A few links

Lid of Blogwell has written a very good intro/primer to the basics of HTML in HTML for Bloggers.  The topic is tackled from the angle of a novice blogger so I am sure many people will find it useful. 

10 Photoshop Techniques You Can’t Work Without has some great productivity tips

As Usual Brusheezy has a number of new free photoshop brushes. 

There is also great slate texture pack from High Resolution Textures 

The Stroke Panel is a good tutorial for anyone starting out with Adobe Illustrator CS3. Published by a new blogger klethegr8 this tutorial is well explained and illustrated with step by step screenshots. The corners of objects and aligning the stroke are two topics that are particularly well covered. Dont let the teen-ish name of klethegr8 put you off it’s a good blog and well worth exloring further.

 

Photoshop and Illustrator Goodies

A new set of free  Decorative Floral Brushes by Pixels & IceCream has been released

Paul W has released 25 Grunge brushes for Photoshop over on Brusheezy

Also on Brusheezy is a bunch of Photoshop brushes created by V Wake that include postage stamps, graphs, diagrams and interesting ephemera

Obsidian Dawn has also released a collection of brushes in the star shapes

 

Tutorials discovered this week.

Bittbox has published a great tutorial on Complex Circular Design Techniques in Illustrator

VectorTuts has published Seven Helpful Techniques that Every Adobe Illustrator Artist Should Know. These tips by Jonathan are very helpful

Over on Brusheazy thre are some photoshop brushes in the shape of labels free to download

Over on High Resolution textures there are 7 high quality textures of drapery created by Danny C Boyce

Jared Rhizor of Nettuts has written a tutorial on how to Create a Photo Gallery with MooTools The tutorial is well written and covers a complex process. The interface produced allows browsing between thumbnails and the original-size images with ease. However it not dynamic which means all thumbnails are loaded when the gallery loads making it suitable for about 20-30 images only.

 

More Illustrator and Photoshop goodies

Obsidian Dawn has produced some new vector gear brushes for Photoshop

Pixels and Icecream is another 5 free high resolution floral brushes from Brusheezy

This tutorial from up240 teaches you how to create and save for future use Pattern & Swatches in Adobe Illustrator

Also from Bittbox is a Free High-Res Texture Pack: The Anatomy of a *Really* Old Book

Image * After describes itself as a free image collection from which you can use any image or texture from the site to use in your work, either personal or commercial.

Jonathan of Vectortuts.com has written up some great tips in  Seven Helpful Techniques That Every Adobe Illustrator Artist Should Know

 

More Photoshop and Illustrator freebies

Dot Pattern Art Brush in Adobe Illustrator is a illustrated tutorial on creating a brush

Spoongraphics wrote this roundup of free ornamental, floral, swirly and curly graphics on the web

Vector Illustration: 60+ Illustrator Tutorials, Tips and Best Practices is what it says it is. There are some great tutorials in this list and I must admit to not yet checking them all out.

Tutorial Blog has featured Color Manipulation in Illustrator

Over on WebResources depot there is a listing of 64 Beautiful And Free Nature Brush Sets And Vectors

On the DZine Blog there are 27 Best Photoshop Web Layout Design Tutorials to Design Decent Web Layouts

 

Photoshop and Illustrator Goodies

Vectips has published a tutorial on how to create your own brushes in Illustrator

Bittbox has been drawing decorative elements and released two sets of hand drawn ornaments as EPS or SVG files. Also on Bittbox is an Illustrator CS3 tip on how to load brush libraries faster and a tutorial on how to make a grungy paper texture from scratch

Also there are some free acrylic Photoshop brushes from Shoreways

There is a paisley Photoshop brush and a handwriting brush available from brusheezy.com

Stephanie of Obsidian Dawn had released some brushes of Floral Patterns to be used in conjunction with her Flower Vectors Photoshop Brushes set. Also dont miss her Celtic Vector brushes

Vector tuts is anew vector and Illustrator tutorial site

 

Catching up on reading

The Graphic Mac is a rediscovery of a site I used to visit regularly. It covers Mac or design related tips, tricks, and software reviews. There is a heap of Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign tips on the site. James Dempsey was formally author of “Creative Guy Blog”

These web based favicon generators and resources are handy tools

The 10 Commandments of Web Design distills a list of key points to consider when designing a site.

 

Sample chapters on Photoshop and Illustrator

Peachpit often provide sample chapters of their books. The site houses such items as a sample chapter on using the Bridge in CS3 and the Photoshop Reference Guide by Matt Kloskowski houses a number of video tutorials. Unlock the True Power of Illustrator by Mastering Vectors written by Mordy Golding focuses on the pen tool. These are a few of the resources to be found at Peachpit so do explore a little particularly the blog

 

Photoshop and Illustrator goodies

Obsidian Dawn has released some new distressed brushes and I also discovered these 26 Silhouette brushes of people for Adobe Photoshop.

I came across this Photoshop tutorial on Creating A Cool Vintage Collage Design

There are also 10 high res brushes “Messy Spraypaint” brushes from Bittbox and there is some new free vector graphics this time it’s flowers!

Nenodesign made a great find in a garage sale and has scanned the part of a collection of design motifs from a copy right free publication on design

In the process of creating a simple tools icon Veerle demonstrates the use of the Pathfinder and Align tools in Illustrator and has a new tutorial on the Pucker and Bloat Effect

On the tutorial blog you can find out how Make Repeating Seamless Tile Backgrounds with Photoshop which led me to Pixblix which houses ‘useful web graphics’

 

Photoshop Express

Adobe has released a free web based image manipulation tool Photoshop Express which allows users a simple way to enhance, share, and store photos. This is a beta product so I imagine there will be more features and functionality developed.

You join and upload your JPEG images both of which I found quick and easy. Phtotoshop express just supports JPEG files so your images must be saved int hat format. It’s all fairly obvious but you can also Test Drive Photoshop Express using that feature on the home page.

The crop and rotate tool in action
Once photos are loaded via the edit button you will discover the basic tools used for image manipulation.

Autocorrect option
These include basic manipulation tools such as crop and rotate, autocorrect red-eye removal, touch up and saturation.

You can fine tune the image with white balance, highlight, fill light , sharpen, and soft focus.

People will enjoy the Effects options pop color, hue, black and white, tint, sketch and distort options are avalable.

You can preview what the image will look like and feel free to experiment as at anytime you can undo what you have done by clicking the cross on the right hand side of the image.

Popcolor options

Hue options

Black and white options

Tint options

Sketch Options

Distort in action
If you want to apply the effect to this image click the green tick on the right hand side of the screen.

You can also ‘zoom in’ on the image using the plus and minus icons found at the bottom left hand of the screen

Photos uploaded are not automatically made public. If you want to share them click Albums in the left column, then choose the checkbox labeled Share under the albums you want to make public.

You will need Flash Player 9 but that is free to download.

There is free storage space of up to 2 gigabytes and you can easily connect to Facebook, Google’s Picasa, and Photobucket. This means you can open your Facebook photos from within Photoshop Express, edit them, and save them back.

It is not in any way an online replacement for your desktop Photoshop CS3 but then it is not meant to be. At times it’s a bit slow but for a beta product I think its a great online editor with the exception that I could not find a way to change the size of an image or rename a photo.