Design Resources : 6 Texture and Pattern Websites

Posted by Jennifer | May 23, 2007 | 3 Comments

texturethumb I’ve been looking for some background textures for another website I’m working on. I was initially thinking of a wood type background but then changed my mind and decided to go for a stone texture instead. There are loads of textures and pattern sites out there and on my web travels I came across a few good sites that really came up with the goods in terms of textures and patterns and were well above average. I thought you may find them useful too. Please let me know of other good texture sites you use.
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Posted by Jennifer | Filed Under Design Resources

Photoshop Tutorial : Using the Crop tool to ADD canvas

Posted by Jennifer | May 22, 2007 | 3 Comments

The Crop tool is generally used to crop or make an image smaller, but this trick shows you how to add to the canvas area. This is a nice way to add a larger border or white space around an image. It works well for posters and you could also easily adapt it to create a polariod style image.

1. Open an image that you want to add white canvas area to.

2. Press D to set the Foreground and Background colours to Black and White respectively.

3. Zoom right out so that you can see the grey desktop area around the image.

4. If you are working on an image that has more than one layer, make sure that the Background layer is the active layer.

5. Select the Crop tool (C) and drag out a marquee from the top left corner of the image to the bottom right corner. At this stage it doesn’t matter if the whole image is not selected.

6. Drag out each corner or middle handle so that the cropping area is now outside the image and takes in some of the grey desktop.

7. Press Enter (PC) or Return (Mac) to finalise the Crop. The grey desktop area that you include in the crop area will be converted to extra image canvas and will appear white because that is the current background colour.

8. (Optional) Add some text to create a poster or advertisement. In this example I used Century Gothic, size 14, bold for the headline, and Century Gothic, size 10, regular for the tagline.

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Posted by Jennifer | Filed Under Photoshop Tutorials

Photoshop Quick Tip : Sortin’ Your Document Windows

Posted by Jennifer | May 21, 2007 | Leave A Comment

You’ve probably found yourself working with lots and lots of images in separate document windows. And I’m sure, just like me you found it a bit of a pain in the bum sorting through them. Well one quick way of whizzing through each of those windows is to use the following shortcut:

Ctrl + Tab (windows) or Cmd + Tab (mac).

These shortcuts allow you to switch documents quickly.

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Posted by Jennifer | Filed Under Photoshop Tips

Design Resources : Misprinted Type

Posted by Jennifer | May 18, 2007 | 2 Comments

These are some of the coolest fonts I’ve come across in a while. They are grungy, dirty, spooky, rough around the edges and Fabulous! There are a selection of free fonts and paid fonts and they all look amazing. Read more

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Posted by Jennifer | Filed Under Design Resources

Photoshop : Tutorial - Photo Retouching With The Layer Mask

Posted by Jennifer | May 17, 2007 | Leave A Comment

Earlier in the week I posted a tutorial showing you how to use a layer mask to create a pretty cool special effect. Today’s tutorial again features the layer mask but this time we’re looking at a technique often used by photographers to give subtle sharpening to a portait.

In this case what we’ll do is duplicate an image, sharpen up the copied layer, then add a black layer mask to the sharpened layer and finally paint back in the sharpness where it is required, usually the eyes and the lips.

1. Open a portrait style image.

2. Duplicate the background layer by pressing Ctrl + J (Windows) or Cmd + J (Mac).

3. Make sure the duplicated layer is selected in the layers palette and then choose Filter > Sharpen > Unsharp Mask. Use the Amount and Radius sliders to increase the sharpening on the image. Overall, the image may look too sharp, but that’s ok because we are going to hide most of it with a mask.

4. Alt-click (Windows) or Option-click (Mac) the Layer Mask button at the bottom of the layers palette to add a black layer mask, which hides the entire layer. You will now paint with white to add the image back—to work additively you bring the image back into view.

This is because the black layer mask is hiding the contents of the layer. You’ll now paint in the eyes and lips using white.

5. Make sure the foreground colour is set to white. Use the paintbrush to paint over the eyes and lips. Notice the black mask thumbnail shows exactly where the white paint has been used and the areas where the mask is see-through. The eyes and lips on the image should now look nice and sharp.

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Posted by Jennifer | Filed Under Photoshop Tutorials

Photoshop : Tutorial - Using A Gradient With A Layer Mask

Posted by Jennifer | May 15, 2007 | Leave A Comment

Here’s a method to use a gradient with a layer mask in Photoshop to produce a very cool effect. Layer masks are great because they allow you to make dramatic changes to an image without damaging any pixels in your original picture.

So to get started, what we’re going to do is use a layer mask to blend a normal colour photograph with a filtered version of the same photograph. We’ll use a gradient in the layer mask to make the photograph gradually blend from colour to the filtered black and white.

1. Open an image, I’m using this fairly bright pink photo of a child, who looks like he’s had an electric shock!.

2. Press Ctrl + J (Cmd + J for the Mac) to duplicate the layer.

3. Give the new layer a descriptive name (I used “Filtered”).

4. Select the layer named “Filtered” and choose Filter > Sketch > Graphic Pen.

Make any adjustments to you like in the Graphic Pen filter dialog box and then click OK.

4. With the “Filtered” layer selected in the layers palette, choose Layer > Layer Mask > Reveal All

In the layer palette you will see the thumbnail of layer and a thumbnail of a white square. In between the two thumbnails you’ll see a link icon. This tells us that the layer mask is linked to the image.

5. Press D to set the foreground and background colours to their default of white and black.

6. Select the gradient tool and in the tool options bar, make sure that the selected gradient is the first one in the drop down box, i.e. Foreground to Background.