Photoshop

15 Places to Find Awesome Free Photoshop Brush Sets

Even the best of us creative types struggle with what I like to call “designer’s block,” staring at a blank canvas in your favorite graphics editing program for hours. It can be downright difficult to find inspiration when starting a design from scratch. I have often found that one great source of inspiration are Photoshop brush sets.

Depending on the type of website, I might choose to create my design based on a set of grunge brushes. Or for a more artistic website, I could choose a set of nature brushes. Regardless of what your needs are, there are places to find awesome brush sets for Photoshop — and they won’t cost you a penny! What’s more is that there are no limits to how you can use these free photoshop brush sets in your designs, it’s all up to your imagination.

Without further ado, here are 15 great places to find awesome free Photoshop brush sets. Read more

Photoshop

10 Places to Find Absolutely Free Vector Graphics

Vector graphics allow the preservation of quality within an image. These graphics at times offer superior quality over the traditional (raster) image formats, such as Bitmap. This means that if you were to view a vector and bitmap image next to each other, as you zoomed in you’ll be able to see that the bitmap image will suffer from pixelation while the vector graphic’s quality will remain intact.

Here are 10 of the top sites where you’ll be able to grab absolutely free vector graphics that allow editing in Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator. Most of these sites offer free vectors in several formats for quick and easy customization. Sites that showcase high-quality vectors can be a bit hard to find now-a-days, this is why we’ve done the job for you and assembled this collection for your enjoyment. Read more

Photoshop

Keeping Perspective

Remember the game where you had to spot the difference in two images? Take a look at the two images below. Can you spot the difference?

If you noticed a change in the number of windows on the 3rd floor to the left of the porch area, you are right! The critical factor in making such an edit to the image is…Keeping Perspective. That can sometimes become very difficult…unless we are familiar with the Vanishing Point Filter.

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Photoshop

Resize It! Part 2 – Using an Action in a Batch Process

In the Part 1 of Using Photoshop Actions, we set up an Action to resize our images and add a stroke just inside the perimeter of an image. Below is an example of applying that action to an image:

In this second part, we will apply this action in a batch process. The end result will be an entire folder of images are resized with a stroke just inside the perimeter of each image.

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Photoshop

Resize It! Part 1 – Recording an Action in Photoshop

Actions in Photoshop let us automate a process. For example, instead of spending the time to apply 5 steps to an image, then re-applying those same steps to more images, I only need to record an action one time, then at a click of a button, apply that same action to the other images. Actions can consist of only 1 step or up to as many steps as needed. Actions can also be used within a batch process – so that the action is quickly applied to numerous images.

I use Photoshop Actions to create thumbnails, to reduce image resolution, to add a stroke, etc. In this tutorial, we will set up an action to reduce the size of an image. In Part 2 of this article, we will use the Action within a batch process to resize a folder of images.

Let’s get started!

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Photoshop

Working in Camera Raw

Working in camera raw gives you the most control over your images. Camera raw eliminates any processing by the camera and lets you set the parameters for each image – parameters such as white balance, contrast, color saturation, sharpening, and tonal range.

In contrast, when the camera is set to capture images as JPEG files, the camera automatically interprets the image data and makes adjustments and conversions to the data. The beauty of camera raw is that the camera simply captures the image and gives you the raw data. However, because there is no processing and interpreting of the data, be aware that camera raw files are larger files.

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