Design Quote

Posted by Jennifer | June 16, 2007 | Leave A Comment

I saw this quote and it made me laugh. I think anyone who get’s so into their Photoshop or Illustration work can probably relate to it.

“My wife keeps complaining that I am married to my art. But my art keeps complaining that I am still sleeping with my wife.

Emek - Artist and designer

Have you got any good art or design quotes that you’d like to share?

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Posted by Jennifer | Filed Under Design Stuff!

Photoshop Brushes : High Res Hazard Signs

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

To end the week, here’s a set of 8 “distressed” hazard signs. The signs include warnings of acid, poison, electrocution, explosions, lasers and more. I’ve roughed them up a bit too so that they look used. Let me know if you find them useful.

hazardbrushes

Download the zipped brush file here.

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Posted by Jennifer | Filed Under Photoshop Brushes

Design Resources : Fake Concert Ticket Generator

Posted by Jennifer | June 14, 2007 | Leave A Comment

Ok, so maybe this isn’t going to be a major part of your design life but this kept me amused and off the streets for a few minutes. The Fake Concert Ticket generator lets you enter your own text to create tickets for whatever you want. Enter your details and press Go.

Please find below, a complimentary ticket to visit Digital Design Cottage ANYTIME you want.

fakeconcert-ticket

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Posted by Jennifer | Filed Under Design Stuff!

Design Resources : Cherubim Initials Font

Posted by Jennifer | June 14, 2007 | Leave A Comment

If you’re a fan of scrapbooking or maybe you’re making your own cards, then you’ll like the Cherubim Initial font. A – Z of cute cherubs intertwined with old style lettering and foliage. I downloaded the font a few months ago - it’s created by Paul Lloyd - and just recently came across it again. Check out his website where you’ll find this font and lots of other lovely ornate work available for download.

In the sample below, I’ve combined the Cherubim Initial with an uppercase Helvetica, Bold Condensed font.

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Posted by Jennifer | Filed Under Design Resources

Photoshop Tip : Keyboard Shortcuts For Scaling

Posted by Jennifer | June 13, 2007 | 4 Comments

When you are resizing an object in Photoshop with the Free Transform tool (Ctrl + T or Cmd + T), you probably already know that holding down the Shift key when dragging a handle will let you resize proportionately and avoid distortion. Read more

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Posted by Jennifer | Filed Under Photoshop Tips

Photoshop : Tutorial - Converting to Black & White With Calculations

Posted by Jennifer | June 11, 2007 | 1 Comment

The word “calculations” can be pretty scary for creative folk like us. It conjures up images of sweating over some really hard sums. However when we’re talking about Calculations in Photoshop what we’re referring to is the ability to blend two individual channels from one or more source images. In this tutorial, I’m going to show you how to convert a colour image into black and white using the Calculations dialog box. (And it’s not hard either!)

1. Open up your colour image that you want to convert to greyscale.

2. Choose Image > Calculations.

This will open up the Calculations dialog box. This dialog box lets you pick two channels from your colour photograph and blend them together to create a new image. (Note that you can also choose to blend two separate images together.)

3. Make sure the Preview box is checked so that you can see what you’re doing.

The default setting for the Calculations dialog box is to combine a Red Channel (Source 1) with a second copy of the Red Channel (Source 2). By playing around with the available channels and blending them together you can create a nice looking black and white image. This does come down to a certain amount of trial and error and can be different for each image you convert. The best place to start is by leaving Source 1 Channel set to Red and set Source 2 Channel to Green and see what happens.

You will notice that the default blend mode in the Calculations dialog box is Multiply. For this particular image that I’m using, Multiply works well as it gives nice dark colours to the sky. However, this is not great for every image so try changing the blending mode to some of the other modes such as Linear Burn or Overlay.

4. You can also change the Opacity setting if you feel the effect is too much. For my final image, I set up the following settings in the Calculations dialog box: Source 1 – Channel = Red, Source 2 – Channel = Green, Blending Mode = Mulitply and Opacity = 90%.

Original Image below followed by the Calculations conversion.