Photoshop-Week I (March)

By Dirk Metzmacher

In this series I have a look at the most current Photoshop tutorials. Sometimes there could also be classics among them. I’m sure you’ll always find great techniques and inspiration.

Eye tutorials

I wasn’t aware that there are so many tutorials dealing with creative changes to the eyes, such as you can see in the collection It’s All in the Eyes: 100 Beautiful Photo Manipulations. Eyes are very important for human beings, after all.

3D sphere and cube

Initially, the Photoshop tutorial How To Design a 3D Glass Icon leads us to a 3D sphere including lighting effects. In addition to that, the sphere is then put inside a transparent cube. So basic geometric shapes are arranged in a beautiful composition.

Create your own shapes

Photoshop offers a number of default vector shapes, but of course you can create your own shapes, such as described in the workshop Creating Custom Photoshop Shapes. A very abstract form with holes in it is created there.

60+ creative Twitter backgrounds for inspiration

The Print24 weblog published another one of my articles: 60+ creative Twitter backgrounds for inspiration. The diversity in which designers adapt the background is really astonishing. And this is even though Twitter doesn’t offer many options in that area (in terms of profile personalization in general).

Adobe Photoshop CS5 – new painting functions

The following video shows you the new capabilities that the upcoming Photoshop CS5 will have for color choice and color application. The color picker, the eyedropper, the brush settings and the zoom function have been optimized and Photoshop is supplemented with a new brush tool.

Snow Cold Poster

The article Create an Abstract Piece Theme – Freezing Snow Cold shows you how an image is fragmented and pieced back together again. New landscapes are created and combined with a few graphical elements.

Light Streaks Effect

The article How to enhance your subjects with striking light effects shows you a way to put a light streak effect into a Photoshop image. First, a background is created, and then a separated person above the background is treated with an interesting light streak effect (it’s hard to describe, but you can see it below :) ).

Logo ideas

The logo ideas collected in the article 30 Minimal Logo Designs that Say More with Less have not been designed specifically for existing companies. It was more about choosing a word and then creating a fitting logo for it. Still a great source of inspiration.

Photoshop 1.0 to CS5

Two more additions at this point. Firstly another preview for CS5 (the impacts get closer, it probably won’t be long now), and secondly a birthday tribute with Photoshop 1.0, which has been created very lovingly.

The Egg

Hardly anyone would choose Photoshop to design an egg, of all things. But if you look at the result of the tutorial Egg Planet. Fantastic globe photo manipulation, you’ll have to agree: Looks great, that egg. A high class composition.

Beautiful photos at the push of a button

I’m a little apprehended that at some point in the future – maybe in 20 years – Photoshop will have a button that says: Optimize Photo. And BOOM, proportion rules are automatically considered, the crop is adjusted and image elements are repositioned. Don’t believe me? Well, then have a look at this:

Making of Grenat

Another Making of. A painting called Grenat has been created in Photoshop, and you can read about its development history at the cgarena.com website. A simple palette as a base is enough for the artist to achieve the result below.

80 Photoshop actions for your projects

I’ve collected a couple of good sources again for the Print24 blog, this time 80 Photoshop actions for your projects. The majority of these actions is for creative changes in photo material, such as black/white conversions, cross processing or Polaroid simulations.

Photoshop Timeline

Gizmodo has published the Photoshop history as a timeline. A good overview for any fan who’s interested in the software’s development.

Photoshop 1.0 on the iPhone

A nice video for iPhone owners and Photoshop junkies. Russel Brown presents the first Photoshop version, 1.07, on the iPhone. Sure, it’s just a simple simulation with a welcome screen and the option to adjust the levels of an image, but the hardcore Photoshop fan would love to have this as an app… but no…, sadly, this program is not available on the App Store.

The (funny) history of Photoshop

Another video that shows Russel Brown talking about the history of Photoshop, filled with a lot of gags and surprises: