“In this tutorial, you’ll learn to design a realistic calligraphy pen from scratch. The tutorial involves a simple use of the Pen Tool and a few flexible Layer Styles. Lighting and reflection techniques are explained throughout the tutorial. This might be a quite useful for icon enthusiasts. Let’s dive in Asher Abbasi.”
Here is a link to the written version of the tutorial How to Create a Realistic Fountain Pen and the video version is below.
Original post by Gavin Steele and software by Elliott Back
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The use of textures can dramatically improve your print design work. You can (if used sensibly) add more depth to your work, whether your work be business cards, advertisements or posters. The results of using texture in your print design projects can be completely different every time, depending on various factors such as what textures you use, how many textures you use, and how you apply them to your work.
This post showcases a great selection of print design projects that make good use of textures; making the work more visually appealing. The showcase is followed by a small selection of useful links and resources.
Textures in Business Cards
Although there are thousands of textured business cards out there, it’s not very often you’re actually given one. Most business cards are very simple, which is usually suitable for the company they are representing, although there are a lot of simple cards being used to represent companies that could do so much more with their corporate image, such as landscaping and construction agencies. Below is a selection of great textured business cards.
The use of texture in this card is incredible. A little bit of grunge mixed with paint and splatter marks is (usually) never a bad thing, and the composition of this card shows how to do it perfectly.
Redbox Media use a subtle grunge texture in the red of their business card to make it just that little more appealing. The digital texture of the lined paper and coffee stains, combined with the ‘hand-drawn’ style typography make this card very unique.
Well, it’s quite obvious what the texture is used for in Marko Manojlovic’s card. Although very simple, it’s interesting and definitely appeals more than a standard plain card!
Colokial use texture in their business card to give it a worn-out and stained “tropical” look. It works very well with the color scheme of the logo and that little touch of Spot UV makes it so unique!
The texture used in Hypno Liberate’s card adds a lovely vintage look to the design, matching the corporate brand of the company well.
Textures in Printed Advertisements
In my opinion, textures are used to their greatest advantage in print advertisements such as billboard posters and postcards. Taking a look at the selection of superb designs below; you can clearly see the huge difference adding a little bit of texture can make.
This fantastic advertisement for a hair product is incredibly clever and is made up (almost) entirely of hair texture. The addition of someones face in the bottom center of the poster makes it a little comical, too.
This great poster to encourage people to stop smoking has a great three-dimensional look to it which was created using textures. In fact, without the textures in this poster, there’d be nothing left!
These clever Pepsi Max posters (see other one above) show a depressed lonely calorie, advertising that Pepsi Max is a one calorie per can soft drink. The use of textures make the illustrations much more interesting to look at, and just gives them that extra “Oooomph”!
The use of an old stained piece of paper in this poster makes it individual and much more interesting. The way it works so well and merges in with the model and birds is superb!
Textures in Poster Design
A lot of the creative posters below actually rely on textures – without the texture in the images, some of the designs would be fairly simple and quite boring to look at. The following collection shows that texture really can bring your work to a completely new level!
“First Date With Alice” has an excellent yet simple composition and a beautiful, bright color scheme. The texture makes the poster a lot more interesting, adding different shades of color to the main shapes in the center of the poster.
This poster makes use of subtle texture to just a little more depth in the background of the piece.
Like in the Pepsi Max advertisement posters showcased earlier in this post, this poster uses textures to add new life to the otherwise flat vector illustrations. The extra noise gives it a that little extra detailing it needs to keep you looking at the poster for a longer period of time.
Light grungy textures are using in the posters “Squares” to give it an interesting background and to add a little extra noise to the model and other various shapes used in the composition. Without it, the overall feel of the poster would be completely different.
First of all, I have to say “wow!" What a great poster! The vibrant colors mixed with the grungy textures and superb lighting effects make this a stunning one, definitely worthy of going on the office wall!
This Abduzeedo poster uses texture to add a retro look to the otherwise plain background. A slightly grungier texture has been used to make those clean-cut abstract shapes fly into a completely different dimension!
Last but not least, this great poster titled “Axygene” uses plenty of different textures to bring the poster to life, as well as using a grungy eraser brush to remove areas of the right-angled corners.
Links & Resources
Original post by Cameron Chapman and software by Elliott Back
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My clients often ask me to create impossible scenarios, weird landscapes and surreal images for their projects; images that wouldn’t be possible in real life. It’s situations like these where photo manipulation becomes a powerful design tool. In today’s tutorial I will show you how to design a CD cover using several photo manipulation techniques, how to keep critical text layers editable for any future change and how to render a quick mockup using the Vanishing Point filter. Let’s get it started!
Tutorial Assets
In order to save time, you can download all of the following images before you get started.
Step 1 – Setting up the document
This time we will create a photo manipulation inspired from the classic poem of Edgar Allan Poe, "The Raven". This should not be interpreted as a graphical representation of the poem, just a twisted adaptation depicting the loneliness of the man who lost his beloved Lenore. Imagine this as an audio book project, or a rock band album cover.
Start creating the document; a standard CD cover is 4.75 x 4.75 inches. So create a document in these dimensions. If you want to actually print this you should work on a resolution of 300+ pixels per inch, but this time I’m setting the document to 200 dpi because of the photo sizes.
Once you have your image resolution set, show your rulers (Command + R) and add some guides to the document’s borders. Since this will be a print design you should add a margin for security, so go to Image > Canvas size and change the dimension to 4.85 x 4.85 inches Anchor: Center.
Step 2 – The Room
The entire poem takes place in the narrator’s room, open the "Empty Room" image in Photoshop and save it with a descriptive name like "Room.psd". This image is wide and our design should be a perfect square. We will need to stretch it without distorting it. Is pretty simple actually, first draw a Guide trying to delimit a square on the left side, then using the Rectangular Marquee Selection Tool (M) select the right side of the image, copy it and paste it matching the right side of the segment with the guide. Then using the Free Transform Control (V) and hold the Command (Ctrl) key to distort the pasted area and match the room’s horizontal wall lines.
Step 3 – Join
In order to make the reduction as polished as possible, adjust the levels of "Layer 2" as shown in the image below. I did it in 2 rounds but you can try to get it done in only one. Then, add a Layer Mask > Hide All and fill the mask with a Horizontal Gradient (White – Black). This step will make the reduction work almost perfectly.
Step 4 – Add the room into the main document
In the "Room.psd" file using the Rectangular Marquee Tool (M) select the right side of the image and hit Command (Ctrl) + Shift + C to copy all the layers of the selection (this is to avoid the step of flattening the image and helps you to keep this part of the job editable for further changes just in case). Then paste it into the main document in a new layer named "Room."
Step 5 – Add the guy
Now it is time to add one of the main characters, the guy. For this, grab the sitting guy image and open it in Photoshop, then using any technique select the guy’s shape (I’m using the Polygonal Lasso Tool). Copy the selection and paste it into the main document. Then go to Edit > Transform > Flip Horizontal to make it match the lighting of the scene. This is really important because all too often you’ll not have enough money to actually take your own shots and you’ll need to use stock and choosing just the right picture isn’t easy. Use the Free Transform Tool to reduce the guy’s size. Name the layer "Guy".
Step 6 – Overall shadow
Since I don’t want a 100% photo realistic scene, but a dramatic one; we will add several levels of shadows, the first one is the room’s shadow. Create a new layer named "Room Shadow"; using a big soft Brush (Color: #151610, Size: 300px Opacity and Flow 50%) paint all the right side of the scene, then change the Blending Mode to Multiply and its Opacity to 75%.
Step 7 – Adding more objects: a stool
Open the stool image, select its shape and paste it into the main document; name that layer "Chair". Once again you must flip it horizontally in order to match the lights.
Step 8 – Burn and desaturate
Grab the Burn tool, select "Guy" and burn all its right side to increase the shadows’ intensity. Then grab the default Sponge tool and desaturate the brighter areas. Do the same with "Chair" layer.
Step 9 – Here comes the raven
Open the " Crow1" image from the assets and select its shape using any technique (I did it with the Polygonal Lasso Tool), copy it and paste it into a layer named "Raven". Flip it Horizontally and resize it a little bit, make the crow bigger than the guy. Place it next to the room’s door.
Next add a Layer mask to the "Raven" layer using the Rectangular Marquee Tool. Do this by drawing a rectangle over the door’s shape and by filling the area with black. This way we will create the illusion of a raven entering the door without actually being destructive to the image.
Step 10 – Some books
Open the "Pile of Books" file, select the shape and paste it into a new layer named "Books", resize it and place it just over the "Chair" layer, then burn its right side as well.
Step 11 – Combine crows
Our crow is pretty nice, but it is not quite right. To fix this, we will need to manipulate it a bit by giving it a new head. Open the "Crow 2" image from the assets and select only its head. Paste it, flip it, and resize it into a new layer named "Head" above the "Crow layer" then using the same technique showed in step 3 of this tutorial, merge the head with the body; but instead of using a gradient, use a black Brush. If necessary, delete some areas of the "Crow" layer’s head.
Step 12 – More books
Since the bird wings makes the air blow we’ll add a book opened because of the breeze. Open the "Open Book" image from the assets, extract only the top open book and paste it into a new layer in the main document named "Open Book". Finally add as many more books as you want. Always remember to Burn the right side of them.
Step 13 – Shadows
Duplicate the "Raven" layer using the Free Transform tool to distort it; making it wider. Then in the Hue / Saturation (Command (Ctrl) + U) bring down the Lightness value to -100. Go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur, radius 8px to blur the shadow and bring down the layer’s Opacity to 50%.
Step 14 – More shadows
We will apply this technique on almost every object in the scene, is pretty easy. Create a layer behind the related object, in this case "Raven" Layer and name it "Raven Shadow" (we did it in the previous step) then using a big soft dark Brush (#110C06) paint a shadow there. Next create a new layer named "Front Shadow" and paint shadows over the related object, in this case the raven. Then using a big and soft Eraser (E) Opacity and Flow 50% delete some areas of the front shadow where you think there should be more light. Try grouping the shadow layers and the main object into a folder in order to keep the layers organized.
Step 15 – Shadows and more shadows
Repeat the previous shadow technique but this time with the "Open Book" layer. If you want you can use the Smudge Tool on the shadow layer to merge it better with the background.
Step 16 – Guy’s shadow
Just like with the "Raven" layer on Step 14, duplicate the "Guy" layer, bring down its Lightness and Opacity and then paint both the front and back shadows as well just be sure to take special care of the shadow below his sneakers.
Step 17 – Chair and books’ shadows
Using the same technique paint the shadows of the "Chair" layer and the extra books on the floor, once again, don’t try to create a photo realistic outcome but a dramatic one, so feel free to add as many shadows as you desire but always try not to make the image too dark.
Step 18 – Room’s shadows
Using a larger dark Brush (#110C06) paint all around the room’s borders into a new layer named "Front shadows" somewhere above the "Room" layer. Finally bring down its opacity to 50%.
Step 19 – Words on the wall
This guy is really obsessed with his lost love Lenore, how can you depict a feeling like that into a mute image? That’s pretty hard isn’t it? That’s why I decided to add the word "Lenore" painted several times on the wall. For this, create a new document (any size is ok) with a neutral gray background (#A0A0A0) and using some hand drawn fonts (you can find several free fonts in dafont.com) write the word "Lenore" everywhere. Then hit Command (Ctrl) + A to select all and Command (Ctrl) + Shift + C to copy a flatten version of the image.
Step 20 – Use the vanishing point filter to paste the words on the walls and ceiling.
Create a new layer named "Wall words" above "Room" layers or "Room" folder. Then go to Filter > Vanishing Point. On the vanishing point window draw the necessary planes to put the words on the wall. If you’re not familiar with the vanishing point filter maybe you should read the following tuts first: Using the Vanishing Point Filter to Mock up a Business Card or Create an Impressive Mock-up of a Grunge Box.
Once you’ve created the planes, paste the clipboard there, drag it and resize it until looks good. This isn’t an easy process so feel free to try as many times as you need before moving forward.
Once you’ve placed the text appropriately, change the "Wall words" layer’s blending mode to Overlay.
Tip: Windows 7 and the Vanishing Point filter don’t work well together, for some reason Windows’ Aero has a conflict with the Vanishing Point engine, so if you’re working with W7 and your system suddenly crash while using this filter try changing the desktop appearance to "Windows 7 Basic".
Step 21 – Delete the extra words
Using the Polygonal Lasso Tool select the areas without walls (door and window) with the "Wall words" layer selected, then delete the selection. Then change its Opacity to 50%.
Step 22 – Raven’s motion blur
Since our crow is flying, we will need to add a motion effect, that’s pretty easy. Duplicate the "Raven" layer and place it above the original. Go to Filter > Blur > Motion Blur, set Angle: 0º and Distance 20px and hit OK, then with the Eraser Tool or using a layer mask delete some portions of the blur layer as shown the images below.
Step 23 – Some pieces of flying paper
Grab the piece of paper from the assets, extract it from the white background and paste it into a new layer above all the others in our main document. Using the Warp Tool (Edit > Transform > Warp) distort the piece of paper as shown in the image below. Repeat this step as many times as you want with different pieces of flying paper. Put all them into a folder.
Step 24 – Add shadows to the flying papers
Merge the Flying paper folder and desaturate the resulting layer. Using the Burn tool to darken some shadows over the paper itself. Then using our same old technique of shadowing, add two shadow Layers, one on the front and other on the back, paint some shadows using a dark brush. Finally you can repeat Step 22nd’s process in order to add a Motion Blur effect.
Put all the layers into a folder named "Art".
Step 25 – Add the title
Using the "Trajan" typeface, add the cover art’s title, put all the title Layers into a folder and name it "Title", then Option (Right) click on the layer miniature and select Convert to Smart Object. Then click on the Smart Object and go to 3D > New 3D Postcard From Layer, then the "Title" smart object will turn into a 3D layer with all the text still editable. This way no matter how many changes you do on the perspective, rotation and depth, you can still change the text at any time.
Add a Bevel and Emboss and a Gradient Overlay effect to the 3D layer just as shown in the bottom of the image below. Don’t worry too much about the light position and the shadow right now; we will work it on the next step.
Step 26 – Transform the 3D postcard
Using the 3D transform tool Rotate, Move and Drag the layer to make it match the wall’s perspective. Once you’ve placed the layer appropriately, add the Drop Shadow Style setting the Light angle to 30% and a big distance between shadow and text (32px in this example).
Step 27 – Edit the text
Often, clients change their minds in the middle of the project, that is why it is really important to keep your layers editable all the time. In this example we will be going to add some missing words to the title: the author name. For this you’ll need to dig trough the nested documents into the objects, first double click over the Diffuse Texture on the 3D layer ("Title" texture), a new file named "Title.psd", in this new document you will find the Smart Object layer, double click on it and finally you will see the text layers in a document named "Title2.psd", there you can expand the canvas’ size and add the third line of text. To commit the changes you should Save each document backwards, first "Text2.psd" and then "Text.psd" then you’ll see your 3D layer updated on the main document.
Step 28 – Add some grunge noise
As a grungy detail, we will add some noise to the composite. Hit D on your keyboard to load the default colors, create a new layer named "Noise" above the "Text" object and go to Filter > Render Clouds. Next go to Filter > Noise > Add Noise (set the values shown below). Finally change layer’s Blending Mode to Overlay and Opacity to 35%.
Step 29 – Adjusting the Levels
At this point you will know if the design is too dark or too light, that is why we will need to add a Levels adjustment layer to lighten the image. Now Select All (Command (Ctrl) + A) and Command (Ctrl) + Shift + C to flatten and copy the design.
The Mock-Up
Step 30 – CD Case
Sometimes clients want to see a real life example of their product. It is really hard to send a printed version of a cover art file especially if your clients are far away from you but you can send them a picture. This time we will mock up our cover art in a CD case. Open the "CD case" image in a new document named "mockup.psd" and crate a new layer above the flattened layer. Select the new layer and go to Filter > Vanishing Point, there, paint a plane matching the case shape and paste the clipboard there.
Step 31 – polish the mockup
Since the Cover art is behind the CD’s plastic case, we will need to delete some areas of the cover art layer. For this add a Layer mask to it and using the Polygonal lasso tool, select the tiny notches of the plastic cover, then fill the selection with black on the Layer Mask. You can bring down the covert art’s opacity to actually see the notches.
Then, using the Polygonal Lasso tool, once again, select a semi-circle of the notch, where the paper will be clearly visible, and fill it with black or gray.
Step 32 – The plastic
We will use a Gradient Overlay on the artwork layer to create the ’shiny plastic’ effect, this is pretty simple, just add several black-white transitions on the effect, and change its Blend Mode to Screen and its Opacity to below 20%. In addition, I’m adding an Inner Shadow to improve the depth perception.
Step 33 – Final touches
As some final touches I’m adding the "Paper Texture" layer from the assets into a new layer behind "CD" layer. Changing "CD" layer’s Blend Mode to Multiply works perfect in this case. Then just play with the texture layer, I added a dark (#36312D) Solid Color layer behind the texture; plus I increased the texture’s dark levels by adding a Layer Mask filled with a White – Black Radial Gradient; creating a dark vignette this way.
Final Image
Please take a look at the final version of our cover art.
Original post by Alvaro Guzman and software by Elliott Back
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Categories: Allgemein |
There’s nothing more unique to your creative talent than a series of your own doodles and sketches. Let’s use the good old doodle to represent our design services by combining quick and fun doodles with a print ready business card design. We’ll be drawing our doodles directly in Illustrator, and using the application’s print abilities to set up our business card document with the correct margins and bleed to build a complete print-ready PDF document.
The design we’ll be building calls upon some random ideas for the topic of your doodles. How about a stick-man battle or a cow abducting UFO for the focal point of your business card?
Start work by opening up Adobe Illustrator. Version CS4 took a step forward with its ability to easily create print documents, with new In-Design esque features for setting up bleed automatically. The business card size I’m familiar with is 88×55mm, but this may vary depending on your printer of choice. Enter 3mm into the Bleed options to allow Illustrator to set up your document. Also remember to ensure you’re using the CMYK colour mode for print. It’s also worth noting that folks from the USA will more than likely want to switch to the more common metrics of inches, as opposed to Millimeters.
Illustrator has kindly positioned a red guide to let you know where your bleed boundaries are, as well as the black outline showing where the final card boundaries will be. You’ll also want to add your own ’safe margin’, so that none of the important elements of your design appear too close to the edge. Drag four guides onto the artboard and line them up with the document boundaries.
Right click and unlock the guides. Select the left and bottom guides and hit enter. Input 5mm into the Horizontal and Vertical options then press OK. This will move the guides 5mm into the document, leaving a margin to work towards.
Repeat the process for the top and right guides, but this time enter -5mm so they are moved negatively. Right click and lock the guides to avoid accidentally adjusting them
A typical background you might find behind a doodle would be the ruled pattern from a notepad. We’ll recreate that pattern recreate a similar lined background to our business card. Draw a square with a white fill, then select the upper most edge with the Direct Selection tool. Press CMD+C to copy and CMD+F to paste in place, then move the path downwards towards the center of the square. Add a blue stroke at 0.5pt with the colour c35,m20,y0,k0.
Select the two objects and group together, then drag them into the swatches palette to create a new pattern swatch. This swatch will repeat when it’s added as a fill.
Draw a rectangle onto the artboard and align it exactly with the bleed margins. Add the pattern swatch as its fill colour.
No business card would be complete without contact details, so we’ll add these first. Type out your name in your favourite font (mine is DIN). Align the text up with both the ruled background pattern and the left guide that identifies the safe-area.
Finish off entering your contact details and adjust the line-height to match the height of the ruled lines. You might want to use a variation of type sizes, but remember to avoid point sizes less than 6 to maintain legibility on the printed card.
Now let’s get creative and decorate this boring business card! Use the Paintbrush tool and select a small round brush from the Brushes palette. Choose a typical ink-like colour such as c45,m35,y0,k0 for the stroke colour and begin doodling on your card design. Make sure any sketch lines that extend beyond the edges of the card also span across the bleed area.
There are no rules when it comes to doodling. Draw whatever comes to mind, for me it was a stick-man battle scene.
Don’t worry if your lines aren’t overly accurate, it’s only a quick and fun doodle after all. Just remember to extend your lines beyond the bleed edges.
Fill up any empty space with a random doodle, soon you’ll be left with the coolest business card design on the planet.
Press CMD+A to select all your objects, then go to Object > Expand Appearance. This will convert all those strokes into solid shapes.
Draw a temporary rectangle that fits into the bleed area. Leave the rectangle without a fill or stroke. Select all the doodle lines that extend beyond the edges of the bleed area along with the temporary rectangle. Click the Crop option from within the Pathfinder palette.
All the elements should now have been clipped down to size and fit neatly within the business card bleed dimensions.
Select all your text elements then go to Type > Create Outlines. Just like the Expand Appearance menu converted strokes to shapes, Create Outlines converts text to solid shapes, this will prevent any font related issues with your print file.
Go to File > Print to bring up the print options. Select Adobe PDF from the Print drop down, select Custom for the Media Size, then select the Marks and Bleed option and add all printer’s marks.
Illustrator will then export a print ready PDF file that’s ready to send off to your printer of choice.
Before sending off your file, you might want to double check your ink coverage and number of plates your design will use. In Adobe Acrobat Pro, go to Advanced > Print Production > Output Preview. In the following options panel you can toggle each of the CMYK plates to ensure your colours have exported as expected. Your text and linework will look their best with just one or two colour plates being used. The more plates a colour swatch uses, the higher the risk of mis-registration and blurred lines. In the screenshot notice how all the doodles use the Cyan plate, but the text is invisible, this is because the text only uses the Black (K) plate.
A few days later your freshly printed cards will be in your hands and you’ll be the coolest designer on the planet.
Original post by Chris Spooner and software by Elliott Back
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28456 |
Are you interesting in how to make realistic view scotch tape by using Photoshop tools? If yes, then I will teach you how to make it. I got this effect by experimenting.
So, lets start! First of all create a new document sized 500×300 pixels. Select some appropriate color, for example #a13503 and fill your canvas with it.
Ok, now we should find and bring some picture to our canvas to attach it with scotch tape in future. Actually we can use different pictures or photos. I prefer to use this one, used below. If you want to use the same picture as me, please feel free to download it from here. Open up the picture and copy it to our canvas. After that use Ctrl+T to rotate it a little bit.
Then apply the Drop Shadow and Stroke layer styles to the layer with picture.
See the result on the picture below.
Now, start with creating scotch tape. Use the Polygonal Lasso Tool to make selection which you can see on the picture below. Fill selected area with color of #c1cccd on the new layer.
Remove selection with Ctrl+D. Now, we need to process the scotch tape borders. Get started by selecting the Eraser Tool and use one of the standard Photoshop brushes.
Make some clean work as shown on my picture below.
Set opacity up to 22% for current layer.
Time to add some defects to bring our scotch tape realistic view. Use the Dodge Tool (Brush: 7px, Range: Highlights, Exposure: 50%) to add a few light lines.
Looks better for now, isn’t it? Than use the Burn Tool (Brush: 30px, Range: Shadows, Exposure: 100%) to make some burn work.
To finish off creating scotch tape effect, duplicate the layer with Ctrl+J and change layer mode to Overlay for copied layer. Don’t be surprised that the layer becomes a bit brighter. It is normal. Then apply Filter > Stylize > Emboss with similar settings to these:
Now we have a relief like this:
On this step we are done with creating scotch tape. You can add more tapes if you want. Feel free to experiment and you will get the best results! Good luck!
Original post by MrPhoturist and software by Elliott Back
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28018 |
A lot of HDR photos look surreal and artistic. Theyre usually seen as high contrast with bright and obvious halos. This set of photos shows the opposite; HDR tone mapping used to enhance the details while keeping the realistic look of the photo. Here are 8 examples of HDR tone mapped photos that looks so realistic you probably wouldnt have known they were tone mapped if we havent told you.
Original post by Sean Hodge and software by Elliott Back
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Categories:
Allgemein |
Icon design is an essential element in any designer’s tool chest. No matter how simple or how complex your design is, a nice looking icon will almost always help to spruce things up. In this Photoshop tutorial we will demonstrate some easy steps to help you to produce your own shiny Psdtuts+ icon in Photoshop. These steps can be easily modified to produce a family of icons for your website.
Step 1
Start with a new document, I’ve used Width – 600px, Height – 600px. Take the Rounded Rectangle Tool (U), Radius- 20px, and draw a shape like this, modify the shape using the Add Anchor Point Tool, then move the new anchor points as shown.
Step 2
Hit Ctrl + Enter to make selection, fill it with color – #05b4ba and then apply a Gradient Overlay using a Layer Style.
Step 3
Name this Layer “Base”, Ctrl + Click on the Layer thumbnail to create selection. Now create a new later and name it “Outside Stroke”. Go to Edit > Stroke. Apply a Stroke of 8px, Location – Center. (You can use any color).
Step 4
Now we need to create a shadow of the layer “Outside Stroke”. To do this, you will need to duplicate that layer and drag it under the main “Outside Stroke” layer. Go to Layer > Layer Style > Color Overlay. Fill it with Black color. Now go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur. Radius – 0.9 px. Change its Opacity to 7%. You should get something like this.
Step 5
Now again Ctrl + Click on the “Base” layer thumbnail. Create a new layer and name it “Glow Overlay 1″. Fill it with white color and move the selection down using your arrow key. Hit delete. Change its Opacity to 7%.
Step 6
It’s time for another glow light. Use the Pen Tool (P) and draw a shape like this. Name this layer “Glow Overlay 2″. Change its Opacity to 11%.
Step 7
Again Ctrl + Click on the “Base” layer. Create a new layer and name it “Box Glow”. Fill it with white. Go to Select > Modify > Contract, contract by 30px. Delete this area. Take the Eraser Tool (E), follow the next image.
Step 8
Optionally, you can add your own effects as shown.
Step 9
Our next step is to give it a glassy look. Create a new layer and name it “Glass”. Take the Rounded Rectangle Tool, Radius – 10px, change the layer blending mode to Lighten. See instructions in next image.
Step 10
Now we need to create the edge of the glass themed area. Draw the same shape using the Rounded Rectangle Tool, press Ctrl + Enter to make selection, go to Edit > Stroke, width – 1px, Location – Center, color – white. Change the Layer Blending mode to Overlay. Take Eraser Tool (E). See the next image.
Step 11
Now that the text has been typed out, it’s time to adjust some of the layers. Create a new Layer Group, name it “Object Front”, and then put all the layers inside it.
Step 11
Time for adjusting the layers. Create a new Layer Group, name it “Object Front” and put all the layers inside it.
Step 12
To create the back side of the object, we will next create a new layer under the “Object Front” group and name it “Object Back”, create a shape using Rounded Rectangle tool, then apply the following Layer Blending Styles.
Step 13
Now it is time to add another glow on “Object Back” layer. Something like this. Use the steps we laid out in earlier parts of this tutorial for this.
Step 14
Our next step is to apply a shadow to our back object. See the following image.
Step 15
Create a New layer Group, name it “Object Back” and put the layers inside it. After that, create the upper area of the folder icon by creating a new layer above the “Object Back” Group. Name it “Head”. Start using the Pen Tool, follow the next image.
Step 16
Ctrl + Click on the thumbnail of the Head layer, create a new layer and name it “Head Stroke”, Go to Edit > Stroke, width – 1 px, color – white. Now add some glow on the Head layer, try creating this one yourself.
Step 17
Now we will be creating our tag. To do this, follow the instructions on the image below.
Step 18
To create the rope, draw it using your pen tool and apply the hole’s Blending Style. (Used in Step 17.)
Step 19
To create the shadow of the tag, follow the steps laid out in Step 4 and erase the outer areas. Set its Opacity to 61%.
Step 20
Create a shadow for the folder icon just like this and place the layer at the bottom.
Final Image
You can create a family of icons using very similar techniques. Thank you! I hope you have enjoyed this tutorial.
Original post by Tanmoy Dey and software by Elliott Back
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27513 |
In this week’s roundup of creative goodness, we have a unique Illustrator tutorial covering the creation of watercolor effects; a CSS tutorial on the popular sprites technique; a fantastic introduction and overview of CSS attribute selectors; another brilliant Illustrator tutorial, this time creating a bright and crisp illustration; and a well presented bunch of typography tips.
This unique tutorial from the freshly launched Design Instruct covers some great tips on how to recreate a great looking watercolour and hand-drawn marker effect from a base photo. Definitely worth checking out!
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Using CSS image sprites is a popular technique for menus in web design. This tutorial from Build Internet does an excellent job of introducing the concept of sprites, and takes you through the steps of building a sprite powered menu yourself.
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CSS attribute selectors are often left collecting dust at the back of our CSS toolbox, but they’re actually one of the most useful resources when it comes to styling up our websites. CSS Tricks goes back to basics and gives a complete and thorough overview of how attribute selectors can be used.
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Ryan from Vectips seems to have a never-ending stream of amazing Illustrator tutorials. One of his most recent takes you through the steps of creating a mouthwatering strawberry graphic, complete with bright colours and crisp vector shapes.
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This well presented post from CSS Wizardry documents some best practices and common mistakes when it comes to setting type on the web. The post includes some super handy tips and is one every designer should check out, I picked out a few good pointers myself.
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Original post by Chris Spooner and software by Elliott Back
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27430 |
Over the last three days we’ve been steadily rolling out a new Tuts+ theme across all 8 sites. The new design is a refinement more than a big change, with lots of little improvements in usability and more suited to big screens. Read on to learn more about the redesign and lots of news about Plus!
1 The Plus Project
As you may know we have some pretty big plans for these Tuts+ sites. While today they are humble little tutorial blogs, we’ve thought for some time that it would be cool to build an entire platform for education. We’re going to call that platform Plus. You’ll know Plus content as our premium content, but no longer.
Our premium content is now ‘Premium’ (go figure!) and Plus is the brand for the educational platform we’re building, which, just like Psdtuts+, will be completely free for the most part.
With Tuts+ well established now, we’ve finally begun work on the project! We’ve acquired the domain Plus.org which will be the home of the new platform (yay for our first four letter domain!) We’ve also brought over our resident code genius Ryan Allen (who built our ActiveDen platform all by himself back in 2006) to team up with Tuts+ developer extraordinaire Fred Wu and kick ass front-end guru Derek Herman. And Skellie and I have been busy spec’ing out the plans for the new site, and it’s pretty, damn cool if I do say so myself!
Right now the Tuts+ sites are fairly passive, but we’d like to get the whole community involved in writing, teaching, answering questions and generally learning. The new Plus.org platform promises to incorporate all that plus some nifty ideas we’ve taken from gaming to come together into a social education platform.
It’s going to take a long time and we’re going to roll it all out in pieces over the next 2 years. We’re super excited about it all, and I hope I’ll have more updates in the coming months!
2 Creative Sessions and Mobiletuts+
While Plus.org will take a long time, we do have some new goodies coming much sooner including Creative Sessions which is being built now, and also Mobiletuts+ which will be all about mobile development!
3 Server Update
About a week and a half ago we had some major problems with our servers. I’m happy to say that we’ve now completely resolved these issues by moving hosts and reengineering our hosting setup completely from scratch. The new setup is much quicker and has a much greater capacity for growth, so fingers crossed, that will be the last server outage for a long time to come!
4 The Redesign
The new theme has a few neat features you may want to check out including:
- Basix!
While Tuts+ has always been known for intermediate to advanced level content, we’ve been thinking it’d be good to separate out tutorials and articles better suited to people just getting started. So we’ve created the Basix tag for quick browsing. You’ll find it in the top menu, and expect to see more Basix content soon as we beef up our library of novice-friendly content.
- Easy access to Videos, Tips and Premium Posts
We’ve also started tagging videos, tips and Premium membership posts so that along with Basix content you can quickly find what you’re after. We’re generally going to be working to clean up our category/tagging across the network in the coming months to get it more standardized.
- Tutorial Details on Posts
We’re also going to start standardizing all tutorials to have a "Tutorial Details" section at the top with difficulty and other pertinent details. Eventually we’ll get all the archives updated … but with over 2000 tutorials, that will take a while!
- Bigger, more readable content area
We’ve expanded the site to be optimized for bigger 1280px wide screens, with a bit of JavaScript to resize for smaller resolutions. This has given us the space to clean up the content area to be a bit bigger and more readable generally.
- Latest Creattica content for inspiration
We’ve also started porting over the latest Creattica content into our sidebars. There’s actually a redesign of Creattica coming in the next few weeks and we’ll be expanding the gallery to cover even more types of inspiration. The new sidebar widget will give even more exposure to those talented creatives on Creattica!
- General UI Improvements
Most of the improvements on the new design are small, subtle improvements such as a reduction in the number of clicks needed to browse categories, a clearer search field, faster loading pages and generally cleaner, more optimized code.
One change that we have also made is to remove the community link feed. Over the years this was a great way to get exposure to community links, but unfortunately was also home to a lot of spam. So with this iteration we’ve left it behind.
Also at the moment sites with Flickr groups don’t have it showing, but don’t worry that’ll be back. There’s just a problem with our Flickr plugin at the moment!!
There are still some more tweaks to do to the new design and a lot of post formatting to do to get our archives matching up with the new theme. But for all intents and purposes the new theme is now alive and well! Enjoy!
Original post by Collis and software by Elliott Back
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27419 |
Washi is a type of paper made from organic materials. It is used in many traditional arts and its usage is popular in Japan. This set contains twelve high resolution images up to 6000×4000 pixels of washi made in Thailand.
Original post by Sean Hodge and software by Elliott Back
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Allgemein |
