonal Design Competition with some cool prizes to be won!

And of course, I will keep publishing quality and easy-to-learn Photoshop Tutorials as usual, and hopefully they will give you an extra boost for your creativity!

Meanwhile, if you have any suggestion to PSD Vault, simply drop me a comment on this post or contact me.

Last but not the least, I would like to again wish you all a very safe and happy Christmas, and thanks for all your support!

PSD Vault is growing fast, much faster than I expected. And so far the growth has been consistent and steady. Last week PSD Vault had over 24,000 page views and I can slowly see a community building up here!

I would like to say thank you for all the visitors of PSD Vault and thanks for all your comments and feedbacks. I will try my best to keep posting quality, easy-to-learn Photoshop tutorials, and keep providing resources and more importantly, design inspirations.

I also would like to apologise for not being able to reply some of your guys’ emails and comments on time. The reason is that I also worked full-time as an IT support and web developer for a median-sized local company, sometimes I’m just too busy with work :)

What’s in the Future with PSD Vault?

My goal with psdvault.com is to get it into the global top 100,000 sites in the near future (I strongly believe I can do it!), and to expand PSD Vault into a bigger site with more Photoshop Tutorials, Resouces and Inspirations for the global web/graphic designer community.

Oh by the way, my advertising slot is up and for sale on buysellads.com. If you’re interested, please check out my advertising page.

Once again thank you very much for all your support and have a nice day!

One week after the offical launch of PSD Vault, it reaches 10,000 visits! (All right, to be precise, 10,451 visits) As a result, I had to urgently contact my hosting company and get my plan upgraded to double the amount of monthly limit!

Below is a screenshot of week 1:

To be honest this is completely unexpected and I never thought my blog would be this popular. Although it’s a tiny success, I would like to say a big THANK YOU to everyone who comes to my site, especially to those who wrote email and left comment to me.

I will try my best to keep fresh contents coming in and write more tutorials. Meanwhile, if you guys have any suggestion to the site, please let me know.

Once again thanks for your support and have a great day!

I’m here to announe the launch of psdvault.com, a site dedicated for collecting Adobe Photoshop Tutorials, resouces and inspirations for all web and graphic designers around the world!

My name is James and I’m a recent IT graduate from Queensland University of Technology, Australia. Although I’m not yet a professional, full-time web/graphic designer, I love designing and I spend a large amount of my spare time on learning new design skills on the web.

The reason that I decided to start psdvault.com is simple: I love Adobe Photoshop!

Therefore, I would like to share some of my findings and thoughts of those Photoshop tutorials I encountered with the rest of web design world, and hopefully this site will be of use to those who seek to improve their Photoshop skills and find design inspirations.

Here you can find posts that linked to useful, informative and easy-to-follow Adobe Photoshop tutorials from all over the web, gathered in one place.

Meanwhile, I would like to take this opportunity to thank all original tutorial authors and writers for their works. Every article I post here will have a link back to their original post and a link back to associated website.

My plan is to post at least 10 articles per week so that we will always have fresh content here.

If you have any comment or suggestion to psdvault.com, please drop me a comment. Thanks.

Hope you enjoy your stay here. Have a great day!