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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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Rey The Last Jedi – Flowers Double Exposure Photoshop Tutorial

I spent some time trying to find a tutorial to create a flower portrait. You’ve probably seen these images around on the internet, particularly on Instagram where it looks like the person’s face is either sprouting flowers or has flowers covering the edges of the face and head. I’ve wanted to create one of these flower portraits for a while now but couldn’t find a tutorial online that had all the assets to create one. I finally found one via Emir Hujdur’s YouTube channel and decided I’d give it a go.

Here’s the completed image:

REYFLOWERPORTRAIT01

I managed to find an image of Rey I wanted to use taken from The Last Jedi (obviously not a stock image). I edited the image by removing Luke (sorry Luke!) to single out Rey.

last-jedi-rey-luke-skywalker-ahch-to-1

And used this stock image for the flowers:

Painted_Transparent_Large_Purple_Flower_Clipsrt.png

Website: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOJmhlHKQg8

Time: 30 minutes

Level: Intermediate

Comment: This tutorial is not one that I would recommend, particularly for anyone that’s a beginner looking for easy tutorials to lean in Photoshop. The reason for this is the tutor is moving extremely fast through the creation of this image, If you don’t know your way around the Photoshop interface, you’ll probably struggle with this tutorial. I had to double back on some of the steps myself so I could replicate the tutor exactly to create the desired outcome. That aside, the tutor does provide links to other tutorials they’ve done, all of the assets used in the tutorial (free) and even a link to the music they used.

Rating: 5/10

 

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Vector Tuts Photoshop Tutorial – Adding a Bokeh Effect to your image

Yay! I am finally back again doing tutorial reviews which I love. It’s one of my favourite blogging posts because I like to have a record of what I’m learning and how I’m improving as I go.

This tutorial was a great choice for several reasons, the first being I had never created a Bokeh effect of my own from scratch before. I have used Bokeh effects in my images with someone else’s actions so I was really happy to learn this technique. Secondly, ALL of the assets were available online! If you recall my last attempt at a tutorial, it went very badly and I ended up wasting valuable time doing nothing at all because the tutorial was too old and all of the assets were no longer available online. So I have become better prepared for this situation by choosing tutorials more wisely to blog about.

Website: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=62&v=dndTpLFnYTo 

Time: 15 minutes

Level: Beginner

Comment: I really enjoyed this tutorial but I can’t give it a full.10 out of 10 rating because not all of the steps were included in either the video tutorial or the written tutorial. It took some time to actually get all of the settings correct before being able to complete it. So for that reason, it’s getting an 8 out of 10. However, I was very pleased to see all of the assets available to download so you can get to creating right away.

Rating: 8/10

Here is the before stock image:

girl-1245835_1920.jpg

And my edit with the Bokeh effect applied:

BOKEH GIRL.png

 

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PiXimperfect Tutorial – Luke Skywalker Edit – A New Hope

I wanted to apply this colour grading tutorial to a stunning image of Luke Skywalker in A New Hope, but I wanted the image to be of just Luke. So I edited out C3-P0 and the annoying branding which was pretty easy to do and voila! Luke was ready for adjustments.

Here is the before image:

18AUTH-Promo-Cards-Resubmit-07-09-18_Page_03.jpg

And here is the after image:

LUKESKYWALKERNEWHOPEEDIT01.png

Website: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=he6HCZz5bZ8

Time: 20 minutes

Level: Intermediate

Comment: There is so much you can learn from playing with colours, adjustment layers and adding shadows and highlights to an image. Unmesh takes you through a colour grading tutorial on an image which you can see above looks pretty washed out and dull to begin with but just comes to life after the editing has been done. I hoped to achieve the same effect with the image I edited of Luke, and I think it came out OK. I even created edits with masking on the eyes to bring out Luke’s pretty blue eyes a little more.

Rating: 10/10

Now the image is ready for social media posts or just about anywhere really.

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PiXimperfect Duotone Preset Tutorial – Rey – The Rise of Skywalker Edit

I’m slowly getting back into my routine again of adding Adobe tutorials to the site once more. I have actually really missed doing these tutorials, so I am hyped to get this one posted.

For those of you unfamiliar with Photoshop or unfamiliar with using duotones, this tutorial is a good one to learn from. I’ve used duotones before in edits I’ve done but Unmesh Dinda always finds a way to shine a light on different tools in photoshop in fun and unique ways. Before I used this tutorial, I didn’t know that Photoshop actually comes with a whole lot (100 plus) of preset Duotone and Tritone templates built in. No need to use any external resources (if you don’t want to).

How to use Photoshop’s built-in Duotone presets

Website: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=he6HCZz5bZ8

Time: 10 minutes

Level: Beginner

Comment: Using Duotones in image creation is one of the most commonly used trends in digital and graphic design today. If you want your images to have a special and unique look, duotones and tritone colours will certainly give your image that special lift to make your images look funky and professional.

Unmesh’s tutorial is great because not only does he show you how to use the duotones in your images, but he also shares tips and tricks on how to blend duotone colours into an original image to make it look even better.

Rating: 9/10

Here’s the before image (I didn’t like the brownish/reddish tint this image had originally and wanted to give it a more sombre look)

REYTROSEDIT06

And the after image:

REYTROSEDIT07

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Layer Life Tutorial – How to create Neon Glow Lines in Photoshop

I haven’t done a tutorial review in a few days so I thought I’d finally post this one all about learning how to create glowing lines in Photoshop. This is the most straightforward technique I’ve learned in a tutorial so far so it was a breeze to follow along and then use later on in my own edits which you can see in use here.

How to create Neon Glow Lines in Photoshop

This tutorial is via YouTube so you can check it out in the clip below:

Website: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHRk8xfRzoo

Time: 10 minutes

Level: Beginner

Comment: If you’re looking for a very easy way to make an image edit stand out in a social media post, this is definitely worth checking out. I’ve used this technique a few times in image edits to great effect. The tutorial itself is without sound, but the steps are shown as text on the clip above.

Rating: 10/10 – PERFECT RATING

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PiXimperfect Tutorial – Create Light Rays in three Simple Steps with Photoshop

I’ve recently discovered a new Photoshop channel on YouTube, and it’s actually amazing. The host is one of a kind, and his tutorials are so unique and refreshing. I imagine tutoring would be a daunting task even for the most dedicated and talented artists, but Unmesh Dinda makes it look so effortless, and his approach and charm makes it easy to follow along.

The tutorials aren’t separated by difficulty level because Unmesh’s tutorials are designed for basically anyone to learn, even beginners. And I think this is one of the best things about his channel. I put this to the test by taking on the following tutorial, and I am pretty much sold so expect to see a lot more of Unmesh’s tutorials on my blog in future.

How to create Light Rays in three Simple Steps with Photoshop

The object of this tutorial is to learn how to turn a rather dull image of sunlight in a forest into something worthy of a thousand likes on Instagram (if that’s your thing). Who doesn’t want people loving their pics? And the great thing about this tutorial is you can apply these techniques to any image using different filters such as Color Dodge and blur filters such as Radial Blur. I will definitely be using this technique in other photos!

Website: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FEw2BrsTek 

Time: 15 – 20 minutes

Level: Any

Comment: I think Unmesh Dinda is the original Guru of Photoshop and I don’t say that lightly. If you follow along with any of his tutorials, you will see exactly why he has more than a million followers on his channel. He is basically a Photoshop genius. All example assets are provided as well, which is, really awesome.

Rating: 10/10 – PERFECT RATING

Note: These images are very high quality 6000 x 4000. Here is the before:

Light Rays - PiXimperfect - Sample Image.jpg

And here is my edit after applying Unmesh’s techniques. Pretty cool, right?

Light Rays - PiXimperfect - FINAL.png