Paperflame » photoshop tutorial

Photoshop Tutorial: Rotate View Tool – CS4 Only

admin — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 05:17:03 +0000

Adobe Photoshop CS4 Rotate View Video Tutorial.

For a clearer and/or larger video choose “HD” in “Full Screen”

Top 100 Plus Design Blogs: Inspire and Re-wire Your Desire

admin — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 00:17:15 +0000

This list of Top 100 Plus Design Blogs is used mostly for my personal inspiration. Design Blogs come in many flavors. These flavors are more dynamic than most web docs due to the nature of their creators… designers at heart. I hope you find a blog that you have not seen yet. I will append this list as I see fit… If you have a Design Blog and it’s not on the list (and you think it should be on this Top list) submit your site in the comments. We would all love to have a look see. I’m at 125 design blogs and counting. Here we go (in no particular order)… I was going to just make a list, but decided to put a little more heart into it. Plus, this way you can get a visual taste of what your eyes will encounter when you visit a site.

fuelyourcreativity.com

wearejustcreative.com

signalnoise.com

sharebrain.info

redswish.co.uk

positivespaceblog.com

rwillustrator.blogspot.com

elliotjaystocks.com/blog

justcreativedesign.com

arbent.net

creativebits.org

dache.ch

underconsideration.com/brandnew

frederiksamuel.com/blog

blog.spoongraphics.co.uk

webdesignerdepot.com

dezinerfolio.com

knowtebook.com

crazyleafdesign.com/blog

webresourcesdepot.com

uxbooth.com/view/blog

thefloatingfrog.co.uk

denisdesigns.com/blog

webdesigndev.com

designshard.com

nikibrown.com/designoblog

nouveller.com

littleboxofideas.com/blog

dawghousedesignstudio.com

colourlovers.com/blog

rob-sheridan.com/sketchblog

More To Come!
Please Submit Sites in the Comments Section.

Photoshop Tutorial: Using Smart Objects

admin — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 23:58:48 +0000

Most graphics programs use rasterized images. When applying transforms like resizing or such the original pixel information is lost. Most of you know you can’t play around with an image in Photoshop and preserve the pixel information of the original image. Well, this is where Smart Objects come into play. They don’t call em’ Smart for nothing.

Smart Objects can be placed or imported as a layers. Smart Objects allow the designer to transform the original image using – scaling, distorting, skewing etc. all the while maintaining the original pixel resolution of the original image. A dream for designers. One can scale the image to the size of an icon and then back to its original size without a loss of image quality. No rasterizing is taking place until the final output when you “flatten” said image.

Here’s a quick example…

Create a Smart Object… there are a couple ways

1. Using Photoshop click File > Open as Smart Object. This is for when you want to open an image directly as a Smart Object.

2. You can paste from Adobe Illustrator. You will be able to choose to past as a Smart Object in a the dialogue box.

3. The other way is within a Photoshop image document, click File > Place – then choose the image file you want to place as a Smart Object. This is for placing an image as a Smart Object layer into an existing project document.

After creating a Smart Object, you will notice in the Photoshop layers palette that the layer looks a little different than a normal layer. It is now easy to tell the difference between Smart Object layers and normal layers. There will be an inset or “badge” in the Smart Objects layer.

Once this Smart Object is created you can go ahead with all your transforms back and forth without losing the resolution of the original image that you placed in as a Smart Object.

Here I placed a Smart Object layer next to a normal layer. They are both the same image, but the one on the right was placed into the document as a Smart Object. Here they will look the same on the canvas except for how they are shown in the layers palette.

Now, After I a re-sized the canvas to 25% then back to its original size, then back to 10% then back to it’s original size you can really see where the Smart Object does it’s magic. Notice the pixelation that has occurred with the normal image layer on the left. You will notice the Smart Object layer on the right has maintained it’s original resolution throughout all the transforms that I put it through! Awesome.

Remember, both these images are layers in the same document canvas. The Smart Object clearly shines. The normal layer is highly degraded. The Smart object holds it’s original quality because during the resizing transformations that I put it through, each time I transformed the image the Smart Object re-sampled the original Smart Object image.

This is just a prime example on why the usage of Smart Objects is a wonderful thing.

Photoshop Tutorial: Create Simple Paper Texture

admin — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 20:58:54 +0000

OK, this is pretty basic. It may be useful for the beginner or just be a simple reference refresher for anybody. There are many ways to create paper textures. Here I am posting a baseline tutorial that can be expanded on in many different ways. Of course, different colors and styles can be created with experimentation. This should get you started though.

Open Photoshop and create a new white RGB image that is 60 x 60 pixels (you can really make it any size).

Next, go to Filter > Noise > Add Noise. Set the setting as I show. Experimentation is most expected on your part!

Now go to Filter > Stylize >Emboss. Select settings similar to what is shown.

You now have a simple paper texture to work with. There are many different variables and “looks” that can be achieved if you try out different settings using the different filters in Photoshop. There is also a Brushed Aluminum tutorial here at Paperflame that is a variant of making a paper texture. I myself like grey paper textures. To change colors go ahead and go to Image > Adjustments > Hue/Saturation. Here you can mess around with color adjustments like so. I remove all color by sliding the Saturation slider all the way to the left.

That’s it… Experiment on your own!

Photoshop Tutorial: How to create a Favicon

admin — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 03:18:17 +0000

In your browser, look above, do you see the purple PaperFlame logo displayed to the left of the URL? It’s small - 16 x 16 pixels. It will also display within the tab of tabbed browsers. Not all web sites have them. I think they are a great touch for any website. Let me take a moment to show you how to make a “favicon” using Photoshop. There are other ways to make them.. but for those of you that consider Photoshop your “best friend” (you know who you are) let’s stay true.

First off, Photoshop (mighty as it is) can’t output the .ico (icon) file format. There is a plugin that can do this for us so don’t fret. You will have to install it before we can continue. Get the icon plugin for Photoshop at Telegraphics it’s free, but I am sure they would love a donation if you can spare it. Because of this freebee plugin, I am also listing this tutorial under the “Free Stuff” category.

Done installing the plugin? Let’s get crackin’.

A 16 x 16 image is a very small canvas to be working with. Lets start by creating an image that is 64 x 64. You can work with 32 x 32 if you wish but 64 x 64 is a bit better on the eyes. If you change size remember to stick with even multiples. Create a new image File> New – Set the size to 64 x 64.

You most likely have your own logo already. Put the image you want into the 64 x 64 image we just created. At the 16 x 16 size, not all images look OK. If not… you will have to be a bit more creative and come up with some version of your logo, initials, and/or color palette. Work with something that ends up looking clean at 16 x 16.

To try your design out, choose Image> Image Size then change the image to 16 x 16 and choose to re-sample the image using “Bicubic Sharper” (CS2 and above). After testing, Bicubic Sharper seems to keep the original image looking it’s best when reduced. You may have to experiment a bit until you get something that looks good at such a small size.

This image I made of the asterix looks pretty good at the 16 x 16 size so I will go with it.

Once you have that perfect little image created, to save just go to File> Save As and name the file favicon.ico and be exact. The ICO file format is now available through the use of the previously installed plugin. Sweet!

That’s it! Well almost. You then need to upload the favicon.ico file to the root of you webserver. The root is where your index.html file is or it may be called homepage.html on some servers. The point is, do not put the favicon.ico file in a sub folder of the root (/) directory. Don’t place it in an “images” folder or a “misc” folder. Just drop it wherever your homepage file exists.

Almost there… you are now going to have to add a little snipplet of code on each page that you want the favicon to work (I do all of my pages).

Place the code: everything within the < and > symbols and including the < and > symbols themselves somewhere within the section of your webpages.

The one line below this line is the code:

Example of where to place the code in your web page.
————————-

————————-

Done. Upload your modified page(s) and see if the favicon image shows. If not it may help to clear your browsers cash, then reload. Other things that work to get the favicon to appear are to bookmark the page in your browser or close your browser altogether and re-launch your browser, then go to your website again.

Good Luck!