Photoshop Help

The Most Amazing Retro PSD Tutorials!

2011-09-22T21:19:00.000-07:00

Ever just feel like getting your retro on? Maybe pulling out your old bling from back in the day, poofing up your hair and putting on your leisure suit? No? Well maybe your Photoshop does feel like that. Don't be afraid to let it loose after checking out these awesome retro photoshop tutorials!

Easy Retro Picture Effects

Cross Processing Effect (Super Easy)

Retro Text Effect

Retro Poster Tutorial

Retro Stars Tutorial

Retro Curves With A Modern Twist Tutorial

Retro Poster Tutorial

Advanced Retro Gig Poster Tutorial (Advanced, but sweet!)

Super Vintage Photographs

Vintage Dreamy Effect Tutorial (Love it!)

Retro Inspired Poster (Not quite retro, but inspired by the times!)

Also, check out these awesome free retro resources!

Fonts
Groovy Fonts via dafont
Old School Fonts via dafont
Retro Fonts via dafont
Retro Fonts via 1001FreeFonts
40 Free Fonts Ideal For Retro And Vintage Designs via bluefaqs

Brushes
500+ Free Retro Photoshop Brushes

Retro Inspiration
Note: Pay attention to the color schemes in most of these 'retro' images and you will notice they are mostly the same. This will give you an idea of the colors your retro designs should aim towards).

Tons of Retro Movie Posters
Celebration of Vintage and Retro Designs (An enormous variety of retro graphic design and original retro posters and advertisements).
50 Retro Inspired Photoshop Inspirations
40 Vintage and Retro (mostly vintage) advertisements

Have some more inspiring, useful, or awesome retro resources? Let us know in a comment below!

Advanced Galactic Scene CS5 Tutorial

2011-09-22T20:07:00.000-07:00

I found this awesome tutorial today on YouTube. While it is done with CS5, I'm confident this can also be done with CS or above.

Know of other great tutorials? Let us know in a comment below!

Typography

2011-09-09T15:26:00.000-07:00

Have you ever wondered just what exactly typography is and how to do it? Get started below with these key typography resources!

Brief Intro To Typography

10 Common Typography Mistakes

21 Inspirational Typography Artworks from Deviantart

Typography is Sexy Part 2

Minimalist Typography Examples

Typography Served (Typography Gallery)

Typography From Behance (Gallery)

30 Creative Examples of Typographic Art

Know of any other cool typography resources? Let us know in a comment below!

Awesome Text Effects

2011-09-09T14:36:00.000-07:00

Is your text falling flat on it's face? Why not let it shine? Take a look at these photoshop tutorials to learn how to give your text some pizzaz!

Click on the pics to see the tutorials!

<-- This tutorial is six tutorials in one!

Know of some great text tutorials? Share them with us in a comment below!

Better Inking In Photoshop

2011-09-08T15:33:00.000-07:00

It's finally here! A better way to ink your drawings in Photoshop. Not only fast and easy, but also satisfying!

Know of another great photoshop tutorial? Post a link in the comments below!

Privacy Policy

2011-09-08T12:53:00.000-07:00

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Advertise With Us

2011-08-21T18:41:00.000-07:00

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We look forward to working with you!

Awesome New Brush Website!

2011-08-21T18:03:00.000-07:00

Hey folks, I came across a new brush website today and it's so awesome I knew I had to share it with you! Brush Lovers offers both free and paid PSD brushes for your everyday and commercial photoshopping needs.

These brushes are amazing and I love them to pieces. So what are you waiting for? Go check out Brush Lovers today!

Add Graphic Interest To Your Drawings

2011-08-19T11:59:00.000-07:00

Are your drawings flat? Are they failing to sell online? Why not try adding some graphic interest to them? In this basic tutorial we will show you one easy technique to add some interest to your work.

Let's say you've just drawn yourself an awesome looking knight in Photoshop. But so far he's only in black ink on a white background, so he's looking pretty uninteresting.

Let's try using some custom brushes (downloaded free offline) to add some interest behind him (in a different layer). We don't have to use many brushes. In this case I used about four and turned them at different angles in the background using the select and transform functions. As the knight is just a line drawing, you'll need to use a hard eraser to delete any part of the brushes that go over the lines into the drawing itself.

Now, turn off the white background layer, while keeping your knight layer and the layer you added the custom brushes to visible, go to Image --> Apply image. Now you're ready for the next step.

What you'll want to do is grab this tool:

Then hit Ctrl+A (This will select all). Now use the right arrow key --> then the left arrow key <-- . This will select everything that was in the applied image (which is why we didn't want the white background to be a part of that). Basically your drawing and the custom brush details should all be selected.

Now you want to get the Gradient tool which looks like this:

Then pick the two colors you want (black and red in this case):

At the top of the screen if the gradient tool is selected you should be able to choose a type of gradient. I use the one indicated by the red box.

Now, your drawing is selected, the gradient tool is active, you've set the colors and chosen a gradient. Click somewhere in the selected drawing and drag upwards (or downwards depending on which way you want the color to go). You can click and drag a longer line or shorter one. When you use the gradient tool in this way you should get an image similar to the one below. You can hit ctrl+D if you're happy with the way it looks, and this will deselect the image.

The last step was adding words to the background in a font I liked, taking the opacity down, rasterizing the layer, and using a soft edged eraser brush to get rid of some of the words on the outer edges, giving us a final image like the one seen below:

Overall it's a pretty simple technique to use with a variety of different drawings and colors. You can add as much or little detail to the background as wanted with brushes or your own detailed little drawings, and can skip the words in the background altogether or add something else of your own design. The goal is to make the eye travel to many different places to give the image interest, and to have many layers of interest and textures. The color separates the image into two portions and adds yet another dimension of interest.

I hope this tutorial was helpful to you! Keep on photoshopping!

Basics of Perspective

2011-08-19T10:51:00.000-07:00

We have a great tutorial for you this week on using perspective in Photoshop. In this case we've made a city planner drawing. View the awesome video tutorial below to get some hints on how to make one for yourself!

Want to learn more? View some of these other awesome perspective tutorials!

Basic/Intermediate Perspective Demo (1,2, and 3 point perspective... excellent video!)

Intermediate Perspective Demo

Advanced Perspective Tutorial

Ultra Advanced Perspective Demo (Curvilinear Perspective)

We hope these have given you a good start in your perspective endeavors! Keep on Photoshopping!

Comic Book Resources

2011-05-23T11:44:00.000-07:00

Are you into turning photos into a comic book? Or perhaps you're an awesome artist who needs some comic book fonts? This is the place for you! Check out the free resources and tutorials below to get started in your comic book endeavors!

Tutorials:

Basic Retro Comic Book Effect - Easy tutorial to get you started.

Coloring Superheros in Photoshop

Comic book style graphic design - This is an insanely cool tutorial.

Create a graphic novel with photos - Very basic tutorial to get you started without any advanced effects.

Sin City Look - Achieve the look of the Sin City movie and comics with your photos.

Comic book effect - Fairly simple with a few advanced techniques.

Amazing Comic Video Tutorial - There's a 10 or 12 second advert in the start of the tutorial video, but past that it's a 7 and a half minute video that will show you how in a few layers and with a few effects, you can achieve a stylized comic book effect on any photograph!

Digital Inking Tutorial - The basics on inking your drawing in Photoshop

Digital Inking Video

Example of digital inking in Illustrator (Video)

Resources:

1001 Free Fonts - 12 pages of free comic book fonts! Scroll down to the bottom of the page. You can click next page for more free comic fonts.

DaFont - 23 pages of free comic book fonts!

DaFont - 61 pages of free Cartoon Fonts - (many are suitable for comic books)

Blambot Fonts - Some free fonts, some fonts that you must pay for. Many great free comic fonts though!

Design Instruct - 10 free comic book text fonts

14 Free Comic Book Brushes

Know of some great free comic book resources? Post them in a comment below!

The Next Round of Awesome Tutorials

2011-05-23T10:02:00.000-07:00

Here it is Photoshop Junkies, the newest round of awesome Photoshop tutorials to soup up your arsenal and your portfolio.

Flood Tutorial - Learn how to make an awesome flood scene! Includes Video!

Halftone Dots - Super easy way to make an awesome picture pop!

Turn pictures into a comic book! - Another easy tutorial to make your pictures sweet!

Lomo Effect - I can't even describe how much better digital photos look when this effect has been added to it.

Energy orbs - This tutorial is a good start to making it seem as if your child has Jedi powers. They skim over some of the polishing effects, but this is still a great tutorial!

Turn an outdoors photo into a watercolor painting!

Awesome Displacement Effect

Have some awesome tutorials to share? Comment below with a link!

Until next time, Peace!

Tutorials

2011-03-10T13:21:00.000-08:00

Below are many helpful tutorials to get you going in the right direction to Photoshop Gurus.

Know of a great tutorial online? Post the link in a comment below! Help contribute to our Photoshop Helps community!

Best Tutorials of Feburary 2011

3-D Layers (Video)
3-D Splashes
Add Animation to Grahpics (Video)
Add Video to Graphics (Video)
Background Eraser (Video)
Background Removal (Video)
Clone Stamp and Manual Cloning (Video)
Concept Art (Video)
Covering Your Mistakes (Video)
Creating Brushes
Creating Tears
Curves (Video)
Custom Brushes (Video)
Distort, Warp, and Layer Effects (Video)
Downloading Brushes (Video)
Downloading New Fonts (Video)
Eye Coloring (Video)
Fantasy Painting Part 1 (Video)
Fantasy Painting Part 2 (Video)
Filter, Liquefy (Video)
Glass Effect (Video)
Grungy Poster (Video)
Layer Basics (Video)
Patch Tools and Levels (Video)
Paths and Masks (Video)
Rocking Silhouette (Video)
Select Color Range (Video)
Silhouettes Part 1 (Video)
Silhouettes Part 2 (Video)
Slice and Export a Website Layout (Video)
Supernatural Text Effect
Tech Backgrounds
Tech Borders
Tech Pipes
Textures Grunge
Tools: Gradients
Vanishing Point (Video)
Vector Shapes
Vista Styled Wallpaper

Help Sites

2011-03-10T12:57:00.000-08:00

For the most part these are tutorial sites, but some of them are other resources that will help you in your bid to become a Photoshop Master.

Know of other cool Photoshop help sites online? Post them in a comment below!

Bitterpiphany's Graphic Design Tutorials
Photoshop CS Keyboard Shortcuts
Photoshop CS2 Keyboard Shortcuts
Photoshop CS3 Keyboard Shortcuts
Photoshop Tips and Tricks
Photoshop Tutorials (PSDTuts)
Photoshop Tutorials (TDA)
Photoshop Tutorials (Tutorial Nine)
Resource Masterlist (TDA)

FAQ

2011-03-10T12:18:00.000-08:00

Here are some answers to some frequently asked Photoshop questions.

Have more questions? Ask them in a comment below!

How to Install Brushes
How to Organize Brushes
How to Install Fonts (PC)
Crediting For Resources Used

Free Resources

2011-03-10T12:05:00.000-08:00

We're not rich, therefor we know the importance of free resources to keep our cheap Photoshop addictions going. Enjoy the free resources below, and if you know of any free photoshop resources out there on the net, post them in a comment below!

Brushes
Fonts
Inspiration
Models
Stock Photos
Textures

Free Textures

2011-03-10T12:04:00.000-08:00

Textures are the spice of Photoshop life. Stock up!

Best Free Textures Feburary 2011
Cloudy Haze
Caren's Textures
Christ Seeker 37 Fractals
Urban Dirty (Grunge)
Textures
Light Texture Christ Seeker 37
Light Texture 2 Christ Seeker 37
Light Texture 3 Christ Seeker 37
Light Texture Skit Skit
Paper Silv3r_ic3
Papagallo

Stock Photos

2011-03-10T11:55:00.000-08:00

Need stock photos on the cheap? How does free sound? Check out the free stock resources below for all of your photoshopping needs!

Every Stock Photo
Stock Vault
Models

Models

2011-03-10T11:49:00.000-08:00

Need stock photograpy of models to work with for free in Photoshop? Check out the free resources below!

Cheeky Graphics (Male and Female)
Sweet and Talented (Male and Female)

Free Fonts

2011-03-10T11:42:00.000-08:00

Don't be stuck with the boring fonts your computer came with. There are way too many fonts out there to stick with the ordinary, and most of them are free.

Check out the free fonts on these sites below!

1001 Free Fonts
DaFont

Brushes

2011-03-10T11:35:00.000-08:00

Here is a variety of free brush websites. Adding brushes to your photoshop arsenal is very important if you ever want to expand out into selling your graphic art online.

Note: If you are downloading brushes for selling your artwork, be sure to read user information. Some websites do not allow you to use their brushes for commercial purposes, while others do. Some brush authors ask that you credit them for the brush you used.

Brusheezy
Brush Lovers
Cheeky Grahpics
Golden Snidget
ChristSeeker37
Imagination
Jen's Sanity
Muse-Driven
Photoshopbrushes
QBrushes
SpyGlass
The Fifth Muse
VBrush

Best Free Textures of Feburary 2011

2011-03-09T21:39:00.000-08:00

You can never have enough textures in your photoshop arsenal. So, in honor of that rule of thumb, we've decided to list a few of our favorites for Feburary 2011.

Check them out and download away you texture fiends! Click on each image to go to the website where it's located!

Have some good high-res textures online? Comment with a link below!

Feburary Tutorials In Review

2011-03-09T21:13:00.000-08:00

Here are the best tutorials from February 2011. Check them out to enhance your skills, give you inspiration, and become the photoshop master you always wanted to be.

First, head over to PSDTuts to learn how to make an imaginary arctic frog.

Visit PSDTuts for these text effects tutorials that will spice up your artwork!

This Northern Lights Tutorial from vladstudios will blow your mind.

Go retro with this awesome free tutorial!

Retro Compass Tutorial

Dramatic Grit

PS HERO Part 2 (Part 1 linked within the page)

Awesome Grungy Business Cards

And Finally, the last one for February, a grungy website design for your viewing pleasure.

Know of any awesome Photoshop tutorials posted online? Link to them in a comment below!

Where To Sell Your Designs

2011-03-09T20:35:00.000-08:00

There are a number of places online to sell your photoshop art, but very few will turn out to be profitable for you. How do you choose the right selling platform? How do you know what's a scam? Which sites actually pay you?

I will list below what I have tried, and what my experiences have been.

Zazzle.com

In my opinion, this is by far the best place to sell your work. Zazzle is a company based in San Francisco California. You sign up for a free account, upload your designs, decide which products they go on and what the mark up will be (what percentage of money you will make off of each sale), and let your designs start making money for you! Zazzle takes care of printing, packaging, shipping, and returns. They will pay you by check or by paypal.com based on your preference. It's not an immediate money maker, but if your stuff is good it will sell. Zazzle has never failed to pay me what they owe. There is a $30 minimum balance before payout, but it's pretty easy to get that far.

What products do they have? Too many to list: Skateboards, shirts, sweatshirts, coasters, posters, greeting cards, business cards, shoes, ties, binders, stickers, stamps, aprons, mugs, hats, and even dog clothes. My best seller there have been posters and skateboards. Check out my site on zazzle.com HERE.

To see Zazzle's guide templates, click HERE.

Cafe Press

Cafe press is much like zazzle with one exception... it's NOT free. Cafe press will allow you to open up a store and sell about 5 items for free, but any more than that and you will be charged around $8 a month. I had a cafe press store for a long time, but I never made a profit because what I made each month was less than what I paid for the cafe press account. They have a few products zazzle doesn't have, but on the other hand, zazzle has A LOT of products cafe press doesn't have. Good luck to you if you try this platform, there's nothing wrong with it except that it's not free.

Deviant Art

Many graphic designers have a deviant art account because it's a great way to show off your work. You may not know that they will also let you run a small store where they will print posters with your designs. The problem? It's hard to make money there. They take a pretty big cut of any profits you might have. Feel free to try it to have some options though!

These are just three of the sites I've tried, but I would recommend zazzle hands down. I've made good money there. If you open up your store and add about 13 items, and then one item per month after that, you're store will be thriving. Keep in mind that you must use their templates for size requirements, and that you may not make money for your first few months. It's always a good start to my day however when I open up my e-mail inbox and see the message from zazzle declaring, "Your products have been sold!"

Have other websites that you use to sell your designs? Post them in a comment below!

Get Inspired

2011-03-09T20:13:00.000-08:00

Ok, so you know how to use Photoshop. You're a master. Now what? It's time to get inspired is what.

The main way I get inspired is by looking at what other people have done. I'm not only looking at the ingenuity and beauty of designs, but also the techniques used. I see a really great grunge poster, or a great color scheme, and think, I can do that but tweak it this way or use it for this other idea I have...

Below are some great sites I use to see wonderful works done in Photoshop and get myself inspired. Some of them are tutorial sites, others are not.

VladStudios
PSDTuts
Deviant Art (Type a topic and go)
Google Search
Behance
Design Flavr

These are just a few to get you started.

Have some great sites that you go to for inspiration? Post them in a comment below!