Design Shard

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.

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.

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.

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.

5) ALL CAPS PROJECT

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

6) SKATEBOARDS

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

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.

8) STATION

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

9) CG SOCIETY

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

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.

Comments

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

Comment to win 500 free Postcards and 1 free Huge Canvas Print from U-printing

U-printing is a trusted online printing service for products such as postcards , canvas prints, business cards and many more product ranges. They also have a great give away for the readers of design shard too, see below for more details on the prizes and how to enter.

How To Enter

Leave a comment at the end of this blog post, saying which you would like the most the pack of 250 postcards or the 18″ x 24″ canvas print and describe what you would use them for.

Please make sure you leave your name and a valid email address in the appropriate fields when commenting, so that you can be contacted if you are a winner.

Winners will be randomly selected using a random number generator you must only comment once.

The Prizes

250 free postcards for 2 lucky readers
1 free 18×24 canvas print for one lucky reader

3 Winners Total

You can choose from any of the stocks for these items.

Rules

Winners in the United States and Canada qualify for free shipping. Shipping fees will apply to winners outside these areas.

Closing Date

This competition is now closed and winners will be annouced and notified on friday 8th jan 2009 , thanks to all who entered.

Get more traffic with good web design

While designing We Are not Freelancers we had one goal in mind. Our goal was to get featured on as many web galleries as possible.

This isn’t easy by any stretch of the imagination, we had never achieved it before so why would we do it now? From start to finish this blog took about 8 days to create but I think of those 8 days I must have spent every hour of them on the design.

Why did we want to be featured on galleries?

Was it ego? Was it recognition?

It was a little bit of both.

But. The main reason was traffic and the spin offs of that. I strongly believe that if you are a start up blogger and you have a bit of a budget/time to play with you should really put a lot of focus into your design.

We managed to get featured on quite a few CSS galleries and the result was 2000 visitors per day for the first 5 days. That is a lot of visitors for a new blog.

A small selection of the featured sites are listed below:

That was only the start.

With that comes features on other blogs, We Are not Freelancers has been featured on many blogs for

Top this and Top that, best twitter birds, best headers the list can go on.

SEO

So getting featured is awesome, your ego gets stroked, your get recognition, you get traffic. But the most important thing is still to come:

SEO rankings… with all the sites we have been featured on, We Are not Freelancers has gained some serious back link horse power. We have put literally no effort into our SEO but, due to the amount of sites we have been mentioned on, our SEO rankings have been impressively boosted purely off back linking.

Get creative and then refine your design

So I highly recommend that you spend a bit more time on either getting creative or finding someone who is creative. We spent hours looking around, analyzing trends etc. We noticed that one popular trend which is under used is hand drawn designs. So we tackled it head on.

This isn’t the only trend out there which is under used. There are many, you just have to dig deep, discover a cool style get inspired, execute good padding, establish a grid structure and then refine, refine, refine.

If you are struggling a little then ask someone in the design world to have a look before you release it, people like Liam McKay are seriously friendly and helpful, Adelle Charles is another. Hell you can even ask me ;)

By doing so you will kick start your viewership in a big way which can only be a good thing for the future. Spend the time now and reap the rewards later, we spent many hours on this design but it not even close to the amount we would have had to spend on SEO’ing and hustling.

So what are you waiting for ladies and gents?!? Get cracking on an awesome design!

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

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

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

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

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.

Top 10 Tips to Get Exposure on Design Blogs

Whether you are a freelancer or you work for a design agency, getting your name spread in the design community should be a top priority. A lot of doors can be opened with a just a little networking when using the right strategy to contact the top design bloggers.

An interview or feature on a top design blog with a large existing audience of your peers can be a major ingredient for success. Here is a list of the top 10 tips to get that design blog exposure and take you to the next level.

You may also want to check out this article on Arbent 10 No-No’s When Contacting a Blogger” the other half of the story.

1.) Direct E-mail

I had to list direct e-mail as the first option because it starts the introduction. It is the most forward and “to the point” way you can ask for exposure. However, direct e-mail alone is usually not enough. You need to perform a few of the remaining tips to earn some blog love.

2.) Get Involved

You know your Uncle Larry who only calls when he needs a favor? Yeah…you screen his calls for that reason. The same will happen in the design blog community if you haven’t spent time getting involved first. It’s so easy to do. Just leave some comments on the blog and add to the conversation.

3.) Include a Link to Your Portfolio

When leaving those comments from Tip #2, always link back to your personal website or portfolio so the blogger and their community can check you out. If you’re good enough, your work will speak for itself. If you are e-mailing the blogger, always include links to your site or portfolio in the e-mail to give yourself added credibility.

4.) Provide Ideas

There are many days that bloggers wake up and bang their head against the wall for hours trying to figure out the next subject to write about. Lend them a hand and give them a good idea, and they are sure to return the favor.

5.) Promote the Blog

Submit an article from the blog to Design Bump or Design Float and let them know how much you enjoyed it. Flattery can go a long way.

6.) Offer an Exchange

Do you have something that they can benefit from? Maybe you have expertise in a subject that they don’t feel versed enough to write about. That is the perfect situation for a guest post. This is often one of the most lucrative scenarios for exposure.

7.) Provide a Giveaway

Bloggers love to give stuff away. Do you have some custom brushes or vector art that you don’t mind parting with? Offer it to them in conjunction with a contest they are doing or as a single post for linkbait.

8.) Do A Tutorial

Tutorials are so valuable right now that places like the Envato Network will pay you up to $150 for one. Design bloggers love tutorials because their audience craves them.

9.) Create a Blog

I shouldn’t have to list this one, but we are designers and not copywriters. You can get a tricked out WordPress blog that acts as your personal website, content management system and as your blog.

10.) Offer a Discount

The last one doesn’t apply in all situations, but if possible, give an exclusive discount. If you sell services or products, then you can almost always count on an exclusive promo code being published on a blog.

So what are you waiting for? It is time to get after it. Accomplish these 10 tips and I am sure that we’ll all be knowing your name soon in the design community.