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.

 

More Illustrator and Photoshop goodies

Keeping up with and understanding new features in software releases is always a bit of a challenge. For those who are using Flash and Illustrator hand in hand Understanding 9-Slice Scaling explains the new feature that has been added to Illustrator CS3 which allows you to control a Movie Clip symbol to scale in a particular way.

Drawing in Illustrator is the first part of a series on drawing (including using the pen tool) by Jeremy of Sack Lunch

Pretty Circles is a Illustrator tutorial which is aimed at those new to the program. This tutorial on Nora’s blog is ideal if you are new to Illustrator and want to understand transparency better.

Bittbox has written a new tutorial Illustrator 101: Faster Font Selection

In Inspiration: Assemblage, Montage, and Collage Sean Hodge of PSDTuts, has “assembled some resources together that will encourage you to combine and unify elements. Review traditional concepts, look at current work, and get inspired by digital masters. Learn powerful collage techniques and how to apply them in your designs.”

 

More Photoshop and Illustrator goodies

Both Photoshop and Illustrator enable you to record a series of actions that you may constantly repeat. After recording these steps you can play them back over other other images. They are extremely useful for any task that you have to do over and over again. These 124 Free Photoshop Actions to Boost Your Designs will give you an idea of what is possible

You can download the keyboard shortcuts from the links in Increase your productivity - Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator and Dreamweaver keyboard shortcuts as it contains all the keyboard shortcuts for Adobe Photoshop CS3, CS2, CS, 7, Adobe Illustrator CS3, CS2 and Adobe Dreamweaver CS3, both Windows and Mac versions.

Bittbox has released some free ink/water Illustrator brushes and has done a round up of 16 Incredibly Detailed, Useful (and free) Dingbat Fonts

How to Create Line Brushes in Illustrator demonstrates the process of creating different types of brushes

All about views and the art board in Illustrator explains the various viewing options in Illustrator

“Free Transform” Tool Distorting paths into perspective using Adobe Illustrator’s “Free Transform” tool

This tutorial shows you how crop in Illustrator and work with Crop Area

Obsidian Dawn has produced a tutorial that shows you how to create a seamless texture in Photoshop.

Introduction to Live Paint by Stian Bakkane is a quick introduction and covers the basics of the Live Paint tool in Illustrator.

 

More Photoshop and Illustrator goodies

Vector Guru has produced a tutorial on how to create a Retro styled background using Illustrator

Track 6 Design has published a tutorial on how to create textures in Vector images using Illustrator

Smashing magazine has created a Best of Adobe Illustrator Tutorials list. I have yet to check out all of the tutorials but what I have investigated looks good

Joanna Dacko has an intermediate level video Tutorial which is an Introduction to Smart Objects In Photoshop
This video tutorial from the Adobe Design Center demonstrates How to use the Live trace and Live Paint tools

Another video tutorial which demonstrates how to convert images to PDF using Adobe Photoshop CS3 and then how to protect them using Adobe Acrobat Professional 8

 

More Photoshop and Illustrator goodies

3DTotal has collated a collection of 100 Photoshop tutorials. Pass your cursor over the thumbnails for a full description of what the tutorial covers.

Digital Arts has featured a CS3 tutorial on Exporting Illustrator layouts to Flash

Featured on Designer Today Beatriz Mariniello has written a tutorial on Scaling an object but not its stroke in Adobe Illustrator

Brusheezy has featured 15 Scratch Splat Grunge brushes for Photoshop

 

More Photoshop and Illustrator goodies

Introduction to the photoshop layout is a video tutorial that is ideal for beginners to Photoshop introducing the user interface to those who are new to the program.

Stephanie of Obsidian Dawn has released some lovely Texture brushes hat can be used in Photoshop. They are created to be used as brushes ie actually painted into an image so the assumption is that you enjoy drawing. Its not quite the same a squishing paint about or getting mucky with pastels but almost as much fun! If you are a heavy user of Photoshop’s base texture brushes you will enjoy these.

Ladyvictoire has creates some Script brushes for Photoshop for Brusheezy
Diane Miller has written a tutorial on Changing Colors Selectively in Adobe Photoshop CS3

 

Keyboard shortcuts in Photoshop

Key Board shortcuts not only increase your productivity as they save you time but they also save your hands from problems caused  by over use of one set of muscles. Why do I say this? Any work practice that involves less mouse clicks is better from an occupational health point of view, because when you switch between key board and mouse you are using your hands in a different way.

These Power Shortcuts For Working With Layers in Photoshop mean you are moving your hands from clicking a mouse constantly to using the key board. It’s just a little thing but if you use a graphics program for hours on end it is these small work practices that can lead to either having a problem or not.

Of course I should add that the best thing you can do to protect your hands is take regular hourly breaks!

 

More Photoshop and Illustrator goodies

This tutorial by Barton Damer shows you how to create and use brushes in Illustrator to make  complex and intricate patterns

How to Change Your Designs Colors in Illustrator CS3 is a video tutorial on using the live color tool in illustrator, produced by Pixelpusher
Cloud image from Pixel Digest is a tutorial suitable for new hands to Photoshop. It shows you how to render a shape to look like a cloud. This beginner level tutorial introduces using shapes, feathering a shape, working with layers and using the render filter.

Photoshop Extended Animation 101, Part 1 briefly steps you through the animation features in Photoshop CS3 explaining  what a key frame, the basics of working with the time line feature, using the position property  of a layer and Animation 101, Part 2 examines the opacity and style properties and how these too can be animated before saving as a small video.