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The Photoshop Blog offers the latest Photoshop news and software updates, Photoshop tips and tutorials, and random thoughts from graphic artist and Photoshop expert Jennifer Apple.




February 22, 2008

Have a wonderful weekend! I'm learning Dreamweaver and this will be my first post not done in GoLive in close to 7 years. Yikes! I miss my old friend, but am getting to like this new one at the same time.

John Nack
New $20,000 Adobe design challenge
Adobe has teamed up with Cut&Paste for the "See What's Possible" challenge: Compose an engaging 15-second or less animation or motion graphic video of the Photoshop brand logo that illustrates the theme of “See What’s Possible.” The winning work must incorporate and close with the Adobe Photoshop logo and will be used by Adobe as part of an upcoming Photoshop marketing campaign.
The grand prize is $20,000 (USD) and Adobe Creative Suite 3 Master Collection (BYO forklift & Brinks truck)."
You've got until the Ides of March (specifically, 11:59 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time on March 15, 2008) to submit your work, and it needs to be created predominantly with Photoshop, Flash, and/or After Effects. Full details are on the site. Rock out!

You Suck at Photoshop #7
"Nicole Richie's head on a corn dog..." Wow, even as just a mental image, that's something I can't easily un-see. Enjoy.

PSDTuts
Reader Request: MSNBC Style Effect
In this tutorial I will create an effect like the one in the header of the MSNBC.com website. This effect is a reader’s request tutorial. If you have an effect you want to know how to achieve, just let us know in the comments and we will try to write a tutorial about it.

Create a Constructivist Inspired Poster
In this tutorial you’ll learn how to create a poster design inspired by an art movement called Russian Constructivism. We will cut up some images and paste them together to create a stylized revolutionary design. We’ll then tie it all together by overlaying some texture to give it a vintage feel.

How to Put Smokin’ Bullet Holes and a Wanted Sign into a Piece of Wood
OK so this tutorial is like three tutorials rolled into one. We’re going to make an awesome wood emboss effect, put bullet holes into the wood and finally smoke ‘em up to a gnarly Wyatt-Earp-just-walked-past look.

PluginsWorld.com
SF Maskerade by Ralph Altmann: plugin for Adobe Photoshop
The filter SF Maskerade serves for creating luminance masks, color masks, saturation masks, edge masks and contrast masks. You can also extract channels, select colors very precisely in consideration of saturation and lightness, select only the black, white and gray tones of an image, transform photos into outline drawings, enhance detail contrast and much more. Finally you get the result (optionally inverted or blurred) as gray tone mask or converted into layer's transparency channel.

Fractalius by Redfield Plugins: plugin for Adobe Photoshop
Fractalius plugin creates unusual, eccentric artworks in a single step. The effects are based on extraction of so-called hidden fractal texture of an image. You can also simulate various types of exotic lightings and high realistic pencil sketches.

Photoshop Quicktips
Episode 69: Keyboard Crazy
One of the questions I see most often in my inbox is "are there any keyboard shortcuts for adjustment layers?" The short answer to this is no, but in this week's episode of Quicktips, I will show you how you can fix this problem.

BittBox
Dingbats Roundup: 16 Incredibly Detailed, Useful (and free) Dingbat Fonts
Now, before I start, not everyone is going to think these are all useful, so if you don’t ever use tree silhouettes, fine. But some of us do. Personally, I love dingbats because (most of the time) I convert them to vectors in Illustrator and use them as very large elements in some cases. All you have to do is use the font in Illustrator and then go to Type > Create Outlines, and Bam. You got yourself a vector to work with. Here are some dingbat fonts that I thought you might enjoy.

Mac Users: A Note on Adobe Keyboard Shortcuts
BittBox 22/02/08 2:24 PM BittBox OS X Comments
[OS X 10.5] While having a Volume, Brightness, Pause/Play buttons integrated into my keyboard may be convenient, it really drives me crazy that my function keys don’t, well…function like I want them to in Photoshop. (or illustrator, etc.) I want to show you a way that I managed to get around this while keeping the functionality of the media buttons at the same time.

Creative Suite Video Podcast
Create your own custom label tags in Bridge CS3
In this episode I'll show you how to create custom labels in Bridge CS3 to tag your images and documents in ways that will make more sense to your workflow.

Keeping Lightroom and Adobe Bridge in sync
Adobe Creative Suite Video Podcast 21/02/08 12:01 AM Lightroom
In this episode special guest Colin Smith from Photoshopcafe.com shows us how to keep the changes we make in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom in sync with Adobe Bridge CS3 and Adobe Photoshop CS3.

Brusheezy
Scanline + screentone patterns - by c130 - Photoshop Pattern (27 in set)
These are good for use in Photoshop 7 and above. All black & white or black & transparent patterns, you can get lots of different effects if you experiment with layer styles or try inverting the colours. To use them, download the file directly into the folder Adobe/Photoshop/Presets/Patterns and restart Photoshop for it to appear in your patterns list – just like installing brushes, but it goes into a different folder. No need to link back or give credit if you use them, but a comment would be appreciated if you like them. ;)

19 high resolution urban/grunge brushes - by compactdewildesign - (19 in set)
the brushes are in high resolution. enjoy, share and please comment.
use, for what ever you like.

LightroomNews
Podcast #49 has been posted, with Gregory Heisler
Adobe Evangelist George Jardine has posted Podcast #49, with Gregory Heisler: “‘Maybe you want to do a Brett Weston, and you don’t want anyone to open your files. Maybe you want your files to just die a peaceful death, and you want to pull the plug on them, and send them on to eternity. And what you want are these finished prints; they are the realization of your vision. And everything else was just a way to get there. Like you don’t actually want somebody, in a sense, reprinting from your negatives. You’re done. It’s fine. Even though with photography the temptation is that it’s always an open door, it’s fine to lock the door and throw away the key. That’s OK.’ - Gregory Heisler.

PixelPerfect
PixelPerfect - Symbols
Bert invites his friend Morty to the show again for more fun with Adobe Illustrator, specifically the world of symbols and how you can work with them in your designs.

As always, a special Batgirl thank you to James Jean
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SiteGrinder Photoshop Plugin - Create Websites Instantly

There often seems to be a strict division of labor within the world of web design and development. Creative professionals tend to stick to the Photoshop domain, while those well-versed in scripting are left to the task of implementing their work. Indeed, the two realms are quite different from each other, to which any of us even vaguely familiar with either can easily attest.

Essentially, Photoshop is a no-holds-barred design studio, offering the artist a seemingly endless array of creative options. On the other hand, HTML, CSS, Java and the like follow strict rules of engagement, requiring the developer to take any number of esoteric concerns into consideration in order to ensure that designs are properly displayed on the web.

Turn Photoshop Into A Complete Web Design Tool
SiteGrinder seeks to bridge this gap between design and development. Basically, this program turns Photoshop into an easy-to-use and fully functional web design tool. With SiteGrinder, designers will now have the freedom to totally let their creativity loose and then, without skipping a beat, transfer their designs to the web. Bringing esthetic concerns together with more practical considerations, this program is an amazingly powerful tool that would make a fantastic addition to any web designer's bag of tricks.

Generate Your Web Pages Directly From Photoshop
By generating web pages directly from Photoshop, you'll be able to spend much more time on the creative end of the spectrum, since you'll know right off the bat how well particular designs will translate to the web. No more going back to the Photoshop drawing board after getting a phone call from your development team, telling you that what you had envisioned doesn't have a chance of being displayed on the web. You can immediately visually and interactively test your designs, which permits you to then make changes to either esthetics or functions while it's still relatively early on in the design process.

Pricing and Availability
Mac OS X and Windows versions of the SiteGrinder unlockable demo are available now via download. SiteGrinder can be ordered from Media Lab's online store.

Photoshop CS3 Upgrade Options And Bundles From The Adobe Store

Photoshop CS3 Extended is ideal for film, video, and multimedia pros and for graphic and web designers using 3D and motion. Get the full version for US $999, or upgrade for US $349. The standard version of Photoshop CS3 is available for US $649, or as an upgrade for US $199. See all upgrade options at the Adobe Store. See our CS3 Resource Center for free Photoshop CS3 tutorials.

Photoshop Extended is also available as part of Adobe Creative Suite 3 Design Premium, which combines all-new CS3 versions of Photoshop, Flash Pro, Dreamweaver, Illustrator, InDesign and Acrobat 8 Pro. Upgrade options for customers in Europe, the UK, Australia, New Zealand and Asia can be found at the Adobe International Store.

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Available At The Adobe Store

There are tons of new features in Adobe Lightroom 1.0 that you won't find in the beta version. From Clone and Healing functionality to metadata browsing, you'll be able to free-up post-processing time like never before. Get it now at the Adobe Store. Customers in Europe, the UK, Australia, New Zealand and Asia can find special pricing and offers at the Adobe International Store. For free Lightroom tutorials see our Lightroom tutorials page.

Photoshop Masking Plugin Fluid Mask 3 - $15 Discount Special

The 4 1/2 out of 5 star review of Fluid Mask 3 at MacWorld begins by saying that this "Photoshop plug-in takes the pain out of extracting backgrounds," and goes on to recommend the latest version, stating that "Fluid Mask 3.0.2 is a very effective tool for separating objects from their backgrounds. It offers a variety of useful features for tackling almost any difficult image, from wispy hair to complex foliage. Online video tutorials and live training sessions help ease the learning curve."

Our friends at Vertus, the makers of Fluid Mask 3 Photoshop Plugin, have set up a special exclusive discount for PhotoshopSupport.com. Just follow this discount link and instantly get $15 off your purchase of Fluid Mask 3.

Fluid Mask 3 is designed for photographers, image editors, graphic designers and all those who take digital image editing seriously. In a streamlined interface and workflow, Fluid Mask 3 instantly shows key edges in the image and provides comprehensive easy to use tools that work with difficult-to-see edges and tricky areas like trees & lattices. Features include: