Photoshop : Tutorial - Using the Metallic Gradients

You’re probably well aware of the “regular” gradients that come with Photoshop but did you know that there are lots of other gradients that come with the program that are just waiting for you to load them up. In this short tutorial, I’m going to show you how to add extra gradients into the Gradient Picker and how to make a super quick “silver” pipe.

1. Open a new RGB document, 300 x 300 pixels.

2. Select the Rectangular Marquee Tool from the toolbox and draw a long skinny rectangle, similar to the one I’ve drawn below.



In the toolbar, select the Gradient Tool .



3. On the tool options bar, click on the down triangle next to the Gradient thumbnail to open up the Gradient Picker. In the right-corner, click on the triangle to open up the Gradient Picker pop-up menu. At the bottom of the menu you’ll see a list of all the other gradients that come as presets with Photoshop. Cool or what?



4. Choose Metals from the list . Photoshop will ask you if you want to replace your current gradients with the new set or if you want to append (or add) them to your current set. I usually choose Append.

5. Now that the new gradients are added, you can run your mouse over them and you will see that they have names such as Silver, Gold, Brass, Steel Blue and so on.



6. To make the Silver pipe, choose the Silver gradient , then using the gradient tool, click and drag from one side of the rectangular marquee to the other.


7. Ta Da! You now should have one nice looking “silver” pipe, made literally in seconds. Press Ctrl + D (Windows) or Cmd + D (Mac) to deselect the new pipe.

As well as the "metallic" gradients there are quite a few more to choose from so take a look at those ones too.

Design News : Kate Moss - The Font

Some of you font lovers may be interested (or horrified) to hear that Kate Moss now has a new brand. Created in conjunction with typographer Paul Barnes, it looks like this:



You can read more about Brand Moss here on creative review.

Photoshop Quick Tip: How come my Colour Picker looks funny?

This morning one of my trainees was having a problem with the Colour Picker in Photoshop. Normally, when you click on the Foreground or Background Colour Swatch (at the bottom of the Toolbox) it looks like this:



However, this morning it seems like the Photoshop elves had been at the whiskey and the colour picker looked like this instead:

If this happens to you, you can get your normal Photoshop colour picker pop-up back by pressing Ctrl + K (Windows) or Cmd + K (Mac) to open up the General Preferences dialog box. To make sure you get the one you want, under the Color Picker pop-up menu, set the chosen Picker to "Adobe."

Photoshop : Tutorial - Using "Lock Transparent Pixels"

Changing the colour of an object that is semi-transparent or has faded edges in Photoshop is easy when you know how! In this short tutorial, I’m going to show you how to use the “Lock Transparent Pixels” button on the layers palette to do just that.

Let’s start off with a yellow blob. As you can see from the image below, it is definitely yellow in the middle but then it starts to fade out at the edges.

If you try to use the Paint Bucket tool on this faded edge, you will just end up with a circle with very rough edges, as seen below.

To get over this problem, click on the “Lock Transparent Pixels” button near the top of the layers palette in Photoshop.

Note that you cannot use this on the background layer only on layers with transparency.

By locking the transparent pixels, we can now only manipulate the opaque areas of the layer.

Now when I use the Paint Bucket on the yellow blob, the fade is preserved.

Obviously this is a very simple example, but as you can imagine this would be extremely useful when you are designing things like t-shirts or print work where you may need to change an objects fade colour.

Photoshop : Tutorial - Using Filters and a Quick Mask to Create A Border

In this Photoshop tutorial, I’ll show you how to make a border using a quick mask and a couple of filters. It’s quick and easy and you can get all kinds of cool results by using different filters.

1. Open up the image that you want to apply a border to.



2. Using the lasso tool , draw a rectangular(ish) marquee around the area of the image that you want to keep. It doesn’t matter if the edges look a bit rough, that all adds to the, ahem, “character” of the piece.



3. Press Q on the keyboard, or click on the Quick Mask mode button on the Photoshop toolbar.



4. Now we’re going to apply some filters to the area we have Quick Masked. You can play around here and try out several filters to get different effects. For this example, I chose Filter > Brush Stokes > Sprayed Strokes. This opens the Sprayed Filter dialog box.



Here I set the stroke length to 18, the stroke radius to 14 and the stroke direction to left diagonal. Click OK to close this filter.

5. At this point you might like to use this jagged edge as your border or you can go on and try out more filters. Again, I chose Filters > Distort > Glass.



6. The settings used here were Distortion of 7, Smoothness of 3 and Texture set to Frosted. Click OK when you’re happy with the effect.

7. The Quick Masked area will now look quite different than when you first selected it. Press Q on the keyboard to return to Standard Mode. You’ll see the dancing ants indicating the selected area.

8. Invert the selection by choosing Select > Inverse.




9. Create a new layer and make sure that it is selected. Set the foreground colour to white and then using the Paint Bucket tool, click anywhere on the selection to fill the area. Your border should now look something like this:




By adding the white border on a new layer, you haven’t damaged your original image. Now save your masterpiece and impress friends and loved ones with your new found border-making skills.

Free Photoshop Brushes : High Resolution Tattoo Style

I've created five high resolution Photoshop brushes for your viewing pleasure! They are in Tribal Tattoo style and were created in Illustrator and then brought into Photoshop to become the fine upstanding brushes you see today. The brushes are all about 2500 pixels wide or high and have nice smooth lines. You can download them as a zip file below.



Download Zipped Brushes

I'd be delighted to hear from you if you find them useful or like them.

Back from holidays ...

I'm just back from a really nice (and desperately needed!) break from work and commuting. Went to Tunisia for a week to recharge the batteries and get some sun, although the weather has been brilliant here in Ireland - sun is splitting the stones at the moment. Tunisia is lovely, particularly the south with the troglodyte dwellings and the Sahara desert. I've attached a picture I took of the sun coming up early in the morning in the desert. Can't decide if this is depressing to look at now that I'm home or that I'm delighted I was there ....

Photoshop Quick Tip : Exporting your layers as separate documents

This is a very quick tip today, but a handy one. If you are working on a document in Photoshop with multiple layers, it is possible to export each of those layers as separate documents. An example where I use this is if I have made up a document with several of my photos to work on, when I'm finished I can just shoot them out.

All you need to do is choose File > Scripts > Export Layers to Files.

Photoshop Quick Tip : Find your layers fast

When you’re working on a large document in Photoshop with many layers, a quick way to jump to the layer you want to work on is to:

1. Select the Move tool by pressing V on the keyboard.
   
   


2. Right-click (Windows) or Control-click (Mac) on a portion of the image.
   
   A menu will appear when you click and will list all of the layers underneath your cursor.
   
   
   
   
   
   


3. To make a particular layer active, just click on it in the list of layers. Now, you’ve got your active layer.
   
   If you click Right-click or Control-click on a part of the image where there are no layers or if the layer is transparent in that area, then only the Background layer will be listed in the menu.

Book Review : Digital Photography by Scott Kelby

I bought this book a couple of months ago and read it cover to cover, thoroughly enjoying it. I've recently gone back to the book again and more importantly I've been trying to use and apply some of the excellent tips contained within.

I would consider this a must-have reference book for digital photography fans. It's written in the humourous but fact-filled Scott Kelby style and covers a wide range of photography subjects. The full title of the book is : "The Digital Photography Book: The Step-By-Step Secrets for How to Make Your Photos Look Like the Pros'!" and that's literally what the book offers. Step by step instructions over eleven chapters on Landscape photography, Flower photography, Portraits, Travel, Sports photography and more.

I've read a lot of photography books and this one is without question one of the easiest to understand and immediately apply to your own photography. Also it's not too expensive and is well worth the money.

Digital Photography by Scott Kelby

5 stars out of 5.

Check this book and other's like it in the Digital Design Cottage Bookshelf.

Photoshop Tutorial : Creating an Ansel Adams Style photograph

Here's a quick photoshop video tutorial showing you how to use the Colour Mixer to create a very "contrasty" black and white image.


Creating An Ansel Adams Style Photograph In Photoshop -

Photoshop Quick Tip : The best Photoshop keyboard shortcut!

Ok, this is probably a matter of personal opinion (and perspective) BUT, the first keyboard shortcut that I insist my trainees know in Photoshop is ...

Ctrl + Z (windows) Cmd + Z (mac).

This very simple shortcut will undo your last action/mistake.


If you need to undo more than one action then the other shortcut you will find invaluable is ...

Ctrl + Alt + Z (windows) Cmd + Option + Z (mac).

Photoshop : Tutorial - Usint The Art History Brush

Rather than using the filters to create a watercolour or painterly effect, you can use the Art History Brush in Photoshop to create a nice looking "painting". And it will make you feel like you're part of the process of making something because with this tool you need to make decisions about how the effect will look.


1. Start by opening the image you want to paint in Photoshop. I’m using this close up of a flower. This is a large, high resolution image.



2. Select the Art History brush from the toolbox. It may be hidden underneath the History Brush.



3. On the tool options bar, click on the Brush options. Choose a “Dry Brush Tip Light Flow” brush from the list of brushes available. Depending on the size of your image you may need to change it from the default of 66 pixels. For this image, I’m going to leave the brush size as 66
pixels.





4. Open the brushes palette and click on the Shape Dynamics under Brush Tip Shape.



5. Drag the Roundness Jitter to about 50%

6. Click on the Color Dynamics. Drag the Hue Jitter to about 10%.
That’s all the brush adjustments that we need to make.



7. On the Tool Options bar, set the style of the Art History Brush to Tight Short.

(You may want to try out different styles depending on the effect you want to achieve). Set the area to 50 pixels.




8. Start painting on the image. It’s a good idea to paint over large areas of similar colour to get a feel for how the art history brush works.

9. Continue painting into the more detailed areas of the image. Reduce the brush size where required on the intricate areas.




10. Keep working on the image until you have painted the whole area and you have what should look like a nicely painted watercolour image.

Design Resources : Picfindr

This is a new free service that I heard about at the weekend. It's a search engine for free stock photography that you can use commercially. There are already several free free stock sites such as Image:After , MorgueFile and the great SXC.hu, but Picfindr should make it that little bit easier and quicker to find images.


As it mentions on the site, the service is neither "alpha" nor "beta", it's just not finished yet. I found it already works really well. I typed in a couple of terms and off it went searching on 4 different sites and coming back very quickly with thumbnail results.

As part of your search you can specify if you want to give credit for the image, not alter it in anyway or ask permission to use the image. Depending on your choices, the search engine will return different results. I know that I'll be using this service regularly.

Happy St. Patrick's Day

Well Happy St. Patricks Day to you all! I'm looking forward to a few days off work - one of the best things about Paddy's Day in Ireland is that you get a day off work, even if it's on a Saturday! Also looking forward to a few of these babies ...

Free Photoshop Brushes : Book of Kells

The set of free photoshop brushes that I'm offering you today are based on the Book of Kells. The Book of Kells is an ornately illustrated manuscript of the gospels created by monks in about 800 AD. The books were found in a town called Kells here in Ireland and I live about 7 miles from there. The manuscripts are now held in Trinity College in Dublin and you can go and see them in the wonderful library there.

You can find out more about the book of Kells here.

The photoshop brushes consist of some of the images found in the book and some of the ornately decorated letters. I hope you like them.



You can download a zip of the brushes here.

Photoshop Plugin : Virtual Photographer

As you probably know, there are literally hundreds of plugins available for Photoshop. Some are excellent and some not so hot. I'm generally of the opinion that most of the things you can do with a plugin, you can learn how to do using just Photoshop and I like to try to figure them out myself.

Having said that, the Virtual Photographer plugin is one that I have had for over a year and one that I really, really love. It allows you to add styles to your photographs that could take quite a bit of time and effort to achieve in Photoshop alone. But most importantly the results are very professional. There is everything from sepia to ultra-contrasty cold steel styles. Very cool.

The plugin is free from the optikVerve Lab website and there are lots of samples and a forum over there too.



B.T.W. I have absolutely nothing to do with the company, I just really like this plugin.

Photoshop Brushes : Bugs, Bugs, Bugs

Here's another set of free photoshop brushes from the Digital Design Cottage downloads section. These are the bug brushes.



You can download the brushes as a zip file here, and let me know if you like them!

Colour Models in Photoshop : What they are and when to use them

When you’re working in Photoshop, it’s important to understand that there are different colour models and colour modes available. I'm going to to briefly explain the theory behind models in Photoshop and why you would choose one particular model over the other.

What is a colour model?
A colour model is simply a way to define colour. A model describes how colour will appear on the computer screen or on paper. Three of the most popular colour models are:

• CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black)
• RGB (Red, Green, Blue)
• Lab Colour

Let’s take a look at each of these in turn.

1. The CMYK model is used for print work and it describes colours based on their percentage of Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black. These four colours are used by commercial printers and bureaus and you may also find that your home printer uses these colours too. These four colours are needed to reproduce full colour artwork in magazines, books and brochures. By combining Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black on paper in varying percentages, the illusion of lots of colours is created.

2. The RGB model is used when working with colours destined for TV screens or computer monitors. A value between 0 and 255 is assigned to each of the colours – Red, Green and Blue. So for example if you wanted to create a purely blue colour, Red would have a value of 0, Green would have a value of 0 and Blue would have a value of 255 (pure blue). To create black, Red, Green and Blue would each have a value of 0 and to create white, each would have a value of 255.

In this situation, when we talk of “value” of colour, we’re referring to the strength of the colours in relation to each other.

3. The Lab colour model is a slightly more complex beast. It is made up of three components – the lightness component (L) ranging from 0 to 100, the “a” component comes from the green-red axis in the Adobe Color Picker, and the “b” component which comes from the blue-yellow axis in the Adobe Color Picker. Both “a” and “b” can range from +127 to –128.

When Photoshop is converting from one model to another, it uses Lab as the intermediate colour model.

So, after all that which model should you use?
If you know that your work is being sent to a commercial printer, then it’s a good idea to start your document in CMYK mode. Otherwise it’s safe to say that you can work in RGB for almost any other project. Even if you’re printing at home on your own inkjet printer then RGB is the one to go for. For any screen-based work such as websites or web graphics or DVD’s, you should always work in RGB. Your monitor works in displays in RGB so in terms of colour, what you see is what you get. If you do need to convert from one colour model to the other, it’s just a matter of choosing Image > Mode and then picking the one you need.

Photoshop Link : PhotoshopTalent.com

I've been having a bit of fun entering the contests on Photoshoptalent.com. I only joined about two weeks ago and haven't won anything yet but ... Victory Shall Be Mine! (Eventually I hope.)

It's a great place to try out your photoshop skills and I've found that there are lots of experienced photoshoppers there who are willing to give advice. The skill levels for the contests range from beginners which is open to all, to more advanced contests which can only be entered by photoshoppers who have built up "talent" points by winning contests.

If you're interested in developing your skills and can't think of things to do in Photoshop this site is great for getting you thinking.

Photoshop : Tutorial - Eyecatching Text Effect Using Layer Effects

Here’s a very simple and quick way to create some eye-catching text. It’s all based around one Text layer with three layer effects added. Let’s get started.

1. Create a new file with dimensions of 500 x 200 pixels.

2. Select the Type tool and add some text. I’m using the Cooper Black font, size 72, anti-aliasing set to smooth and colour set to red.



3. Make sure the text layer is selected then click on the Layer Effect button on the bottom of the layers palette.

4. Select Drop Shadow from the Layer Effect drop down menu and choose a Distance and Size of 5 and Spread of 0%.



5. Don’t click OK, yet. Click on the words “Inner Shadow” on the left hand side of the Layer Style dialog box. This will change the options available in the dialog box. Again, set a Distance and Size of 5% and Choke of 0%.



6. Don’t click OK, again! Click on the word “Stroke” on the bottom left of the dialog box. Set the Size to 3 pixels, Position to Outside and the Colour to white.



7. Click OK. The final layer set-up and the text below:

Book Review : Graphic Design For The 21st Century

This heavy book will be of interest to graphic designers at the start of their career but also of interest to experienced professionals. Throughout more than 600 pages, the authors show us the work of 100 designers from around the world. You may recognise some of the designer names, whilst others are not so well known but it's fair to say that the authors did a great job making their selections.

The book opens with an essay on design culture which I found interesting and informative, but probably more interesting AFTER I had gone through the book and looked at the designs.

As mentioned already, there are 100 designers included in the book and each one has been allocated a decent amount of space with pictures and some text about the work. It's easy reading and some of the designs I found quite inspirational.

Graphic Design For The 21st Century: 100 Of The Worlds Best Graphic Designers

I would rate this book 4 out of 5. Don't forget to visit the Digital Design Cottage Bookshelf to see a wide range of Photoshop and Design related books.

Photoshop Tutorial : Create an electrical current effect

This short tutorial shows you how to create the effect of arcing current in the air. Because it uses the “Difference Clouds” filter, the effect can look different every time you try it.

1. Open a new file. Make it 500 x 500 pixels.

2. Set the foreground colour to black and the background to a light grey.

3. Select the gradient tool and in the tool options bar, set the gradient to Foreground to Background.

4. Drag the gradient tool diagonally across the image.

5. Choose Filters > Render > Difference Clouds.

6. Now Invert the colours in the image by pressing Ctrl + I.



7. Choose Image > Adjustments > Levels to open the Levels dialog box.

8. Drag the black slider to the right to dramatically darken the image. At this point the effect of “electrical currents” should become apparent.


At this stage the current looks pretty cool but if you would like to add some extra colour to the image. choose Image > Adjustments > Variations. From the Variations dialog you can add colour by clicking directly on any of the preview images. Each time you click , the colour will change.

Photoshop News : Online version of photoshop available in six months.

A story on news.com is revealing that an online version of Photoshop will be up and running in six months. Apparently the online version will be free but supported by ads (quelle suprise). It also sounds like it will be "Photoshop Extra-lite" and will be a stripped down version of grown-up Photoshop.

It's hard to imagine how a program which uses such large files could run smoothly online but then there are so many mind-boggling things that Adobe products can do, I'm sure they'll work something out.

Photoshop Quick Tip: Copy Layer Styles and save time

Let’s say that you’ve added a layer style, or even several layer styles to a layer in Photoshop. Now you find that you need the same look on another layer, so is there a quick way to do this or do you have to go through the layers dialog box all over again? Well, yes of course there is a shortcut!

All that’s required here is to click on the layer style you want to copy to another layer and hold down the Alt (PC) or Option (Mac) key and drag the effect onto your layer of choice. By holding down the Alt/Option key you simply duplicate the layer effect whilst dragging the effect to another layer.

Photoshop Video Tutorial : Change the colour of an object using Hue & Saturation

In this video tutorial, we’re taking a look at how to change the colour of an object by first of all selecting it and then using one of the image adjustment options to completely change the hue and saturation values.


Learn To Change The Colour Of Objects By Adjusting The Hue & Sat

Photoshop Tutorial: Transforming text

Some of my trainees are surprised to find that they can apply many transformations to text in Photoshop without having to rasterize the layer. You can Scale, Rotate, Skew, Warp, Flip Horizontal and Vertical and STILL go back and edit your type without any problems.

To apply transformations, make sure the Text layer is selected in the layers palette and then choose Edit > Transform. From there you can choose from all of the transformations listed above.

After you’ve made the transformation, you can edit the text again if necessary. Just select the type tool and click on the type you want to change.

If you want to use Distort or Perspective transformations, however, you will need to rasterize the layer first. Rasterizing means that you are converting vectors to a bitmapped (made up of pixels) image. To rasterise text, choose Layer > Rasterize > Type. Once the text is rasterized you can transform to your heart’s content.

Photoshop Brushes : The Simpsons

I've just added a new set of Photoshop brushes to the download page of the main Digital Design Cottage site. This set features Springfield's finest characters, over 20 different brushes - just in time for their movie debut later this year.



You can also download the zip file here.

Photoshop Quick Tip: Save time by making your own custom document sizes

When you create a new document, Photoshop offers you a pop-up list (the Preset option) of the most commonly used document sizes in terms of width, height, resolution and colour mode. This includes sizes such as A4, Letter and the more popular web page sizes. However, you will often find that you use other sizes over and over. So rather than type in the details each time, you can just enter the size and resolution you need, give it a name and then save it as a preset using the Save Preset dialog box.

For example, I sell t-shirts on CafePress. The size required for T-shirt designs is 10 inches by 10 inches and requires a resolution of 200 ppi. So I saved this as a preset called T-shirts and now it appears at the top of the list. You can make as many custom document sizes as you want, so save yourself some time and make some custom document sizes.

Photoshop File Download : Reusable Magnetic Poetry

Here's a PSD file I created that you may like to use. It's one tile based on the idea of magenetic fridge poetry. You can reuse it as much as you want and just change the text layer on the tile.



You can download a zipped version of the file here. Let me know if you find it useful.

Photoshop News

News reports about the release of Creative Suite 3 are mentioning a release date of around the 27th of March.

Betanews quotes an expert from Merrill Lynch:

"Jay Vleeschhouwer, the analyst who wrote the report disclosing the release date, says he expects about six different CS3 product suites, and 14 individual products overall. Core CS3 products would include Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign."

As an instructor in New Media Creative Design, this is very exciting but also means lots of hard work learning the new programs. (Although, realistically, it's not tooooo hard, having to play with Photoshop and checking out its new features).

Design Inspiration : DesignersWhoBlog.com

This is a super blog that I've only just discovered and it's fair to say it's bursting with inspiration for anyone with an interest in art, design, advertising and more.



DesignersWhoBlog.com is a jumping off point to (what seems like) hundreds of cool blogs from designers all over the world.

Photoshop Tutorial : Make a badge for your website

Badges or flashes are a bit of fun decoration that you can add to your site and they are appearing more and more on the web. They're also very useful for drawing attention to specific parts of your page. It's a good way to set up a call to action like "Buy Now" or "Join Here". So in this tutorial I'm going to show you how to make a badge using one of Photoshop's vector tools.

The Vector tools in Photoshop allow you to create all kinds of lines and shapes and their advantage over raster images is that you can scale the Vector paths up as much as you want and there is absolutely no loss of quality.

1. Create a new document - 400 x 400 pixels.


2. Select the Polygon Tool from the toolbox.


3. On the tool options bar at the top of the screen, select the Shape Layers option.
   
   
   


4. Again, on the tool options bar at the top of the screen, click on the down arrow for Polygon Options.
   
   
   


5. Check the Star check box to ensure that you draw a star rather than a polygon shape with lots of sides.
   


6. In the “Indent Sides By” field enter a percentage. To get a very pointy star enter a high number such as 60 - 70. For a less pointy star enter a lower number, say 20%. You will get very different effects with these numbers. I’m using 50% for this example.
   


7. In the colour picker, choose a foreground colour. I picked a red for mine.
   


8. Click and drag out a Star shape to the size you want.
   
   When you release the mouse you notice that a new shape layer had been added in the layers palette. This new layer consists of a red fill linked to a star shape mask.
   
   
   
   
   

Don’t worry that the edges of the star appear jagged. This is because the path around the star shape is selected. Click on the background layer to deselect the shape and you will see the nice sharp edges of the star appear.



9. Now it’s time to add some text to your badge. Select the Type tool, set the font colour to white and choose a solid, heavy-looking font. I used Arial Black, size 30. After you have typed in some text, commit it by clicking on any other layer on the layers palette.
   
   


10. Select the type layer again by clicking on it in the layers palette. Press Ctrl + T (windows) or Cmd + T (Mac) to free transform the text. Run your mouse over one of the corner handles so that the cursor changes to a double-headed arrow and drag to rotate the text. Press Enter (Windows) or Return (Mac) to apply the transformation.
    
    
    
    
    


11. The last thing to do is to add a drop shadow to the badge. Click on the star shape layer to select it, then click on the layer style button at the bottom of the layers palette.
    
    


12. Leave the blend mode at multiply, the shadow colour to black and set the angle to 90 degrees. Adjust distance, spread and size to your own taste or use the values I used in the Illustration below.
    
    
    
    


13. Click OK and Voila!
    
    
    

Photoshop Quick Tip: Time Yourself!

Photoshop can tell you how long you are spending on different commands as you work. To find out (if you really want to know how long you play with each toy, I mean tool), then click on the right-facing triangle at the bottom of the document window. Usually you will see document info here, such as the file size but when you click on the triangle, choose Show from the menu and then choose Timing. This is effectively a stop-watch which times your actions on each tool or command.

So now you can start working towards your personal best, painting a circle in under 0.5 seconds.

Photoshop Tutorial: How To Create A Vignette or Soft Fade Edges in a Photo

A vignette is a photograph or illustration in which the background fades gradually away until it blends into the paper on which it is printed. In this short tutorial, I'm going to show you one method (because in Photoshop there is nearly always more than one way to do things) to create this effect.

1. Open your image. I'm using a stock image of a family out skiing.
   
   
   
   
2. Double-click on the background layer to convert it to a “normal” layer. You can rename your layer in the New Layer dialog box that opens and I named mine “vignette”.
   
   
   
   


3. In the toolbox, select the Elliptical Marquee tool.
   
   


4. Drag out a circular marquee selection around the area of the image that you want to hold on to.
   
   


5. Click on the "Add layer mask" button at the bottom of the layers palette.
   
   
   


6. Click on the layer mask thumbnail in the layers palette.
   
   
   


7. Go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur and make sure the Preview option is checked.
   
   
8. Play with the radius values until you are happy with the amount of fade and then click OK.
   
   
   
   

You should now have a vignette with a transparent background. If you want to add a colour background, all you need to do is add a layer underneath your current layer and fill it with whatever colour you like.

Photoshop Video Tutorial : Setting a specific crop size

In this tutorial you'll learn how to set a specific size for cropping and printing your pictures from Photoshop. In a previous video I showed you how to create a basic crop using the Crop tool in Photoshop. In this video tutorial we’ll take a look at how to set definite dimensions for your crop, rather than just using a freeform crop.



Cropping To A Specific Size For Printing In Photoshop

Design Inspiration : MagazineArt.org

MagazineArt.org is a wonderful site featuring a huge database of magazine covers from the 19th and 20th century. It contains covers from magazines you probably never knew even existed - women's magazines, gardening, movies, pulp and the artwork is terrific. I particularly like the Adventure section with lots of fairly rough looking dudes or damsels in distress on the covers.

So if you're having a creative block, take a look at this site for some inspiration.