The Best Digital Vector Artworks by Cristiano Siqueira

Cristiano Siqueira is a digital illustrator from Brazil. He is also known as CrisVector. With very little formal training, being mostly self-taught, he has risen to become a truly talented designer. His stunning creations blends 3d characters, vector graphics and amazing uses of vivid colors. If you are looking for a great source of inspiration, this designer showcase of Cristiano Siqueira is a must see. Here are the best his artworks. Check them out!

For Photoshop Beginners: 5 Good Photoshop Habits You Must Form Right from the Start

For Photoshop Beginners: 5 Good Photoshop Habits You Must Form Right from the Start

 

 

Photoshop is an amazing tool that can do almost everything you can think of with an image – but it is also very tricky to learn from scratch if you’re beginner. Therefore, it’s vitally important to form a few good habits right from the start and as a result, you will find yourself better positioned for any future Photoshop work you may encounter.
In this post, I will show you 5 Good Photoshop Habits You Must Form Right from the Start. Personally I think it will be quite beneficial for you to try and adopt those good practices, especially if you consider using Photoshop as a working tool and be professional with it.
The version of Photoshop I use here is CS4, but the points mentioned here should apply well for older version, too.

Habit 1: Get Your Workspace Setup Right, and Memorise Keyboard Shortcuts

10 Steps to Improving Your Photoshop Skills

First created by Steven Snell26 Dec 2008

Photoshop is an incredible tool for graphic design, but there is certainly a lot to learn for new designers, and there's always more to master for those who are already experienced. If you're currently working as a designer and looking to improve your skills, you probably find that time is a major constraint to improving your abilities.
If so, you'll need to develop a plan to improve your skills step-by-step in the time that you have available. If you're an aspiring designer, you may have no idea where to start in order to achieve the level of success of some of the Photoshop masters that we see online. In this, article we'll look at ten steps you can take to progressively build your skills using resources that are readily available.

1. Follow Tutorials

Psdtuts+ is obviously focused on providing excellent quality tutorials for readers. Like Psdtuts+, there are a growing number of other websites and blogs that regularly publish Photoshop tutorials. All of these sites are valuable resources for improving your skills, whether you're looking to develop specific skills or just looking to improve in general.
In order to take advantage of the tutorial sites that are available, subscribe to a few that you like the most so you don't miss out on new posts (you may also want to bookmark other tutorial sites in case you want to find them in the future). With the amount of content that is published, you'll never be able to work through each tutorial, and you're unlikely to have an interest in all of them anyway.
Try to get in the habit of picking one or two per week to attempt on your own. For most of us, learning is much easier when we're actually doing something ourselves, so working through the tutorials is essential rather than just browsing through them. If you use Google Reader you can star the tutorials that interest you the most so you'll be able to easily find them when you have some spare time.
About six months ago Collis published a list of his favorite tutorial sites, which included: Tutorial9, PS Hero, Tutzor, PhotoshopStar, Tutorial Dog, Abduzeedo, PhotoshopGUIDesign, Worth1000, Digital Grin, and Photoshop Support. In addition to Collis' list, PSD Learning, PSDFAN, PhotoshopTutorials.ws, and Photoshop Essentials are also good resources.

Making Sense of the Warp Tool - It's All About the Lines

Every now and then a project comes along that challenges me to use one of Photoshop's tools more than ever. This particular image was part of a series of ads I was working on with photographer Richard Radstone for a clothing line based in Colombia, South America.
Each of the ads featured a surreal representation of a different region of Colombia and was created by compositing various stock images and photos Richard shot for the job. The challenge with this one was to wrap an accordion around the palm tree like a giant snake.

Introduction

As we started to work on the image we quickly realized that accordions just don't do what we wanted and so we had to shoot it piece by piece and then warp, morph and tweak each piece into position to create the illusion. This was challenging enough, but after we had accomplished this the client then said "Oh, did we tell you it has to be red? And there needs to be a diamond pattern on the side?" Oh Boy!
It was while adding the diamond pattern that the Warp Tool really started to make sense to me and so transitions us into the tutorial. What we're going to do is pick the image up from the part where we have the accordion sections in place with the red coloring applied to the sides. Then we'll go step by step through adding the diamond pattern to the side of the top wrap. By the end you should have a pretty good understanding of how the Warp Tool works and will be a Warping Master as well.

Final Image Preview

Take a look at the image we'll be creating.

Step 1

To begin open the file "Tree-Accordion_Part1.psd located in the "source" files for Psd Plus members. As you can see, this image has a few layers in place already, such as the background, palm tree and the five accordion rings with the top section needing to have the diamond pattern added.
The Layer Groups used here help to keep all the layers organized and easy to find. Some very complex composite images can have over a hundred layers so it's important to keep them organized. A side benefit to using the Layer Groups is that if we use the Normal Blending Mode, then any Adjustment Layers we create within that Layer Group will only affect the Layers inside the Layer Group, something we'll use as a last step to adjust the lighting of the tree and accordion so it fits better into the background.

Create a Lightning and Nebula Photo Manipulation (Exclusive Tutorial)

Today I want to share a few tricks on how to merge photos. For this composition I used a stock photo of a ballerina. Ballet is the most fascinating dance! So let's add it some expression with the help of lightning and nebulae of outer space.
Useful resources

• The Best Photoshop Actions Ever
• Photoshop tutorials
• Freebies: Round-up of 100 Free Textures
• 100 Free Patterns to Boost Your Creativity
• Adobe Photoshop CS6 Classroom in a Book

Step 1

Let's begin our tutorial with creating a new document. Go File - New or press Ctrl+N.
Select width and height you need and press OK.