May Wallpaper

With the release of my latest blog design, I’ve also created a wallpaper for your downloading pleasure.

This is a special edition wallpaper though, because is specifically tailored with a calendar for the month of May. I will be happy to take special requests for specific months for those interested.

Without further adieu…

April 15, 2009 at 11:30 am | General | No Comments »

Update!

So, I decided that the first rendition of my blog was much too dark.

I’ve updated my blog with a much cleaner look and things feel alot better. If you find any issues, please let me know!

April 15, 2009 at 9:29 am | General | No Comments »

Playing with Color Saturation

Have you ever looked at one of those cute cards that have the two little children being portrayed as adults? One of the kids usually has some kind of flowers, usually roses. In full color, they really don’t have that much impact on the viewer, but the real effect that draws you in is that they tend to be done in black and white. However, the flowers are colored still.

Many Photoshop users already understand how color substitution works, but for those of us that do not, getting this type of effect can be a daunting task. Thankfully, this type of effect can easily be done in just a few simple steps.

In today’s tutorial, we’ll be exploring the art of color substitution using adjustment layers, with the intent of course to preserve the pixels in the original picture.

Here is what our final result will look like:

Step 1:

Select the picture that you want to create this effect on. I chose a lovely picture of a rose and some baby’s breath that I found on http://www.sxc.hu.

Step 2:

Open the photo in Photoshop and while pressing Alt, double click on the layer to unlock the layer. Add a Hue and Saturation layer, and reduce the Saturation to -100 as shown below. This essentially removes all of the color information from the picture, but because we created a layer mask to do this, the integrity of the original layer is left intact.

Step 3:

Click on the mask portion of the Hue & Saturation layer. Select the brush tool and remembering the rule “White allows, Black suppresses” unmask the portion of the picture that you would like to allow the color to show through.

Step 4:
Finally, add a Color Selection layer. Notice that there is a drop down that you can change all the different colors with. The only one we need to be concerned with is the Reds. Adjust the values as shown below.

There you have it! A desaturated ‘old style’ photograph. Feel free to stylize the photo in different ways to achieve different results. I hope you enjoyed today’s tut!

April 6, 2009 at 10:34 am | Design, Tutorials | 2 Comments »

Wallpaper in Two Flavors

Here’s another:

April 3, 2009 at 3:46 pm | General | No Comments »

Apocalypse Wallpaper

Just a little something I whipped up.

April 1, 2009 at 10:00 am | General | No Comments »

4 Great Sites for Photoshop Brushes

If you’re like me, inspiration is sometimes no more than a new brush away. Sometimes I just like to poke through different compilations of Photoshop brushes and find a new set that I find interesting. It’s hard sometimes to know where exactly to look.

Today I’m going to compile a short list of sites that you can go to find all sorts of new and interesting brushes. Spark inspiration, find that finishing touch, or maybe just play around. Whatever you use brushes for, here is a few sites that you can go to find brushes.

Brusheezy.com - This site is a fantastic site to find brushes of all kinds. Grunge, holiday, objects, you name it. Here you will find hundreds of brushes all neatly organized in various categories. It’s simple and easy to search or browse for a new set of brushes. It is the first place I always look when I’m searching for a new brush set to use.

DeviantArt.com - This is another great site for brushes. It takes a little bit of work though to find what you want, but if you’re not opposed browsing, then this site won’t be too hard on you. The brushes are not very organized, but there is a lot of them in varying levels of quality. It is a community of artists that submit all kinds of different artwork, including Photoshop brushes. In addition to the brushes, you can also get inspiration from user submitted works of art in many different formats.

Myphotoshopbrushes.com - This is a somewhat new site to me. Until today, I did not know that this site existed. It is neatly organized, with the ability to browse through various categories. There are several hundred brushes available here.

psbrushes.net - This site has just over 500 brushes sorted into various categories. The site is neatly organized and offers some really nice brushes.

There are many other sites out there for Photoshop brushes. What are some of your favorite sites for brushes?

March 30, 2009 at 11:14 am | Design | No Comments »

Easy Atmosphere Effects Tutorial

Man has always been fascinated with space and everything in it. Planets, stars, black holes, solar systems…these objects have been the subject of many forms of art. With Photoshop, designing space art has never been easier. Today’s tutorial is actually quite simple.

I’m going to show you how to create an atmosphere that one might see around a planet. Keep in mind that this technique can be used to create a really nice glow effect for a lot of different projects as well.

To start off, create a new photoshop document. Make it 1000 pixels wide by 1000 pixels high.

Set your foreground color to black and with the paint bucket tool, fill the current layer with black. Create a new layer, and call it Planet.

Select the Ellipse Marquee tool and holding down the shift key, drag a fairly good sized circle. Fill it with black. You won’t see the circle because we’ve got a black circle on a black background. If you look at the layers window, you can see that there is indeed a black circle.

Now click on the Layer Styles button. Use the values in the screen shots below to add an Outer Glow and an Inner Glow.

Right click over the FX icon in the Planet layer and click on Create Layers. This takes the effects that we added and makes them into separate layers so we can more easily manipulate our atmosphere effects.

Add a Layer Mask to each of the effect layers, and remembering the rule “white allows, black suppresses” mask out a portion of the glows as shown.

Congratulations, you have successfully created a dark planet with atmosphere. There are other things you can do such as adding texture to the planet or creating a star field that can be placed behind your planet to give it a more natural setting. In the one below, I toned down the outer glow a bit and created a textured planet that looks more natural.

For more tutorials and other design tidbits, check back often!

March 27, 2009 at 9:37 am | Design, Tutorials | 3 Comments »

Things I learned about Design from the Terminator

With the new Terminator Salvation movie in full advertising mode, preparing for a (hopefully) triumphant release this summer, there are articles popping up everywhere. One article I read talked about the Terminator as a metaphor on life. (source)

I got to thinking, what can you learn about design from the Terminator? I realized that you can learn quite a bit. And so, in light of that, I give you:

Things I learned about Design from the Terminator.

• If a design doesn’t quite work the way you want it to the first time, change it up and try again. If it doesn’t work right the second time, try again. In fact, no matter how many times it just doesn’t work…try again and again until it DOES work. T-100, T-1000 and T-X are just Skynet’s way of trying again…and again…and again.

  You don’t have to change the actual design itself. Maybe you need to change the playlist of music you’re listening to in order to see or feel out a different angle. Go watch a movie and come back to the design, maybe you’ll be inspired by an event in the movie. If all else fails, scrap it and start over.

• Learning something new is always a good thing. Terminators always seemed to know exactly what to do in every situation. In design, learning a new method of doing something that you have always done a particular way. This can help you be much more versatile.

• Using the right tool for the right job is always a great idea, but sometimes you can use a different tool to get the same effect. Terminators always seem to have just the right tools available to complete their mission. If all else fails, try the big semi truck!

  Using the layer effects tool can often achieve quick and easy results on a given project. For example, using the Layer Effects toolbox you can achieve really nice light and shadow effects. But you can achieve the same effects by using additional layers and the brush tools. It might take you a little more work, but sometimes you can get better results through the use of your brush tools.

• When designing for a client, getting additional and more specific information is always a good idea. In the first Terminator, Arnold had to look through a phone and systematically terminated every Sarah Connor on the list. Despite the script, if Skynet had done it’s homework and gave Arnold additional information, the job could have been a lot more successful.

  If you don’t have all the information from the client, your job can be a lot more difficult that it needs to be.

• Contracts. Every Terminator knows exactly what it’s supposed to do and what it is responsible for. Make sure you know what you are responsible for before you even start on a project, and get it in writing. When you have a well written contract in your possession, it’s hard to be surprised when the client says, “But you didn’t tell me I had to provide all the content.”

• “Nice Jacket” Don’t be afraid of criticism, good or bad. Being able to take criticism and turn it into something that you can learn from is always handy. Too many people don’t take bad comments very well. The idea is to learn from what people like and don’t like.

  At the same time, don’t be afraid to give good criticism. Knowing how to give good comments is just as important as being able to take it. When you tell someone ‘That looks like crap’ you’re not really helping anyone.

  Instead, give them an idea of what you think makes or breaks that particular design. ‘I’m sorry, but I don’t feel like that shade of blue goes with that shade of yellow. Maybe you could try a different shade of blue?’ This goes over a lot better for both you and other designer.

What things have you learned from watching the Terminator?



March 24, 2009 at 1:41 pm | Design | No Comments »

A short and neat tutorial on Light and Shadows

The tutorial is not of my design and demonstrates how to create light and shadow using the Feathering tools in Photoshop. Go over and take a look!

Creating Light and Shadows in Photoshop with the Feathering



March 23, 2009 at 1:51 pm | General | No Comments »

T-shirts at ModernTee.com

I created a design for a line of T-shirts on ModernTee.com. If you like my design, please take a minute to go over to their site and vote for me.



Follow this link to my design


*Edit* Apparently my design has not been approved just yet, hopefully it should be up soon.



March 20, 2009 at 10:40 am | General | No Comments »

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