Archive for December, 2009

200+ Textures, Brushes, and Fonts: Ultimate Grunge Roundup

Grunge style is rough, rugged, torn, worn, and tattered. To most, these adjectives would describe something less than appealing, but in the hands of a talented web designer, elements possessing these qualities can be used to turn a web site into a work of art. So, if you are just getting started in grunge design or if you are already a pro, you should find the grunge freebies in this article to be very useful. via 200+ Textures, Brushes, and Fonts: Ultimate Grunge Roundup | Design Reviver.

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Smashing Highlights 2009 * By Smashing Editorial * December 29th, 2009 2009 was a very successful year for Smashing Magazine. It was a year of ambitious goals and an intense time schedule, which brought many changes over the past year. In 2009 we published more posts than ever (on average, 8 posts per week). We broadened our areas of interest: for instance, we explored freelancing and the business side of web development, but also tackled user interface design and mobile web design. We also discovered new formats, such as the “Global Web Design” series and Q&A-Sessions — unfortunately, the latter (the Ask SM series with Chris Coyier) lasted only a couple of months. Smashing-128 in Smashing Highlights 2009 None of this would have been possible without the tremendous support of our authors, contributors, and editorial staff. We express sincere gratitude to them for all the ideas and hard work they’ve put into articles published here on Smashing Magazine. We also want to thank you, the readers, for your attention, criticism, ideas, suggestions, emails, tweets, and links over the past year. Smashing Magazine is driven by your support which is why we are always listening to you and we truly appreciate every message we receive. We have tried our best to improve the quality of our articles so as to increase their value for designers and developers. In this post, we’ll review what has happened on Smashing Magazine over the past year: smashing highlights, setbacks, and small sensations of 2009 — which we present in a month by month timeline. You can compare the highlights of 2009 with those of 2008 or 2007 (which, by the way, include links to some really useful articles). via Smashing Highlights 2009 - Smashing Magazine.

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50 Amazing and Useful Photoshop Photo Manipulation Tutorials arshad | Dec 23, 2009 In this post i’ve collected amazing tutorials  created by Photoshop.You can see how Photoshop is powerful and if you can imagine,you all can do these kind of photo manipulations.These 50 amazing tutorials are a little bit for advanced users but i’m sure if you start working you cannot believe what you can do with Photoshop. via 50 Amazing and Useful Photoshop Photo Manipulation Tutorials | DesignBeep.

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Five Best Wallpaper Sites Nobody likes staring at a boring desktop when they fire up their computer every morning. Keep your wallpaper fresh with the five most popular sites Lifehacker readers use to satisfy their wallpaper needs. Photo by goincase. Wallpaper on monitor available here. Earlier this week we asked you to share your favorite wallpaper site. We quickly learned that—while not everyone has a strong opinion about Linux distributions or encryption software—everyone has a favorite wallpaper site; readers logged nearly 500 votes for their favorite wallpaper sites. Now we're back to share the five most popular sites used by Lifehacker readers to dress up their monitors with fresh wallpaper. via Five Best Wallpaper Sites - Wallpapers - Lifehacker.

Creating a Vintage Ski Poster Design with Illustrator® CS4 – Vector Plus Tutorial Dec 23rd in News, Plus by Neal McCullough We have another great Vector Plus tutorial available exclusively for Plus members today. If you want to learn how to create retro illustrative designs, then we have an awesome tutorial for you. This one will have you adding those subtle touches that will take your work to the next level! Author: Neal McCullough Hi there Vector Enthusiasts! I just started out this year as a Freelance Illustrator under the name of Hand Drawn Creative. I’ve worked for over a decade as a Graphic Designer/Illustrator throughout the UK and over the years have gained a lot of experience in creating eye-catching vector illustrations for the advertising industry. This Tutorial is Filled with Creative Techniques I'd describe this as an intermediate level tutorial and throughout the process I'll show how you how to add a little Art Deco glamour to your illustrations by making subtle use of the Gradient and Transparency palettes in Illustrator CS4, as well as introducing an aged paper feel with clever use of texture resource files. Tutorial Details * Program: Illustrator CS4 * Difficulty: Intermediate * Estimated Completion Time: 4 hours via Creating a Vintage Ski Poster Design with Illustrator® CS4 – Vector Plus Tutorial | Vectortuts+.

My 5 Coolest Lightroom Commands by Helen Bradley There is so much of Lightroom that’s not apparent when you first begin using it and that takes time to discover and explore. Here are my five coolest Lightroom techniques that you might want to add to your Lightroom toolkit. via My 5 Coolest Lightroom Commands.

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How to Use Retro Colors in Your Designs November 16th, 2009 by Tyler Denis Retro colors are a great way to give your website an older/vintage feel; it can give your design a little something different from the regular fully saturated colors that you see often in modern-themed designs. This article is both a showcase of retro-colored themes in existing web designs, as well as a tutorial on how to achieve retro colors using Adobe Photoshop (you’ll learn about five different techniques). via How to Use Retro Colors in Your Designs.

Design a Minimal and Modern Portfolio Layout with Photoshop October 29th, 2009 by Richard Carpenter In this Photoshop web design tutorial, we’re going to create a mock-up of a clean and modern-looking website. This is Part 1 of a tutorial series that will show you how to create the design, and then convert it to an HTML/CSS template. via Design a Minimal and Modern Portfolio Layout with Photoshop.

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See how Photoshop & Adobe apps helped make Avatar "Literally the first piece of software we went out and purchased was Photoshop..." Check out this 2-minute overview of how PS, Lightroom, After Effects, and other Adobe tools were used in the production of Avatar: Adobe's Mike Kanfer won an Academy Award working with James Cameron on Titanic & has been a great conduit of information during the making of Avatar. Too bad I never did manage to twist his arm & get behind the scenes during shooting... Ah well: this morning the Photoshop team is off to see Avatar--a welcome little break from the whole march to Cocoa. I justified it to my wife, saying, "Well, they used Photoshop to make the movie." Raising a dubious, I-know-you're-all-cutting-class eyebrow, she asked, "Don't they use Photoshop to make every movie?" Hush, woman!! [Update: Evidently Photoshop co-creator John Knoll was the Avatar visual effects supervisor at ILM.] Semi-related bonus fun thing: Slate talks about Cameron nearly dying while making The Abyss, punching & then firing a rescue diver. Posted by John Nack at 8:34 AM on December 18, 2009 via John Nack on Adobe: See how Photoshop & Adobe apps helped make Avatar.

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