BestGFX

Corey Barker, Executive Producer of PlanetPhotoshop.com and one of the Photoshop Guys of Photoshop User TV, brings you this handy and inspiring volume in the Down & Dirty Tricks series. Yes, this book is an insane collection of some of the most mind-blowing Photoshop effects you’ve ever seen in one place. Ever wonder how that movie poster was created, or how they created that cool magazine ad, or maybe even how to take a seemingly mundane photo and give it the Hollywood treatment? Or maybe you just want to know how to do some really awesome stuff in Photoshop. Well, then, this book is for you! Whether you’re a designer, artist, or even a photographer, there’s something here for everyone. Moving through these projects, you’ll start to see the potential of Photoshop’s most powerful features and how, with a little experimentation, you can open up a whole new world of dazzling effects.

In this collection of lessons we will learn basic terms, definitions and workflows for digital painting in Photoshop CS5.

Whether you’re an artist or not, drawing the human body is a complex and difficult task. There are so many different shapes, sizes and proportions to consider that it can make your head spin. But it’s also a lot of fun if you know how to do it the right way, and that’s why Kirk Nelson is here. He’s back to teach the basics of drawing the human figure digitally, and he has a few techniques that will help you along your way. Now let’s start drawing!

In this tutorial, concept designer Joe Peterson breaks down the process of creating a mechanical character using only a story outline as the starting point. With the initial premise being a believable sci-fi future world, Joe sets out to design an appropriate mechanized unit for a high-tech SWAT team. He begins by discussing how this initial idea influences the entire design process, beginning with reference gathering and following all the way to the final detailing and rendering phases.

The fourth in a series by industry-pro Deke McClelland on the premiere graphics creation application, Adobe Illustrator, this course shows you how to become a more efficient, exact, and creative designer with the advanced tools in Illustrator. Maximize your productivity with tools such as Smart Guides to precisely align your artwork, symbols that help you reuse it, and pattern brushes that allow you to tile it across the screen. Plus, learn how to add special creative touches to designs with the Gradient Mesh feature, great for creating photorealistic airbrushing effects; the Liquify and Envelope tools; the layered transparency you can achieve with opacity masks; and 3D effects like live, editable 3D type.

When it comes to creating concept art for environments, the process doesn’t have to be a slow methodical one. In fact, when we do something as simple as setting a time limit for ourselves, something truly magical can happen.

What separates ordinary images from the extraordinary? The more you can utilize your creativity to enhance your photographs, the more you will stand out amongst the competition and sell your prints at the prices you deserve.

Time means money. If you can work quickly and efficiently in the competitive world of professional photography, your dream of turning your passion for photography into a lucrative business are always within reach.

Do you love using Photoshop? Do you want to improve your photo retouch skills and jumpstart your career as a photo retoucher? In this workshop you will be able to learn all the most advanced retouch skills you need for professional work in several fields in the industry. The techniques we cover in this special workshop are used by high-end fashion photo retouchers, digital artists, professional photographers and graphic designers. Join Martin Perhiniak, Adobe Design Master Instructor for five intense but fun workshops if you want to improve your skills and jumpstart your career as a photo retoucher.

Time means money. If you can work quickly and efficiently in the competitive world of professional photography, your dream of turning your passion for photography into a lucrative business are always within reach.

Filters are a part of Adobe Photoshop often misused or overlooked by designers. Author Nigel French teaches a creative approach to filters, explaining how to combine them both with other filters and with the Photoshop masking and blending tools for maximum visual impact. Plus, learn how to use filter blending modes, filter masks, and how to stack filters to create unique filter combinations.

Before watching this video, I was always worried about how to look sexy if a giant tentacled sea monster pulled me down to his underwater lair. That is a concern no longer.(Thank you Jason Chan!) I”m also no longer concerned with how to complete a digital illustration based on an approved thumbnail sketch.

Learn how to enhance the natural beauty of a landscape photo with Adobe Photoshop Lightroom. In this short start-to-finish editing project, author Jan Kabili walks you through corrections for common issues you may have in your own landscape photos. She shows you how to create a mood with white balance, enhance contrast and detail with tonal adjustments, increase image intensity, make corrections to specific areas of the photo, and export the final processed photo.

Explore the power of Adobe Illustrator brushes to quickly and easily add detail to your fashion illustrations. This course shows how to create and maximize the use of pattern and scatter brushes; make brushes with start and end tiles; and control brush placement relative to the path for greater control. Packed with creative ideas and inspiration, author Robin Schneider's examples are specifically geared toward fashion design use but the techniques can be applied to any design field.

We’ve all seen banners on the Internet; they’re more common than pictures of cats with bread on their heads. If you’re a designer and you’ve been tasked with creating a banner, there’s a lot more too it than just throwing a few elements into place. Your banner has to be effective, accomplish the task at hand and look good. Gary Simon has all the details on how to make the perfect banner, and he’ll walk you through it in this course. Soon you’ll be making powerful banners in no time flat!

In this lecture, Phil Holland will be discussing the various techniques and camera rigs required to accurately shoot and process High Dynamic Range (HDR) images for live action visual effects, image based lighting, and creative print use. Beginning with the acquisition of the imagery, Phil discusses terminology and camera equipment necessary to accurately capture 360 degree spherical HDR images. Once the imagery is acquired, the next phase is processing. Phil covers a variety of approaches to processing imagery using a variety of off the shelf software packages including PT Gui, HDR Shop, Adobe® Photoshop and Adobe® Camera Raw. Along the way, Phil will be sharing many of the techniques and camera rigs he has created for use on movie sets and in post-production houses over the last several years.

For concept artists, it is important to be able to quickly come up with numerous ideas. In addition, you also need those ideas to be strong and creative as well. In these lessons we will cover different techniques to jump-start creativity and increase work speed.

Lesa Snider returns to creativeLIVE for an intensive look at the newly released Adobe Photoshop CS6. Whether you've already upgraded or are still deciding, you'll learn practical yet non-destructive editing techniques you can use every day. This 3-day course is a perfect companion to Lesa's previous CS5 class on creativeLIVE. Lesa will go further in-depth into advanced filters such as Puppet Warp, Liquify, and Lighting Effects, which all take advantage of the new processing power of CS6. Lesa will spend a full day covering Photoshop's brand new video features.

In this tutorial we will cover steps and a creative workflow to create a fantasy character for video games or movies. Throughout the training, you'll see how to create fast textures and color for the character, and see the whole process involved in character creation.

In this tutorial, we'll learn how you can start, or add new techniques, to create detailed human-figure drawings.
We'll begin this process by introducing a photo of the model we'll be drawing from and learn how we can establish the overall pose with basic lines of action. Following this we'll explore capturing the model's form through different gesture drawing exercises.