A Pseudo-Sugar Skull: From Start to Finish.

A Pseudo-Sugar Skull: From Start to Finish.

Hey people! It’s Dave again giving you all yet another excuse to get your knowledge on. This isn’t as direct as my previous Gigposter Tutorial (by the way - thanks to everyone who found that helpful!) because I’m actually covering a piece of my own artwork, and as we all know, there are just some things that are hard to explain during the process. Hence why I’m condensing it down to the nitty gritty. Kinda like a walk through my process if you will.

Oh, I almost forgot! I STRONGLY suggest you guys read our previous tutorials that deal with “start to finish” subject matter, especially anything involving Illustrator. If I re-wrote how to do everything we’ve already covered in previous tutorials in this one, I’d be up way past my non-existent bedtime. Now let’s start!
First I drew a half of a skull. Why half do you ask? Because we’ll be inking the outlines in Illustrator. Why do more work for yourself when you can just flip half of what you’ve already traced, connect them, and then run with it? Then I scanned it in.


I opened Illustrator and placed the image in a new file (once the new file’s been created - go to file, then place and browse for your image). I enlarged it to my liking, turned the opacity down, and locked into place.



Alright, now I began to trace out the half of the skull. I kept the skull outline and eyes in black and made the teeth and nose in separate colors. This way I can edit them in case they don’t merge properly (which happens alot when I do skulls). If you’re lost as to how inking is done in Illustrator - we have a tutorial all about it here. Once everything lined up good and looked nice, I added them together then unlocked and ditched the placed file/ I was left with a clean outline.



Now I wanted to add some decorations to the skull. I was feeling like adding some tattoo-esque flourishes around the contour of the skull. So I grabbed some I had made from the upcoming Set 10 VectorPack release and carefully placed them in neat spots all around our skull’s face until I was satisfied.

So I go into Photoshop, and start a new file. The size I used was 4×6 @ 300 dpi. I made the background a muted pinkish/red so the coloring I’ll be doing won’t be obstructed by loud-ass background colors. I pasted the outline of the skull into the piece as a vector smart object (copy and paste from Illustrator) and used the magic wand tool to make the selections of the portions that I wanted to color. Mind you, I kept the coloring done on layers I made below the inked outline. You never know when you can fumble up, so always keep your layers separate. In this case, I used a layer for the color of the skull and it’s teeth. HINT: If you encounter weird lines bordering your inked layers and your colored layers - try expanding the selection you made with the magic wand about 2-3 pixels. This way the color will bleed beyond the lines and look alot cleaner when sitting below the inked layer.

Now with these layers separated, I ctrl+clicked the thumbnail in the layers box to make the entire contents of the layer a selection (keeps myself from coloring outside the lines), grabbed my wacom tablet (a mouse will suffice, we’re only airbrushing minimally), selected the airbrush tool, used a blurred edged brush at anywhere from 70 pixels to 170 pixels and went to town! I added shadows and I added highlights. Getting these exact results is hard because everyone colors differently, BUT YOU MUST KEEP THE FLOW DOWN ON YOUR BRUSH OPTIONS AND MAKE SURE YOU’RE NOT GOING PAST 30-40% OPACITY. This is crucial because it lets you gradually see the darkness as you apply brush strokes and make it feel real.


I wanted to add texture at this point, so I opened a concrete image that i liked from our Texture Packs and dragged it over to the piece we’re working on (keep it below the inked layer so you can see what you’re doing. I moved it and sized it to where there wouldn’t be too many blemishes in the skull’s face from the concrete. I used the magic wand to select everything outside of the skull on the inked smart object’s layer, expanded the selection about 3 pixels, and deleted the excess off of the concrete photo’s layer.


As you see in the last image I posted, I toned the opacity down a bit. But with this next image, I played with the layer mode and the one that suited my fancy was Linear Burn at 36% opacity. It burned the skull enough to give it a weathered feel but not over done.

I made a new layer, added some white for highlights in certain portions of the skull, and changed the layer mode to soft light @ 100%.

Now it was time to add the tattoo flourishes. I pasted them in, sized them according to the AI file’s placement, cut the excess off the same way I did with the concrete, and changed the layer mode to Multiply @ 70%.


So now, I added some eyes to it from our Anatomy pack, colored them in, added a tint of red around the edges to make it look realistic and we have this result: The Finished Skull!

So now to the background. I chose one of the watercolor textures from The Arsenal, a paper texture from Stock Exchange, we doctored up the solid background layer with some funky greens and we got to playing with the layer modes. The watercolor texture’s coloring was changed to a more blue-friendly scheme with the hue/saturation tool. I layered it in Multiply mode @ 100%. I slapped the paper texture over that because it wasn’t quite doing the trick alone and layered it also in Multiply mode @ 100%.




Combined result with the aforementioned layer modes (sans paper)

And with a few more doodads in the background and skull, the paper added to the background, and the airbrushed layer brightened…

we have…….

Ink Bleeding Effect

Create a Dream Design with 3D Typography

Create a Dream Design with 3D Typography

Hello, my name is Alex Beltechi, a designer that is currently studying in college and working in the print media realm. I would love to explain my vast experience and overwhelming knowledge to you, but due to the fact that I have no such qualities, I’ll stick to sharing what skills I’ve been developing lately, through tutorials. Among keyboard shortcuts and mouse clicks, I enthusiastically tap piano keys and dream of adjusting a lens’ focus. And in case you’d like to find me on the web, you can read my tutorials on PSDTUTS or see more of my work on my Behance portfolio.

Introduction

In this tutorial, we’re going to create a 3D Typography based design. All the elements will revolve around the centerpiece and theme: dreaming. The word will dictate the entire layout and control the space by allowing everything else to emerge from within. The trees will grow out of the letters; the mountains will show themselves behind the word and overshadow the glowing moon.
Dreaming often takes you to different places and unites bits and pieces of your memory. It basically takes you to a whole new world, but that is usually made up of real elements. We’ll illustrate this by making everything float in mid air, as if suspended in time, yet maintain realism by using common elements of nature.
Naturally, people dream at night, so the overall lighting will be dark and predominated by a cold color palette: cyan and lime green.
Also, the typography should have a classic, storytelling look; one that would complete the eerie atmosphere.
Feel free to download the PSD at the bottom of the post that contains the final image. Now that we’ve planned everything, let’s begin.

Create the 3D text

The first thing to do is get this free font called Storybook. It’s a font that fits our context well, and that will look well with 3D decorations due to its elegant serifs and bold stature. Type up the first letter of your word and give it this color: 4C3F38.

Now add a 3D effect by going to Effect > 3D > Extrude & Bevel. Play around with the settings yourself to get the angle, lighting and form you want. You can recreate my treatment by using the same settings. Don’t forget to use a ‘Complex 2’ Bevel.

Once you finish the first letter, repeat the process on the remaining letters. The only modifications you should make are to alter the position. Then copy (Ctrl+C) each individual letter and paste (Ctrl+V) them in Photoshop one at a time. Once you try pasting them, you’ll be prompted to choose a method of importing. Choose the ‘Smart Object’ Option. By doing this you can make simple adjustments at all times to the Illustrator file right inside Photoshop by double clicking the layer icon.
Position the letters onto an empty Photoshop canvas. I’m working at a rather large resolution of approximately 6300 x 4500 px at 300 ppi.
Also, fill the background layer with this color: 17151d.

At this point we’ll begin stylizing the letters. Get the Magic Wand Tool (W) and make a selection of the letter’s foreground. Right click, select Make Work Path and specify a tolerance level of 1,5.

Now that it’s a work path, we’ll fill it with a color by going to Layer > New Fill Layer > Solid Color. Fill it with white. The path should now be a vector shape. Double click on its layer and give it a bevel. Use the settings shown in the image below and choose the highlight color (94aa53) and shadow color (6c6f64).

It’s now time to create a pattern that will cover the front of each letter. I’m using a Go Media vector freebie: Seamless Swirls. Go on and download it if you haven’t already, and open the provided Illustrator file. Change its color to this: 94aa52 and copy (Ctrl+C). Open a new Photoshop project with the clipboard size (235 x 235 px) and fill the background color with another color: ebe77f. To make it into o a pattern go to Edit > Define Pattern. Your new pattern will be saved in the pattern set that is currently opened.

Now that you’ve created the pattern, you need to add the pattern to the face of the letter. Double click on the white shape’s layer and add a Layer Style: Pattern Overlay. Your newly created pattern should already be selected.

One last touch is a Gradient Map Adjustment Layer that we’ll place on top of the letter’s body. While having the layer selected, go to Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Gradient Map. Then play around with the colors until you get a similar result. My colors, from left to right are: d8c67f, 94aa53, 262628, and 141416. Make sure that the Adjustment Layer Applies only to the letter. To do this, make it a clipping mask for the letter layer by holding Alt and clicking right in between the two layers.

Now copy the layer style of the letter face and duplicate the Gradient Map. Apply these effects to the remaining letters.

Draw the scenery

The text is now finished. Let’s add the trees and foliage.
This technique I’m about to show you is what I have developed for myself. It reduces complex imagery to simple shape. A simple splatter, when grouped in a pattern begins to take a certain role, thus resembling an element of nature. You may find it useful or dull, but it’s what we’ll use for this design.
All you need is a standard Photoshop round brush and a mouse. Choose one using your Brush Tool (B) and input the settings found in the images below.



Now that your brush settings are all ready, begin painting a tree. It’s important to know that you shouldn’t create the whole tree with the same brush settings. There is one adjustment you need to make along the way. If you look under Shape Dynamics in your Brushes Window, you’ll see a setting we’re using: Fade. This fades out your brush depending on how much you put in the adjacent field. A Fade set at 100 will end faster than one set at 250. You can use whatever settings you find appropriate. I used 100 for the trunk, 150 for extensions of the trunk, and 250 for thick branches. As you increase the fade, reduce the brush size at the same time.

Continue using this technique in creating the rest of the trees and draw some roots too. Reduce the size considerably for the thin branches and add even more fading when necessary.


It’s time for foliage. Prepare a separate brush using these settings.


Now begin painting. Begin with a larger size using this green: 94aa53. In a layer underneath, with a smaller sized brush, paint with a darker green: 55612f. Again over the light green layer, use the same color (94aa53) with an even smaller size. For highlights, use the same size as the last one, but with this yellow: e3e07d. Here is an image you can use as a reference in creating your own trees.
I drew my inspiration from acacia trees, while coming up with the shape of the trunk and volume of the foliage.

Following the branches as a reference, draw away!

Add more nature elements now. I added a mountain and a moon. They will give depth to the image, and prevent the composition from being scarce. Use the pen tool (P) and create them as vector shapes.

Make the mountain fade out on the bottom. An easy way to do it would be to create a new layer on top, clip it to the mountain layer and paint with a large soft brush with the background color. I also added a glow on the moon. To add one yourself, add a layer style: Outer Glow. Keep the standard color, increase its size and reduce the opacity to 25%.
Some more improvements include adding dark accents to the lower part of the tree trunks and shadows that stretch across the face of the letters. You can create those in the same way – clip a new layer to the one you want darkened and paint with a soft brush using a dark color. This applies to the mountain, trees and roots. Use a sharp brush to draw the tree shadow though.

Finalize the design

In order to complete the artistic feel of this design, add this texture to your canvas. Simply paste it on a new layer, over all the other ones. Set the layer’s blending mode to Linear Burn and its opacity to 30%.

Now invert the texture (Ctrl+I) and change its hue by going to Image > Adjustments > Hue and Saturation. Change the hue to 153 and saturation to -73.

One last touch – add the watercolor texture inside the mountain and moon, once more, with clipping masks. Put their layers on Overlay (Mountain) and Multiply (Moon). Adjust the opacity.

And that concludes it. Now go on and create your own, one of a kind, dream design.

How to Create Awesome T-Shirt Mockups Like Jimiyo

How to Create Awesome T-Shirt Mockups Like Jimiyo

Go Media gave me the chance to test out their new women’s t-shirt templates, and I have to say, they are awesome. High quality, crisp images that’s sure to impress my clients since presentation is paramount!

They are simple to use, but here are some tips on how I used them.
First, I copy pasted my flattened high resolution image into the “Your Art” layer.

Secondly, I align my image to be centered on the shirt. To do this:
1. Select All while you are on “Your Art” layer
2. Press ‘V’ to initiate the Move Tool.
3. You will notice alignment tools associated on the toolbar.
4. Click the center align buttons for vertical and horizontal and your image should be centered.

Now with my image centered, I initiate the transform tool by using shortcut CTRL-T.
In the toolbar, I link the vertical and horizontal, and play with the numbers til a good size is found.
To constrain proportions by linking, click on the chain link icon.

EDITORS’ NOTE: Since this post, we’ve changed the “Material” layer to “Shirt Color”
Once you arrive at a good size and position, fill the Material layer below the Art layer with the base color of the tee. This should match exactly with the bg color of the art image. Color pick while having the shadow and highlight layers turned off, and fill.
An easy way to do this, would be to
1. Select the brush tool (B),
2. Hold ALT-Click to invoke the color picker and color pick the bg of the image,
3. Hold ALT, press BACKSPACE to fill the current layer with the foreground color.

Depending on what color the shirt is, I almost always tweak the highlights/shadow layers to optimize the realistic shading effects. Since this shirt was black, I tweaked the “Highlights” layer by using levels, as well as reducing opacity after leveling.

In the final steps, I like to embellish the composition with a few extra additions.
1. Medium tone stroke and drop shadow.
2. Enlarged, reduced opacity grayscle of the shirt image for the background.
3. After I flatten, I reduce image size for emailing.
4. After reducing image size, I run the “Sharpen” filter to Crispy it up a bit. Make sure to go under edit after sharpening and “Fade Sharpen” to tone down the filter effects.
BLAMMO!
This is a shirt in running at Designbyhumans. If you guys throw me some votes, maybe they will print it!
Thanks for reading!

How to Design Your Own Custom Hoodie

CREATING YOUR CUSTOM HOODIE DESIGN

We’re making a super custom illustrated hoodie design, right? The best place to start with a project like this is the sketchbook. For some inspiration check out my colleague’s sketchbook. You should start sketching something that you’re really interested in. Personally, I love tentacle looking things and couldn’t get the word “bogus” out of my head…so a bogus octopus was born. I did this one really quick (about 15 minutes) but your mileage may vary.

I scanned the rough image from my sketchbook into Photoshop and busted out my handy dandy Wacom tablet.

sketch

I set up my file for 25” by 20” at 300 dpi in CMYK, then pressed ctrl+alt+shift+n to create a new layer and began to draw over my sketch.

initial settings

We always get questions about what kind of brush settings we use when drawing with a Wacom. These are the exact settings I used.

pen settings

pen settings2

Remember how quickly I sketched the octopus? It’s just a starting point, because as you can see I don’t always stick to the original sketch. As I am working I just let the drawing dictate where things should lie.

If you aren’t comfortable with this, you can just add all the detail that you want to your initial sketch and try to follow it a little more closely inside Photoshop.

outlines1

In this next shot you can see how the drawing is growing beyond the boundaries of the original sketch. It’s starting to shape up! Take a look at your own design right now and start to revise it until you’re happy. We’ll be moving on to adding details in just a minute.

outline2

After I had my rough outline at a satisfactory point, I then went back through the drawing and added detail to make the little guy come to life a bit more. For me, it usually just involves thickening up outlines to simulate depth and adding texture to the rough outline. In this particular image, it mostly involved making wrinkles and adding splashes of ooze.

These next few shots are really important. As Bill expertly explained in his “How to Become a Master Designer” series, one of the secrets to depth is varying line weight. Take note of how this looks and try to add a little depth to your own design.

lineweight How to Design Your Own Custom Hoodie

Okay! Looks like all my linework is complete. Now let’s bring it to life with some color.

outline3
Adding Color

Once I was finished with the outline of the drawing, I went back and began to add color. I started by laying down the base color of the octopus. For this drawing I chose a nice bluish green color.

Here’s how I set up my new Octopus layer:

* Use the magic wand to select all the white area around your black outline and all the other spots where you don’t want the octopus color to be.
* Then use select inverse and create a new layer.
* Use the bucket tool and fill the new layer with the color you chose.

color1

Then I selected a slightly darker hue and added shadows to create even more depth and dimension.

shadows How to Design Your Own Custom Hoodie

I followed the creases and folds of the tentacles with my Wacom pen keeping in mind which parts I want to pop forward and which I want to recede into the background. Always try to think of where the light would be hitting the different areas.

shadows21 How to Design Your Own Custom Hoodie

I wanted the octopus to look really wet and shiny, so I added heavy white highlights throughout the illustration to simulate a glossy surface. Again, just follow the creases and folds keeping in mind how the light would hit the various parts. Also keep your Wacom pen strokes somewhat loose and free flowing.

color3

highlights How to Design Your Own Custom Hoodie

I then chose other colors that complimented the design and I used them to add the final details to the octopus. FYI: I always keep my colors on separate layers. It makes it much easier to edit them without having to destroy the whole drawing if you decide to change something.

colordetail

For the background of the illustration, I created a free form splatter shape that echoed the shapes of the ooze splatters. I duplicated the shape and used a bitmap to create a halftone image. I then used hue shift to change the color to a purple hue.

background3
background 2
background1 How to Design Your Own Custom Hoodie

The final illustration looks a little something like this…

fullfinal
Making the Repeating Pattern

I really liked the way the tentacle/intestine shapes were looking so I decided to make a repeating pattern from them to use as a background texture/all over print.

To begin with, I created a file at 1800 x 1800 pixels. I then copied portions of my black outline layer from the octopus illustration into the new file.

offset

After I had arranged the tentacles into a design I was satisfied with, I used the offset filter to make the pattern repeat. I did this by offsetting the image by half of each of my dimensions, so 900 pixels in width and 900 pixels in length. You will notice at this stage there is a noticeable area in the center where the lines are crazy and don’t match up - don’t freak out - we’re gonna fix this.

refineoffset

So, I erased all the weird seams and began to re-connect the tentacles with my Wacom Pen. Go back and redraw, erase, and repeat. There are a lot of lines to clean up, but the most important thing is that you should not change any of the lines on the outer edge of your design or your pattern will not repeat correctly.

repeating pattern

Once you get it to a point where you think everything looks good, double check to make sure the pattern aligns correctly in all directions. If it does, congratulations, you just made a repeating pattern…not so hard, huh?


MOCKING IT UP

Now if a client asked for a hoodie design - she might not be too impressed if I show her just the flat illustration. She asked for a HOODIE, so that’s what we’re going to give her. Enter the hoodie templates.

hoodytemplate

I begin by dragging my artwork onto the “whole hoodie” layer to size it and get it positioned where I want it. Once you get it where you want, the joy of the hoodie template comes into play. The design already looks pretty darn real because it’s automatically shaded by the ‘Shadows’ & ‘Highlights’ layers.

For this design I only want the print to appear on the front and the pockets of the hoodie. However, if you want some custom pockets or cuffs - it’s really easy. Adam Wagner has painstakingly masked off the various parts of the hoodie at nearly every seam, so you can do some really custom things with the design.

Anyway, for my particular design, I opened the folders for the “Chest” and “Pocket” Layers and pasted the design onto the “Left Chest”,” Right Chest”, “Left Pocket” and “Right Pocket” Layers.

chestdesign

Now that I have my design in place, let’s move on to coloring the hoodie. I am a huge fan of reversible hoodies (two looks for one price baby!), so we’re to mock this up as one.

I began with the outside color of the hoody. I’m on a big purple kick right now so I am going with a vibrant dark purple color. I selected the folder named “Colors” and I use hue shift to adjust one of the color layers until the hoody is the right color of purple.

hoodycolor

On the inside, I used a green that is similar to the green of the ooze in the design. I sampled the green from the ooze with the eyedropper tool and then filled all three of the “liner fill” layers with the fill bucket tool.

hoodycolorinside

The last thing I did was add the seamless pattern to the whole hoodie. For the outside I gave the pattern a light purple color, and for the liner I gave it a light green color. Presto - done.

alloverpattern

Here’s the final design and hoodie mock. Phew - we made it! If all of this was a bit difficult for you, give it time & keep reading. I’m going to show you some really quick shortcuts to get you started in the next couple of sections.

mockfinal


MORE MOCK UP EXAMPLES

I’m pretty happy with the final result, but let’s take a look at what the design would look like on a couple of different hoodies. I really like the way this next one shows the inside of the liner. Gotta love reversible hoodies.
hoodie-mockup-photoshop
Here’s one more in a standard flat view.
blog-mockup-31 How to Design Your Own Custom Hoodie


HOODIE DESIGN PACK FEATURE TOUR

Alright. This post is getting kind of long, but I really want to explain the Hoodie Design Pack a bit more. There’s a ton of included treats & functionality. Let’s see what’s under the hood.
1. The Templates

template-layers1 How to Design Your Own Custom HoodieOk, so here is the meat & potatoes of the design pack. It includes 10 Hoodie templates in PSD format. Each Hoodie has masks & layers for nearly every single seam on the hoodie. Each seam has the following layers which make it really easy to experiment with many design possibilities.

1. The shape layer (this acts as the mask)
2. Fill Layer
3. Pattern Layer (more on this in a minute)
4. Art Layer.

To the left you can see all the seams that we’ve already masked out for you.

These layers make it a snap to mockup complicated designs that need to look real. For example, you can realistically mockup diagonal stripes on each of the pockets, or give your design dark cuffs. Besides all these layers, you’ll notice lots little details, like how the tag & drawstrings are separated for some extra realism.

The Colors Group has eight preset base colors, and you can of course fill any of these layers for any base color you choose.




2. The Textile Patterns

pattern_preview1 How to Design Your Own Custom HoodieThe Hoodie Design Pack also includes 93 Seamless Textile Patterns for quick experimentation with the templates. Think of these as “presets” to start stimulating design ideas & options.

Textile Patterns include:

* Herringbone
* Houndstooth
* Zebra, leopard & crackle print
* Plaid & Argyle
* Shearling

The hoodie mockups below were created in a few clicks using a few of the included patterns. Cool!
more-mockup-examples1 How to Design Your Own Custom Hoodie
THAT’S IT!

Impressive Watercolor Splatter Effect Tutorial & Freebie

I have been working with natural media more recently, and as a result, I have been learning how to bring my natural work onto the digital drawing board. I have shown a few people my “watercolor” technique and it has proven to be wildly popular amongst my peers. It’s not very hard to accomplish, so I figured I’d take a few minutes to share it with you good folk!
For this tutorial I will assume that you have a basic working knowledge of Adobe Photoshop. Everything here should be backwards compatible back to 7.0 at the very least. Without further delay, I present information for you to be having:
By the end of this writing you should be able to achieve a halftone watercolor effect similar to what I have achieved with this:

Making The Drips and Splatters

Before we can do anything in Photoshop, we have to have some splatters and washes and drips. I don’t actually use watercolor paints, I make an ink wash. You could just as easily search free stock images such as those at The Stock Exchange, but I prefer to make them myself. If you’d rather not wait for paint to dry, you can snag the free high quality textures at the bottom of the post. It lends greater flexibility to my technique, and a more accurate delivery of the effects. Here are the supplies that I use, your mileage may vary:
Ink Wash Supplies

The supplies pictured are as follows:

• A standard Wash Brush used for painting
• A Canson acrylic sketch pad (185LB Cold Press Paper)
• Dr. PH Martin’s Bombay Black India Ink
• a Sauce Cup (be sure that the owner of the sauce cup is okay with ink being put in it..long story…)

Obviously, the supplies you use are up to you. This is just what I have had the greatest success with.
I fill my sauce cup about 1/3 of the way up with water, then I add approximately 3 drops of black ink. You may have to figure out what works best for you, but this mix has worked well for me in the past. Note: I use black ink because the contrast allows for a reasonable file quality even with my cheap scanner.

At this point I lay some paper towels on a counter, hold the paper up with one hand, and proceed to make a mess. There’s really no wrong way with this effect. The sloppier the better. I usually try to stay generally true to whatever shape I’m working with, but keep in mind that the imperfections are what makes it interesting. Also, once I get the drips and wash the way I’d like I lay the paper flat and splatter some of the mix on it. It’s fun - make a mess!
Here’s a video tutorial so you can see exactly how it was done.

Okay, I have made a mess. Now what?
At this point you’ll need to scan your wash into the computer, or take a high quality picture of it to transfer to your computer. Save it somewhere you can find it and open it up in photoshop. I try to scan at nothing less than 300DPI, but it’s not really that important. As long as the file is big enough to resize without getting terribly pixelated, you should be okay. Here’s mine:

This is my splatter image.
I have already opened up the file that contains the linework for my Mermaze design.
Press Ctrl+A to “select all” on your ink wash file, then click the window with your other artwork and Ctrl+V to paste it into the image.
Resize, rotate, and move your wash to where you want it in the final output. I have placed it behind my lines, personal preference. Here’s where I’ve arrived:

Once you are happy with size and placement, you’ll want to be sure that you have the wash layer selected in your laters pallet, then Ctrl+A to select all and Ctrl+X to cut the image.

Making The Halftone

Press Ctrl+N to make a new document, be sure the background is set to white or transparent, and click okay to make the new document. Press Ctrl+V to paste your wash into the new document. Once you have this done, we will prepare the wash to be made into a halftone.
Press D to reset your foreground and background colors. Then click the “Image” menu and select Adjustments>Gradient map. The gradient map dialog will pop up, and you should notice your wash become slightly more black and white.
Click the gradient picture on the dialog so that the Gradient Adjustment Dialog pops up. You will need to move the white tab in towards the middle until you are sure that the white background on your wash is absolutely white. Then you’ll need to adjust the black tab until your wash is as dark as you feel it should be.. Mine looks something like this:

I have placed red arrows pointing to where I have my black and white tabs set. This step is important because if your background is anything other than absolutely white, the halftone will have little dots placed all over it in an attempt to make it look off-white. It will not be attractive. Hit “OK” on both of the dialogs when you are finished setting the tabs.
Tip: A good way to be sure your background is pure white is to click your foreground color so that the color selector comes up, click the background of your image with the eyedropper tool, and make sure the hex code is “FFFFFF”.
Now that your background is white, and everything looks good, it’s time to make the halftone. In the “Image” menu select Mode>Grayscale. Press OK on any questions that pop up about flattening layers, or losing color information.
Now you will open the “Image” menu again and select Mode>Bitmap. When the first Dialog pops up, be sure the Method is set to Halftone Screen:

When you press OK a second Dialog will pop up. You may want to play with these settings a bit but the important parts to note here are: Halftone type should be “Round” and never set “Lines Per Inch” or “Angle” higher than 45 if you are setting this design up to be screen printed. Any higher and the printer could encounter problems. If at all possible, it’s best to contact the printer first and ask them.
Once that is done hit “OK” and your splatter should now be a halftone. From the “Image” menu select Mode>GrayScale once again. Using the magic wand tool select the white background of your ink wash. Press Ctrl+i to invert your selection. Press Ctrl+X to cut the selection, Select the window with the design you want the watercolor placed in, and press Ctrl+V to paste it in. You will probably need to move your halftone into position.
Finally from the “Layer” menu select Layer Style>Color overlay and pick a color you would like your halftone to be. That’s all of it. Here’s what mine looked like:

That’s all for this tutorial. I’ll have more soon!

Free Ink Wash Splatters

I have a file with some high resolution splatters for you to try out. The image below is a sample of some of the washes, drips, and splatters in the package. They’re all really hi-res, so you’ll be able to get a lot of mileage out of them. Click the link below the image to download the file:

Create a Furious Pink Panther Poster

Everyone knows the pink panther! I sure love the old cartoons and remember this old VCR tape packed with episodes I used to watch as a kid, over and over again. Well, there were lots of episodes, so it wasn’t as obsessive as it sounds…
Anyway, I thought it was time to give the old feline a modern, furious twist, and so I created this T-shirt for Design by Humans, for which I would greatly appreciate your vote!
Apart from shamelessly promoting myself, I’m going to show you how to create a poster of this new and improved pink panther using some great online resources, from Bittbox and the Go Media Arsenal. You can use just about any version of Photoshop and will need to brush up your art skills for this poster with a pen tablet.

Drawing the panther

First of all, download the sample file below & follow along with me in Photoshop. It’s got more than 100 layers, so you’ll really be able to see how this was put together.

Download the Pink Panther Poster Project File

Indeed, you are looking at a tiger photo, not a panther. I know my English and Zoology well enough to tell the difference, but I found a tiger’s fur much more fit for this particular design. Not only that, but those huge fangs are just SO cool.
So, get this image from istockphoto and position it accordingly in your newly created A3 canvas at 300 ppi.

You’re going to need a pen tablet at this point, so use a regular round brush with pen pressure enabled. Begin by tracing the general outline with black. Later on, we’ll fill the strokes with paint sprays of different colors. Change the tiger photo’s Opacity to about 60%. That will make drawing easier.
Try to give the dark outline a depth of field through stroke width. On a pen tablet, the harder you press, the thicker the line. So by drawing parts of the face with more pressure, you’ll get more obvious and visually imposing features. In this drawing, we want to draw attention to parts that show a fierce, angry panther. To do that, draw the fangs, jaw outline, eyes and wrinkles with a thicker line. These are the features we want to point out, and the emotion we want to generate.

Now add a few accents to the face. It’s a good idea to keep altering the visibility of the photo so that you get a general idea of what the new art will look like, while still keeping the photo as a reference. Use a shade of pink for this layer (ef6878) and make individual layers for each color, or even for different stroke widths of the same color. You’ll probably change your mind later on some of the lines, and it’s not worth having to redraw everything.
While drawing the pink strokes, think of them as the first step to defining the lighting and actual features of the feline. The mouth is almost completely painted because it’s not only a pink area in real life, but because we want it to appear darker.
Also, instead of painting the whole left side with pink, we’ll draw strokes that fade in and out (through line thickness). That will give the face a particular texture, and avoid giving the impression of a flat surface. It’s not a finished effect, but will work once we have all the other layers finished.

We’ll now get started with the highlights. It’s a good idea to change the background color right now too. Fill the background with this blue: 0a1e29. And use this yellow for the highlights: fbe382.
As if complementing the pink layer, draw the yellow highlights in largely unoccupied areas. Try not to cover much of the pink, and imagine how a bright yellow light from the right would highlight the animal’s fur. Don’t leave the left side completely dark, but remember that fur generally absorbs light and doesn’t really reflect it. For artistic reasons, the light is exaggerated, but serves the style and purpose of the design. We want edgy and bold contrast that goes with the kitty’s bad temper.

Two more layers. One containing a darker shade of pink (b0314f), and one of the previously used lighter pink. Firstly, make a new layer over the yellow one, and paint thin, short strokes on top of yellow areas. Those will add texture, and add small shadows to the lit side. Also, make one more layer for the darker pink and use it to darken pink areas, not yellow ones. These act as more profound shadows and will act as a transition from pink to background blue.

Double click on the black outline layer. Add a Color Overlay Layer Style. Choose the background color. That will basically make it fade into the background. Also, add more accents of the darker pink and of the lighter one, just like in the previous step. Fill the eyes with a bolder yellow (e7cc5f). That will not only bring more attention to the eyes, but will later be used over the yellow covered side to create depth and texture.

Add dark accents of this bluish gray: 293a44. We’re doing this in order to differentiate distinct facial features, and to be able to make an easier transition into the background, as well as paint details. Also, add the pupils using the same gray, and dark pink rings.

Bring out some of that beautiful fur with stubble-like strands. This effect is simply meant to make the fur look more dynamic. Also in order to add more depth to the lit side, add even lighter accents with this yellow: f7e2a8.

Finally, select the darker yellow found in the eyes and paint over yellow areas. Make sure that you only paint on the left side of all lighter yellow strokes. That’s it for the panther, so let’s get on with the next section.

Making it messy

It’s time for some messy artwork. In this section, you’ll need two resources: Bittbox Messy Spraypaint brush set and Go Media’s Stain Photoshop Brushes. From now on, it’s all trial and error, so you will most likely be moving things around in time. When using brushes, I suggest you paint inside the canvas and manually position it.
The head is basically just floating on the canvas, and it’s not the result we’re looking for. It’s time to create a transition from side to side of the document, using artistic elements found in the links written above.
To blend in the face, we’ll not only add paint elements behind the face, but also inside the face. Doing otherwise, will make the transition less subtle.
While placing the vectors and brushes, keep a general orientation in mind, because we want this to be well built from a compositional point of view as well. The paint will appear as a diagonally oriented line, starting near the source of light and ending in the darker side of the canvas. It is also further down than up, because we want the piece to have a certain stability and foundation. If it would be heavier on the top, it would create a floating sensation. There’s lots of material to read on Composition, and as a foundation to this sort of work, i suggest you read on that topic, if you haven’t already.
As previously mentioned, the Project File would be most useful in this case. Because the splatters and stains are kept on separate layers, it will be easier for you to keep track of all the changes seen in the screenshots below.

Add more yellow stains and spray paint. I also placed a Bittbox spray paint over the Go Media dripping stain because I wanted to make its edges less defined. It’s a good idea to do that with most vectors in this piece, since we’re trying to create a smoother transition.

In a similar manner, add more stains and spray paint. We’re already defining a general orientation, as you can probably see.

As mentioned before, we’ll fill the dark face outline with messy spray paint. Select the dark outline layer of the panther’s face. Because the layer has a color overlay, you’ll need to flatten the effect. Create a new blank layer, select both layers and merge them (Ctrl + E). Now create another layer, make it a clipping mask and while using a messy spray paint brush, paint yellow sprays on the lit side of the face. Also, paint two more yellow sprays behind the face; you can see them near the eyes- they appear as horizontal streams.

Add ink-like splatter vectors to different areas of the canvas using existing colors – yellow, pink and bluish gray. Also, begin adding pink accents of spray paint.

Add some more splatters and paint with pink. I also cut out a small stream from a spray paint brush, and applied it the left side of the face. It’s pointed out with the first white line on the left, as a Bittbox brush.

Next, continue the red section and add more splatters too. Mix splatters, paint stains and paint sprays, just as you did on the right side. I also added a couple of grayish stains so that the stream becomes visibly darker.

Create a halftone background

Now you’ll need the Abstract Halftone brush pack. Using a bluish gray (243941) fill the background with a 45° angled line halftone brush. Make sure that the halftones are well aligned, so that it gives the impression that they are simply changing color, not crisscrossing or mismatching. Position these in the unoccupied, or whitespace of the canvas.

And now add some background colored halftones. That will simply fade out some of the elements. I also added a pink halftone on the right side, just barely visible.

Finnish it off with type

You need this font for the final part. Download it, and type in the words in a similar way. Place them behind all the layers, including the halftones. You’ll notice that the final block of text, both pink and yellow, forms a rectangle. This is meant to bring a certain order and predictability to the layout of the design. It acts as an anchor that keeps all the elements in place.
Also, readability is not a main objective here, so neither the font, its layout or modifications are meant to serve that purpose. It has a more graphic role.

Now, while using the light yellow color, type the word panther repeatedly in the lower right corner in order the complete the rectangle grid. Also, add a lighter colored spray paint that will eliminate some of the negative space of the text.

And as a last touch to the text, make a selection of all the text by holding Ctrl + Shift and clicking on all the text layer icons. Make a new layer above, and spray paint with a light yellow. That will make the text appear less flat.

And with that, we’ve just finished creating a furious pink panther poster using only a few messy spray paint brushes, abstract halftones and splatter vectors. It’s situations like these where brushes and vectors prove their worth. Now use them to make your own furious design!

Download the Pink Panther Poster Project File

How to Draw a Classic Hand using a Graphics Tablet

Introduction

Hey! I’m Whyball and I’m a graphic designer. Since I was a little kid, I loved to draw; at first I started drawing all kind of things that I saw in the books - usually animals were my favorite subjects! After a while I started to create original drawings.
A few years ago I discovered the digital drawing and was excited to see the simplicity of using the graphic tablet. Once again I was combining those 2 ways of drawing: copying and using the imagination.
I recommend to use this technique of copying something when it helps you to save some time while you’re working, or to achieve better quality. For example, if you need to draw a hand in a specific position, and you’re not so sure you can draw it from imagination, my advice is to take a camera and capture the position & form of a hand. It’s useful to have a timer function so you can take picture of your own hand easily.
In this tutorial I want to show you how I draw a hand using a picture plus some imagination, and make it all look like a classic pencil drawing!
I use this kind of drawing to give to the design an artistic look. In my opinion the hand drawing effect looks great applied on anything from animals to gothic ornaments. Another advantage of this style is that you can make great artwork using only one color.

Let’s get Drawing!

Step 1: Find a Reference
The first step is to take a picture of a hand, you can use the same picture that I used in this tutorial, see the download link below; it already has the opacity reduced to 30 % so it is exactly like the one i started here with .

Download Hand Reference Photo

Step 2: Sketch Guidelines
After that, you should sketch out how you will adjust on the picture. In this case I’ve increased the size of the fingernails, and made a a white area in the middle of the hand where I want to put a small brain. Just make a place holder for now, but make it a little smaller than the actual brain will be so you can draw the hand tightly around the brain without gaps. You can draw some drips too. You can put them between the fingers, and on one side of the hand, like i did. You will sketch all this on a separate layer.

All that being set up, you should start drawing the hand.
Step 3: Build the Outline
The file size that I us is somewhere between 50/ 50 cm and 70/70 cm at 300 DPI. Get your graphics tablet set up & operating properly. Take a look at the settings that I usually use for the brush. These settings work well for the file size we’re using; I recommend that you try them.
For drawing, use a dark brown or gray color (something like 3f311d ), not black. Black has a too strong of a contrast with the white background which gives your linework an overly sharp appearance. So my advice is to use those colors for the brush, but if you want to use black for the brush you can change the background color to a light cream or gray and everything will look OK.

Start by making a new layer where you will draw the outline, it should look like this. You will also draw the lines that you consider will help you in the next step; (the first level of shades), so look for thicker and darker lines from the picture and draw them too.

After the outline is done you can start making the shades, but first I made those red dashed lines which follow the shapes of the hand. You should always have lines like this in your mind when you start hachuring, so you can represent the volume in the right way.

Another thing that I recommend you to do before you start is to adjust the contrast of the picture until it will look like this. This will help you to see where to put the darker and most important shades. You will see that after this first level of shades are made, the subject will start to look good.

Step 4: Begin Hachuring
Now, when you start the hachure, don’t forget to make a new layer. I recommend that you always make a new layer when you do something new or different on your design and you’re not sure how it will going to look.
We all know how bad is to work on a wrong layer….
Now your drawing should look like this. The hatchring it’s made from overlapping lines in different directions and different lengths, so where you want to make a darker area you will draw thicker lines. In lighter areas you will leave only a few lines and you can make them thinner for an even lighter tone.

The hachure should look something like this, here you can see how on the left/down side is darker then the rest. That’s because of the multiple overlapped lines. If you will make it smaller you will see the effect that I want to achieve; and that’s to look like a textured gradient.

Step 5: Add Details
After you have finished with the darker tones, make another layer, and start working on the details. You should not make too many details, or at least not small ones because you will not be able to see them when the drawing will be printed.
To assure that you have enough details you have have to look at the drawing at approximately the size that it will be printed and see how it looks. Or better yet you can print it on a paper at the real size so you can have a preview of the final work.

Drawing the Brain

Now in case you are not used to draw brains, find a picture of one and try to imitate the texture that you see on it. The most important thing when you will draw it is to respect the light source when you make all the ‘’wrinkles’’. This will actually make it to look like a brain.
Now it’s time to merge the layers you created while drawing the hand. Once merged, apply a color overlay effect to give it a red color. Now you can see the parts from the hand that you will have to erase, parts where the brain and the hand are overlapping.
Now you will understand better why I told you earlier to make the placeholder for the brain smaller than the brain will be. It’s easier to erase what’s behind the brain.

Now you can delete the color overlay effect and get rid of the unwanted layers, if you have some. If you think that you may want to color the drawing later, you can keep separate layers for the hand and for the brain.

Final Touches

Step 6: Add Extra Shading
Finally let’s put some shades around the brain as you think it would reflect on the hand. And you should remember to keep the same light source whenever you put new shading.
And now you can merge all the layers together, and you’re done!
You can use this technique for making t-shirt designs, illustrations, posters, you name it. From my experience I can tell you that it will be appreciated very well.

Step 7: Add Texture to the Final Presentation
If you want the drawing to have more impact when showed to a client, I recommend you to change the white background to one more ’’artistic’’. Usually I use a combination of different textures and old papers pictures, and it should look like this.

Here are some details from the drawing, and some designs that i created using this technique.

More Examples of this Technique

I hope you liked my tutorial and find it useful, for any other question, don’t hesitate to write here or contact me at pallavireddyv8@gmail.com. Thanks for reading!

Photoshop contest - skyscraper window

www.photoshoptalent.com

Awsome Simple Logo Creation With Glossy Effect Tutorial.

Awsome Simple Logo Creation With Glossy Effect Tutorial. - Watch a funny movie here

How to create a beautiful logo in photoshop.......

1. Setting up your Document in Photoshop

• Once you have photoshop open, go to File -> New. Then specify the name of the logo, and a width of 600 and a height of 500.
• Then click "OK" (Refer to the screenshot below).

After you click "OK" Your setup should look like this: (I'm on a 1600x1200 resolution.) For the menus on the left, I have the layers view, and the Characters in view.)

2. Experiment with Font Selections
As a starting point, I always experiment with a font that I think will work well with the logo. You have to develop an eye for what font will or will not work, with the specifics of the project in mind. Since for bluelaguna we're trying to focus on a serious yet gamer'ish feel, a serious font selection might be the best bet. Having yourself an arsenal of fonts is very important. I have several thousand myself.

Select the Text Tool on the left menu: (As shown on the image to the right) Adjust the settings on the Text Properties at the top to match these settings: In the character window to the right, set AV to -60 as shown below: (This simply shortens the space between each separate character, I like starting out with this setting, I don't know why :) Type "BLUE LAGUNA" in the document space (First, be sure that the background is white, you can use the fill tool for this. And I've decided to go with all caps to start out with, since all caps is generally deemed more serious). With the type tool selected, and layer 1 selected, select the font list menu (where it says Arial): You can do this next section in either three ways. - Hit the "Down" arrow to change the font view of "BLUE LAGUNA". - Hit the Down Arrow of the Font List to see the list of available fonts with a tiny preview of the font. - Download a font viewing program. I personally just use the first method, although I sometimes use a font viewing program. Our goal here is to find fonts that might work with the logo. Once you come across a font that looks like it could work, you should Duplicate the layer in the Layers Window to the right, and then hide the previous layer (The layer you right clicked and selected "Duplicate" from. This way, you've saved that font selection (the hidden layer), and you have a new layer to find more fonts from):

3. Good and Bad Font Selections
Since our goal with this particular logo is to be serious, we need serious looking fonts. It simply takes time to develop an eye for what is serious and what isn't.

Here are a few examples of bad font selections for this project: The first logo (the top), has a very laid back, fun / unprofessional tone to it. The second logo is simply "goofy" looking, and it's generally always bad to select a logo that has an inherent shadow. The third logo is way too "ragged" with its frills all over the place, definitely a no go. Calligraphy logos are generally outdated, especially ones with weird "drops" coming from them. The last logo you can hardly even read. Remember, a logo should be easily readable.

Here are a few examples of good font selections for this project: All of these logos with the exception of 4 and 6 are pretty much similar. #1, 2, 3 & 5 are all very simplistic and serious in appearance. Logo 4 still appears "serious" even though it is significantly different from the rest. I chose this just in case I want to experiment with piecing together fonts for the word "Blue" and "Laguna". Logo 6 is a very bold / italicized logo that says nothing but serious.

4. Finalizing a Font Selection
Once you have some possible font selections, each in their own layer, you further analyze them and see which works. With logos that have more than one word, most of the time it is good to separate the appearance of the words from each other. Since this particular project has two words, "Blue" and "Laguna", we're going to want to separate them by possibly choosing two different fonts. You can also separate words from each other by keeping the same font, but changing the color. So I'm going to experiment with the 6 good font selections above.

This is what I've come up with: Although I didn't use one of the 6 fonts I selected initially for the word "blue", I simply used an unboldened version of "LAGUNA", which keeps a consistent feel but also allows for separation of the two words.

5. Adding in a symbol
Sometimes logos work well with only the use of fonts, but most times adding in a relevant symbol of some sort will really make a logo stand out. When I say "symbol", I mean any part of the logo which isn't actual text. So let's start with the first font selection from above:

Now here is where having an eye for design and experience is a really big help. We need to begin contemplating ideas of what exactly we can add to this logo to make it awesome. So, the first thing I do is just sit there and stare at the font selection and think of what exactly the product/service/site is all about. Well, BlueLaguna.Net is about gaming, more specifically speaking, it's a site that offers RPG media (Role Playing Game) media. Therefore, we have two things to work with: RPG and Media. What exactly can we associate with both RPG and Media? Well, we don't necessarily have to convey both RPG and Media through the logo (if you try to get too complex, the logo will become cluttered). We can choose one or the other if we want. I think it'd be most logical to focus on the whole RPG aspect, as you can find media all over the place and it isn't an entirely unique concept.
So let's do some research on Role Playing Games. We need to figure out a symbol which can really represent RPG. The current BlueLaguna.Net features a 3d female, perhaps that has something to do with RPG? Well, let me do a search on images.google.com for "RPG". The results turn back a few different female characters, Hmm! The first few results, keeping in mind the 3d female character on the current header of bluelaguna.net, seem to suggest that depicting a female in the logo might be the best bet. It also seems that weaponry / mystical environments are associated with RPG as well.
Now that I know what I can associate with RPG, I can come up with some possible ideas for a symbol. I think maybe featuring a face of one of these RPG'ish females with maybe a hint of mysticism.
The Pen Tool is your Friend
The most important tool when it comes to logo design is the pen tool. If there is one tool to thoroughly understand, it should be the pen tool. The pen tool allows you to create any shape(s) you want, and maintain vector format (which is very important if you ever want to size your logo up n' down (for professional print or whatever.)
It's always good to draw your logo by hand without copying over a picture (vector tracing), but if you aren't very talented and don't have much experience, it might be your only option. So for the sake of making the biggest impact on this tutorial, I will teach you all an awesome technique for creating great looking symbols for you logos.
Finding a suitable picture
If you're going to trace, I always suggest using a site like istockphoto.com to find the image and pay for it. This way you won't be using copyrighted images to trace over. Or taking your own picture to trace over. Unfortunately though, istockphoto has nothing with RPG or "anime". So I just went on images.google.com and found a picture which I think is suitable, here it is:

When I came across this picture, I got the idea that I can vector trace over her face and hair to create what I want, and then integrate it along with the font selection in some unique way. So once you've found the picture you want to trace (if not the same one), save it to your hard drive, open it up in photoshop, CTRL-A, CTRL-C to select it and copy it, and go back to your main logo document and CTRL-V. Now you've imported this picture into your logo document. Once you've imported it, with her layer selected, you can cut off the bottom half of her body. (Select the first tool in the upper left corner of the tools menu, Rectangular Marquee Tool), select the bottom half of her body and hit the delete key. Your screen should look something like this by now (You can hide the text layers behind it).

Vector Tracing
Now select the magnifying glass in the tools menu and select around the girl, it will look like this zoomed up to about 400%:

Now select the pen tool in the tools menu:

Make sure that the foreground color (the black square at the bottom of the pic to the upper right ---^) is the same dark blue color of the text we specified.
In the layers window to the right, select the little round circular > icon on the upper right corner of the window, and click on "Create New Layer" in the window that comes up. Hit "OK" and then in the layers window, with the new layer selected, change the Opacity to 0%. We do this because once we start tracing over the image, we don't want the dark blue color hiding the picture of the girl below.
And with the pen tool selected, click a point somewhere on the outline of the hair (at the top), and then click to make another point somewhere on the hairline where the line will begin to form. You can hold down and "direction" the angle of the line to create a certain type of curve. It takes awhile to get the hang of, but it's very easy once you get the hang of it. After plotting points of an entire section of hair, yours should look similar to this: (Note: I've lightened the opacity of the girl to illustrate what your lines should look like so far)

(opacity 100%)

It's not perfect, but for now it's a good start.
Now I'm simply going to continue creating more shapes, like the facial features. After 15-20 minutes or so of creating the different facial features and the face itself, here is what I have come up with:

As you can see, I specified a different color for the face (light blue). And by now I have around 15 different layers. There's a separate layer for the top portion of each eye, the bottom portion of each eye, the middle, and the small glare. There's also a layer for the face background, and the ear. So let us continue and add some shading...

After about 20 more minutes of shading, this is what I've come up with: There are a total of 3 different layers for the hair. It's somewhat of a tedious process to do hair shading simply because there's a lot of strands of hair! But you have to just condense them and get the general idea of the shading and it will work out well. Then I did some light shading work on the face and the neck. Now I consider the actual draft of the symbol complete. Let's make our initial text layer visible and see what we can do to integrate the symbol with the text.

First, you will want to select the very last to the very first vector layer that you created (you'll have a couple dozen or more), hold down the shift so you can select them all. Then in the layers window click the little circular round button and select "New Group From Layers". This will put all of the layers of the girl, into one easily manageable layer group. This way, you can move around the one group and it will keep all of their positions together so it won't break up her face.

Now this actually doesn't look too bad, in and of itself. But the proportion of the anime head is too big, in relation to BLUELAGUNA. So we will want to scale down the head. Let's try moving it over to the left, and adding the slogan + the ".net" text. This is what it looks like:

Now it looks pretty damn good eh? The only other thing I did, was with the pen tool, I added a white shape over the "B" in "BLUE" so that the face doesn't collide with the B.

Unfortunately I messed up and didn't design this over the dark blue'ish background that the bluelaguna.net has. So I'm going to change the colors of the logo to fit a background of an appropriate header for the site.

As you can see, simply changing colors around can really change the look and feel of a logo. I'd consider this logo a winner.

6. Conclusion

I can pretty much guarantee you that if you're a first time user of the pen tool or photoshop for that matter, it won't turn out so pretty like mine did. It takes some time and patience to really get the hang of it. It's all about getting a little creative and working at it for awhile.

Simple Icons for GUIs Design

AlignCenter.gif	AlignCenterArrow.gif	AlignLeft.gif	AlignLeftArrow.gif	AlignRight.gif
AlignRightArrow.gif	BarGraph.gif	Battery.gif	Binocular.gif	blank-20.gif
BlueCircle.gif	BlueFlag.gif	Bold.gif	Bomb.gif	Box.gif
Bulb.gif	Calculator.gif	Camera.gif	CameraFlash.gif	Caution.gif
CD.gif	Check.gif	Circle.gif	Circle_0.gif	Circle_1.gif
Circle_2.gif	Circle_3.gif	Circle_4.gif	Circle_5.gif	Circle_6.gif
Circle_7.gif	Circle_8.gif	Circle_9.gif	Clock.gif	ClockGo.gif
ClockStop.gif	Column.gif	Computer.gif	Copy.gif	Cut.gif
Cylinder.gif	Data.gif	DataExtract.gif	Delete.gif	DataStore.gif
DeleteColumn.gif	DeleteRow.gif	DeleteSheet.gif	Document.gif	DocumentDraw.gif
DocumentIn.gif	DocumentMag.gif	DocumentOut.gif	Down.gif	DownLeft.gif
DownRight.gif	Draw.gif	Enter.gif	Envelope.gif	EnvelopeIn.gif
EnvelopeOpen.gif	EnvelopeOut.gif	Exit.gif	Eyeball.gif	Favorite.gif
Key.gif	FingerDown.gif	FingerLeft.gif	FingerRight.gif	FingerUp.gif
Folder.gif	FolderIn.gif	FolderOut.gif	Forward.gif	ForwardAll.gif
Gauge.gif	GreenFlag.gif	Hammer.gif	Help.gif	Home.gif
Inform.gif	Italic.gif	Laptop.gif	Left.gif	Lengthen.gif
LengthenLeftRight.gif	LengthenRightLeft.gif	LineGraph.gif	Lock.gif	Magnify.gif
MagnifyMinus.gif	MagnifyPlus.gif	Memory.gif	Minus.gif	Mouse1Btn.gif
Mouse2Btn.gif	Mouse3Btn.gif	MouseWheel.gif	Move.gif	New.gif
NewColumn.gif	NewEnvelope.gif	NewFolder.gif	NewPin.gif	NewPlug.gif
NewRow.gif	NewSheet.gif	Object.gif	Open.gif	OpenArrow.gif
OpenDoc.gif	OpenLock.gif	Paint.gif	Palette.gif	Paste.gif
PDA.gif	PDAIn.gif	PDAOut.gif	PieGraph.gif	Pin.gif
PinLeft.gif	Plug.gif	Plus.gif	PlusMinus.gif	PlusPlus.gif
Print.gif	RedFlag.gif	Redo.gif	Reply.gif	ReplyAll.gif
Right.gif	RotCCDown.gif	RotCCLeft.gif	RotCCRight.gif	RotCCUp.gif
RotCWDown.gif	RotCWLeft.gif	RotCWRight.gif	RotCWUp.gif	Row.gif
Save.gif	SaveAll.gif	SaveDB.gif	Select.gif	Sheet.gif
Therm.gif	TileCascade.gif	TileHorizontal.gif	TileVertical.gif	ToBack.gif
ToFront.gif	TrafficGreen.gif	TrafficOff.gif	TrafficRed.gif	TrafficYellow.gif
Underline.gif	Undo.gif	Up.gif	UnLock.gif	UnPlug.gif
UpdateColumn.gif	UpdateRow.gif	UpdateSheet.gif	UpLeft.gif	UpRight.gif
User.gif	Users.gif	Users2.gif	VCRBack.gif	VCRFastForward.gif
VCRForward.gif	VCROpen.gif	VCRPause.gif	VCRRewind.gif	VCRStop.gif
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32 Beautiful Website Logos,

After staring at the computer for hours and going through close to two hundred websites I picked out these awesome looking logos. This is a good list of logos to look through when you need to get inspired before working on a website logo project.

alfredfox.com

arenasia.com

arsnovadesign.com.ar

barock.ro

ciuboflo-myguide.ro

dairien.com

digitalcafe.it

dpivision.com

freesbe.es

gastropedia.ro

idealhut.com

idevelop.ro

imagexmedia.com

inspireimage.com.au

jobsy.ro

kit10designs.com

kompakt.cz

lightwaysoftware.com

logopro.it

melbo.ro

naistudio.com

newspond.com

plainsource.com

rainfall.ro

rainfall.ro

rainfall.ro

rodrigovarandas.com

spine.ro

tomatic.com

villagecreative.com

zonica.com
 

blog headers for free download

full view | download (7× jpg + psd, 5.6 Mb)
“Sending you our schedule. nopolitics means that the design of the laws, you can always open up a new direction, to develop the old, everything will change in its own way, freedom of expression is limited only in design technology.” Designed by Sergej Gorodenskiy, Russia.

Cosmosource

full view | download (jpg, 65 Kb)
This theme is based upon the cosmopolitan style of life. “I tried to show a cosmopolitan life full of style using modern colors (symbolizes fashion), a dynamic picture of a girl (symbolizes people) and buildings (means the the city work/style) in the background.” Designed by Paulo Loreto from Portugal.

The Lighthouse Project

full view | download (jpg + psd, 1.3 Mb)
“The Lighthouse Project” was brainchild of mine to do a daily blog of testimonies from the Christian walk to encourage others through life’s trials. Though the blog is not up, I thought it best to start with an awesome header graphic for the artistic direction on how the rest of the site should be designed. I wanted to go with an “urban” theme using a lot of vector and photo combinations like what a lot of the graphic artists are doing today. Tracey Jackson, Miami, Florida, USA.

[R] Evolution

full view | download (jpg + psd, 6.6 Mb)
“For this Design I wanted not just to create a banner that could be used in any kind of blog like music, personal thoughts, design, philosophy, science, history or any other, but also passing through a deep meaning. There are some questions about humanity that really intriguing me since my early days. Where do we come from? Where are we going? And what is our mission here.
The banner concept is not trying to give an answer for these questions, but is actually trying to reflect these questions on user’s subconscious. So I developed the evolution idea to reflect our mission as humans. From left to right I try to show some steps of evolution process, since prehistoric history until these days.

All big changes in human history were produced by revolutions. For that fact I Use [R] incorporated in the title. So users can read evolution and at the same time also read revolution. Evolution-Revolution. Revolution can also be noted in the design with the revolutionary Flag contradicting with the peace symbol within, French soldiers and the atomic bomb. All evolution process is being pushed by an elephant, which is a strong animal that exists from a long time ago. This idea is to create movement and consequently reflect the questions where do we come from? And where are we going? The elephant baby is also there to represent the different generations along the evolution path.
On the right side of the banner there’s a glimpse of what I believe will be the future. Human mind uses just 15% of his brain capacities, so when humans will use 100% I’m sure we can easily travelling around the universe 10 times or more the speed light, conquering new worlds… This fact is presented by the astronaut starting traveling to the universe (present) and the UFO on the top dropping small spaceships (future connections). For enhance mystery I used a blue light.
This banner is better viewed in a black background.” Designed by João Filipe Cunha, Portugal.

Mindscape

full view | download (png + psd, 1.45 Mb)
Designed by Michał Bronka from Mindscape interactive agency, Szczecin, Poland.

Retro Header

full view | download (jpg + psd, 2.1 Mb)
“One day I drew an icon from a picture. This was a classic truck that is colorful and sweet. I want to use this icon in a design project. And I saw your contest. Then I designed a header that contains the classic truck icon. This was a cheery work for me.” Designed by Cem Ozdogan, Turkey, Ankara.

Typography

full view | download (png, 65 Kb)
“I think about a header graphic as a start of a page, like to start a conversation - so the idea was born. We all start a (good) talk with an easy greeting - so why don’t use this for a website? after trying some stuff i decided to keep the design as simple as the idea - so I used lovely RNS Baruta Black. Simple and clean, but also interesting and playful.





The languages I used are just examples - of course it’s possible to use all greetings of the world (as long as it fits 800px).” Designed by Robert Winkler, Dresden, Germany.

The Sexiest Dirty Underground Theme

full view | download (5×jpg, 0.3 Mb)
“What inspired The Sexiest Dirty Underground theme was a chance to explore some new styles. I’m very pleased with the results and I’ll be exploring these techniques even more. I’ll be finishing The Sexiest Dirty Underground header theme on my blog to bring the total to 20 headers in the next two weeks. For Rich-Bitch-Fish, Co-op-Bone, and Woman-Confident I used the process of first sketching on paper, then working with illustrator, and finally finishing in Photoshop. I’ll be explaining the process more indepth on my website coming soon.
My favorite headers from this theme are City-Under-Heat, New-Tech-Earth, and Woman-Confident-Fear.” Designed by Jimmy R., Manitoba, Canada.

A New Day

full view | download (png + gif + jpg, 0.1 Mb)
Designed by Jonathan M., Canada.

Fellowsisters

full view 1 | full view 2 | download
The first image is a little tribute to Escher’s “Drawing Hands”. It is an adaptation of the big old theme of the boundaries of representation but with the Fellowsisters as main characters. It also contains a reference to the Plinian Myth of the origin of Painting.

In the second image the two cups of tea are associated with a moment of relax. Usually the Fellowsisters are represented by two female figures or by two analogue or complementary objects. Designed by María from Spain.

Inspiration Theme

full view | download (0.9 Mb)
Designed by Daniela Mincheva from Sofia, Bulgaria.

Lucifix

full view | download (2.6 Mb)
Designed by Nathaniel Heller, New York City, Manhattan, USA.

Rocket And Go

full view | download (65 Kb)
This is what came out after more than an hour of mad photoshop and illustrator play-around, the whole themes were greatly influenced by my brother’s ear candy crave on Mika’s “Happy Ending” and my personal fave on young Youtube star Daniel Talevski’s “Rocket and Go”. Lots of stock images were used from across the Web, with massive blending, be it softlight, multiply, overlay in addition of some vector shapes, brush tools, photoshop patterns from deviantart.com. Designed by Mikel D.Lian a.k.a splashmilk from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Grunge Look

full view | download (0.4 Mb)
Designed by Alex Frison from Germany.

This Is How It Feels

full view | download (0.9 Mb)
The ideas are quite simple. Valentines soon, so I got this idea of making this header. Each of them represents feelings as it is presented in ways such as the graphics itself, colors etc. I made all the images my self. Just got them after compiling all my artworks from my artbag and then I just simply paint them using Photoshop.

Back to the feelings, I may make a list of definitions for it.

• On the left side, the girl with plaster glued on her mouth means she cant say what she actually want to say. you know, sometimes people just cant spit the words out when someone likes this person.
• Then, you can see these two couples, from this, I use colors to symbolize feelings. green is for envy and red is for desire. every couple fights — obviously. But in the end, they still love each other anyway. you can see it from the faces (the couple graphic).
• And that sheep, it’s symbolizes a female. You might laugh about this, but its true! Sheeps fur is soft, like girls, soft on the outside but then you see the real deal inside. The reason I place the sheep like that is to show how girls can just simply make the guy fall for her and be the queen in just one blink.
• And for the background, its just some doodles I made at my science class last 2 years, I think it fits this whole thing don’t you think?

Designed by Wirdy Hamidy from Brunei Darussalam.

Growing On You

full view | download (psd + jpg, 0.9 Mb)
I have used different brushes from Aivult itself and symbols of vector from there as well. The brushes were used to create the flowers along with few splashes of paint. Then the sunburst effect in the background was used from one of its tutorials in order to come up with a creative vector header. Designed using Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop and was possible by hand and head co-ordination of one8edegree. Created by AiVault, One8edegree, Pakistan.

Sublog

full view | download (jpg, 65 Kb)
It’s the header graphic of my actual blog Sublog.ch. The design is a collage of pictures I took some time ago and some free city landscape pics I found on the net, combined with some graphic elements. I used some grungy photoshop brushes to destroy the edges. The Swiss mountains at the bottom reflect a typical element of my homeland.
The contrast to the clean Swiss image is the grungy design and the city landscapes which are overlayed with a hard blend mode. a connection to the web and the modern world is made with the typo elements. I used a very clean, technical font called eurostile. Designed by Pascal Greuter, Switzerland.

Elements, Transition

full view 1 | full view 2 | download (jpg, 150 Kb)
I wanted to put accent on graphics (drawing, sketching) development through years. Therefore, its an old clock with overlayed Van Gogh’s portrait (an axiom in art :) + painters brush….and it’s “transforming” into mouse pointer with some binary code in background. Designed by Ratko Horvat (e-mail), Zabok, Croatia.

Graffiti Splatter

full view | download (jpg + html template, 0.5 Mb)
Okay, here’s my little horror show for your header contest. Yes, it’s a little bit special, but I like horror movies, comics, books… Also like Graffitis (but not that stupid noob tags). Theme is free - so I splattered some this weekend. I included a “making-of”-screen in a .zip-file. Also as goodie a website-template with background images. Designed by Rainer Weber, Pfungstadt, Germany.

Designer’s Canvas

full view | download (jpg + psd, 0.7 Mb)
The colors have been inspired by Mother Earth and her best friend, Nature. I draw real intricate designs on books and I always wanted to include this talent of mine into my website. Though I am creative I do not have anybody to guide (I guess this is the case with most designers).

I was not sure of how to incorporate my talent into the web media, luckily I stumbled on your website where I found links to amazing designs and tutorials. Every time I look at the stunning designs I would open up my Photoshop and Illustrator. Since I work full time, my website is not complete as I get to work only during my free time. Photoshop has always been my canvas to my creative work hence I have included the Photoshop toolbar in my design. Designed by Savitha Shivaram, India.

Lion design, the creative king

full view | download (jpg + psd, 1.1 Mb)
The Lionshead I used for this header is a drawing that I made earlier for a friend in Illustrator. I thought it would work great with a grungy theme. Designed by Didier Depraetere, Belgium.

Ephemeral

full view | download (5 jpg’s, 0.25 Mb)
The main idea with ephemeral is a graphic that seems constant and changing, with no form or whatsoever. The artwork was created in Adobe Illustrator. I wanted to share a visual header that can be easily customize, can provoke an emotion or tone without too much details. Designed by Nate Legaspi, Philippines.

Monsteck Variketch, The Invasion

full view | download (jpg + psd + ai, 7.3 Mb)
Based on your Illustrator tutorial about how to create a blob monster I developed the idea of creating a monster family which I called the Monsteck Variketch Family. This family is just starting to invade the city. Their names, from left to right are: Vermistech, Vaitistech, Bilistech, Piriastitech and Kapastech. For the design concept I used a grunge and urban styles. This banner can be used in a big variety of blogs. Designed by João Filipe Cunha, Portugal.

The Magic Box

full view | download (jpg + psd + ai, 3.1 Mb)
This banner was created under the idea of the surprise element and good feelings when someone opens a gift on their birthday or in Christmas time. The moment of opening and discovering the gift it’s in my personal opinion a magic moment. That magic moment can be also translated to blogs, when we anxiously wait for a new post in some interesting blogs.

So I tried to show that magic moment in the design, creating a kid discovering the new toys, and from the open box is getting out the energy that creates that magic mood. A very soft pastels color palette was used to create a very soft moment of magic. Designed by João Filipe Cunha, Portugal.

Untitled Dream

full view | download (jpg + psd, 3.1 Mb)
This banner was created for those dreamers out there. The idea was to create a dreaming environment, transforming the impossible possible. I came out with a sky landscape and in the top of a cloud there’s the dream focus. A natural landscape with some animal’s, flowers and ornaments. Mixing photography with illustration emphases the dreaming idea. Designed by João Filipe Cunha, Portugal.

Kultivating

full view | download (jpg + psd, 0.5 Mb)
The main purpose of blogs is to share ideas, or ‘cultivating’ ideas in this big garden that we call the Web. So based on this idea I created this concept. I used an orchid which is my favorite flower; actually Orchids are my other passion. Is not just about the different shapes and colors that makes them another pretty flower, but yet what makes the reigning magic of the orchid is their invisible power of communication. I also used the tree and flower ornaments to reinforce the ‘cultivating’ idea. Some soul tech brushes were used to represent the Web as the main garden of ideas. Designed by João Filipe Cunha, Portugal.

Metamorphosis

full view | download (jpg + ai, 2.8 Mb)
Metamorphosis is about a transformation of vector styles from simple lines to more complex line art. Seeing such different styles and moods being created with line and color, I also wanted to give a sense of relaxation that nature gives us. Designed by Carolyn Van Deursen.

Betsyness

full view | download (jpg, 60 Kb)
“I’m in the process of creating a website to showcase some of my drawings and paintings. I wanted this header graphic to reflect on my personal style and although created in perhaps the hallmark of the digital art process, Photoshop, to still have a hand-drawn essence to it.” Designed by Betsy Chang, USA.

Nuestra Señora

full view | download (jpg + psd, 1.7 Mb)
“This is a header graphic for my friend’s blog. This is how she initially described it to me: “I have decided on a name for the blog: Nuestra Señora. It is adapted from Los Angeles’ original name: Pueblo de la Nuestra Señora Reina de los Angeles del Río de Porciúncula. Plus it is feminine. I think it suits the blog. I am not sure if other people use the same name on their blogs.

So the concept for the blog is: Los Angeles city politics infused with pop culture. I want to provide a counter-perspective to the city from a life-long Angelino and integrate art, culture, fashion, and more. But again, its all about how the city is changing, I want to be a cynic but also a resource. The blog should be an artifact. I need to write and be creative. The more I think about it, the more I want multiple blogs, but maybe we can do that later or make tabs on the blog page itself. I would like to talk about US politics, the world, pop culture, gossip, everything that encompasses my daily life.” Designed by Betsy Chang, USA.

War of the Good & Evil

full view | download (jpg, 62 Kb)
“Doing design that can affect people, with this theme to show that being good or bad is just a thin line of difference. So we should show others the angel side of us, letting the good triumph over the evil.” Designed by Koh Maw Shin, Singapore.

Dragon

full view | download (png + example, 170 Kb)
“Dragon.png is a layered Fireworks CS3 file containing all the design elements used in example.gif. The elements are all transparent and can be moved around and combined to easily create a custom header image for your blog. All elements were created by us and you are free to use and distribute as you feel fit. Come show us your work at Heavychef.com were keen to check it out.”

Dream On

full view | download (gif, 60 Kb)
“This design was inspired by my thought process. Whenever I need some ideas, I think, research & analyse and then I just let my thoughts go blank. This is when the ideas begin to flow. I tried to visualize this whole process & this is how I imagined it. I am sure a lot of people out there would relate to this process as well.” Designed by Heavena Rayan, India.

Thanks to all participants!

The Significance of Color

I wonder if you knew that visitors to your website form an instant opinion? And they form it about you and your offer. This instant opinion is created subconsciously. It happens automatically within the visitors mind. It happens automatically. Your site visitors can't help themselves. It matters not a jot how clever the text is on your page. You can have paid an expensive professional to produce your copy for you. The visitor need not read a single word, and yet they will form their instant opinion.
The quality of the images on your web page won't make any difference. Their quality doesn't affect in this instant opinion. You might think if you make an unrepeatable offer, that your visitor is bound to be swayed by that! I'm sorry, the instant opinion clicks in, and your brilliant offer lies unseen. This is because the instant opinion is made when your web page is displayed to your visitor. You may have guessed there is something subliminal at work here. In a way, that is right. Immediate opinions are formed by visitors to every single website. You may have already worked out that the answer is colors. When your web page appears to your visitor, the colors you've used go to work on the subconscious of your visitors.
The reason this happens is because we all react psychological and intuitively to colors. There isn't anything we can do about this. Colors has an affect on each of us. This is one of the reasons why companies can invest millions in getting the colors exactly right for their products and marketing promotions. They invest this money as they know how the psychology of color works. In their business propositions, the big companies understand that the use of appropriate colors is a key element. And so it is in web design. The colors of your web pages also convey feelings and emotions to the subconscious mind of your visitors.
By the psychological power you could encourage your website visitors to leave your page the instant they see it. This can happen even if the copy on your website is compelling. The chances are that visitors who are put off by your colors are unlikely to read your copy anyway. But all is not lost. In the same way that colors can be a turn off, it is possible to create a positive feeling through the use of colors. This isn't a new discovery. The psychological power of colors is well known in the offline marketing world. It's been around with us for decades. It doesn't make any difference whether you know about color power, your subconscious mind is affected.
What we need to do in our website design is to ensure the color combination on our web pages convey a positive feelings. Your choice with your color selections is to send a sense belonging, trust and warmth. Conversely, the feeling sent may be one of distrust, coolness and rejection. Here is a list of colors showing the types of feelings each will evoke:
RED
Love, strength, sense of power, energy, excitement, danger, leadership etc
ORANGE
Comfort, friendliness, confidence, courage, steadfastness, playfulness, cheerfulness etc
YELLOW
Curiosity, intelligence, brightness, amusement, caution, joy, organization etc
GREEN
Harmony, nature, healing, life, food, health, money etc
BLUE
Patience, love, peace, tranquility, trustworthiness, stability, acceptance etc
PURPLE
Wisdom, independence, nobility, ambition, dignity, luxury, royalty etc
BROWN
Earthiness, nature, durability, tribal, comfort, reliability, primitive etc
BLACK
Elegance, sophistication, health, dramatic, power, formality, style etc
WHITE
Goodness, easy, simplicity, cleanliness, purity, fresh, innocence etc
Finally, be aware that your website color scheme should reflect the product or offering you make. What happens is that the subconscious mind of your visitor will attempt to reconcile the colors with the message. If it can't, it will lose interest. And you will lose your visitor. You should spend time in determining what are the right colors for your web pages. Try and make sure your colors and message are in harmony. If you can achieve this, you will produce better results from your website. In summary, the difference between the right and wrong color scheme on your website can be the difference between profit and loss.

Importance of Colors in Web Site Design

While designing a web site, importance of color is always overlooked by many web designers. But, keep it in mind that you depend on your company and your company depends on your website and your website truly depends on its color. So, color must be one of your very first concerns at the time of web site design. It's harder to read text on monitor as compare to paper and you will have to choose colors that are going to work best. Through color you can make your visitor feel comfortable, relaxed, trusting and also tempestuous.
Alas! Web browsers can only view 256 colors and even some browsers can see only 216 colors. If you want the color you chose for your website, should appear to everyone, exactly as designed by you then go ahead with 216 colors pallet. Always use web browser safe color.
Color combination is also very important aspect. Some color combinations are very unimpressive such as Yellow text on Blue Background. That's why black text on white background is the easiest color combination to read. What can be the intention of any web designer? Obviously, to make an interactive web page and interactivity comes with the colors you choose for web page. Color affects our feelings, our perceptions and our interactions.
What do colors say?
white : White is the best background color on a web page. White color shows truthfulness, Purity, devotion etc. It's the most refreshing and superlative color.
red : Red is the most emotionally vivid color and may cause a faster breathing. It symbolizes energy, action, confidence and passion.
orange: Orange is very hot color to the human eye. Orange demonstrates warmth, cheer, strength and ambition.
black: Black is the favorite color of web designers to display text but it effects very bad when used as background. It suggests excitement, speed and demands attraction.
blue: Blue is the second most popular color between web designers. It is associated with stability and depth. It represents wisdom, confidence and loyalty.
green: Green is the most compatible color with eyes and has a great healing power. It shows growth, harmony and fertility.
yellow: Yellow is the color which enhances concentration. It shows wisdom, joy and happiness.
pink: Pink is a quiet color and symbolizes sweetness, softness and innocence.
brown: Brown color provides you the feeling to mix up with the background. It represents politeness and richness.
Think about your primary audience like if you are designing a website for selling toys, then using pink and blue will be productive. Don't use more than two or three colors on a single page. Use the same background color on each page. It should not be like that 'Home Page' has a White Background and 'Contact Us' has a Yellow Background. Avoid making larger parts of web site with very bright colors. If the company for which you are designing website has already an established Logo, then make it sure that the color of Logo on website must match with the real color. Maintain the consistency because it really works. Your visitor may be irritated with your stupid color choice.
Try to be color wise and color safe, you will be able to feel the color of success.

Night Before Christmas : Photoshop Tutorial And WallPaper

We will create something like this, click on the image to see full preview:

Step 1: Document Creation And Sky
Create a new document, I wanted this image to use later as wallpaper, so I used 1920×1200 resolution, 72 dpi.
Fill background with radial gradient (press G to activate gradient menu) with colors #1773e3 and #0b3972:


Step 2: Star Creation
Although we will create night effect, we need again to create some stars.
Now create new layer ( CTRL+SHIFT+N), right above the background, fill it with black ( choose black and ALT+DELETE to fill).
Go to Filter–>Add Noise and add settings like on picture below (amount 20-30):

To get lesser amount of white noise, go to Image–>Adjustments–>Brightness/Contrast:

Change Blending style to Color Dodge:

Step 3 : Ground creation
Press CTRL+SHIFT+N to create new layer ( look at screenshot at my layers palette so it’s the same like mine).
Then select rectangular marque tool (press M) and do selection like this:

Let’s use linear gradient to create 3D look with colors #000b17 and #0b3972:

Ok, now we have background:

Step 4: Adding Detailed Star
Create a new layer and grab soft  brush (B), change foreground color to white ( press D to reset colors and X to switch foreground/background).

Draw big stars in various sizes on the sky and use right/left brackets [ ], to change brush size  :

Step 4: Adding Moon
What is Christmas night without moon? Let’s create one!
Create a new layer, select from custom shape tool - “Crescent moon”, if You don’t have shapes like me, do this bonus step:

Add moon in sky, where You want, also add white outer glow to the moon.


Step 5: Hills And Downs
In the fifth step we will add some hills and downs, but I won’t repeat this step, techniques is the same as in my previous tutorial - Beautiful Christmas Vision Tutorial And Wallpaper, start from the step 2 there.

Also look at my layer order:

Step 6: Adding Trees
Now let’s create some trees to make look our scene more interesting.
Add some guidelines to create more precise results, create new layer, then grab pen tool and try to do something like this:
(You can get guidelines, by pressing CTRL+R to get rulers. Just click and pull from rulers to get them).

Now CTRL+Click on path, and fill it with any color pressing ALT+DELETE ( foreground color):
If You don’t see Your path palette - go Windows–>Path.

Now on the tree layer, add blending options–>gradient overlay with colors - #1b2d02 and #477407:

Duplicate layer 2 times (press CTRL+ Upper Arrow) and upper layer transform perspective a little bit:

Ok, now holding SHIFT select all three layers and group them pressing  CTRL+G. You can also smudge trees to add texture, but I won’t do that this time.
With all three layers still selected, resize trees to much smaller size  - CTRL+T and holding shift resize.
We will use these trees in background, so we need many trees. Just press on the group with CTRL+Upper Arrow to create more duplicates and position trees like in the picture below:

Add as much trees as You think is necessary.

Step 7: Horizontal Shadow
Let’s add shadow on trees - create a new layer, select rectangular tool with black color:

Go Filter–>Gaussian blur and blur it 100px radius. Change blending mode to overlay and reduce opacity to 64%.

Step 8: Adding Global Colors and Shadows
Create a new layer on the top of all layers and add some colorful radial gradient, change blending mode to overlay.

Adding Shadows:
Let’s add some more shadows - use Elliptical marque tool and feather 100px. Create a selection and then press CTRL+SHIFT+I to invert selection and fill it with black ( ALT+DELETE). Change blending mode opacity to 75%.

Okay, we are already finished, I added just a few more effects:
1. I added those swirly lines at the moon, with pen tool –> stroke path.. –> simulate pressure.
2. Also I added two trees on the front side in the same way as I added background trees, I just didn’t want to go through whole process again.

Hope You enjoyed this tutorial as much as I did!

Beautiful Fluffy Clouds in Photoshop

Step 1
Create a new document in Photoshop. For this image I chose the A4 format. You can find it under the International Paper Preset. Then in the Background layer and apply a Layer Style with Pattern Overlay. For the Pattern, select the Linen Weave, it's a default pattern in Photoshop.

Step 2
Add a new layer and create a rectangle with the Rectangle Tool (U). Make it slightly smaller than the background, so it will have some borders. After that apply a Gradient Overlay via Layer Styles. Use Linear for the Type, 90° for the Angle and for the colors use: #12141c, #3e221a, #341f1b.

Step 3
For the Clouds I created a brush. It's really easy and I learned that from another tutorial I found online, you can see the video here. But I decided to show you the screenshots too, because it's easier to follow. Basically create a brush and use this settings:

• Brush Tip Shape: Round shape, 500px Diameter, 0% Hardness, 25% Spacing.
  
• Shape Dynamics: 100% Size Jitter, 20% Minimum Diameter, Angle Jitter 20%, Roundness Jitter 0%.
  
• Scattering: Scatter Both Axes and 120%, Count 5, Count Jitter 100%.
  
• Texture: Select Clouds for the Pattern, 400% for the Scale (but you can make it bigger if you want the couds softer and you will have to reduce the size if you want a smaller brush). Mode Color Burn

Step 4
Now add a new layer and select white for the color. Choose the Cloud brush and start painting the cloud. The secret here is paiting it very slowly, click by click until you get the shape you want.

Step 5
The previous step we created the first part of the cloud, but to make it look more volumetric and realistic you will have to create some dark areas. Add another layer on top of the white cloud and go to Layer>Create Clipping Mask. Select black for the color and change the Brush Opacity to 50% (press 5). Then start painting the dark areas. If you look at some real clouds you will notice that these dark areas are always at the bottom of the clouds, so do the same.

Step 6
Paint one cloud and move it to the right side of the page like the image below.

Step 7
Create another cloud and place it on the other side.

Step 8
Now create a big cloud, remember if you increase the size of the brush you will have to increase the size of the pattern of the brush preset. Also create smaller ones too, so you can create so sort of persepective. The biggers in the front of the document and go reducing the size to those that are in the back.

Step 9
Add a new layer and fill it with a gradient. Use #291907 and #dad6d2 for the colors, then change the Blend Mode to Overlay.

Step 10
Here I decided to get a photo of a moon instead of creting one, that could easily be done too, but my goal was to create only the clouds from scratch, at least this time. So I used an image and you can donwload it here.

Step 11
Change the Blend Mode of the Moon layer to Color Dodge and duplicate the layer so the moon will get shinner.

Step 12
Add a new folder in the Layer Palette and change the Blend Mode to Color Dodge. This folder will be beneath the Moons' layers. After that inside this folder, add a new layer and select white for the color. With the Brush Tool (B) select a basic round brush very soft, 0% hardness, and 20% opacity. Make it slightly larger than the moon, use the [ and ] to reduce or increase the size of the brush. Then start painting the light, use the image below for reference.

Step 13
Select the Eraser Tool (E) and start deleting the area of the moon that won't be illuminated.

Step 14
Here let's add our Santa Claus's reindeer, you can find lot sof images on the web or if you prefer you can buy a very nice vector at iStockphoto.com

Step 15
In this step I just added some stars, I have written quite a few tutorials showing how to create stars in Photoshop so you can check that out this tutorial. Add the layers beneath all the other layers and, also, delete the area beneath the moon, even the dark area.

Step 16 - Aurora Borealis
To create the Aurora Borealis effect, add a new folder in the Layer Palette, rename it to "aurora" and change the Blend Mode to Color Dodge. Inside the folde add a new layer a and select the Brush Tool (B). Get the Cloud brush you created for the clouds and paint some clouds, use the image below for reference.

Step 17
Go to Filter>Blur>Motion Blur. Use 90° for the Angle and 450 pixels for the Distance.

Step 18
Now go to Filter>Distort>Spherize. Use 53% for the Amount and Normal for the Mode

Step 19
The last filter for the Aurora Borealis effect is a little wave distortion. Go to Filter>Distort>Wave. Use the image below for the values.

Step 20
My first idea for the design was to give it a nice vintage style. To do that I used some texture. Just add some textures on top of the other layers and try different bend modes and opacities. In this case I used an old paper image with Overlay for the Blend Mode.

Step 21
Here add the text and logos and group all layers. Rename the group to "card" and duplicate the group. With the duplicated group selected go to Layer>Merge Group.

Step 22
With the merged layer selected go to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur. Use 20 pixels for the Radius and a change the Blend Mode to Screen. Then with the Eraset Tool (E) delete some areas that won't need to be so bright, Basically leave just the clouds and the moon, and deleted the rest of the the image.

Conclusion
You can add more effects like using brushes and masks to create even more vinatage effects, like my final card. The idea of this tutorial was to show how to create more fluffy and realistic clouds, once again I used references from other tutorials on the web. There are so many good tutorials online showing how to create some effects that then it's just adapt them to your needs. In my case I just added a few extra steps to create my clouds. I hope you enjoy the tutorial and a Merry Christmas to everyone ;)

Other Examples

Apple Logo Design and History

The, now well-known, American company Apple was the first computer firm not to use its name as its corporate identity. The idea of selling a computer under the name and image of a fruit was conceived by Californian Steve Jobs and his colleagues (even the word "Macintosh" is the name of an apple variety). The motif of a multicolored apple with a bite taken out of it is a reference to the Bible story of Adam and Eve, in which the apple represents the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. For more information about the logos, read this interesting article

The logo on this page is a registered trademark. Use of the logo here does not imply endorsement of the organization by this site.

Google Logo Design and History

The Google logo is a very simple logo made up of a simple font and some basic colors. It seems almost amateurish. The simplicity of the logo could possible represent the simplicity of the search engine. There are numerous debates/discussions on the web about the google logo. One discussion centered around the two O's in Google, representing infinity. The logo was designed by Ruth Kedar.  The logotype is based on the Catull typeface

Every once in a while, you will see the Google logo change to represent a current topic  e.g The Olympics, World Cup etc. These logos are called Google doodles. The doodles are currently created by Dennis Hwang and he has created over 150 doodles since he started working at Google. Apparently, the first doodle was produced by the founders Larry and Sergey. The logo was created when they attended the Burning Man festival in summer 1999. They put a little stick figure on the home page logo in case the site crashed and someone wanted to know why nobody  was answering the phone.
For more on the doodles, visit the official Doodle page.
Click here for an interview with Dennis Hwang
More World Famous Logos
Logo Parodies 

Microsoft logo history

Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational computer technology corporation with 79,000 employees in 102 countries and global annual revenue of US $51.12 billion as of 2007. It develops, manufactures, licenses and supports a wide range of software products for computing devices. Headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA, its best selling products are the Microsoft Windows operating system and the Microsoft Office suite of productivity software. In 1987, Microsoft adopted its current logo, the so-called "Pacman Logo". The logo was designed by Scott Baker. According to the March 1987 Computer Reseller News Magazine, "The new logo, in Helvetica italic typeface, has a slash between the o and s to emphasize the "soft" part of the name and convey motion and speed."

The original logo was a "groovy logo" and reflective of the 70's and 80's. I can see this logo with glowing Disco lights.

The old logo, which was green, in all uppercase, and featured a fanciful letter O, nicknamed the blibbet, but it was discarded. Microsoft "blibbet" logo, used until 1987.

Microsoft logo with the 1994–2002 slogan "Where do you want to go today?"

Microsoft logo as of 2006, with the slogan "Your potential. Our passion"

The  logos are registered trademarks of the Microsoft Corporation. Use of the logo here does not imply endorsement of the organization by this site.
More World Famous Logos
Logo Parodies

LG Logo Design and History

LG is a large South Korean conglomerate, which produces electronics, mobile phones, and petrochemical products and operates subsidiaries like LG Electronics. The LG brand originated from Gold Star, a popular brand name in Korea. The company now tries to promote its new tagline "Life's Good". The LG logo shown alongside is a fairly interesting logo. As you can see the logo has the alphabets, L & G in the form of a face. The symbol consists of two elements: the LG logo in LG Grey and the stylized image of a human face in the unique LG Red color.

•  The letters "L" and "G" in a circle symbolize the world, future, youth, humanity and technology. The symbol also represents LG's efforts to maintain close relationships with our customers worldwide.

 Red, the main color, represents friendliness, and also gives a strong impression of LG's commitment to the best.

Design
The circle symbolizes the globe. The stylized image of a smiling face in the symbol conveys friendliness and approachability. Overall, LG’s symbol represents the world, future, youth, humanity, and technology.
One eye
Goal-oriented, focused, confident.
Upper- right hand space
Intentionally left blank and asymmetric, which represents LG's creativity and adaptability to changes.
Colors
LG Red, the main color, symbolizes friendliness, and also gives a strong impression of LG's commitment to be the best. LG Grey represents technology and reliability.