Filed under Adobe Photoshop, Articles, clipping, Design, design tutorial, masking, methods, photoshop, photoshop tutorial, selection, techniques, Tips by Chris Spooner
One of the most important Photoshop skills you need as a Designer is the ability to clip out images of various detail using masks or selections. Whether you’re creating designs for print, web or just fancy artwork it’s inevitable that you will be faced with the task of removing a subject from its background in [...]
Continue Reading "Photoshop Masking Techniques Everyone Should Know"Filed under adobe illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, Design, design tutorial, Graphic design, Illustrator, illustrator tutorial, photoshop, photoshop tutorial, poster, Tutorial, Tutorials by Chris Spooner
My absolute favourite style of motorcycle is the custom “bobber”. I love the stripped down appearance and the raw vintage styling. It’s my plan to chop up a bike of my own one day, but for now I have to settle with designing custom motorcycle posters instead. Follow this step by step Photoshop and Illustrator [...]
Continue Reading "Create a Dark Vintage Style Motorcycle Poster Design"Filed under Abstract, adobe illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, design tutorial, Graphic design, guide, How to, illustration, illustrator tutorial, lines, photoshop tutorial, Tutorial, Tutorials, vibrant by Chris Spooner
Follow this step by step tutorial to create a cool abstract lines design with awesome vibrant lighting effects. We’ll use Illustrator’s easy tools to create the vector linework then add a range of glows, colours and effects in Photoshop to finish the design with a cool grainy but luminous style. It’s difficult to describe this [...]
Continue Reading "How To Create a Grainy Abstract Lines Poster Design"Filed under adobe illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, Design, design tutorial, Graphic design, illustration, Illustrator, photoshop, Tutorial, Tutorials, typographic, Typography, Vector by Chris Spooner
In today’s tutorial we’re going to create a typographic blackletter layout full of character with dirty textures. We’ll begin by creating the layout in Illustrator before importing everything into Photoshop to bring the design to life with colour, tone and weathered textures. The typographic design we’re going to create is the quote ‘All Roads Lead [...]
Continue Reading "How To Create a Dirty Typographic Blackletter Design"Filed under actions, Adobe Photoshop, Articles, Design, design resources, effect, Graphic design, Photo Effects, photography, photoshop, Resources by Chris Spooner
There’s an abundance of Photoshop actions available that allow you to quickly transform your photos with a retro or vintage effect, the problem is choosing the best actions from this vast collection. Over 40 Photoshop actions were downloaded and tested to create this showcase of the best freely downloadable retro and vintage actions. The original [...]
Continue Reading "25 Tried and Tested Retro & Vintage Photoshop Actions"Filed under Adobe Photoshop, Design, design tutorial, Graphic design, photoshop, photoshop tutorial, poster, skull, Tutorial, Tutorials, western by Chris Spooner
I recently watched the movie Tombstone (1993) on TV, which gave me the inspiration to try my hand at designing a wild west themed movie poster. Follow this step by step tutorial to create a grungy western poster design, see the whole design process from start to finish as the various stock resources are manipulated [...]
Continue Reading "Design a Grungy Western Movie Poster in Photoshop"Filed under adobe illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, Art, Articles, Design, Graphic design, illustration, Inspiration, roundup, showcase, Vector, vector graphics, vexel, vextor by Chris Spooner
Vector and Vexel Art are two techniques of creating highly realistic images using Photoshop or Illustrator. As the name suggests, Vector Art is built entirely of vector graphics whereas Vexel art is pixel based, but the process is very similar in that layers and layers are drawn to form the overall portrait. The more layers, [...]
Continue Reading "35 Beautiful Examples of Vector & Vexel Art Portraits"Filed under Adobe Photoshop, Art, Articles, Design, design tutorial, digital painting, Graphic design, links, Resources, Tutorials by Chris Spooner
I’ve always loved browsing the insanely detailed and realistic artwork created by digitally painting in Photoshop, so this year I’m planning on setting aside some time to learn the basics myself. I’ve read through numerous online tutorials and have hand picked the best to share with you today. All the tutorials showcased in this post [...]
Continue Reading "20 Tutorials for Learning Digital Painting Techniques"Filed under Adobe Photoshop, design tutorial, Graphic design, metal, photoshop, photoshop tutorial, text effect, Tutorial, Tutorials by Chris Spooner
Follow this step by step tutorial to create a realistic pewter style metal text effect in Photoshop. The best part is it’s really easy! Just a couple of Photoshop layer styles is all it takes to create the basic effect, with a subtle tweak or two to perfect the lighting to maximise the realism. This [...]
Continue Reading "Super Easy Pewter Style Metal Text Effect in Photoshop"Filed under 2011, adobe illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, Articles, design tutorial, Graphic design, greatest hits, illustrator tutorial, links, photoshop tutorial, popular, posts, Tutorials by Chris Spooner
It’s that time of year when I reflect on another year’s worth of design tutorials here on Blog.SpoonGraphics and check over the stats to see which posts ended up proving the most popular. Here’s a roundup of the most popular tutorial posts from 2011 based on the number of StumbleUpon ‘thumbs up’ votes. If you [...]
Continue Reading "Blog.SpoonGraphics Design Tutorials: Greatest Hits 2011"Filed under Adobe Photoshop, Design, design tutorial, Graphic design, lighting effects, Photo Effects, photoshop, photoshop tutorial, Tutorial, Tutorials by Chris Spooner
The post-processing stage of photography is definitely the most fun and creative. It’s where you can really transform your otherwise bland and boring photos into really intense images that draw in the viewer. In this tutorial we’ll cover the process of editing your landscape photos in Photoshop to give an epic, almost fantasy style appearance [...]
Continue Reading "How To Intensify Your Landscape Photos in Photoshop"Filed under Adobe Photoshop, Articles, Brushes, Design, design resources, designer resources, Freebie, links, photoshop, photoshop brushes, post, Resources, stamps by Chris Spooner
It’s inevitable that one day in your design career you’ll need to create some kind of letter, postcard or parcel complete with postal marks. Be ready for that day with this roundup of high quality Photoshop brushes. These sets contain numerous high resolution brushes based on various stamps, post marks and mail signs from around [...]
Continue Reading "High Quality Stamp & Post Mark Photoshop Brushes"Filed under Adobe Photoshop, clean design, definition, depth, detail, interest, modern design, perspective, photoshop, readability, Tips, Typography, Web Design, white space by Cameron
Clean, elegant, and beautiful web design is often a matter of personal perspective. I look at hundreds of websites every week, and several of them stand out to me, but not all of them are necessarily effective. Too often designers boil a concept down too far, producing a final design that is nothing more than [...]
Continue Reading "7 Photoshop tips for designing clean and modern websites"Filed under Adobe Photoshop, Brushes, design resources, Freebies, Giveaway, grain, photoshop, photoshop brushes, resoures, Textures by Chris Spooner
It has been a while since I last posted a set of free Photoshop Brushes, so I thought it was about time I got busy creating a new pack. I always find the simple Photoshop brushes the most useful in my own project work, so I created this subtle grain pack to help add light [...]
Continue Reading "Free High Res Subtle Grain Photoshop Brushes"Filed under adobe illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, Design, design tutorial, Graphic design, photoshop, photoshop tutorial, retro, Tutorial, Tutorials by Chris Spooner
Follow this step by step tutorial to create a 1960′s style retro motorcycle ad for a modern café racer custom. We’ll mock up the ad design using inspiration from original ad designs from the time period then use Photoshop to replicate the basic screen printing effect and textures to give the artwork an aged appearance. [...]
Continue Reading "How To Create a Retro Café Racer Motorcycle Ad Design"Filed under adobe illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, Design, design tutorial, geometric, Graphic design, illustration, illustrator tutorial, lines, photoshop tutorial, poster, retro, Tutorials by Chris Spooner
In the recent typography inspiration showcase a design by Jordan Metcalf particularly caught my interest, which reminded me of the design style used in the Mexico 1968 Olympics branding. I decided to combine these inspirations and create my own poster design artwork in a similar style. Follow this step by step tutorial to create a [...]
Continue Reading "Retro Style Geometric Lines Poster Design Tutorial"Filed under adobe illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, Design, design tutorial, Graphic design, illustration, Illustrator, illustrator tutorial, photoshop, photoshop tutorial, poster, retro, Tutorial, Tutorials, typographic, Typography, Vector by Chris Spooner
Follow this step by step tutorial to create a retro style typographic poster design with distressed textures and a muted colour scheme. We’ll create a typographic layout based on the number ‘one’ using Illustrator’s easy manipulation tools, then switch over to Photoshop to lay out the poster design composition and grunge everything up with some [...]
Continue Reading "How To Create a Retro Style Typographic Poster Design"Filed under Adobe Photoshop, Articles, design resources, Graphic design, links, photography, photos, photoshop, Photoshop actions, Resources, retro, vintage by Chris Spooner
Instagram is one of the most popular apps for the iPhone, allowing users to quickly and easily apply retro style filters to their snapshots to create trendy effects based on authentic photography techniques. You don’t have to limit these effects to your iPhone photos, this post rounds up a collection of high quality Photoshop Actions [...]
Continue Reading "10 Photoshop Actions to Create Instagram Style Effects"Filed under Abstract, adobe illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, Design, design tutorial, geometric, Graphic design, illustration, Illustrator, illustrator tutorial, photoshop tutorial, text effect, Tutorial, Tutorials, Vector, vector graphics by Chris Spooner
I recently stumbled across the new branding for the Canadian Olympic Team, which then reminded me of my recent abstract geometric poster design tutorials, so I decided to combine my technique with the idea of creating a patriotic design with a similar mosaic effect. Following this step by step Illustrator tutorial to create a colourful [...]
Continue Reading "How To Create an Abstract Geometric Mosaic Text Effect"Filed under adobe illustrator, Adobe Photoshop, book cover, character, design tutorial, Graphic design, illustration, Illustrator, illustrator tutorial, photoshop, photoshop tutorial, retro, texture, Tutorials, Vector, vector graphics, vintage by Chris Spooner
Follow this step by step Illustrator and Photoshop tutorial to create a retro style book cover featuring a stylized vector illustration of Superman. We’ll create the Superman illustration with simple vector shapes before laying out the complete retro style book cover with textures in Photoshop. The design we’ll be creating has similar traits to old [...]
Continue Reading "How To Create a Retro Style Superman Book Cover"