30 Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Tips and Tutorials

Published May 23rd, 2011 in Design - 11 Comments

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom is one of the top choices for photo editing software among amateur and professional photographers. In addition to editing photos, Lightroom also helps with organizing and managing your photos. You can also create slideshows and galleries to present your images.

In this post we’ll showcase 30 tutorials and articles from a variety of different sources that will help you to learn more about Lightroom.

Customizing the Background Color

15 Photoshop Tutorials for Designing Advertisements

Published May 16th, 2011 in Design, Photoshop Tutorials - 9 Comments

The design of an advertisement can have a huge impact on the level of success of the ad campaign. Being able to design attractive and effective advertisements will lead to better results for you and your clients.

In this post we’ll showcase 15 tutorials that will lead you through the process of designing an ad in Photoshop. Most of the tutorials are for designing poster/flyer type ads.

Design a Sleek Diamond Poster Advert

33 Tutorials to Design Your Own Business Cards

Published May 10th, 2011 in Design - 18 Comments

Business cards are an important marketing tool for many designers, and a lot of web designers also design business cards for their clients. If you’re interested in learning more about business card design take a look at the tutorials presented here. Some of the tutorials cover the process of designing the card in Photoshop and others use Illustrator.

For some examples of excellent business card designs please see:

• Letterpress Business Cards
• Double Sided Business Cards
• Embossed Business Cards
• Die Cut Business Cards
• Creative Business Cards

Creating a Colorful Vibrant Business Card

Learn Adobe InDesign: Getting Started Tutorials and Lessons

Published April 18th, 2011 in Design - 5 Comments

Adobe InDesign is industry-leading software for designing page layouts, both for print and digital. It’s extremely useful for multi-page publications like magazines, but it can also be used on single-page items like resumes and invoices. Photoshop and Illustrator users will find that InDesign works nicely with these applications, and having skills in Photoshop and Illustrator will help to make your layouts in InDesign more effective.

Like any advanced software, learning how to use InDesign can take some time and effort. With that in mind we have compiled this collection of tutorials that are great for those who are just getting started with InDesign, or for those who are looking to improve their familiarity with it. The tutorials found here focus on the basics, things that will be foundational to your work with InDesign.

You may also be interested in:

• Learn Photoshop
• Learn Illustrator
• Learn Web Design

Intro to InDesign:

Getting Started: What is InDesign CS5?

Create a Plaid Pattern in Photoshop

Published April 7th, 2011 in Design - 7 Comments

Patterns can be extremely useful for quickly creating backgrounds for your work. Having a diverse catalog of Photoshop pattern sets at your disposal will make it easy to try a variety of different patterns. In this tutorial we’ll walk through the process of creating a plaid pattern, which you can then duplicate with other color combinations to compile your own set of plaid patterns.

Here is a look at what we will be creating:

30 Outstanding Tutorials for Photo Manipulation in Photoshop

Published April 5th, 2011 in Design - 15 Comments

Designers love to be able to use Photoshop to create interesting and amazing things. Photo manipulation allows you to use your creativity and put it to use with Photoshop. There are lots of great tutorials available online that take you through the process of creating a specific photo manipulation. In this post we’ll showcase 30 tutorials that are great for learning more about photo manipulation. You may also be interested in an our older (from 2009) collection of photo manipulation tutorials.

Create an Incredible Story Coming Alive Fantasy Photomanipulation

Design a Blue Corporate Website Layout in Photoshop

Published March 31st, 2011 in Design - 5 Comments

Today we’re going to be walking through the process of designing a homepage for a corporate website in Photoshop. This particular design belongs to the Vandelay Corporate Template (HTML/CSS), which is available to members of Vandelay Premier or can be purchased for $10.

Here is a look at what we will be creating (click the image to view in full size):

30 Photoshop Tutorials for Amazing Lighting Effects

Published March 21st, 2011 in Design, Photoshop Tutorials - 14 Comments

Lighting effects can drastically change a design and give it an element that catches attention. Photoshop makes it possible to create impressive lighting effects in a variety of different ways, and in this post we’ll feature 30 tutorials that show how it can be done. If you’re looking to improve your Photoshop skills in this area you’re sure to find something of use here.

The Revolution Artwork by Aoiro Studio

How to Create a Set of Marker Brushes for Illustrator

Published February 17th, 2011 in Design - 8 Comments

Today we’ll be going through the process of creating a set of Adobe Illustrator brushes that will allow you to easily duplicate the look of a marker stroke. We recently released a set of marker brushes for Vandelay Premier members, and in this tutorial we’ll show how you can create your own.

21 Magazines Especially for Designers

Published February 9th, 2011 in Design - 17 Comments

There are countless blogs and community sites for web and graphic designers, with new ones popping up every day. However, there are also a number of quality print magazines for the industry, and they can serve as an excellent addition for learning new techniques, staying up-to-date, and for inspiration. In this post you’ll find 21 publications with some basic information on each.

Take some time to browse through the info on these magazines and I think you will find a few that are very interesting and helpful for you. Many of the magazines also come with tutorials and resources on CD, so the value can be very good. The descriptions shown below come directly from the websites of each publication.

.net Magazine

“.net is the world’s best-selling magazine for web designers and developers, featuring tutorials from leading agencies, interviews with the web’s biggest names, and agenda-setting features on the hottest issues affecting the internet today. If you’re serious about web design, then .net is the magazine for you!”