Posts Tagged ‘3.Photoshop’
Posted on January 20, 2009 - by Khaled
Create a cool frog in just 3 steps with Photoshop
Another quick photoshop tutorial…So do you remember this fella?
If you were a regular reader of this blog when it used to be called “No relation” then you will recognize this frog as it was on the header. You can download the full resolution stock photo from sxc.hu for free. I will quickly show you in 3 steps how to turn this plain ordinary frog into a cool one! Ok first of all let’s change the eyes color to something more attractive and exotic! what about pink?
Step 1 : Eyes color
Start with the selection of the eyes with the elliptical marquee tool.
Now we’re going to add a new adjustment layer to tweak the Hue/saturation of the eyes.
Set the hue/saturation to the following values:
Of course by setting the hue value differently you can have a different eyes color. Just choose what you like!
Step 2 : Body color
Ok don’t deselect just inverse the selection (ctrl+shift+I). Add a new adjustment layer of Brightness and contrast: set brightness to +30 and contrast to +25.
Now as you see the colors are a lot more lively and nicer to see!
Step 3 : Final touches
Ok use the Burn tool (brush 35px, Range: Midtones; Exposure: 30%) and darken the shadow and the lower parts of the frog. You may want to use the dodge tool to add some brightness to the eyes. The final result will look like this:
I hope you enjoyed this quick tutorial. If you need more details about the steps just let me know.
Posted on January 16, 2009 - by Khaled
Easily achieve the trendy LetterPress effect with Photoshop
In late 2008 and early 2009 LetterPress effect is becoming increasingly popular and used in many web sites. So here 2 quick examples on how you can create a realistic letterpress effect with Adobe Photoshop (Version 7 or newer). This will take you just a couple of minutes and you can achieve it even if you are a beginner.
Example 1:
Open Photoshop, create a new document (600 x 400 for instance). I started with a white background and typed the word Letterpress (Font: Century Gothic, 60pt, All caps and set the color for instance to: #00bae8).
Now we are going to add layer effects (double click the text layer) and simply check the inner Shadow box and set it to these values (shadow color: black #000000):
You will obtain this kind of effect:
As you see we’re almost there! You can customize a bit more with overlaying a gradient overlay or you can rasterize the type layer and work on it with burn/dodge tool. You can check out this tutorial to see how to use Dodge/Burn tools. You should be able to end up with a final aspect that looks like this:
I just applied a gradient overlay effect and some burning at the base of the letters.
Example 2:
Ok, let’s see another variation that might work better if you are after a metallic Letterpress effect. Create a new document, fill in the background with a light grey color (#d0d0d0 for instance). Type in LETTERPRESS (Font: Century Gothic, 60pt, All caps, Set tracking to 50 and set the color for instance to: #919191). Now we’re going to add an inner glow effect this time. Set the Inner glow values as following (color: #000000):
The noise percentage can be tweaked and set to what is best for your purpose!
Now apply an outer glow with these settings:
You should obtain something like this:
All you need now is to play with your background to make it look like brushed metal using noise filters and motion blur along with dodge/burn tools. May be also add a gradient overlay to the text layer and you will have something that looks like this:
If you think I should put more details about the creation of this metallic background or on the last steps of this tutorials let me know!
Posted on January 7, 2009 - by Khaled
Top 10 Web Design / Web Development Podcasts
Nowadays, Podcasting is gaining a ceaseless increasing interest. The word podcasting was created by blending the words “iPod” and “broadcast”. This is due to the fact that the first podcasting scripts were developed for Apple iPod portable media player. However, an iPod is no longer required to listen to podcasts. Most Media Players will do the job! I prefer iTunes though as it allows searching podcasts, subscribing to them (free and paid podcasts do exist) and of course listening to them. iTunes offers really cool features for this.
Podcasts are generally a series of audio or video files which are diffused on the web via syndicated download, through Web feeds. So they are a perfect combination of RSS specification and the MP3 compression algorithm.
Over the few last years I gathered a nice collection of podcasts that I like to watch/listen to. I am going to share with you the top 10 podcasts that I favor when it comes to Web Design and Web Development.
1. BoagWorld.com
Paul Boag’s Podcast (co-hosted with Marcus Lillington) started since August 2005. It has, as of today, 147 episodes. Episode 148 will be released within a week or so. Paul deals with different subjects related to the web design business. He usually invites some big names to the show. The live streaming recording is a nice bonus too!
2. SitePoint.com
A fairly new, yet excellent Podcast, that started last November (2008). The Hosts are Brad Williams, Patrick O’Keefe, Stephan Segraves, and Kevin Yank. The SP Podcast is about The Web industry. This is an outstanding show with different point of views. 5 episodes till now but the 6th is in its way soon!
3. Photoshop User TV
An excellent Podcast to watch for Photoshoppers! Hosted by the Photoshop guys: Dave Cross, Matt Kloskowski, and Scott Kelby from the National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP). The Photoshop guys share each week some very nice Adobe Photoshop tutorials, along with some very cool tips and tricks that will hugely increase your Photoshop productivity. 167 episodes for now.
4. Web Design TV
This podcast is produced by .net magazine. This podcast deals with different web design aspects and presents several software tutorials and tips (CSS, Graphic design, Flash, Photoshop…). The podcast started back in March 2008 and 28 episodes were released till now.
5. Adobe Creative Suite Video Podcast
The Adobe Creative Suite Podcast features tips and tutorials mainly about Photoshop, Indesign and other Adobe CS software. It is hosted by Terry White. This is a 2 years old podcast that started in 2006 and still active till now.
6. The Rissington Podcast
Hosted by famous web designers John Oxton and Jon Hicks. Deals with Web geeky stuff. Started in late 2007. 19 podcast episodes were released.
7. php|architect’s PHP Podcast (P3)
A bi-weekly radio-style podcast full of news, events and discussions about PHP. It is probably one of the oldest Podcasts on the net as it started since 2003.
8. Appclinic
A video Podcast with tutorials for graphic designers hosted by Adam Hay.
9. Rookie Designer
An audio podcast about web design as a job/career hosted also by Adam Hay. This podcast wasn’t very active lately but the early episodes are great.
10. Rails Podcast
A nice rails podcast.
Now even if some of these are less active these days, listening to older episodes is really a good thing that will help learn tons of things. Most of them are available for subscription via Apple iTunes which the media player I really recommande for podcasts.
Posted on April 7, 2008 - by Khaled
Photoshop Metal Interface Tutorial
Another old Adobe Photoshop tutorial from Kyscorp old archives. I’ll be reposting most of those. This is not a text effect tutorial but it is a simple Photoshop tutorial for beginners that will show you how to use the dodge and burn tools in Photoshop to create a metal-like interface. Quite easy to learn with good results at the end. It is an old tutorial that was created for Adobe Photoshop 7 but you can of course use Photoshop CS, CS2 or CS3. More old tutorials will be posted soon…
Posted on April 7, 2008 - by Khaled
Photoshop Twirl Neon Text Effect
So back to posting the old Photoshop tutorials that used to exist on Kyscorp. Many of you emailed me asking for those especially the ones related to Text effects. So I am just starting with this one: Photoshop Twirl Neon Text Effect. It is an old tutorial that was created for Adobe Photoshop 7 but you can of course use Photoshop CS, CS2 or CS3. More old tutorials will be posted soon…
Posted on March 28, 2008 - by Khaled
Adobe Photoshop Express Beta: now Online for free!
Adobe Photoshop Express Beta is now officially launched. It is free but only available for the US users at least for now. I believe some other countries should follow up soon. Photoshop Express is a light version of Photoshop that’s based on Flash 9 web application. You won’t be able to use layers, make heavy changes and manipulations or even use text and text options but it is pretty simple to use Photoshop Express to crop, resize, sketch, saturate or change the colors of your Image (Hue).
With your Free online Photoshop Version you will have 2GB of free disk space storage and a Flickr-like admin to go with it. Moreover you can and it synchronize it with your Facebook, MySpace or Picasa accounts to change any of your photos and when you save those tweaks via the Photoshop interface they show up directly in your Facebook or Myspace. As for the synchronization with Flickr it is being devoloped and will be happening soon. Same for adding other languages and of course countries as I’ve mentioned it before. So now soon we will see everyone having his own light Photoshop reachable online! and probably soon Photoshop Express will be a lot more powerful than what it is now…. Only time will tell. If you are based in the US go get your Adobe Photoshop Express Beta! all you need is to sign up for a free account! For the other just wait for your country to be listed!
Continue to the Adobe Press release:
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