Photoshop Tutorials Blog » General

Photoshop Elements 5 Review

Dimitris — Mon, 06 Nov 2006 20:21:39 +0000

Sue Chastain, from Graphicsoft has posted a review of Photoshop Elements 5 for windows. To be honest I have been thinking of upgrading a rather ancient copy that I own (version 2 lol) and this review have convinced me to do so. As you probably figure the review is generally positive. You can read the review here .

Competition for the Best Stock Photo Of 2006

Dimitris — Wed, 13 Sep 2006 16:51:34 +0000

Not exactly related to Photoshop but I believe a lot of people might be interested in this Competition. Stockvault, one of the most well known sites offering free stock photos has launched a competition for the Best Stock Photo of 2006. Obviously this is a photography competition and the prize for the winner is 1000$. The competition is open to everybody that likes photography, no matter if he is an amateur or a pro and to be honest I am hoping that I will find some time to send a couple of entries, since photography is one of my favorite hobbies. Submissions of course need to be original and your own work and the minimum size is about 2MP.

So go ahead and read about the competition and don’t hesitate to participate.

A look at StockVault.net

Dimitris — Sun, 30 Apr 2006 12:56:02 +0000

I have mentioned StockVault in an earlier post about sites that offer free stock photos. Now it’s time to take a closer look at this really useful site.
Let’s start with the site’s aesthetics, since my lost post StockVault has gone through a major redesign. The new look of StockVault is really fresh and pleasant in the eye with nice use of colors. But that’s not really what is important about StockVault, the most important is what it actually offers designers and webmasters. So what here is a list of what you can find at StockVault:

Free Stock photos personal and non-commercial usage.

Free Photoshop Brushes

Photoshop and Web Design tutorials

Design related articles

Photopacks for commercial use

Design related Directory

The most useful from all of the above for most people would be the Gallery with the free stock photos. The gallery contains a total of 3,214 free stock photos (mostly around 2MP in size) for personal and non-commercial use. The highlight of the gallery is the textures and backgrounds sub gallery that holds more than 1000 pictures. Textures in my opinion is one of the most useful kind of stock photos for designers and it’s not that easy to find high quality textures and backgrounds. Another really interesting subcategory filled with useful pictures that you should definitely take a look at is the Objects subcategory. Besides the free stock photos, StockVault also provides asPhotopacks that can be used for commercial projects. Each photopack contains 25 photos and the price is really affordable, even cheaper than most cheap stock photo agencies like dreamstime and istockphoto.

Don’t forget to check the tutorials section, where you can find photoshop, dreamweaver and CSS tutorials. By far my favorite tutorial is the one titled Showcasing Your Work, nothing fancy but it sure is effective.

As a conclusion StockVault is a great resource for everyone interested in Design.

Technorati Tags: stockvault, stock photos, review

Photoshop Tutorials Blog Directory

Dimitris — Fri, 07 Apr 2006 16:50:40 +0000

I was looking for a way to organize all the design resources that I have posted in past posts and the ones that I will post in the future. WordPress, is a great blog platform but doesn’t really provide an easy way to do that with in an easily “navigatable” (is that a word?). Because of that I decided to add a directory. The directory is not ready yet, I just installed the script with a free template and created the basic categories. Until it is ready and populated with resources I am not going to add a link at this blog’s sidebar. However, if someone wants to add a few links he thinks are noteworthy or even a link to his site he can do that at http://pstutorialsblog.com/directory , I will probably start populating the directory and see if I can create a custom template in a week or so.

Photoshop TV Episode 18

Dimitris — Wed, 22 Feb 2006 20:08:29 +0000

Photoshop Guys have released episode 18 of Photoshop TV.

In this episode

- Matt shows you a handy, automatic way to crop and rotate pictures from scanned photos, courtesy of the Photoshop CS2 Speed Clinic book.
- Scott gives you the lowdown on adding a bit of ‘bling’ to your images using glints.
- Dave shows you the ins and outs of threshold layers masks.
- Special guest, Felix Nelson, demonstrates how to use layers to make a weather-beaten sign.

iTunes link

Adobe Lightroom Beta 2 Released

Dimitris — Thu, 16 Feb 2006 18:03:39 +0000

Adobe has released Lightroom Beta 2. The main changes since the first version are:

For more information check PhotoshopNews

Also have a look at the updated Lightroom Resources list

Technorati Tags: adobe, lightroom, beta 2, resources

IstockPhoto joins Getty Images

Dimitris — Fri, 10 Feb 2006 09:13:44 +0000

Istockphoto announced yesterday that they have reached an agreement with Getty Images and is now part of the Getty Images family. According to the reports Getty paid 50 Million $ to acquire IstockPhoto. I have mentioned IstockPhoto before in my Cheap Stock Photography post, but here is a small presentation. IstockPhoto was the pioneer in microstock photography, they have launched almost six years ago and created a community of contributing photographers, that, allowed them to sell stock photos in very affordable prices (0.5$ at first). Since then they have grown and they now have a library of almost 625.000 royalty free photos and illustrations. Getty Images on the other hand, is the leader in professional stock photography and the dream of many professional stock photographers. They accept only a handful of contributing photographers each year and only accept the best of the best.

What I find interesting is that most professional stock photographers that contribute to Getty, Corbis, Alamy and all the other traditional stock photography agencies, used to flame and are still flaming the contributors of the microstock agencies like IstockPhoto. Their main point was that microstock photography devalues photography and threatens their livelihood. Here is an example of that at the PDN forums. I really wonder how are hey going to react to this.

Here is a part of the announcement:

Recently, in a rainy, sleepy suburb in Seattle, I met someone that shared my passion for iStockphoto and my drive to see it succeed. Over a greasy breakfast, he talked excitedly about how our community has created a new market, a culture of participation serving a vast audience. Our talk developed into a wide-ranging collaborative discussion about industry trends, size, consolidation and personal values. We dished a fair amount of gossip, too. After three hours passed in a blink, it was clear how naturally and sincerely our relationship was forming. We continued our dialogue as I detailed our community philosophy for site and feature enrichment, development of artist portfolios, international expansion, localized content and continuous improvement of our technology and methods. “This community is the most important development in the picture business this decade”, he declared. Yes, Jonathan Klein understood us. He “gets it.”

In Getty Images, we have found our perfect partner. On February 9, in the early hours of the morning, iStockphoto agreed to join the Getty Images family, functioning independently with the benefits of Getty Images, yet, very importantly for them and us, autonomy. They will nurture and encourage our pioneering spirit so that our entrepreneurial culture will continue to thrive.

You can read the whole announcement here

By the way, although currently I don’t have an active portfolio at IstockPhoto, I have been accepted as a contributing photographer. I guess that means that I can now proudly say that I am a Getty contributing photographer

Technorati Tags: stock, photography, microstock, istockphoto, getty, images

Adobe Proxy Volume 2

Dimitris — Fri, 10 Feb 2006 00:05:51 +0000

Adobe has released the first issue of the second Volume of Proxy, Adobe’s free quarterly interactive design publication. You can find it and download it at Adobe’s Proxy site. At Proxy’s site you can also find and download the four issues of Volume 1.

This latest issue includes a Photoshop Vanishing Point filter tutorial, an interview with Alex Gelman, tips on converting InDesign projects into websites with GoLive, an interesting article about Illustrator’s Live Trace and Live Paint, an article about automation in Photoshop and much more.

Via The unofficial Photoshop Weblog

Technorati Tags: adobe, proxy, magazine, online, design

Photoshop tops wishlist of linux users

Dimitris — Tue, 07 Feb 2006 19:00:33 +0000

In a poll conducted by Novel, asking which is the program most Linux users want to see ported from Windows/MacOS, Photoshop ranks number one. The top five applications after a month of voting are

1. Photoshop
2. Autocad
3. Dreamweaver
4. iTunes
5. Macromedia Studio

Via Desktop Linux

Radiant Vista

Dimitris — Sun, 29 Jan 2006 22:49:54 +0000

I have just found this website and it went straight into my bookmarks . Radiant Vista is a site offering Video and PDF Photoshop tutorials but it’s much more than that. The site is run by three people Craig, Mark and Mathew, all three of them are photographers and they provide daily critiques for photos submitted by users as well as photography tips. They also have a very interesting podcast.

Check it out