I recently worked on a business card design project and thought it would be a great opportunity to use the work as a base for a walkthrough of the design process.

The project was for James Clarkson; a driving instructor working out of Tadcaster near York with his business, Visibility Driving Tuition. I really enjoy working with James, and with a high level of creative freedom on his projects the design process is really fun! Let’s look back at my process for creating the final concept of his business card, resulting in the finished printed product.

Continue reading Illustrator Business Card Design Project Walkthrough

Photoshop plug-ins are the add-ons that power a Photoshop user.

They make a complicated task much easier & help creating amazing effects, designing faster & better.

There are lots of free Photoshop plug-ins which can fire your skills. This post aims to present most of them (150+) in a comprehensive way.

Continue reading Free Photoshop Plug-ins Collection

For months, we have been bookmarking interesting, useful and creative Adobe Photoshop tutorials and Resources, so you can now rest assured that you will have the necessary tools to get the job done.

Due to this phenomenally vast amount of textures, brushes, patterns available, you can now add dirt, rust, floral effect, swirls, mold, oil stains in your artworks and photos to give them an aged, damaged, dreamy or any look you want.

So in today’s post, you’ll find an assortment of top-notch tutorials, brushes, patterns, textures, actions and .PSD downloadable files that others have freely contributed to the design community for making your next photoshop effect.

Continue reading 60 Most Wanted Photoshop Tutorials, Brushes, .PSDs and Resources

Adobe Illustrator is the industry-standard when it comes to the creation of vector graphics. Though a very robust tool - the learning curve involved in mastering it can be high. Thankfully, there are abundant resources on the web that allows you to “learn by doing”.

Video tutorials (in general) enable the learner to witness – step-by-step – how a particular technique works. We often learn best by seeing how things are done and following along with the instructor (much like in a classroom environment).

In this article, we present to you 50 excellent Adobe Illustrator video tutorials. We’ve broken down the video tutorials into several categories that include creating objects, effects, and general tips and techniques.

Continue reading 50 Excellent Adobe Illustrator Video Tutorials

PSDTuts has posted a very detailed tutorial on restoring old and damaged photographs.

In this tutorial, we’ll take an in-depth look at restoring an old torn photograph. Restoring old family photos is something that you can do for your relatives and bring tears to their eyes, and yes this is a service you can offer to clients as well. Let’s take a look at a professional workflow for restoring old photographs to their former glory.

Continue reading Professional Photograph Restoration Workflow

Photoshop users are able to benefit from the vast amount of high-quality resources that are freely available to the community. Brushes get a lot of attention, but custom shapes are also extremely useful in the right situations. Finding a custom shape that has already been created can save you some time and headaches in your design, and fortunately there is a very wide variety of custom shapes available.

This post highlights 80 different sets of custom shapes (over 2,500 individual shapes) in several different categories. If you plan to download and use any of these shapes be sure to check to terms and conditions set by the creator of the shapes.

See the Photoshop shapes

Adobe Photoshop is the industry standard for digital-image editing and graphics creation. Photoshop’s versatility makes it a popular choice among Web designers, graphic designers, digital media artists, print designers, photographers and other professionals in design and image-editing. Whether you’re designing a business card or website or digitally enhancing an image, you can rest assured that Photoshop will give you the necessary tools to get the job done.

In this article, we focus on tutorials on digital photography. You’ll find an assortment of top-notch tutorials that deal with applying post-production techniques and effects, color correction, enhancement and photo retouching. So fire up Photoshop and try out some of these wonderful tutorials on your own photos!

Without further ado, we present you with 50 Excellent Photoshop Tutorials for Digital Photography.

View the 50 Excellent Digital Photography Photoshop Tutorials at Smashing Magazine

Part of the Photoshop class project is to create a Web site mockup. I have recently found several tutorials that may help you to complete this project.

Create a Sleek, High-End Web Design from Scratch - put together a high-end Web design using a crisp, thin font, gorgeous background images, and clever use of space and layout. You can easily use the technique to create your own unique designs.

Build a Sleek Portfolio Site from Scratch - take a PSD file and build it with some nice clean HTML and CSS.

How to Convert a PSD to XHTML - a screencast that shows you exactly how to convert a PSD into perfect XHTML/CSS.

From PSD to CSS/HTML in Easy Steps - Part 1 - how to take a PSD file and convert it into a fully CSS based html page. Be sure to check out parts 2, 3, and 4.

From PSD to HTML - how to take the design created for the Fundamentals of Interface Design tutorial and turn that into a usable web interface.

From PSD to HTML, Building a Set of Website Designs Step by Step - entire process of getting from Photoshop to completed HTML. Build out a set of 4 PSD mockups of a website that eventually will become a WordPress theme.

Creating CSS Layouts: The Best Tutorials on Converting PSD to XHTML - a collection of tutorials to help you to convert PSD files to CSS based layouts.

20 Wonderful Photoshop Tutorials for Designing Professional Navigation Menu - a collection of 20 Photoshop Tutorials on creating professional, clean and stylish navigation/menu bars.

For those of you who prefer to use Illustrator, check out Use Adobe Illustrator to Create a Clean Website Layout.

For Fireworks users check out Taking a Fireworks comp to a CSS-based layout in Dreamweaver – Part 1: Initial design, Taking a Fireworks comp to a CSS-based layout in Dreamweaver – Part 2: Markup preparation, and Taking a Fireworks comp to a CSS-based layout in Dreamweaver – Part 3: Layout and CSS

Edit 11/17/08 - DesignMag has come out with a list of Top 10 Tutorials for Converting PSDs to HTML/CSS

Edit 11/21/08 - CSSTricks has numerous videos/podcasts on creating and converting Photoshop Mockups. You can find all of these tutorials and more on their video page.

Edit 12/4/08 - New tutorial, Photoshop Paper Texture from Scratch then Create a Grungy Web Design with it!, released at PSDTuts.

Edit 12/15/08 - New tutorial, Converting a Design From PSD to HTML from NetTuts

Six Revisions has an excellent list of 40+ Useful Cheat Sheets for Designers. These sheets are for Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign. You may also find 27 Adobe Photoshop Cheat Sheets and Quick Reference Cards for Adobe Photoshop CS4, CS3, CS2 and Below useful.

If you’re looking for cheat sheets for coding, check Cheat Sheets for Front-end Web Developers

Edit 12/8/08: All Web Design Resources has compiled a list of 30+ CSS Cheat Sheets and Quick Reference Guides.

Just Creative Design has compiled The Ultimate List of The Best Logo Design Resources. Resources include:

• Logo Design Inspiration & Galleries
• Logo Design Articles
• Logo Design Interviews & Discussions
• Logo Design Tips
• Logo Design Blogs
• Logo Design Trends
• Logo Design Showcases
• Logo Design Tutorials
• Logo Design Books
• Logo Designers
• Logo Design Awards
• History Of Logo Design
• Logo Design Resources
• Just For Fun
• Free Logo Design Downloads
• Fonts For Logos
• Working With Style Guides
• Large Design / Branding Agencies
• Logo Design Feedback

This is a great resource to review when you are working on your Photoshop project or designing a site for a client.