Creating Photoshop brushes is rather easy. But, I often find that brush sets lack consistency and are often created form various textures or sources. I like consistency.
I think a great set of brushes isn’t just a matter of throwing a bunch of brushes that kinda look similar together in a set, but rather create a set where each brush complements each other—this way if one of the brushes doesn’t work for what you’re trying to achieve, another brush in the set might since they’re created from the same source.
Start With A Photo
First of all we’ll need a high-resolution image. I find it works best with a photo of a texture rather than something like a landscape or portrait, for obvious reasons.
For the purpose of this tutorial I’ve used one of my own photos taken with a Nikon D90.
Today we have a guest tutorial by Dustin from Vallys In The Vinyl, a brand new texture blog where he’s releasing some of the best freebies around. He’ll be showing you how to create a surrealist portrait in Photoshop using photo manipulation and textures. Enjoy!
Preview:
Bokeh textures are some of the most beautiful and rare resources out there. If you’re in need of a good bokeh image, it can pay off to make your own rather than using a pre-made one. In this tutorial I’ll go over creating bokeh using both a digital camera or photoshop. Let’s get started!
Creating Bokeh using a DSLR
Have a camera? Awesome. Photographing bokeh textures is super easy, all you need is a suitable light source. Here I’ve used a small set of christmas lights, but other things will work too: city skylings at night, streetlights, stars, just have some playing around with it.
I’ll be using an older model Canon Rebel with a stock lens to shoot these. First, I set up the lights in front of a black curtain. It helps if you can isolate the light source as much as possible.
For this image, I used the following settings: zoomed into 55mm, shutter: 1/100 sec, F5.6, manual focus set to blur the image.
Typography plays a key part in many kinds of design. Some would even say it’s the most important element of web design, in order to correctly portray your message you have to invite the user to read what you have to say. So how do you make your type stand out? In today’s tutorial I want to cover some of the basics of modifying text using Layer Styles in Photoshop. We’ll learn how to create the “letterpress” look, how to overlay textures and patterns, and how to use tools like Stroke and Bevel. Let’s get things started.
Preview:
Today I’ll be showing you how to design a neat little textured button in Photoshop. This is a basic level tutorial that will help you learn more about layer styles, texture and pattern overlays, and gradients. If you find this walkthrough useful and would like to see more like this please leave me a comment. Enjoy!
Resources Used:
- Paper texture from Lost & Taken
- Pixel pattern from Premium Pixels
- Seamless wood texture from Graphic River
Preview of what we’re making:
I give away a LOT of stuff here on BittBox, mainly textures and brushes. The truth is, many of the textures are manufactured using recycled images I already have hanging around on my hard drive. I want to share one of my favorite ways to quickly add a little extra to a rather uninteresting texture, without using Photoshop brushes.
I’ve recently come across a lifesaver Photoshop plugin that is gonna rock your world. It’s called GuideGuide from Cameron McEfee and it’s a godsend for creating print layouts, and web for that matter. GuideGuide is free, and its a “panel” that assists you with laying out your guides across the artboard/document. Instead of having to do the math with complicated layouts, you can simply tell guide guide how far from each side of the document you want to place a guide. So simple it hurts.
GuideGuide can even find the center of a selection! You can set the number of columns, and gutter width as well. This is one USEFUL plugin, and I wanted to share it with everyone. Thanks to my friend Mike for the tip. :)
![Must-Have (Free) Photoshop Plugin: GuideGuide [CS4, CS5]](http://www.bittbox.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/guideguide.jpg "Must-Have (Free) Photoshop Plugin: GuideGuide [CS4, CS5]")
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