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Spooner Graphics Photoshop Tutorial Review – How To Create a Letterpress Style Poster with Overprint Effects

Coming back to my one and only Photoshop – I haven’t really had time to sit down and work through a decent photoshop tutorial for some time, so one of my goals is to get back to doing an edit a day. Photoshop Tutorials can be time consuming though, depending on what you’re making or learning.

This particular tutorial is by Chris Spooner, and his website is a particular favourite of mine for learning Graphic Design techniques and for great design assets. He also regularly updates his blog with unique discounted assets for designers from websites he frequently uses so you know you’re getting quality content for a fraction of the price.

My focus has slowly turned more and more to designing posters and working with typography. I really liked the look of this poster, so I learned how to make it via Chris’ YouTube channel:

And here’s the finished product. I was quite happy with the result:

LETTERPRESSPOSTEROVERPRINTFINAL.png

Website: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ILUQXEKADI

Time: 1 hour

Level: Intermediate

Comment: Chris is an excellent tutor, although he does seem to work pretty quickly, so you might have to do a bit of pausing to keep up with him. His tutorials are well made and easily understood, and a huge bonus is that he provides most of the assets you need to make what you’re creating in the tutorial. Like most designers, Chris also uses a lot of stock images which are not always free, unfortunately. You can probably find replacement assets for free online if you know where to look (various websites like Pixabay and Pixelbuddha usually have what you’ll need

Rating: 10/10

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Adobe Create Tutorial – Neon Effect in Photoshop

I’ve created neon effects before but that was just for outlining other images to add something to it and make it “pop” a little. This simple tutorial (it really is the easiest one I’ve done) uses a similar technique but uses a little masking as well to make the overall effect look more realistic on the image.

Here’s the before stock image:

rendition;size=2357;.jpg

This is my finished edit:

NEONHANDEFFECTMINEADOBE.png

The adobe tutorials are also really good for beginners because they usually provide the stock photos for you for free as long as you’re only using them for this tutorial. But isn’t it amazing how a simple masking effect using blend modes in Photoshop can create something quite cool. I’ve always wanted to learn this technique ever since I first saw it used in a graphic design poster on Pinterest.  And now I know how it’s done!

Website: https://create.adobe.com/2019/7/12/how_to_create_a_neon.html

Time: 5 minutes

Level: Beginner

Comment: I can’t really say anything bad about the Adobe tutorials other than they do move really fast through the techniques so if you’re just starting out, be ready to pause a lot as you go. But these tutorials are made with beginners in mind and they do advance in level as well so you know that you’re not biting off more than you can chew. The added bonus is there is a video clip to watch if you learn better that way or you can follow along step by step with the written instructions.

Rating: 10/10

 

 

 

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Design Tuts Plus Tutorial – How to create a Retro 90s Grunge Photo Effect in Photoshop

My edit for the day is this one, yet another tutsplus tutorial (can’t seem to get away from these tutorials because there are so many good ones). The reason I chose this one is that if you remember back when I was doing the Udemy course, I created my very first poster learning Graphic Design basics. And the same stock photo is used in this tutorial, so I figured, hey why not try this one?

So the end result should look something like this:

grungeeffect_final.jpg

I actually thought this was one of the better tutorials because the instruction was excellent and detailed and so easy to follow along to.

How to create a Retro 90s Grunge Photo Effect in Photoshop

As mentioned above, I liked this tutorial for its ease of use and its detail. The screenshots were also very well placed and helpful.

Website: https://design.tutsplus.com/tutorials/how-to-create-a-retro-90s-grunge-photo-effect-in-adobe-photoshop–cms-26971

Time: 20 minutes

Level: Beginner

Comment: I really enjoyed using this tutorial and creating my own brush for the first time too! But the one BIG bonus about this tutorial is that the assets were all available and easy to obtain. No mucking around with creating your own images to use because Pixabay is free!

Rating: 9/10

And here is my edit, you’ll notice I used different text to make this poster, but I think it works well.

GRUNGE03.png

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New Graphic Design resource website – Spoon Graphics

I have become a recent follower of Chris Spooner and his awesome website Spoon Graphics. He’s a designer from the UK who has a blog and website that is dedicated to helping others to learn, design and create.

I am aiming to make my next tutorial one of his focusing on creating beutiful, flowing text. This is what I am going to make next in Illustrator:

shaded-type-sm

So I’ll be following his tutorial and rating at the end like I’ve done with the others which you can find here if you’re interested.

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Luke Skywalker and Rey Black and White Edit

As mentioned in an earlier post, I wanted to try and replicate the style of this image I found on Pinterest by combining two background images together with really eye-catching text over the top.

What I like about the image is the contrast between the black and the white but also the play on words is quite cool as well as you can see the two colours blended together to create grey.

What I came up with is a different play on words using Star Wars text for the theme, but I did something slightly different with the gradient colour because I liked how the colours blended with the text. I also didn’t want the separation between Luke and Rey to be as precise as the other graphic where you can clearly see a break between the two models. I wanted the image of Rey and Luke to blend into each other.

Here’s my first attempt:

BYTHERESOLVINGOFGREY

As you can see, the format is not exactly the same as the original graphic, but I actually like how the gradient effect works with the black, white and grey. I also borrowed the text formatting a little as well the image above as you can see, it’s not centred.

But this is the image I eventually went with after a few minor changes:

BLACKANDWHITEGRAPHICLUKEREY02

The text is taken from the Journal of the Whills:

“First comes the day
Then comes the night.
After the darkness
Shines through the light.
The difference, they say,
Is only made right
By the resolving of gray
Through refined Jedi sight.“

―Journal of the Whills, 7:477[src]

 

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Luke and Rey Graphic Design Edit

I found some awesome examples of graphic design posters, flyers and images on Pinterest and I saw another one that I want to try and replicate. Obviously there is going to be a lot of editing and transforming involved to get the edit just right. I also went on the hunt for a matching font and while I couldn’t match it exactly, I found one that will do the trick.

This is the original image that I want to use as an example:

108c-design02.png

And here are the two images I’m going to use for this graphic:

LUKEBLACKANDWHITE

And Rey:

BLACKANDWHITEREY

More to come soon!

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Fantasy Sci Fi Portrait Photo Manip #1 is almost done

So I am going to come right out and say that I know I didn’t update with an edit yesterday and that is because I have spent way too much time trying to perfect this Warp tool technique.

I am going to show you an unfinished edit that I’ve been working on, and while it may not look like much right now, it’s a lot more involved than the other pieces I’ve been creating lately.

I am going to turn this:

lady2-1

Into something that looks like this:

lady-final

My current image looks quite different from this one, and there are several reasons for that because the tutorial is two years old, and half the assets used are no longer available! So I had to improvise.

Here’s a little peek of what I’ve done so far. As you can see the background image is very different from the one in the pic above, but I actually love this process. I am almost done, and the finished manip will be up tomorrow with the tutorial details.

FIRSTFANTASYSCIFIATTEMPT3.png