A little bit of design inspiration away from the computer
Posted by Jennifer Farley | August 30, 2007
These were a couple of sites I came across while “working”. Although they have nothing to do with web or graphic or any kind of digital design, I find them inspirational. They made me want to do something or create something by hand… In the end I just made dinner but I’m still inspired.
Firstly some amazing sand scultptures at world snooper.
Next up, from the world of watermelon carving, there’s a great set of pictures on Very Bored.
Finally, take a look at the spectacular paper sculpture of Clive Stevens.
Photoshop : Tutorial - Give your drop shadows a little more life!
Posted by Jennifer Farley | August 29, 2007
It’s really easy to add a drop shadow to any object on a layer in Photoshop. Just select the layer in the Layers palette and then click on the “Add a layer style” button at the bottom of the palette and choose Drop Shadow from the drop down menu. This opens up the Layer Style dialox box and you can choose your drop shadow settings from there. Simple.
However, photographs or paper objects like this don’t always lie completely flat. So to give your work a bit more ummph, you can add the illusion of a hint of a curl.
Draw a shape like the one below. You can do this using the Pen tool, Pencil tool or Brush tool, just try to keep the edges FAIRLY smooth, but they shouldn’t be perfectly straight. I used the Pen tool.
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Fill in the shape with black and then blur the edge. You can blur the edge using Filter > Blur >Gaussian Blur. I used a radius setting of 4.
Drag your photograph over the curl drop shadow. (They should be on separate layers, with the photograph on the layer above the drop shadow!).
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Once the photograph is placed over the drop shadow, select the drop shadow layer and Press Ctrl + T (windows) or Cmd + T (Mac) to Free Transform. You may need to scale the curl drop shadow up or down or even skew it, depending on the effect you want to achieve. Hit Enter/Return to commit the transformation.
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The shadow is probably going to be a bit too much so reduce down the
opacity of that layer which will lighten the shadow. Voila!
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Once you’ve made your drop shadow you can create different effects by transforming it. For example you can lift up three corners of the photo by offsetting the drop shadow horizontally and enlarging it vertically.
You can also give the impression of lifting the photo higher off the “page” or surface by showing a larger but softer shadow.
Finally, tilt the photograph and shadow together for a more natural look. Select both layers in the layers palette, then press Ctrl + T or Cmd + T. Then drag around one corner. Press Return/Enter to commit the transformation.
Photoshop Tutorial : Mixing image sizes when dragging between documents
Posted by Jennifer Farley | August 27, 2007
People new to image editing in Photoshop are often puzzled when they drag an image from one document window to another document and the sizes don’t match. You may have found that you have two documents which look about the same size when they are side by side, but when you drag one photo onto the first image appears really small (or really big). So what’s the story? Well, you need to look at the resolution of each image to understand why this happens.
In the example below you can see two images. The makeup image on the right has a resolution of 150-ppi, the silk image on the left has a resolution of 300-ppi document.
The makeup image is displayed at 100%, while the silk image is displayed at 33%. When the makeup image is dragged on top of the silk image, the results appear as below.
Suddenly the makeup image looks tiny.
If you take a look at the magnification level shown on the title bar of each document window, you will get a big clue about how they will appear when one is dragged on top of the other. You can also check the resolution of any image by choosing Image > Image Size. This opens the image size dialog box.
A general rule of thumb for Resolution is to use 72 ppi (pixels per inch) if you are preparing an image for use on the web and 300 ppi if the image is to be professionally printed.
Photoshop Inspiration
Posted by Jennifer Farley | August 27, 2007
Tons of great imagery from some design masters are featured in this post from Smashing Magazine.
The list includes some of my own favourites, such as Adhemas Batista and mcfaul.
A Handy Photoshop Tool
Posted by Jennifer Farley | August 24, 2007
For anyone who loves Photoshop brushes (and don’t we all?), here’s a free brush viewer that’s been around for a while and makes life a little bit easier. It allows you to view any brushes on your system without having to load them up. You can export brushes as a png file and you can easily print a brush reference sheet.
It’s Open Source and can be downloaded from the ABRViewer website.
Photoshop in the News
Posted by Jennifer Farley | August 17, 2007
I saw an article in the Guardian today about how there have been a lot of difficulties installing Adobe CS3.
I’m due to start teaching a new course in September covering Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver and Flash and we’re moving to CS3, so I’m hoping there won’t be major problems. I’ll be installing the new software on 21 pcs so fingers crossed there won’t be the need to go through several reinstalls as described in the newspaper article.
Have many of you moved to CS3 and did you have any difficulties getting it going?
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About
Hi, my name is Jennifer Farley and I am a designer and design instructor based in Ireland. Read more about Laughing Lion Design .
