Use layers to create dynamic depth

Creative genius Neil Duerden has been wowing the design community with his effects-heavy work. Here’s how he uses Photoshop’s Multiply blend mode to add depth.Dynamic depth in Photoshop For this tutorial, we’re going to be primarily using Adobe Photoshop to create an image that layers a stack of simple effects. The result is a more complex final image that shows considerable depth in its composition. This style of image is simpler than you’d think to create, but can demand a lot from your system. You will be switching between Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, and Corel Painter as well, and throwing a few hand-rendered elements in just...

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Create amazing sticker art

In this masterclass, Leicester-based duo Waste – the combined talents of Daniel Lowe and Norman Hayes – have drawn inspiration from the likes of Ed Roth and Jim Phillips to create an astounding sticker collection. And not only can you explore how the duo create their art, but we’ve included the full sticker sheet free with this issue for you to slap onto surfaces anywhere. Mention stickers to professional designers, and the inspirational styles of the likes of Jim Phillips and Ed Roth spring to mind. Roth, who was part of the 60s ‘Kustom Kulture’ in Southern California, kickstarted a whole generation of grotesque characters that have since...

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10 Simple Steps to Better Photoshop Performance

Before getting started with Photoshop, we all should have first visited the “Edit > Preferences” menu and change the “Performance” settings to fit our personal taste and computer specifications, but this isn’t always the case – in many situations designers simply forget these aspects. If you never changed the default performance settings in your Photoshop or you just want to double check them to improve the Photoshop performance, here are 10 important and useful points that you may want to consider. 1. Adjust The Number Of History States Maybe you already went through that bad feeling of clicking “undo” dozens of times and realizing that Photoshop...

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Change the Title Tags in Blogger for More Search Engine Traffic

By default Blogger displays the blog title first, followed by the name of the post. As you might notice this is not good when it comes to SEO. It's important for the name of the post to come before the name of your blog, especially when it comes to google search results. Learn how to make your post title show up first so that you can reel in more traffic from the search engines.Why Change the Titles?It's quite important to have the Post Title + Blog Title arranged accordingly because this is how you would want your blog to be displayed on google's search results. This way more people will click on your link when searching google because the...

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Download Free Norton Antivirus 2010 Beta

Overview Be one of the first to try Norton AntiVirus 2010! This beta test version of Norton AntiVirus 2010 is the fastest, most proactive protection against viruses, Trojans and worms we have ever offered. The 2010 version of Norton AntiVirus offers superior performance, improved protection, and tools to help preserve the performance of your PC. OVERVIEW: This year the Norton Protection System has been enhanced and our new SONAR 2 technology to stop new and unknown threats. To protect your PC’s performance, we have added the Norton Performance System. Testing Windows 7? Norton AntiVirus 2010...

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Master the gradient mesh tool Illustrator

The Gradient Mesh tool is tricky to master, which leads many digital artists to play with it a few times and then leave it alone, or only use it for specific tasks. One challenge with the tool is that when the mesh is complicated, the gradation of colour between two points forms a hard line instead of a soft gradient. There isn’t always an easy way to combat this: instead, the artist has to learn to fool the eye, and even compromise a little sometimes. In this tutorial, Stephen Freeman shows how to deal with this, guiding you step-by-step through how to create this illustration. He’ll also illustrate the potential and limitations of...

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