A lot of people are still clueless on how to use Adobe InDesign to do book or multi-page document layouts. If you’re coming from laying out documents using MS Word or other word processing software, using Adobe InDesign for the first time may be a little bit intimidating. Sure there are tons of Adobe InDesign tutorials, guides, and tips around but most of them are bits and pieces of everything. So I decided to create something that will teach newbie InDesign users straight up the very basics of how to create their first book layout.

1. Planning

When creating any complex document, layout and organization should be planned before you dive in and execute the layout. Below are some of the basic things you need to think about before designing any publication.

• Document size (Page size)
• Content organization (Order of content)
• Margins, columns and other white spaces
• Repeating elements (Running hearders and footers, repeating backgrounds, etc.)
• Typefaces and fonts to be used (The simpler the better. Avoid script or fancy typefaces or other difficult to read typefaces)
• Font sizes (For titles, headers, sub-headers, body text, tables, footnotes, charts, etc.)
• Graphics and images (How do you want to present them and placed along with the text)
• Colors (The less color you use, the less expensive your printing cost will be)
• Other print production considerations like binding, paper stocks for cover and inside pages, etc.

2. Creating New Document and Setting Master Pages

To create a new document, you click File menu and select New Document. You will then be viewing the New Document window which looks like the one shown below.

Right now you’ll just worry filling up options for your page size, column size, and margins. Leave the other options in their default values.

First thing you’ll do after you create a new document in InDesign is set your Master Pages. Every new InDesign document comes with a set of blank Master Pages. A Master Page is a template page that we can apply to individual pages in our document. All objects that we put in the Master Page will appear on any pages that we apply the Master Page. Usual elements that we put in the Master Page are running header and footer, page numbers, and some non-printing items like column and margin guides. You can create as many Master Page sets as you want, but typically you create Master Pages for each section, or chapter of your book, or just one Master Page for a short and simple book layout.

You access the Master Pages in the Pages palette. It is located on the bar of palettes at the upper right of your InDesign screen. If it is not showing up, go to “Window” > “Pages” to open it. The diagram below shows the Pages palette.

The top section for Master Pages contain thumbnails for single page [None] and two facing pages [A-Master]. If you are using just one set of Master Pages, you can just edit A-Master Page by double clicking the A-Master Page to access it. You can add new Master Pages by clicking the Palette options button located at the upper right portion of the Pages palette and select “New Master”.

For now, let’s just create a simple left and right Master pages containing page numbers as shown below.

To add page numbers on your Master Page, select the Type Tool from the toobox on your left. The cursor will now turn into a text insertion icon. Move your cursor on the location you want to place your page number (either left or right page). Press and drag to create a text frame. Don’t bother about the position of your text for now. You may move it later with the Selection tool from the toolbox to the exact position you want it to be. At this point you can now type any text you want on your text frame. But for now, we only want to insert page numbers. So instead of typing text, you will press right click, and from the right click menu select “Insert Special Characters” > “Markers” > “Current Page Number”. You will then see the “A” symbol written on your text frame. The “A” mark will appear as page number on every page in your document associated with that particular Master Page. To style it with the gray boxes similar with the sample above. You may use the Rectangle tool from the drawing tool set in the toolbox and adjust it with your desired size and color or gray fill.

If you’re not familiar with InDesign toolbox, you may refer to the toolbox overview illustration below.

To copy the same page number element on the opposite page, you may select the page number and boxes you created using the Selection tool and copy it by holding the “Alt” (Windows) or “Option” (Mac) button then drag it over the opposite page. You may want to hold the “Shift” button to constrain movement and keep its alignment.

You have now created your first Master Page set.

To apply the Master Page on a particular page or spread, simply drag the Master Page icon towards the document page or spread icon of your choice in the Pages palette. To apply a Master Page to multiple pages, select the pages you want to apply the Master page in the Pages palette then press “Alt” (Windows) or “Option” (Mac) as you click the Master page icon.

3. Using Grids

Using grids in book layout or any design helps us create and impose order, precision and consistency in our layout. Learning and adopting grid based design early on for beginning designers may prove beneficial in the long run. And as you gain more design experience, you’ll also learn instinctively when to use effectively and when to break the rules of grid-based design system.

For now, let’s learn some basic things about grid in InDesign for book layout. We will simply use baseline grid to align our text line per line.

While we are on the Master Pages, we can set our grids on them and use it all throughout our document. In this sample layout, I created my margins with the following settings shown below. To open the margins and columns dialog box, click “Layout” > “Margins and Columns”.

To properly setup your horizontal baseline grids, we need to think ahead what will be the font size and leading of our body text. Let’s say we use Times New Roman, 11 points with 14 points leading. With a 14 point leading, we can say that our baseline grids will also have increment every 14 points.

To setup our baseline grid, we go to the top bar menu once more and choose “Edit” > “Preferences” > “Grid”. The following menu box will appear.

Since our top margin is 15mm, we will make our first baseline grid start at 15mm. Then next, indicate your grid increment value at 14 points. The rest should have similar default values as above. Click ok to apply all grid settings.

To make our baseline grids visible (if it is not showing up), on the menu bar, click “View” > “Grids and Guides” > “Show Baseline Grid”. Make sure Screen Mode is set to “Normal” (“View” > “Screen Mode” > “Normal”). You should have a similar looking Master spread with grids like the one shown below.

4. Importing Text to Add Content

Before we place the actual text content of our book, let’s take a look first on how our simple book page structure will look like. I made this very simple page structure for our basic book layout tutorial. A typical book may contain more than what is shown below. It may include other pages like Foreword, Preface, Acknowledgement, References, Index, etc. But just to illustrate and cover the basics, we can just use the sample page structure shown below.

These are just the inside pages of our book. It is best to create the book cover separately as it has different page size because it is in spread format and may be wider than your actual book spread because it might contain a spine which will vary in size depending on the number of pages you’ll have and thickness of the entire book.

For the title page, you can create this manually and easily. Since this is just one page, you can use the Type tool straight up and type and set your own title. It is also advisable that you just copy the same title or type style from your cover to your title page for consistency.

The table of contents will be discussed on part 2 of our InDesign Book Layout Tutorial.

I won’t be showing you how to layout every page but I will just show you how to format one page and the rest will just be the same.

Assuming we have a separate text document in MS Word format for our content. We will then import and place it in our InDesign document.

To import your document file, follow the steps below:

1. Go to “File” menu, then select “Place”. Or press “Ctrl+D” (Windows) or “Command+D” (Mac).
2. Locate and select your file when the Place document dialog box appears.
3. If you want to specify other file importing options, check the “Show Import Options” check box.
4. Click Open to import the selected file.

If you created a text frame and selected it prior to importing a text file, the content of your file will automatically be placed inside that text frame. If none, you can just click or drag inside your page to place the content. Alternately, you can “Autoflow” your content by pressing the Shift key with the Place cursor. Holding down the shift key changes the placement of your content from a single text frame to automatically flowing your text adding pages to your document as needed.

Navigate through your files, then find and select your Word document. Click Open and you will see your cursor change into a place document icon. Point it on your document page and click. The first text frame of your content will be placed over your selected page.

Shown below is how the Autoflow place cursor looks like and the page containing the imported and placed text.

5. Formatting Text with Paragraph styles

There are several ways that you can format your text in InDesign but the most efficient way is to use Paragraph Styles. Using paragraph styles allows you to dramatically cut the amount of time formatting text particularly with long documents containing long stretches of text. With paragraph styles, appying text formatting to selected paragraphs is just a click away.

There are three ways to create paragraph styles. First method is to create an entirely new paragraph style from the paragraph style palette. Second method is to format the paragraph first then base the new paragraph style from that paragraph. Third method is to import styles from other InDesign documents. In this tutorial, let’s use the first and most common method.

Let us now define paragraph style for our heading.

Open the “Paragraph Styles” palette by clicking “Window” > “Type & Tables” > “Paragraph Styles”. From the Paragraph Styles palette click the options button and select “New Paragraph Style” as shown below.

Change the Style Name to “Heading 1″ or any name you want that will describe the paragraph you want to attach it to.

Next, click Basic Character Formats. Now change Font Family, Font Style, Size and Leading. I choose Times New Roman Bold, 26 pt with 28 pt leading which is a multiple of 14 to match our 14 pt increment baseline grid. The rest you can leave in their default values.

Lastly, go to Indents and Spacing. Set Align to Grid to “All Lines”. This tells InDesign to align all lines of text from that paragraph with the baseline grid. You can also choose “First Line Only” and succeeding lines will still follow and align with the grid because our leading matches our baseline grid increment.

Click OK and we have our first Paragraph Style for Heading 1. Place your Text tool cursor on the heading line and click “Heading 1″ from the Paragraph Styles palette to apply the Heading 1 style.

Next thing you want to do is format the rest of the text by creating new paragraph styles for them. For our body text, follow the same procedure we did with our Heading 1 paragraph style. You may name it “body”, format characters with Times New Roman regular, 11 pt with 12 pt leading. Then set again Align to Grid to “All Lines”. You may also want to set Alignment to “Left Justify” (also from “Indents and Spacing” tab), but that’s a matter of preference.

Applying our body text paragraph style gives us something like the one shown below.

With baseline grid shown (View > Screen Mode > Normal):

Baseline grid and margins hidden (View > Screen Mode > Normal):

Enhance it a bit if you feel that your page looks bare or too boring with too much text. I added some background boxes behind the heading to match the page number.

Continue adding new paragraph styles and apply them as needed with the rest of your document.

That’s it for now. Part 2 of this tutorial will cover how to add Table of Contents, format footnotes and create cover for our book. So if you enjoyed this one and looking forward to the next part, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed and mailing list to keep you notified and updated. You may also like our Facebook fan page and follow our Twitter account just in case you missed our RSS and mail updates.

Adobe Photoshop has been the standard and most used digital painting software available today. And with the advent of Photoshop CS5, a more natural way of painting beautiful artworks has never been better.

Adobe has done some amazing natural painting tools in CS5. It has some new and dynamic set of brush tips available. You can open up a new preview window where you can see how your selected tip respond to your hand and wrist movements. Allowing you to create a wide range of brush tip impressions on your digital canvass. Mixer brush is also available where you can use multiple colors, blend and mix them together which gives you very natural effects reminiscent of traditional way of painting. There are a lot more new and improved features in CS5 which you can experiment with. Combining all these features gives you new artistic directions with natural and realistic painting effects which makes CS5 a worthwhile upgrade.

To show you how these expert digital artists use Photoshop CS5 in creating stunningly beautiful artworks, here are eight Photoshop CS5 painting tutorials that will inspire you and show you new techniques in digital painting using the latest Adobe Photoshop CS5.

1. Photoshop CS5 Painting Tutorial by Rokoroko

2. Photoshop CS5 Digital Painting Tutorial from TwinPixels

3. Digital Painting Tutorial by JNetRocks

4. Use the Mixer Brush in Photoshop CS5 to Turn a Photo Into a Realistic Painting

5. Making of Weird Friendship by Shady “Brahim Azizi”

6. Making of Monkey by Ankit Thapliyal

7. Making of I’m the Godfather by Alexander Skachkov

 8. The Making of the Warehouse by Juraj Molcak

I was so amazed when I first saw a digital painting done entirely from scratch in Photoshop. With the advent of computers, painting artworks where made a lot more easier for digital artists and designers. Technology has indeed helped elevate painting artworks, providing artists better results and effects that are easily achievable.

A high-end computer, a good design/digital painting software, plus a digital drawing instrument like graphic pen and tablet, combined with an artist’s eye for detail, creative skill and desire to learn digital painting are all a novice and aspiring digital artist needs to produce amazing and masterfully created digital artworks.

And if you’re one of those aspiring artists who wants to create digitally painted artworks, you can start learning with these “10 Amazing Still Life Digital Painting Photoshop Tutorials”. Read through them, study the various techniques applied, and be an accomplished master in digital painting yourself.

1. Create a Super Realistic Mango Juice Glass from Scratch

2. How To Make A Digital Painting Of A Rose From Scratch

3. Create a Still Life Candle in Photoshop

4. Create A Realistic Loaf of Bread in Photoshop

5. Create a Realistic Pencil Illustration in Adobe Photoshop

6. Design a Realistic 3D Baseball Cap in Photoshop

7. Painting a Teapot with Photoshop

8. Create an Illustrated Japanese Style Hand Fan in Photoshop

9. How to Draw a Steaming Hot Chili Pepper in Photoshop

10. Water Lily Photoshop Painting Tutorial

Once again, Christmas is just around the corner. And what better way to truly show people you care during this most wonderful season of the year, especially when you cannot be with them physically, but to send them some lovely and creative Christmas cards from the heart.

Many people just resort to quickly sending their loved ones some electronic greeting messages but nothing compared to receiving and opening a real Christmas card wrapped beautifully in a special envelope and finding that lovely crafted Christmas card inside. You can send Christmas cards not just to special friends and relatives but also to your business associates and make them feel real special this Christmas time. Don’t let the good ‘ol tradition of Christmas card giving disappear. Create your own special Christmas greeting card today.

Creating your own Christmas card doesn’t have to be a task. We have here tons of design resources to help you get started in creating your own creative Christmas card. We have here 7 easy to follow Christmas card tutorials, 7 Christmas card design inspirations, 9 Christmas card design templates in various file formats, and 12 amazing collection of assorted useful Christmas graphic design downloads like vector graphics and icons, backgrounds, Photoshop brushes and more.

Browse down, download and enjoy creating your very own Christmas card. Merry Christmas everyone!

Christmas Card Tutorials

1. How to Make a Christmas Tree Pop up Card

2. How to Make a Christmas Card Star

3. Handmade Christmas Card with Removable Ornaments

4. The Joy of Christmas – Christmas card making tutorial

5. How to Make Handmade Christmas Waterfall Cards

6. How to Make a Christmas Card Using Wrapping Paper

7. Making a Christmas Story Star Card

Christmas Card Design Inspirations

1. Magical Christmas Card designed by Swedish Post (Posten) and Crispin Porter + Bogusky

This 2010 Clio Awards winner is a unique design of Facebook updates and dialogues transformed into various Christmas decorations like reindeer, bells, trees, etc.

2. Be! Christmas Card

Christmas card for “be!” – producer of clothes for children & pregnant women.

3. Volkswagen Christmas Card

A very creative and unique Christmas card any Volkswagen enthusiast would like to receive this Christmas.

4. Christmas Time! card design by Patrycja Zywert

A good example of clean and creative use of typography in Christmas card design.

5. The Xmas Card 2009 by Travis Purrington

Excellent mix of simplicity and elegance, traditional and modern Christmas card design.

6. Barajas Christmas Cards by Manuel Olmo-Rodriguez

A set of promotional mail materials with playing cards used as Christmas cards for OlmoCS, designed by Manuel Olmo-Rodriguez.

7. Christmas Cards for Jamaica by Eva Bodok

Lovely Christmas illustrations designed by Eva Bodok in this 2007 set of gate type Christmas cards for Jamaica.

Christmas Card Templates

1. Christmas Card Vector Templates from Freewareme

2. Beautiful Christmas Card Vector Template from Koocha

3. Another Vector Christmas Card Template from Koocha

4. Christmas Card PSD Template

5. Free Christmas Photo Card Templates (PSD and PNG file formats)

6. Christmas Card PSD Template (Danish and English)

7. 13 Lovely Christmas Card PSD Templates from Hero

8. Memory Makers Magazine Free Holiday Greeting Card Templates

9. Free Holiday Cards and Referral Cards Photoshop Templates from EW Couture

Other Christmas Card Design Resources

1. Designfreebies’ Free Winter Snow Flakes Vector Graphics

2. Free Christmas Vector Set 1

3. Free Christmas Vector Set 2

4. Free Christmas Vector Set 3

5. Free Christmas Card Background 1

6. Free Vector Christmas Backgrounds 2

7. Free Christmas Vector Background 3

8. Free Stylized Vector Christmas Tree

9. Free 22 Christmas Snowflake Photoshop Brushes

10. Set of Assorted Christmas Photoshop Brushes deom Ischarm

11. Great Collection of Christmas Photoshop Brushes from Atenais

12. Free Christmas Vector Ornaments and Gift Icons

Early this year, I shared with you some “30 Astonishingly Fresh Examples of 3D Typography“. Now we have 30 of the best Photoshop 3D text effect tutorials rounded up for everyone who wants to create their own stunning 3D text effect.

3D text effect is a strong and eye-catching text effect, and quite easy to create as opposed to many preconceptions that only hardcore digital artists or designers can do this. You don’t need to learn a separate 3D software in order to create one. For most basic 3D effects, you’ll only need Photoshop, using bevel and emboss styles, pattern overlays, along with combining different techniques to seamlessly mount your 3D text into a related background.

So if you’re looking for the best looking and stunning 3D text effect tutorials for you to learn, look no further. Below you’ll find 30 of the best Photoshop 3D text effect tutorials available on the web. Browse, click and enjoy!

1. 3D Flowery Text Effect

2. 3D Text Scene

3. Add Fantastic Color to 3D Text

4. 3D Text Blocks

5. Dream Design with 3D Typography

6. Slick 3D Ice Text Effect

7. 3-D text with some extreme lighting

8. Spectacular Style Text Effect

9. 3D Cliff Text

10. Stunning 3D effects in 30 minutes

11. Soft Stylized 3D Type

12. Master 3D Type Effects

13. Colored Chrome Text Effect

14. 3D Toy Text Tutorial

15. Shiny 3D Text In Photoshop

16. How To Create Stunning And Bold 3D Text

17. 3D Text Shatter Effect

18. Create a Steam Powered Typographic Treatment

19. Using Light and Shade to Bring Text to Life

20. Quick and Dirty Photoshop Text Effects from Scratch

21. Glossy Emblem Text Effects

22. How to Quickly Create a Stylish Retro Text Effect

23. Eroded Metal Text

24. Beveled Aluminum

25. Elegant Chrome

26. Grungy Metal

27. Reflective Metallic Text

28. Smooth Glass Text Effect Tutorial

29. Watery Text Effect

30. How to Create a Copper Photoshop Text Effect

Summer is here and I’m turning up the heat some more by featuring our hottest collection of fire digital artworks, tutorials and background images.

For ages, we have been using fire for cooking, generating heat, signaling, and propulsion purposes. Even with its many uses, fire is also associated with many destructive effects that includes increased soil erosion, increased in atmospheric pollutants, and an increased hazard to human life. With March being the start of summer months in most regions, most countries observe their annual Fire Prevention Month starting this month. But any day of the year, everyone should take extra precaution, continue to educate people and regularly conduct fire drills to inform and prepare citizens on how to prevent and react to a building fire.

Now going back to our featured design free resources on fire, the safest way to use fire is when designers use them in their projects. Fire is very effective in conveying energy, aggressiveness and passion in your designs. So if that is what you intend to project with your design, maybe you can try some of these free fire background images. You may also want to learn creating your very own fire effects with these easy to follow Photoshop fire tutorials, or just amaze yourself and be inspired with some of the best fire digital artworks listed below.

Fire Digital Artworks

1. Eternal Flame by Silvatrez

2. Rebirth Flame by Darkhalo

3. Fire Hall by Pinkuh

4. Vodka by Nikita -trainfender- Buyanov

5. Snail Flame by Ghost3D

6. Heart of Fire by Chymere

7. Fire, Stars, and Fire by Shadow Umbre

8. Incandescence by Benjamin Delacour and Thomas Kim

9. I Love You Collab by Nikolay Ivanov and Stefan Chinof

10. Fire and Water by Artur Napierajczyk (naz)

Fire Background Images

1. Sailor Fire Background 1 by Senshi Stock

2. Nature Fire Background Stock Image Collection by Ayelie Stock

3. Collection of Fire Streak Images by Blary 54

4. Fire Photo Collection by Bcbusinesshub

5. Flame Background Collection by Iran Hot Head

6. 35 Free Hi-Res Fire, Flame and Firework Textures from Designshard

7. 11 Hi-resolution Fire Textures by Shin Rhys

8. 20 Hi-resolution Fire Textures by Frasio

9. 25 Free Fire Textures by Jason Bobich – Heavy Satin Flames

10. 52 Fire Light Textures by Elliptica

Fire Tutorials

1. Fire Tutorial by Windancer53

2. Fox Fire Tutorial by Ashwings

3. Fire Tutorial by Hawk4

4. Hell of Tutorial in Photoshop from Abduzeedo

5. How to Create a Flaming Photo Manipulation

6. Dramatic Text on Fire Effect in Photoshop

7. Create a Stunning Text on Wild Fire Effect from 10Steps

8. 3D Text on Fire from Denis Designs

9. Making of Flaming Hand from 10Steps

10. Creating Blue Flame Text on Carbon Fiber Background from 123RF

Good day everyone. Few days ago, we featured some fresh vector tutorials using Illustrator in “Early 2010 Best of Vector Tutorials in Adobe Illustrator“. Now let’s take a look at some Photoshop tutorials this time. And let’s focus specifically on photo handling and editing capability of Photoshop like photo retouching and restoration.

Photo retouching and manipulation are probably the two most important areas Photoshop is used extensively, mainly because Photoshop offers a variety of sophisticated tools and effects that you can use to smooth out skin and hair, optimize body proportions, emphasize or enhance some beautiful details, correct colors, and a whole lot more.

These skills are important to learn not just for professional photographers but for anyone who simply wants to learn to edit and retouch their own photos using the same powerful photo-editing software professionals use.

Let’s study the dozen examples shown below on how it is done in practice. Photo retouching and restoration listed six tutorials each containing before-vs.-after-comparison with easy to follow step-by-step procedures in Photoshop.

Photo Retouching

1. Shadow Recovery of Backlight Problem

Photographer Edwin Setiawan explains in this simple Photoshop tutorial how to fix backlight problems.

2. Skin and Facial Enhancing

Learn how to enhance and glamorize a face in Photoshop with this easy to follow tutorial.

3. Professionalizing low quality photos

Turn your low quality discolored photos to professional looking photos with this simple and easy to follow tutorial.

4. Glamor Retouch Tutorial

Learn how to smooth skin and add those glamorous glow using this simple and short tutorial.

5. Sharpening Photos: An Alternative Approach

Here’s an alternative and more effective way of sharpening blurry photos.

6. Photo Retouching with Lighting Focus

Photo Restoration

1. How To Repair Scratches, Tears, and Spots on an Old Photograph

This PSD Tuts+ tutorial will teach us how to repair cracks, scratches, and spots so this photo of the Swedish Nightingale, Jenny Lind, looks just like new.

2. Professional Photograph Restoration Workflow

Once again, PSD Tuts+ shows us in this tutorial in-depth professional workflow for restoring old photographs to their former glory.

3. Restoring Colors of Old Photographs

Here’s a quick fix tutorial on how to fix and restore colors of old photos using Photoshop Elements.

4. Coloring an Old Black and White Photo

This tutorial demonstrates in very simple and easy to follow step by step procedures on how to add some colors to old black and white photos.

5. Adding Colors to Black and White Landscape Photo

Here’s another coloring black and white photo tutorial in Photoshop. This one is a more extensive and detailed demonstration using an architectural/landscape type of photo.

6. Give Old Photos A Punchy Stylistic Feel

Restore old photos their once glossy and punchy feel with this simple tutorial which includes a video of the actual process.

Hello everyone! Time flies so fast when you’re having fun or you’re doing something you enjoy so much. I am saying this because I am having such a great time doing designfreebies that I missed celebrating it’s one year anniversary February last month. Although I admit I’m also busy with my regular job and other things as well, but I missed it nonetheless and designfreebies is one year old exactly on February 17 last month (not counting a month or so when it initially started in Blogspot).

And in this regard, I would like to thank everyone who visited this blog and appreciated all the design freebies I shared. Special thanks also goes to thousands of our regular subscribers. And huge huge thanks goes to our sponsors and those who donated and helped keep designfreebies running. Thank you and hopefully I’ll be able to share more and better design freebies on its second year and beyond.

Now let’s talk about today’s article. Since I haven’t done any tutorials here in designfreebies for quite some time now, I decided to look around and gather some of the best and freshest Adobe Illustrator vector tutorials for 2010. Rounded them up and came with a dozen early 2010 best vector tutorials. Please take a moment to review and learn from some of these fantastic Adobe Illustrator design tutorial articles from around the web.

1. Creating a Les Paul Guitar in Illustrator

Craig of Madtuts showed us an in-depth tutorial on creating a highly detailed Les Paul guitar in Adobe Illustrator.

2. Create A Cute Vector Octopus in Illustrator with Simple Shapes

This is a very simple and straightforward tutorial about creating simple shapes and using the Pathfinder tools to manipulate them to create your very own cute vector octopus.

3. Illustrator tutorial: create a 6-egg box

An interesting tutorial about creating some eggs inside an egg box using simple 3D and lighting effects in Illustrator.

4. Create A Mouthwatering Chocolate Covered Strawberry

This is an intermediate level vector tutorial using Adobe Illustrator CS4 where you will learn how to use Ellipse tool, Pencil tool, Pathfinder panel, Gradient panel, and Custom Art Brushes to create a mouthwatering strawberry covered with chocolate.

5. Illustrator tutorial: create a yummy vector cupcake

After indulging yourself with the choco strawberry, here’s another one from Pehaa, creating a yummy vector cupcake in Adobe Illustrator CS4 with downloadable source file ai file.

6. Create An Editable Metal Type Treatment

Vectips shared with us this simple yet amazing tutorial that uses the Appearance panel to create a type treatment that is fully editable when it is done.

7. Create A Briefcase Icon

Another great vector tutorial from Vectips using basic shapes, gradient and other effects in Illustrator to create a cool briefcase icon that you can also apply similar techniques to other icons, logos and illustrations.

8. Create a Colorful, Vector Carnival Mask

A highly detailed vector tutorial from vector tuts+. This colorful mask was intricately drawn and every detail explained.

9. Create a Stylized First Aid Icon in Illustrator

This tutorial uses a combination of craft and Illustrator’s 3D tools to create a first aid icon. Techniques learned from this tutorial is also applicable to other realistic round edged vector icons and illustrations.

10. Creating a Toaster-Popping Illustration

Another great vector tutorial from Vector Tuts+. This tutorial demonstrated effectively the use of Illustrator 3D tools, gradients and the not so often used but absolutely useful Chrome effect.

11. Illustrator Tutorial: Vector Handphone

Check out this tutorial to learn how to create your own cool gadget like this vector handphone in Adobe Illustrator using simple shape tools and gradients.

12. Draw a beautiful female character

Aimonkey shows us how to create a beautiful female cartoon character in Adobe Illustrator using path tool and some basic shapes.

I grew up learning traditional painting and have also seen how digital painting emerged, opening a new era in visual arts. Digital painting is applied using digital tools such as a computer, a digitizing tablet with stylus, and softwares like Corel Painter, ArtRage, openCanvas, GIMP, PaintShop Pro and the most widely used and popular Adobe Photoshop. All these digital tools are used to try to mimic what traditional media has, like utilizing different kinds of digital brushes and effects.

Digital painting is also similar to a traditional painting environment minus the mess. Of course, who wouldn’t miss, aside from the mess, the smell of oil and acrylic paints, and the emotional strokes your brushes create against the canvass. Admittedly, I do. Many times I wanted to try doing oil again but never got the time. But definitely I want to try some digital painting myself, probably on my leisure time, if I can afford one.

There has been always debates on which is better, much like the traditional vs digital photography debate. And there will always be drawbacks and benefits. While digital painting gives the artist ease of working in a virtual, organized and mess-free environment, a lot of traditional artist will argue that there is more control when you are holding a physical brush in your hand and there will always be something missing that the digital world can’t provide.

In as much as I want to talk more about digital and traditional painting, there are much more information and resources around that you can read comparing both. And if you really want to learn more and perhaps master the art of digital painting, there’s nothing much better than to learn it using Adobe Photoshop. There are a lot of digital painting tutorials around but most of them are non-Photoshop or combinations of Photoshop and 3D or other softwares. But most of us are only familiar with Photoshop, so I gathered purely Photoshop tutorials that discusses in details the process, techniques and tips you’ll need to learn and master digital painting. So here are 20 awesome Photoshop tutorials that you can read through and learn. Enjoy!

1. Photoshop Painting Tutorial by Ionen

2. The Making of Frodo by Vishal Pawar

3. The Making of Aretha Franklin by Jason Seiler

4. Portrait of Nathan by Jason Seiler

5. The Making of Halloween Witch by Amber Chen

6. Bioshock Videogame Digital Painting by Roberto Campus

7. Landscape Painting with Photoshop by Alain Descamps

8. Me and Louie’s Sister by Daniel Hammonds

9. Painting a Tree Frog by Richard Harris

10. First Digital Painting Tutorial by Ethe

11. Little Panda Girl Digital Painting Video Tutorial by Rodney Mella

12. Making of Naughty Robot by gigsmella

13. Photoshop Concept Car Tutorial by Martin Tyminski

14. Do You Want to Play With Me? by Mélanie

15. Creating a Photoreal 2D Motorcycle by Renze Rispens

16. “Hanagumori” Digital Painting Tutorial by Dianae

17. How to Draw a Portrait in Photoshop by Constantin Potorac

18. Painting Stone and Rock in Photoshop

19. “Aburod Terra” Digital Painting Photoshop Tutorial by Alexiuss

20. “Praetorian” Digital Painting Photoshop Tutorial by Alexiuss

It seems like ages since I last shared a vector tutorial here. The last one was “Vector Tutorial: Creating Your Own Vector iPhone“, and with the quite busy schedule I’ve had these past few months I haven’t got much time to do another lengthy tutorial until this time. Luckily, I was able to find time to do one. Probably my last tutorial for the year. So I hope you’ll be able to get along with this one.

It’s December, and Christmas Season is in the air, so there’s nothing more appropriate than to show you how to create some shiny vector Christmas balls using Adobe Illustrator (CS4). So lets get it on.

Here’s a preview first of the Christmas balls that we will do with this tutorial.

Part 1 – The Christmas Ball

Step 1: Creating the basic shape

The Christmas ball shape consists of just two basic shapes, circle for the body and a small rectangle for the neck.

(1) Overlap both shapes as seen above.

(2) Open the “Pathfinder palette” and use the “Unite” tool to combine the two shapes into one.

(3) Cut the shape exactly in the middle to leave just one-half of the shape. To do that, you can overlap a rectangle big enough to cover half of the shape and use the “Minus Front” from the pathfinder palette (icon next to unite tool).

Step 2: Creating the 3D ball

Fill the whole shape with white and stroke to none. After that, go to Effect > 3D > Revolve. Set the parameters as shown in the 3D dialog box image below.

To set the “shading color” click “More Options” to reveal the additional options. Use “Custom” as the Shading Color and set the color to red (R-255, G-0, B-0). Click “Ok” to apply the 3D settings and produce the 3D ball shown below.

Step 3: Adding shade and highlights

Now let’s add some shade and highlights to our dull looking 3D ball. They consist of three shapes, one cresent moon shaped shade and two highlights in circle and droplet shape as shown in the image below.

After creating the 3 shapes, apply the following effects and settings to each of them.

Shade: Fill with “Gradient” using “Fade to black” with settings as shown below. After filling with gradient, apply “Gaussian blur” effect (Effect > Blur > Gaussian Blur) with radius set to “20″. Then set the “Transparency” (Window > Transparency) to “Multiply” with “70%” opacity.

Highlight 1: Select the circle shaped hightlight 1 and apply gradient fill using also “fafe to black” with similar settings shown below. Apply the same “Gaussian Blur” with radius set to 20. Set transparency to “Color Dodge” with 100% opacity.

Highlight 2: The second highlight is similar to the first in gradient fill settings and transparency (color dodge) but without the Gaussian blur effect.

So there you go. We have completed the first part of our tutorial where you should already have one shiny red ball similar to the image shown below.

Part 2 – The Crown

Step 1: Creating the crown shape

(1) Create a comb-liked shape similar to the one shown below. Add a middle node on top of the shape using the “Add anchor point tool” from the “Pen tool” then copy the shape.

(2) Move the node up a bit using the “Direct Selection tool” (white filled arrow from the toolbar) to create a similar curve shown below.

(3) Now paste the previously copied shape on front and do the same node shifting but this time moving it down to create a similar curve.

Applying color, shades and highlights to the crown are done in five easy steps shown below.

(1) Fill the bigger crown shape with R-187, G-135, B-50, then move inside just a little bit the two sides of the smaller crown shape on front (using direct selection tool on nodes to be moved).

(2) Select the front crown shape and copy it first (for the shadow), then apply “Fade to black” gradient again using settings shown above. Apply Gaussian blur with 2.0 radius and transparency set to 100% “screen”.

(3) Now paste the copied object at the back, fill it with black and apply Gaussian Blur with 2.0 radius and set transparency to “Multiply”.

(4) For the crown shade on top, create an oval shaped object on top, fill it again with “Fade to black” gradient with similar settings as seen on the 4th image above and set the transparency to 100% “Multiply”.

(5) Finally, create an irregularly shaped object (an oval shape will do) as our final crown highlight on the top rightmost part of the crown. Fill it with white and apply Gaussian blur with 5.0 radius.

Step 2: Adding the string hook and string

(1) Create two circles then subtract the inner from the outer circle using the “minus front tool” from the pathfinder palette to create a donut shaped object.

(2) Create a bigger circle similar to the image shown above, then subtract it again from the donut shaped object.

(3) Curve both ends of the hook by editing the nodes using the “direct selection tool” (white arrow on the toolbar).

(4) Fill the object with linear gradient with colors from dark (R-96, G-57, B-19) to light (R-187, G-135, B-50).

Next thing is to add a string on the hook. You simply create two oval shape loops and shape the string using the “Pen tool”. Fill all objects with gradient from ochre (R-187, G-135, B-50) to yellow (R-249, G-237, B-50) with angle set to 24 degrees and slider location at 80% near yellow.

Putting it all together, at this point, our Christmas ball is almost done. We just need to add some shadow later on.

Part 3 – Adding shadow, changing colors and decorative patterns

Step 1: Adding shadow

Adding shadow is very simple. I have covered much about this in past vector tutorials. So quickly, you just need to create an oval underneath the Christmas ball. Position it somewhere on the left against the light’s direction.

Fill the shape with “Radial Gradient” from black to white “Aspect Ratio” set to 50%. After that, apply Gaussian blur with 20 pixel radius.

Step 2: Changing Colors

Changing our Christmas ball color is easy. Select the 3D ball object, then go to “Window > Appearance” to open the “Appearance Palette”. From the “Apperance Palette”, click “3D Revolve” to open again the 3D dialog menu.

With the 3D dialog menu open, select “More options” button to display additional options. Click the “Shading Color” current color tab (red in our example). The “Color Picker” dialog menu will open where you can now mix and set your new color. Click “ok” for both the color picker and 3D revolve dialog box to apply the new color.

We can try “green” this time.

Step 3: Adding decorative patterns

Let’s add some snow flake pattern to compliment our Christmas theme and add a variety of Christmas balls to our collection. You can get your free snow flake vector graphics from our previous post, “Free Vectors: Early Winter Snow Flakes“.

First, you need to copy your vector pattern and convert it to symbol. Open the “Symbol” palette by simply going to “Window > Symbol”. Drag your pattern to the symbol palette to convert it to symbol.

Now select the 3D Christmas ball and open the 3D dialog box similar to what we did while changing color. In the 3D dialog box, click the “Map Art” button.

In the “Map Art” dialog box, you basically need to do 3 things. First, select the surface where you will apply the pattern to. In our case, it’s surface number 2. Then select the symbol you’d like to use, in our example, it’s the snow flake symbol. Then lastly, turn on the “preview” option so you can see how your pattern is positioned in your surface. You can adjust the pattern’s position and size inside the Map Art dialog box. Clik “ok” when done to apply.

And here’s our new Christmas ball with some cool snow flake patterns.

That’s it. Whew!

Finally, once more, here’s the collection of some colored and patterned vector Christmas ball that we did for this tutorial. Download link for the source Adobe Illustrator file after the break.