The evolution of web design

By Dirk Metzmacher

The article The evolution of web design takes a quick look back on the development of web design. From 1993 to 1996: The web is a boring place for designers to From 1995 to 1998: browsers war to From 1998 to 2000: Designers get serious about creating websites to From 2000 to 2004: the rise of web standards to From 2004 to 2007: the era of Web 2.0 and From 2008 to now: moving to other devices. A great overview.

No Comments / Published on August 10, 2009

Lorem Ipsum

By Dirk Metzmacher

When designing websites or flyers, you’re often missing text that is inserted only much later. The Lorem Ipsum Photoshop CS4 Extension helps by adding another palette to the layers. This way, you’ll always have a handy Lorem Ipsum generator.

1 Comments / Published on August 10, 2009

Tutorial: Water and Waves

By Dirk Metzmacher

Summertime and swimming pools: Hop into the blue and enjoy total refreshment. Not everyone can afford his own pool, but Photoshop offers a way to have a bit of bathing fun for free. For that we use the Clouds filter, which is one of few filters that generate a random result.

Water surface

1. From clouds to water

The water surface in a swimming pool catches the sun in numerous reflections. The Clouds filter as one of the few random generators offers the easiest way to get natural structures. This is one of those cases. Press D on the keyboard to reset the foreground and background color to standard black and white.

Now everything is prepared for our Cloud filter. There’s still one problem though: The clouds’ size cannot be adjusted. For smaller structures this means that you’ll need a larger document in order to scale it down later on. Read more »

2 Comments / Published on August 9, 2009

Create a Surreal Photo Manipulation

By Dirk Metzmacher

Every time I don’t understand what an image is actually meant to display, I’m calling it „surrealism“. The author of the article Create a Surreal Photo Manipulation must have had the same problem. A woman, embraced by branches, in a romantic scene with a bird. That’s definitely… I don’t know. Surrealism?

No Comments / Published on August 7, 2009

John Lennon

By Dirk Metzmacher

I’m a big John Lennon fan and also interested in good drawings with Photoshop. If I can present both of these in a single article, all the better. The following video by Stephanie Valentin shows how she draws a typical John Lennon portrait.

No Comments / Published on August 6, 2009

Creating Depth of Field

By Dirk Metzmacher

Appropriate for “Fake Model Photography�, ultrashock.com offers the tutorial Creating Depth of Field. Among a few basics dealing with Fake Model, Silhouetting and Masking, the author shows step by step how a bridge is turned into a model bridge by applying a blur.

No Comments / Published on April 17, 2009