Wildcat Digital » design

Photoshop Actions

Amber Wade — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 16:06:29 +0000

If you’re looking for a way to streamline your work in photoshop actions are a great way to go. I was always under the impression that actions were used for things like automating repetitive jobs like resizing images, but they go way beyond simple image adjustments. You can also use actions to manipulate photos, but I’m talking more than simple levels adjustments or color balance. There are wonderful actions out there for free that do things like give your images an ethereal glow or convert your images to a character sketch feel. One site that contains numerous free Photoshop actions is

ActionCentral: The Photoshop Action Exchange http://atncentral.com/download.htm

This site has quite a few actions that are available to download for free.

In addition to this and other free sites, there are action sets out there available for purchase that do some pretty awesome things. If you use Photoshop often and need to make image adjustments for either personal or professional use, I would suggest you check out all of your options. It would be worth your time.

Photoshop Brushes for FREE

Amber Wade — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 22:28:09 +0000

I recently stumbled across a very cool website that allows you to download free photoshop brushes.

BrushEezy

http://www.brusheezy.com/brushes

has hundreds of free brushes that are a really great addition to your arsenal of tools. While I am a huge fan of iStockphoto it can get very expensive paying for vector images to use as backgrounds. Some of these photoshop brushes are fantastic for just that–using as background images, or whatever you would like. While the brushes are free, many of the contributers only ask for links to the work.

Forums: Experts Exchange A+

Amber Wade — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 03:03:38 +0000

I’ve been a big fan of forums for quite some time now. I used to buy expensive books and try to glean as much information from them as I could. However, as I started learning more I found that the books were less and less helpful. Books are typically good for general introductory information. Many of them also have great tutorials to follow. But what do you do when you’re working on a project and you run into a problem that you just can’t solve?

My advice is to visit a forum. There are so many talented people out there who love to share their knowledge, why shouldn’t you? When I was working on my graduate thesis in Flash I started getting heavily involved in a forum where I found that nine times out of ten my questions were answered by very knowledgeable friendly people.

It’s been many years since that time, and while I’m still a true believer in forums, I found, what I believe to be, the mother-of-all forums. I’ve seen the forum before. It’s called:

Experts Exchange

http://www.experts-exchange.com

I used to scoff at them because they charge to use their services, and see replies to questions that have been asked. But I sucked it up when I finally asked a question on a forum that no one could answer, and I signed up for a free seven day trial. I very skeptically posted my question and waited. Only 17 minutes later my question was answered. I was floored. I decided I shouldn’t be too impressed–that it may have been an anomaly that my question had been answered so quickly and concisely, so I asked another question, and the same thing happened again.

Not only is response time lightening fast, but Experts Exchange has useful tool that let’s users validate answers when they are proven to work. This way, it’s easy to see which answers properly fixed the problem. Since membership isn’t free, this probably isn’t something that you would want to renew all the time, but for projects that might take a month or so to complete paying for one month’s worth of service might be worth it. While only being able to see answers might not be worth the subscription, the ability to ask a question is.