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.

There are so many photography enthusiasts these days than film photography days. Although film vs digital photography is still debatable, it’s very much obvious that digital photography is aggressively trying to take over film. But a lot of old school photo hobbyists are reassuring that film is definitely here to stay. And whether you are into film or digital photography, you still need post processing at one point in time. Post processing is one of the most important aspects of digital photography; it is just as important as the photo shoot itself. And ever since I featured one of our popular post here about photography, the “10 Tutorials on How to Create Stunning HDR (High Dynamic Range) Images“, I got lots of questions and requests for information about post-processing. So I gathered some of the most popular and useful Photoshop post processing techniques around and featured them all here today. Scroll down and hopefully you find the technique you’re looking for to achieve the kind of result you really want.

1. Adobe Camera RAW for Beginners: Basic Adjustments

PhotoTuts+ has lots of post processing tutorials. I have selected and featured some from them, and to start it off we have Adobe Camera RAW’s basic adjustment tutorial. In this screencast we look at some of the basic adjustments and how they work. Some adjustments work independently while others work best when used together.

2. Quick & Flexible Photo Colour Manipulation

Another great video tutorial from PhotoTut+, in this tutorial we look at a quick, simple and very flexible way to manipulate colour within an image. We’re focusing upon two example photographs to demonstrate the effect.

3. Black and White Photoshop Conversion Techniques

And last one from PhotoTuts+. In this article we run through the most commonly used black and white conversion methods, outlining the pros and cons of each. Instructions are provided for Photoshop CS and if the technique’s available, Photoshop Elements.

4. Image Retouching: Advanced Skin Softening

In this article from photo.net’s Digital Photography Workflow Series, Jean-Sébastien offers advice on how to achieve skin softening using low and high pass filtering. The article is enhanced with illustrative figures and screen shots, and includes example images from Jean’s portfolio. Whether you are just entering the world of digital photography and need some tips and advice on how best to post-process your images, or are a seasoned pro, the insights shared here should be helpful with your own digital post-processing techniques.

5. Exposure Blending Turorial

I don’t want to feature another HDR tutorial this time, but I just can’t help not to include this one to demonstrate simple blending of multiple exposures to create stunning HDR effects.

6. Quick Selective Sharpening Technique In Photoshop CS3/CS4

A very quick tutorial on selective sharpening technique for Photoshop CS3/4. Now you can apply sharpening only where it is needed, such as eyes and hair, and leave skin textures alone. Covers use of layers, selective sharpening techniques, portrait, retouching, filters, brushes, masks, groups, photoshop.

7. Noise Reduction by Image Averaging

Image noise can compromise the level of detail in your digital or film photos, and so reducing this noise can greatly enhance your final image or print. This tutorial compares a couple common methods for noise reduction, and also introduces and demonstrates an alternative technique: averaging multiple exposures to reduce noise. Image averaging is common in high-end astrophotography, but is arguably underutilized for other types of low-light and night photography.

8. Lens Correction Filter in Photoshop

Learn lens correction filter in Photoshop to be able to repair all kinds of distortions. Not only can it remedy the bulging created by a wide-angle lens, and the weird distortion created by taking a photo too close to subject, but it can also straighten images taken at angles and make them appear as if they were shot straight on.

9. Add Dynamic Lighting to a Flat Photograph

Learn from this tutorial how to spice up a fairly dull and flat photograph. It’s very easy and fast! Go from flat photo to a uniquely lit style.

10. How to Effectively Use Contrast, Auto Levels, and Batch Processing

This tutorial will show you a way of safely using Auto Levels and a better way to adjust the contrast. All this can be built into an Action Script that can be turned into a droplet for drag and drop batch processing.

11. Quick Tip: Color Correction in Photoshop with the Curves Adjustment Tool

One of the most important and useful image correction tool we use in Photoshop is the Curves Adjustment tool, it  not only helps us in creating desired contrast, but at the same time it allows us to color correct our images. This is another tutorial from PsdTuts+ that will teach you how to use this tool to color correct photos efficiently.

12. Photo Enhancing Using Dragan and David Hill Effects

Here’s a good one created by Erwin Lazaro at The Digital Photographer Philippines forum. This tutorial is a fusion of Dragan Effect using burning and dodging and Dave Hill Effect using some High Pass and Adjustment Layers.

Halloween is fast approaching and there will be lots of Halloween themed events like parties, concerts, etc. Along with this special October celebration, you will need materials for posters, greeting cards, invitations, decorative items and many more halloween related stuff to make it more creepy and halloweenish. So to spice up your Halloween designs, I have created a one-stop-halloween-shop gathering some of the best free Halloween graphic design materials from various resources around the web.

This collection is jam packed with icons, fonts, vector cliparts, fonts, Photoshop brushes and many more. So put on your ghoulish face, download the materials of your choice for your designs and get your dark creative juices flowing.

Vector Clipart and Icons

1. Smashing Pumpkins: A Free Halloween Vector Icon Set

2. Vector Halloween Cliparts

3. Halloween Icons by Iconshock

4. Dia de Muertos Dock Icons by ~chicho21net

5. kearone’s Helloween icons

6. Happy Halloween Vector Freebies from Kawacoco Illustrator-labo

7. Sad Monkey Design Vector Skulls and Flowers

8. Skull Vector Images from Yaoyuan

9. Halloween Icons by Zeus Box

10. Trick or Treat Halloween Icons from Iconfactory

Fonts

1. You the Murderer

2. Haunting Attraction 1.0

3. Jack Lantern BB

4. Grunt Reaper

5. Melt Bad Manners ww, Regular

6. Blood Crow, Regular

7. Kiddie Halloween

8. Halloweenie Borders

9. Plasma Drip

10. Caracura

Photoshop Brushes

1. Blood SplatterisM

2. Ady’s Blood Splatter

3. The Real Shelob Halloween Photoshop Brushes

4. Skull Brushes by ~Synthexstock

5. Spooky Brush Set by by ~anodyne-stock

6. Bat Demon Wings Brushes by ~Falln-Brushes

7. Dark Places Brush Set by ~anodyne-stock

8. Spider Brushes Set 1 by ~Falln-Brushes

9. Halloween IV: Vintage by ~therealShelob

10. Dark -n- Gothic Photoshop & GIMP Brushes

11. Cobwebs Photoshop Brushes by *redheadstock

12. Arcane Circles-Symbols Brushes by *redheadstock

Images, Textures and backgrounds

1. Texture 026 by ~Synthetic-Textures

2. Seamless Spiderweb Texture by `FantasyStock

3. Spooky paper texture by ~ImAnUpstart

4. Halloween Texture Pack by ~asunder

5. Horror Masks PSD Pack by ~Pathfinder-Stock

5. Horror texture pack – rar by ~cichco

Tutorials

1. Halloween Pumpkin Wallpaper in Photoshop

2. Zombie Photoshop Tutorial

3. Texturing Basics in Photoshop

4. Grunge & Dark Art Tutorial

5. Blood Trail Method Photoshop Tutorial

I have been fascinated lately on how beautiful these HDR images are. So I took  time to gather some of the best HDR tutorials around to learn more about the techniques used in this interesting photo artistry.

1. Merging HDR in Photoshop CS3 Tutorial from Photoshopcafe.com

This tutorial will teach you how to shoot, merge and tone-map photos to extend the dynamic range and produce those painted looking results.

2. How to create HDR photos with free Qtpfsgui and GIMP from Design live

Now here’s a nice one for users of free and open source softwares Qtpfsgui and Gimp. It also include a simple technique in faking HDR effect using curves.

3. HDR tutorial from a travel photography blog Stuck in Customs

This is one comprehensive tutorial from a real HDR pro using Photomatix and Photoshop. Trey Ratcliff, a seasoned photographer and author of this blog, also authored and published a new book called “A World in HDR” featuring so many stuff about HDR including hundreds of his own gorgeous HDR photos. This tutorial also includes a downloadable pdf version.

4. Tone Mapping HDR tutorial from Second Picture

This HDR tutorial effectively demonstrates HDR using tone mapping in Photomatix Pro 3.0.

5. HDR Tutorial from dannorcott.co.uk

An easy, straight-forward tutorial on how to create HDR photos using Photomatix Pro by HDRsoft.

6. HDR Tutorial with Photoshop post processing techniques from thinsite.net

Another easy to follow HDR tutorial from capturing HDR shots, to Photomatix, to post-processing using Photoshop.

7. HDR Tutorial by Markus Linke

This tutorial explains several ways to capture HDR shots and how to create beautiful high dynamic range HDR-pictures using Photomatix and Photoshop.

8. Photomatix Pro HDR tutorial from Before the Coffee

A highly detailed and informative tutorial on HDR using Photomatix Pro.

9. HDR Tutorial Guide from Vanilla Days

Another comprehensive guide on HDR authored by an extraordinary photographer and HDR expert Pete Carr.

10. Single Image HDR Creation from Beyond Pixels

And finaly, a tutorial on how to create a well cooked HDR using just a single image.

That’s it. I hope you get the most out of all those HDR tutorials to create your own stunning HDR images. You are also welcome to showcase your own HDR photos. Just include the links to your images in your comment.

My very first Photoshop tutorial here in this blog is a simple Layer Mask tutorial. Now let’s simplify it further using the same method plus another one. Again, let me reiterate, that this is just a simple tutorial intended for newbie Photoshop users, to demonstrate to them how easy it is to create this effect. The basic materials are just randomly selected and the final image is not intended to be a creative piece of art to be judged by artsy critics. Hope I made that clear. =)

In this tutorial, we will also make use of our vector grunge borders we previously shared in this blog, the first “50 grunge borders and frames” set and the second “50 more grunge borders“. We will pick and use one from the first set to easily create a photo with cool grungy edges.

What we need are just two basic materials, a photo and a grunge border or frame which can either be a vector or a raster image.

First method

1. Open your photo in Photoshop. Shown below is our original photo.

2. Pick one grunge border and open it in Illustrator (I picked one from the first 50 vector grunge border set).*

3. Select and copy the vector border from Illustrator.

4. Paste it in Photoshop. You will then be prompted to select an option. Select “Path” and press ok.

5. Open the “Paths” palette from Window > Paths, and click the flyout button.

6. From the Paths flyout menu, select “Make Selection”. The “Make Selection” option window will prompt, just click ok.

7. While your path selection is active, go back to your “Layer” palette and click the “Layer Mask” button below. You will have a similar looking layer like the one shown below.

Done! Here’s our final image with grunge photo edges.

* Alternatively, if you don’t have Illustrator, you can also open the EPS vector file in Photoshop. But instead of using the Path method we described above in making a selection, you can just load the grunge border selection and use it as your layer mask.

Second Method

The second method is easier. This time, we will use a separate image layer containing our grunge border as clipping mask for our photo.

1. Open your original photo in Photoshop.

2. Open your grunge border in Photoshop. On the other hand, you can also open your grunge border vector file in Illustrator, same as what we did in the first method.

3. Copy the grunge border image (either from Photoshop or Illustrator) and paste it in your photo. You will now have a separate layer for the photo and another layer for your grunge border.

4. Arrange your layer in such a way that your photo layer is on top of your grunge border layer.

5. Hold down Alt (Windows) or Option (Mac), position your pointer on the line between both layers (the pointer will change into two overlapping circles) and click. To remove the mask, do the same.

After you click between layers, your Layer palette will look something like the one shown below.

That’s it! Piece of cake, right? Now if you want to use our grunge border vector files to try it out with your own photo but missed the links I provided above for our two sets of free grunge borders and frames, here are the links once more.

1. 50 Free Vector Grunge Borders and Frames (1st set)
2. 50 More Vector Frames With Grunge Borders (2nd set)