10 Inspiring sites to gain Photoshop inspiration

NOTE: This is a guest post by Sebastiano, if you would like to do a guest post please contact me.

Now we’ve got the Photoshop basics which enable us to use any type of tutorial in the most friendly manner.

It’s time to pull out the creativity and realize our own creations. Where does inspiration come from?, Anywhere: a film, a videogame, a skateboard, a site… Having said that I will propose 10 amazing sites that will certainly provide good ideas where you can start from.

1) FFFFOUND!

It’s one of mine most preferred sources, FFFFound! is a web service that allows the users to post & share their favourite images found on the web.

ffffound

2) COOL SHOWCASE

It’s the marriage of Sergio Milardovich (web programmer) & Leonardo Correa (designer) ideas. CoolShowcase is a cyberspace gallery for the work of freelance digital artists, graphic designers and photographers.

Cool Showcase

3) GRAPHIC-EXCHANGE

It’s a nice site where Fabien Barrall (graphic designer/photographer/art director) shows the works of his favourite graphic designers, photographers, artists and designers.

Graphic Exchange

4) PSDTUTS FLICKR GROUP

Another talent den is Flickr. For my point of view PSDTUTS is the best photoshop blog focusing on photoshop, and its Flickr group is made of 4500+ members.

PSD Tuts Flickr

5) ALL CAPS PROJECT

Graffiti represents a fascinating creativity source and, on the following site, there are several really unique.

All Caps Project

6) SKATEBOARDS

Skateboards.com is an unusual resource. It treats e-commerce of products that are examples of creativity and originality.

Skateboards

7) CLICK FOR ART

ClickForArt is an online store of art prints, printed boxed canvasses, art prints mounted in chunky contemporary frames or in our ornate stately frames.

This is a limited edition

8) STATION

It’s a videogames gallery. Videogames covers are graphic works as good as film covers.

Station

9) CG SOCIETY

The CG SOCIETY is the most respected and accessible global organization for creative digital artists.

CG Society

10) BEHANCE

It’s a network that provides visibility to the works of creative professionals. Behance is a free platform for the world’s leading creative professionals.

Behance

Comments

When I’m looking for inspiration, the above mentioned sites are those I surf first. What are yours?

Photoshop batch processing of actions – Video Tutorial

This tutorial will show you how to use batch processing with Photoshop actions and more specifically how to create an action to crop and resize images using batch processing in Photoshop.

Batch processing allows you to apply an action to a large group of images all at once so there is no need to open each image by hand and apply the action Photoshop can do it all for you.

Before you do this tutorial you may want to look at my actions tutorial

Video Tutorial


[Feed readers please visit post for video tutorial]

Text Tutorial

These Images and text support the video Tutorial

Step 1 – The Action

step1

Go to Window > Actions or use keyboard shortcut ( Alt + F9 )

Make your action that you want to batch process I made a video tutorial about creating actions you can watch that to refresh your memory, and I briefly show you in the current video how to create an action.

Step 2 – Batch Processing

step2

Once you have your action go to File > Automate > Batch this will take you to a screen where you can change certain options as in the next step.

Step 3 – Batch Processing Screen

step3

Play: Set – Select the folder from the dropdown list where you created your action

Play: Action – Select action from the dropdown you want to perform.

Source: Folder > Choose the folder where all you images are. i would highly recommend you make a copy of this folder as a backup just in case you make a mistake and you cant get your images back.

Destination: Folder > Choose the folder where you want to save all your images once the action has been performed.

File Naming: [document name] will keep the current file name in lower case and + [extension] will add the file extension such as jpg, gif, bmp

Click Ok when you have the correct settings and this will start the processing.

Step 4 – The Output

step5

When the processing is finished you can check your files by going to your destination folder this should have your processed files in. Your source folder should have you original files, they should be exactly the same and should not have had the action applied to them.

Conclusion

You can probably see how batch processing can save you a lot more time using actions that you have created, if you are applying an action to a whole group of images you may want to test it on a few of the images to make sure that you get the desired results for each of the images.

Batch processing can be used for a whole host of different things maybe you need to re-colour a group of images or add a certain border to them, the possibilities are endless.

Comments

Do you use batch processing? What do you use batch processing for? Let me know in the comments below.

Photoshop Actions – Creating Folder Structures for Web Designs – Tutorial

This tutorial will show you how to create Photoshop actions and more specifically how to create an action to create a folder structure for your web design layouts

When creating a screen design of a web page organisation is key, keeping layers in folders enables you to quickly move or hide any layers that you need to. When you initially open Photoshop you should create folders to do this, hence a Photoshop action to do it all instantly, every time you want to design a new layout, here is how.

Video Tutorial


Text Tutorial

These Images and text support the video Tutorial

Step 1 – Actions Panel

step1

Go to Window > Actions or use keyboard shortcut ( Alt + F9 )

Step 2 – A Folder for your Actions

step2

Create a new (label 1 step 2) folder to keep any actions that you make, you can put them all in one folder so you know where they are or create new folders depending on the type of action you are creating.

Step 3 – Create folders and layers for organisation

step3

Create a new action (label 2 step 2) and give it a descriptive name so you can easily tell what it does, you can give it a shortcut key as well using the F1-12 keys , some are already occupied by Photoshop default shortcuts but you can overwrite them.

Here are the defaults using F1-12 keys

  • F1 – Adobe Online Help
  • F5 – Brush style palette
  • Shift + F5 – Fill Layer Dialogue Box
  • F6 – Colour, Swatches, Styles palette
  • F7 – Layers, Channels, Paths palette
  • F8 – Navigator, Info palette
  • F9 – Actions, History, Presets palette

Step 4 – Create a new document

step4

Create a new canvas that is suitable for your web design layouts ( Ctrl + N ) you can even give it a default name

Step 5 – Folder Structure

step5

You have your blank canvas and now you need to create your folders that you will use to organise your web designs make as many folders as you need.

Step 6 – Stop Recording and Test

step6

Hit the stop button (label 3 step 2) so that no more actions or mouse clicks are recorded your action should now be complete hit the shortcut key you assigned it in the video it was F2.

Conclusion

There are so many ways you can use actions to record your clicks and settings try and experiment and think about what you do the most in Photoshop and try to create an action for it…maybe cropping images!.

Comments

Was this tutorial clear and easy to understand? do you use any actions in Photoshop, if so please let us know in the comments below.

Media Slap Free Photoshop Brushes Download

Media Slap sent me an email to giveaway some of there finest brushes, I ve compiled some pictures of the brushes that are included in the download. Don’t know if they’re exclusive to us, but feel free to download them.

Download The Brushes

  1. Free From Media Slap: Download (12mb)
  2. Visit Media Slap : Media Slap

About The Brushes

The first is 19 brushes from 18 sets on media slap and the 2nd is 20 border brushes from the entire ‘Bangin Borders’ set.

The pictures don’t do these brushes justice as they are at HI-RES 2500px / 2500px this means you can use them, for bigger projects that you have or scale them down to fit better.

I personally like the grungy style border brushes that are included in this pack.

Samples of the brushes

These Brushes are infact HI-RES 2500px / 2500px

About Media Slap

Departika is pleased to announce the launch of Mediaslap, a new online resource that sells Photoshop brushes created by the Mediaslap team and hand-selected artists from around the world. The new website provides Photoshop brushes of the highest standard to designers, scrap bookers, photographers, design agencies, and do-it-yourselfers.

The initial version of the site includes a limited selection of products and a variety of licensing options available for download. Mediaslap is accepting product submissions from artists and is providing accepted contributors a 60% share in the revenue.

Based on user and contributor feedback, Mediaslap will expand quickly in the coming months to include additional products and tools that provide added value for the contributing artists and designers. Mediaslap aims to become the best resource possible for selling, finding, and licensing Photoshop brushes. For more information on partnerships and artist opportunities with Mediaslap, visit Media Slap

Create a stunning grunge background – A video Tutorial

With the release of my 300+ hi-res grunge texture pack i thought id do a nice quick simple video tutorial to create a stunning grunge background using the colours from a photo on deviant art and a texture from the texture pack,

The result from this method creates a cool background that could be used for the basis of a poster, showing off your work or as web site background etc. just add your own cool designs to the mix.

This is what we shall be creating:

Using the colours from “Be nimble”:

bg_stock

The Online Video tutorial


Watch the HD version here

Download Files

  1. Stock Image (deviant art link) Credit to anaritalanca on deviantart
  2. Slate Texture Right Click – Save As

Download Video Tutorial Versions

  1. HD Version (66 mb)
  2. ipod Version (20 mb)

A cool background made simple, if some one could test the ipod version for me and tell me what it is like that would be great as I don’t have an ipod, and I cant preview it that would be awesome. Thanks for looking and don’t forget about the RSS feed.