“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.

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“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.

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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.

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“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.

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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!

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“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.

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“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

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“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.

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“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

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“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.

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

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“I went to a little book store over the weekend that you can’t even find on Google Maps, bought a book that is about 50 yrs old, dissected it (literally), and scanned all the parts. It took a while, but I have a very cool free high resolution texture pack for everyone to download”.

I’ve featured textures from bittbox.com on this blog before, and this time they are sharing 12 high resolution textures which can be used for both personal and commercial usage.

Bittbox.com has also recently redesigned their website, nice job guys!

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“This is the second set of fractal brushes I made for Photoshop, the brushes are a higher resolution this time. The same licensing rules apply as the last set i made. Let me know if you use them, I’d love to see some of the works made using these.”

An excellent Photoshop brush-set by ekamanganese.
Download it here.

Additional brushes that you can’t miss:
- 36 Texture Brushes by Spiritcoda
- Smudge Brush by Son-Baby
- Painting Hair brushes by AngelinaResource
- Will-o’-the-wisp brushes by m0nica
- Grunge Brushes by Talei-stock
- Spraypaint Brushes by FormFieber

Also check out Brusheezy.com and psbrushes.net for a lot more.

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“One of the hardest thing for me when I was new to lighting, was seeing the possibilities in a location. When I first started in photography, I was lucky to have worked with a very talented photographer in Houston, TX. When I went to work for Joe, I had never been in a studio before, seen or used strobes let alone realize that you could actually make a living taking pictures. It would just blow my mind to watch Joe walk into a drab location and absolutely transform it using light.”

A great post/tutorial from David Tejada on how you can see the different possibilities on locations.
Click here to read the rest.

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“The advent of high quality and inexpensive digital cameras has made it easier than ever to learn the basics of photography. The immediate feedback you get by being able to preview your images (via the LCD screen) in relationship to your exposure settings is invaluable. In the film days (not that long ago!), photographers had to take notes while in the field so that they could compare the results after the images were processed. It could take days or weeks before a film-photographer could process their images and examine their work. This could be sped up slightly if you had your own lab. Mistakes in exposure and lighting were expensive. New photographers breaking into the field faced these same challenges. Learning photography was usually a tedious and expensive endeavor.”

An interesting article Written by Steve Paxton

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We all love Photoshop and its effects, but sometimes it’s great to get your hands dirty when creating elements for your graphics. Ink drops can add a creative and energetic element to your designs. This tutorial demonstrates techniques to creatively work ink drops into your compositions.

This tutorial by PSDtuts.com is a great example on how to create manipulations using stock photos and the raw power of Photoshop’s layermasks and effects. The end result is very cool as well.

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“Colorburned.com is giving away a handful of textures at their website. They are all high quality and can be downloaded for free. Each set contains around 20-35 images.”

Free Texture sets from Colorburn.com:
37 Dry Sand textures, Wet Sand Part 1, Wet Sand Part 2, Wet Sand Part 3, Wet Sand Part 4, Rocks and Pebbles, Waves Part 1 and 2, Waves Part 3 and 4, Waterfalls Part 1

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“When it comes to learning, everyone has their own preference, whether it’s through images, words or … by watching! That’s why I’m happy to announce that we’ve opened a Photoshop Video Channel at the very cool Vimeo video site for anyone and everyone to contribute to!”

If you prefer watching videos rather than reading tutorials, check out the (already 30) Photoshop videos posted in the group.

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“A tutorial by Elliot Jay Stocks: It seems that a fair amount of people want to know how I create background images like the one on this site. Well, the lovely chaps at .net magazine have given me permission to re-publish the tutorials I write for the mag on elliotjaystocks.com, so, from issue #168, here’s the first (of many) web graphics tutorials - now completely free!”

Click here to view the tutorial

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