Tutorials added on December 10, 2008

Where Snowflakes Are Born Wallpaper by VladStudio!

Yesterday I happily crossed Marcio Toledo website where he has a great portfolio selection, and if you love web designing this is something you most see, not only the design but the structures of the websites he designs, very good inspiration for those who like it.

The holiday season is here and these winter photoshop tutorials and brushes are the perfect way to spruce up your designs and get you in the holiday mood.

We often get to see some really talented guys from Singapore. Today, we've found another one the them. Jun, a 25 years old designer that started his career designing flyers. Check his work out!

Branding goes deep these days. Logos are not the only way web designers are leaving their mark on the world wide web. They are scaling down their focus to 16 pixels by 16 pixels, making a different kind of mark altogether. Favicons have exploded across the expanse of cyberspace, cropping up in browser tabs and address bars everywhere. These tiny pixel art impressions of the site can be a daunting task for a designer. With such a small canvas for creation, how does one capture the essence of the site? Well, they may be petite, but we found some examples of fashionable favicons that brilliantly use this minuscule medium with both skill and verve. Check out the showcase below, and be sure to let us know of your favorite favicons that we may have overlooked!

This one came about as a request in the forums. Someone wanted to know how to create a zoom effect. This effect can be done in camera and is quite fun. (See an example at the end of the tutorial for the camera effect). If you didn't do it in camera, fear not, we have Photoshop. This works in all versions.

When it comes to blogging and online content management systems, one name is spoken more often than any other: WordPress. This amazingly user-friendly, endlessly-customizable framework is an open source project that has revolutionized the online community since its creation in 2003. Cropping up on hundreds of thousands of sites across the interweb with eager users and community created plugins to enhance performance, this programming powerhouse shows no signs of slowing down. With so many sites on the bandwagon, designers and developers have answered the call by bringing a multitude of WordPress-ready themes to keep sites looking fresh and new. Given the popularity of the product, these themes make waves when they land in the cyber sea and finding examples that have not been widely used can be difficult and a little bit intimidating. However, after scouring the vast recesses of the web, we have found a few gems that you may not have seen before. Here are some of the standouts we happened to uncover.

Hello, lovers of photography! Today we've found a great site called Onexposure, a photography site that actually is a big portfolio for artists. There are so many good photographers there that I just had to choose one to feature here. And the photographer is Ihdar Nur!

This Photoshop tutorial will teach you how to make a Christmas card that you can print out on some nice paper and send to your friend and family. We will be using shapes excessively to draw different shapes like a Santa Claus and Christmas trees therefore this tutorial will start with a short introduction to the different tools used while working with shapes.

It’s no secret at this point, this internet thing is going to be big! Most businesses today have some kind of online presence, usually focused around their website. The marketing value of this tool is virtually immeasurable. Unless you are a company that specializes in measuring the marketing value of of the internet as a mainstream tool for enhancing your business, then you might have an idea. And if that is your business, what kind of website would you have? Business sites have a different goal than most, to be sure. For most business sites, usability is the main focus when putting the site together. They want to make sure that function takes precedence so that users can easily find their way around to everything that they are looking for. Some businesses believe the look of the site is as important as everything else, and they have achieved usability with an equal focus on aesthetics. Here are the thirty most inspirational business websites that we found.

Would you like to create elegant semitransparent text effect on leather texture? No problem! This tutorial special for you. I will explain you how to create this effect using blending options in Photoshop.

Last December, I posted a list of the best designs in 2007. Now, it is time for — Best of CSS Design 2008 (a new list of 50 websites hand-picked from Best Web Gallery). This year, more designers are using the large background technique and utilizing Javascript frameworks (such as jQuery and MooTools) to enchance the user experience. I also came across a few designs that mixed Flash with CSS; perhaps a new trend we should look for in 2009?

In this tutorial, you'll learn how to combine stock images and 3D text into a cool poster. We'll use an icy theme for it and color it the way we want. You'll see it's not that hard to create a simple appealing poster with effective use of text and imagery.

A few days ago I was watching a movie and I saw the Dreamworks logo. It's very well known and incredibly beautiful; that little kid sitting on the moon fishing. But what caught my attention was the clouds on the logo. They were so dramatic, and I thought that it would be a nice idea try to replicate the effect in Photoshop. The first thing I did was search on the web for references, and to see if there was already a tutorial showing how to accomplish the effect. I found some, not showing exactly what I wanted; but they gave me a nice idea of what I would have to do. I also looked at some real clouds to better understand how they work. In this tutorial I will show you how to create fluffy clouds in Photoshop.

In this very detailed tutorial I will show you how I made a Merry Christmas greeting card with Photoshop.

You don't need a template or a spray-paint to create your own stencil art. I'm going to teach you how to achieve this stencil art effect on your regular image just by playing with the filters and adjustment layers in Photoshop.

In this tutorial we will learn how to made a beautiful snowy Christmas landscape illustration in Adobe Photoshop.

This tutorial will show you how to turn a lovely waterfall into a deadly one with magma effect. We will make it look real and natural, read on to find out how.

This tutorial shows you how to design a Christmas wallpaper, that can we can use on the web, or any other place. Created with Adobe Photoshop.

Learn how to create a "leafy" text effect with a "dark" feel behind it.