Welcome to the May 2006 Newsletter. This month we have another exclusive discount from Vertus Software that offers their pro masking application Fluid Mask for $189. This is for version 2 MAC/PC, and the offer includes 6 months of free upgrades. We also have a 10% discount from DriveSavers for hard drive recovery. Enjoy the newsletter!





Shapes & Styles Redux - New Photoshop Tutorial From Cian Walsh

Another small batch of tips for those that are knee deep in creating graphics through custom shapes and layer styles. In lighting sometimes you want something to appear as if it's being lit from a single source. A linear gradient overlay can do this but it gives a uniform look to the object. Simply switching the gradient from linear to radial focuses the light in a particular area.

If you'd like the object to look like it's being lit from a direction, click on the object while the gradient overlay palette is still open. You can move around the gradient focus to your whim. Increasing the scale of the gradient helps the effect as well.

Read Shapes & Styles Redux, which shows how to use gradients, as well as how to create dashes in Photoshop.



New Tutorial - How To Give An Image A Cubist Look

Over a period of seven years leading up to 1914 and the outbreak of the First World War, Cubism marked a decisive break from representative painting, reflecting a radical fissure in politics, art, and culture. Led by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, the Cubist painters pursued an abstract, geometric approach.

Cubist paintings often look as if the subject has been constructed from a hundred or more snapshots, all taken from different angles. Where people are represented, they are sharply angular and feature masks that strongly suggest an African influence.

Read Photoshop Fine Art Effects - Create A Cubist Look — a sample chapter from the Photoshop Digital Studio Cookbooks, courtesy of O'Reilly Media.

For more tutorials see our Photoshop Tutorials Page.

New Tutorial - Photoshop Cross-Processing

Cross-processing is developing color print or slide film in the wrong chemicals — for example, color negative film in slide chemicals ("C-41 as E-6") or slide film by the color negative process ("E-6 as C-41"). Not surprisingly, this causes wild color and contrast shifts and requires lots of trial and error. But for a period in the 1980s and 1990s, cross-processed images were very much the vogue, with Nick Knight's fashion and studio work being arguably the most influential.

With many possible permutations of film stock and processing technique, there is no single, identifiable, cross-processed appearance. The most common combination is C-41 as E-6, in which slide chemistry is used to process color negative film, and it's a quick job to imitate it in Photoshop. Image contrast is usually high with blown-out highlights, while the shadows tend toward dense shades of blue. Reds tend to be magenta, lips almost purple, and highlights normally have a yellow-green color cast.

Read Photoshop Fine Art Effects - Cross-Processing — a sample chapter from the Photoshop Digital Studio Cookbooks, courtesy of O'Reilly Media.

For more tutorials see our Photoshop Tutorials Page.

New Tutorial - How To Give An Image A Drawn Look

The Ink Outlines filter offers an interesting "drawn" line effect in combination with a background mottling that recalls the Sponge filter.

In "Using The Ink Outlines Filter" You learn how you can use Ink Outlines as a remedy to breathe some life into otherwise flat subjects. In "Fixing Color Cast With Ink Outlines" you'll read about another rescue mission that involves mitigating irreversible color casts.

Read Ink Outlines — How To Give An Image A Drawn Look — a sample chapter from the Photoshop Digital Studio Cookbooks, courtesy of O'Reilly Media.

For more tutorials see our Photoshop Tutorials Page.

Window Seat: The Art of Digital Photography & Creative Thinking by Julieanne Kost

Julieanne Kost is a Photoshop evangelist for Adobe. Her teaching commitments take her virtually across the globe, as she flies from destination to destination. In this book - Window Seat: The Art of Digital Photography & Creative Thinking - she has taken a collection of photographs that she's shot through the panes of glass of her airplane window seats, and gone on to create a book that offers a blend of professional expertise and inspiration for waning creativity.

Our in-flight behavior varies greatly - many of us choose to take a nap while trying to avoid leaning too far into our seatmate's lap, while others watch the tiny drop-down screen and its offerings of archived news clips. Ms. Kost, on the other hand, uses the air travel time that we all-too-often squander in a vastly different way. She uses, to her creative advantage, the unique perspective offered from 35,000 feet as she collects a variety of photos taken through her window.

Window Seat is more than simply a collection of beautiful images, though far be it for us to undermine the often breathtaking aesthetic appeal of Ms. Kost's photography. However, she has an underlying purpose to her artistic renderings – not only does she seek to share many of the insights that she has garnered over her years of work as a creative professional, but she also offers some valuable reflections on the nature of ingenuity itself.

Indeed, the Window Seat photographs speak as a metaphor to her essential message – that all it takes is a simple change in awareness and perspective to awaken and sustain the creativity that often eludes even the most prolific among us.

It isn't meant to be an expert's instructional manual or an artist's complete portfolio, nor is it intended to be a guru's manifesto. What Ms. Kost has accomplished with Window Seat is a unique blend of all three, as she shares her talent, her insight and her work in a quest to remind us all why we create, and to help us when the flow of ideas begins to stagnate.

Take a look out of your very own window seat, open your eyes a little bit wider – as Ms. Kost intonates, and you may well be surprised by what you see.

Available At Amazon.com
Buy Window Seat: The Art of Digital Photography & Creative Thinking at Amazon.com for $26.39 (34% discount).

Free PDF Sample Chapters
You can have a look inside this wonderful book by downloading sample chapters. There's a free PDF available at creativepro.com that includes the first chapter of the book. O'Reilly also has a free sample chapter PDF that also includes some printing tips.



New Photoshop Brush Set 'Handwritten Letters' From Kirsty

The talented and prolific Kirsty sends this in: "Hey everyone, finally I had the time to make the newest addition to the site: Handwritten Letters. I was inspired by a letter written by Émile Zola that I found a few weeks ago and so here you have it :) You can find the brush set at the usual address: 500ml Brushes. Hope you like it!"

The Handwritten Letters set contains contains 8 brushes of old handwritten letters, one of which was written by the French author Émile Zola (Wikipedia), some others date from the 16th century.

For more brushes, see our Photoshop Brushes Page.

Ben Long Review Of Apple Aperture 1.1

Creativepro.com senior editor Ben Long has written an extensive review of Apple Aperture 1.1. From the intro:

Only five months after releasing Aperture 1.0, Apple's breakthrough new digital photography workflow product, the company has come out with a fairly major update in the form of Aperture 1.1. The free update offers dramatically improved raw conversions, new raw editing tools, a new RGB color sampler, performance improvements, and full compatibility with Apple's new machines with Intel processors. All these improvements, yet Apple has also cut the retail price by $200 to just $299.

Many critics will claim that the many improvements prove that Aperture 1.0 wasn't ready for prime time, but that's unfair. While Version 1 had some rough spots, it was a usable product for many professional photographers. Most importantly, the program has shown many photographers that there's a better way to manage their workflows than the document-centered, destructive editing approach they were used to.

Those who say that Aperture 1.0 was priced too high and was essentially a paid beta release will be happy to hear that Apple apparently agrees. In addition to the lower price, the company's handing $200 coupons to anyone who bought the 1.0 or 1.0.1 products at the $499 price tag.

Read the full review of Apple Aperture 1.1 at the creativepro.com site.
Buy Apple Aperture at Amazon.com - discount price 279.99
Buy Apple Aperture at the Apple store - $299.00

For more on Aperture, see our Aperture Resource Center.

Exclusive Discount Price For Fluid Mask 2.0 - $189

Vertus Software is offering Fluid Mask (MAC & PC) at the special 'friends and partner' discounted rate of just $189 - PLUS free upgrades for the next 6 months.

New Features Of Fluid Mask 2.0