I may do a tutorial for this someday on my site, but for this subject these tend to be kind of long, and the format of my tutorials lends itself more to short and medium length types of things, so for now I've gone out and rounded up a variety of cool tutorials from around the 'net. So get your creative juices flowing and put on your movie studio hat, I'm sure you'll come up with something awesome to share!

Create an Action Packed Movie Poster in Photoshop
It doesn't get much more comprehensive than this. Mario Sanchez Nevado has put together an excellent tutorial that will touch upon a good number of different techniques. Lots of composing and photo manipulation is used here, make sure you have plenty of time set aside before delving into this one.

Design a Grungy Western Movie Poster in Photoshop
If you like westerns, this design will appeal to you. Not as quite as complicated as the action movie poster above, but still produces a very nice result.

Create Sci-Fi Poster Art
I had to include a sci-fi themed one in here, and this one does a nice job of using blend modes and filters to create a cool atmospheric poster.

Make a Retro Space Themed Poster in Photoshop
If you've followed my blog much, you know I love almost anything with a retro look to it. This tutorial will show you how to design the poster and give it that awesome aged appearance!

Create a Dark, Creepy Movie Poster
This is probably the quickest to accomplish of those listed. It focuses more on the typographical elements of movie poster design, which is course a very important piece to the puzzle.

That's it for now, happy designing!

Here is a quick rundown of some of the new stuff:

-Updated UI with some engine improvements for quicker editing with some of the more intensive tools, like liquify.
-More content aware stuff, Adobe continues to flesh out one of the most talked about features of CS5.
-Some of the core tools have been improved or redesigned, such as the crop tool.

And here is a feature list from Adobe which you can download here.

General
• Dark UI
• UI Consistency
• Properties Panel (Adjustments/Masks/3D)
• Lighting Effects Gallery
• Presets (Migrate Presets and Import/Export)
• Crop (all new and redesigned)
• Patch Tool w/Content-Aware Option
• Content-Aware Move Tool (formerly the Remix Tool)
• Scripted Patterns (Fill/Pattern)
• Contact Sheet II plug-in back in app
• PDF Presentation back in the app
• File Import Image from Device now includes ImageKit scanning and camera acquisition support
• Minibridge UI tweaks—Filmstrip Mode
• MENA Support (Middle-East and North African text support)
• Rich Cursor information throughout the app (i.e. Crop, Transform, Move, Vectors,
etc.)

GPU/Performance
• GPU Warp Transform
• GPU Puppet Warp Preview
• GPU Liquify—Button for last Liquify used and Cmd + F works
• GPU Oil Paint (Pixel Bender) Artistic Filter
• Adaptive Wide Angle
• Lighting Effects and Blur Galleries
• Background Save, Auto-Save and Auto Recover

Photographers
• ACR 7—Local controls for White Balance and Noise Reduction, new black/white and highlight/shadow controls
• Blur Gallery (Tilt-Shift, Iris and Field Blur)
• Video (No longer limited to Extended)—Video Group Layers
• Adaptive Wide Angle—Includes support for panoramas!
• Face-Aware Mask Generation—Change to Color Range
• Intelligent Auto-Correction

Designers
• Type Styles
• Type Menu (Insert Lorem Ipsum JDI)
• New Dictionaries
• Improved Font Rendering—Gamma setting in Color Settings
• Pixel Accuracy/Snap to Pixels
• New Vector Layers
• Styles on Groups
• Stack of TOP JDI’s specifically for designers
• Layer Search

Painting
• Erodible Tips
• Airbrush Tips
• Brush Rotation for Static Tips
• Oil Paint Filter (Pixel Bender)
• New PRESETS!
• JDI’s specifically for painters
• Painting Performance, CPU and GPU
• Default Tablet Pose Parameters for Mouse Film Industry
• 10-bit Monitor Support
• 3D LUTs, color adjustments

Printing
• Completely Redesigned Print Dialog
• Print Selected Area is back and the selection can be adjusted in the Print Dialog.
• “Edit” button added for the description field in the Print Dialog.
• When using Photoshop Manages Colors, the list of profiles is now filtered to hide profiles that are inappropriate for your currently selected printer.
• Users can change the “preview well” background color in the Print Dialog to better suit their needs.

Check it out and have fun!

I recently got this gorgeous canvas from Easy Canvas Prints. It has not yet found its home yet in my new place but I just had to tell you all how pleased I am with it. At first, I was little nervous about having one of my photos printed, they're like my little babies and if they weren't going to be done right I didn't want them printed at all. Especially this photo from my favorite photos post. You know it's one of my favorite photos I've ever taken because it means so much to me. The light and tones were edited just the way I wanted them to be. But I really had no reason to be so nervous, Easy Canvas Prints did an absolutely superb job with my photo. The tones were spot on, the quality and the build were so much better than I expected.

I decided to go with the image wrap which looks great with its chunky edges. The people at Easy Canvas Prints were very accommodating and answered every question I had promptly. I'm so pleased with my very first professional print/canvas and I encourage you all to give them a try if you're ever considering a canvas print.

I found these great vintage photo frames from Besotted Blog through everyone's new favorite website, Pinterest (follow me)! These are just what I was looking for. I wanted some of my photos that looked a little aged to have even more character and these are perfect for the job.

Here's one of my photos that I re-edited from my Favorite Photos post used with the square frame:

Enjoy!

This is one of my favorite photos I've ever taken. Every time I look at it I feel as though I am walking on the pavement again; I can feel the sun, the emptiness. I love this long stretch of the Extraterrestrial Highway, there is no one there and it was just us among nature.

Ah, the townsfolk of Rachel, NV. The hangout in Rachel is, of course, the Little A'Le'Inn. A place where the "crazies", ahem, the UFO enthusiasts like me congregate. I wish that other enthusiasts were there so we could swap stories and I could ask questions. But I had to ask the one man working there that day, which I didn't want to as I'm sure he's tired of talking about possible alien life in his small town of 98.

I noticed that the door to the men's room did not say "Maliens" like it does in the movie "Paul." So I then learned that "Paul" was not actually shot at the real Little A'Le'Inn, it was shot in New Mexico. However producers from the movie traveled to the real Little A'Le'Inn to buy all sorts of alien-themed knick knacks and to take pictures for the set. And now that I have seen "Paul" again since going to Rachel there is a bit of a difference in the two, but kudos to the set designers.

There's nothing really to do in Rachel, the entire town is made up of 20-30 something trailers, even the church. I believe my husband and I deemed ranching the main trade there, and as we were leaving the townsfolk asked if we'd like to stick around to watch them castrate a horse. We declined. The sun was rapidly setting at this point and we did not want to get caught out in the middle of the desert at night, and we still had to go to look at the gate of Area 51 itself and find the infamous "black mailbox." I could not take pictures of the gate to Area 51, it's against the law and I didn't feel like going to jail that day. But we found out that it is true, you WILL BE FOLLOWED if you go anywhere near it.

We ended up getting caught out in the darkness in the desert anyway and almost hit a cow that was standing in the road, as the land surrounding the tiny towns on the Extraterrestrial Highway is an open ranch. But, there are no people, and there are no lights. Nothing. Just total darkness. I've never seen the night sky so clear, so pure, like the sky itself was about to swallow you. We pulled over and stargazed for awhile, catching a glimpse of two shooting stars. Such a magical experience.

*Bonus Photo* of something I found on one the poles of the Extraterrestrial Highway sign that made me laugh:

I'm excited that I'll soon be in a position to get back to working on the site a lot more. I didn't anticipate such an extended hiatus, but I'll be back and ready to create tutorials that you hopefully enjoy in short order. I also plan to start posting about a bit more varied topics, such as DIY projects related to photography.

I will also be adding some tutorials on an often requested topic, Photoshop Elements. Lots of readers have Elements instead of Photoshop, so hopefully I'll give those of you some helpful tutorials as well.

Happy New Year!

Have fun!

I just came across something totally awesome...free textures! Lost and Taken has a texture gallery filled to the brim with high res textures ranging from watercolor, to grungy, scratched, bokeh, film, and paper. And like I said, they are free to use for any personal and commercial works. Can't wait to start using these! Enjoy!

Anyway, as always, I am rambling. Basically, here's a list of some brushes and tutorials I've gathered that reminded me of my favorite shows that I thought would look amazing in some horror-inspired photoshops. Enjoy!

Brushes:

Splat Brushes

Blood Splatter Brushes

Bloody Tears Brushes

Manga Blood Brushes

Blood Brush Set

Tutorials:

Creating a Blood Texture Effect (this goes with the brush set posted directly above)

Create a Realistic Blood Effect

Photoshop Real Wounds Photomanipulation

*Bonus Brushes*

Fingerprint Brushes

Stitches and Sutures Brushes

Recently, I have found a slew of stylish camera bags that remedies the nasty plague of ugly ones for my fellow female shutterbugs (and couple for you dudes out there!).

Epiphanie

There are 3 from Epiphanie that I am just totally loving, The Lola ($164.99), the Clover ($184.99), and the Ginger ($164.99) (my favorite out of the 3).

I love the designs from Epiphanie, these are much more like handbags yet with the necessary guts (or padding) to protect your camera and lenses.

Also, the Lookbook--outstanding!

Jo Totes

The camera bags at Jo Totes is more for the girl that loves vintage style. Seriously, the Rose bag in marigold ($89) with the gorgeous houndstooth pattern interior is just lovely!

Kelly Moore

In addition to these amazing camera bags I would just like to point out that the video on the homepage is super cute. More handbag style designs including the HUGE Juju Bag ($249.99) is perfect for the girl that need more equipment on her.

There's also a great messenger-style camera bag for the stylish dudes out there called the Kelly Boy Bag ($199).

Emera

The Emera camera bags have a more classic style, particularly the beautiful Quilted Canvas Bag ($169), which channels beloved Chanel but much more affordable.

I'm loving the Classic Canvas bag ($169) with it's simple yet beautiful design.

Photojojo

Photojojo is just so cool. As you may have read in my Dreamy Diana Lens for Your DSLR post, the Photojojo Store is awesome! So of course they have few stylish camera bags too. The SLR Sloop bag ($149) is more of a preppy messenger-style bag for the ladies and the fellas. And, in addition to being totally stylish, they are also water repellent. There's also the Classic Leather Camera Satchel ($190) that's pretty sexy too.