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

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.

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

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

HDR or High Dynamic Range imaging (also HRDI) is a technique that allows a greater dynamic and wide range of luminances between light (direct sunlight) and dark areas (shadows) of a scene more than normal digital imaging can produce. It is also the process of taking several exposures consisting of a normal, under-exposed and over-exposed shots, and merging them together into one composite HDR image retaining all interesting details from all three exposures. If you really want to delve and learn more about HDR, here’s a good technical read about it, FAQ – HDR images for photography from hdrsoft.com.

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)