“Success in the design industry relies on many different factors. There’s much more to it than just being able to make a pretty visual. Communication, self-promotion, technique and execution of the actual creative process are just a few of the many factors that come into play. With success depending on so many elements it’s easy to lose track of the big picture. To keep you on top of your game we asked four established designers and illustrators to share their most valuable advice.”

This article by designfeedr.com lists 28 great advices from some of the top designers in the industry. If you want to be one of the best designers, or just a better one, this is a must read.

“Using vibrant colors is the best way to make an image stand out, although getting the right balance is not always easy. Here we learn how to use lots of vibrant color to create a slightly abstract photo manipulation using pencils and fruit. We will learn how to use the pen tool effectively and also some freehand brushing which looks good.”

Nice Photoshop tutorial by PSDlearning.com which I just found this morning. They also have a lot of other interesting tutorials as well.

ThemeForest is a marketplace for buying and selling HTML/CSS Site Templates and Themes for CMS’ like WordPress and Joomla. Files sell for between $10 and $75 and as of the time of writing we have an early library of about 70 files, which I’m sure will grow fast!

The guys behind PSDtuts, Vectortuts and Flashden have launched a new theme & layout marketplace where designers can sell their themes and designs. It’s member section is connected with flashden and audiojungle which is a great feature in my opinion. They also have a good affiliate program that allows referrers to earn 50% of sales. This site will defiently come in handy when you need a design and don’t have time to design it yourself.

“We are glad to release Notepad Chaos — a free professional Wordpress-theme. The theme has 2 columns, a quite vibrant design including “personal” design elements such as handwritten headings, stick-it-notes, clips and pins. The theme was designed by Evan Eckard especially for Smashing Magazine and its readers.”

Another beautiful FREE Wordpress theme released by SmashingMagazine.com - Click here to download.

From Tutorial9.net -“Don’t have the time to buy the right materials and create your own traditional-style-painting Photoshop Brushes? Maybe you just don’t know where to start? No worries - we’ve found nearly 250 of the best Splatter, Paint, Spray, and Watercolor brushes that we think you’ll love!”

Thanks to tutorial9.net for listing all those crazy brushes. Check out the rest of the site as well, lot’s of nice stuff there.

Happy downloading!

“This post on Understanding Shutter Speed, written by Hawaii photographer Natalie Norton is a follow up post to Moving Toward Manual: Understanding Aperture. The posts are being written as a beginner’s guide to gaining confidence in using manual camera settings.”

Knowing your camera is very important and suggest you read this article from digital-photography-school.com if you are not sure how to set your shutter speeds.

“Bittbox.com has got a set of killer high-res grungy watercolor brushes they are giving away, plus they are also giving away the actual textures they created the brushes from.”

Download the Brushes here

Download the Textures here

“This tutorial consists of creating a digital illustration in Photoshop of a box of matches. We’ll be creating the matchbox cover design, the striker on the matchbox from a pattern, and placing the cardboard texture on the box. We’ll also create the matches and align everything into a 3D perspective.”

A really impressive tutorial from PSDtuts.com on how to create a realistic matchbox in Photoshop from scratch. View the tutorial here.

I came across this video on Youtube.com that shows you how to find and download images from our gallery. I thought it would be a good idea to post it in case you needed a demonstration. Thanks to gigafide for creating the video.

“Dark, despairing, depressed, pessimistic and gloomy. 24 perfect stock textures for your digital artwork, Cd covers and manipulations.”

It’s been a while since I added new packs to texturepacks.net but today I have added 2 brand new high resolution TexturePacks to the site. The Dark & Gloomy series feature 2 volumes of 12 photos each. The images are dark, dirty and detailed, plus they are also bigger then before, measuring 3504×2336 pixels (300DPI). All the images are shot with Canon 20D and my (favorite) 100mm Macro lens.

Dark & Gloomy Volume 1

View the rest of the images here

Dark & Gloomy Volume 2

View the rest of the images here

“I love visiting old and worn out locations with my camera and shoot metal, dirt, rust and other interesting subjects.”

Today Im giving away 5 photographs that I shot 2 weeks ago at an abandoned military location here in Iceland. The images are all high resolution 300dpi and measuring over 3000×2000 pixels.

These images may be used for personal and commercial projects. I do however ask that you do not redistribute these images via your own websites. Please link to this post if you want to share them with your own audience. Read the rest of this entry »

Don’t have a real macro lens but want to get really close? Grab a lens in the 100mm range and also your 50mm standard lens and stack them together for a 1:1 magnification. Or try different lens combinations to get in even closer.

quick video 4, extreme macro photography trick from Jim Talkington on Vimeo.