[Re]Encoded.com » Graphics

350+ Seriously Awesome and Free Photoshop Brushes

Hilde — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 13:00:19 +0000

If you’re a designer you probably have some knowledge when it comes to using Photoshop. This is one of the most popular programs in the community and a lot of people spend time on making tutorials, brushes, actions, gradients, templates and so on. Because of the program being so popular, there are tons and tons of stuff that’s available out there. It can sometimes be hard to find something useful, so we’ve taken the time to go ahead and collect some great free brushes for you to use! We hope you like them! Just remember to read up on the creators comments before using these in any public designs.

We’ve tried to include a good variety of brushes that can have many different uses.

Enjoy!

Nebulae brushes

15 brushes

Star brushset

20 brushes

Suddenly spring

25 brushes

Floral brushes

9 brushes

Foliage swirls

45 brushes

The Ultimate grass brush set

50 brushes

Blood brushes

14 brushes

Fractal brushes

15 brushes

Cool brushes

32 brushes

Urban Scrawl brushes

29 brushes

Water brushes

38 brushes

Light beams & Rays

26 brushes

Glitter & Sparkles

28 brushes

23 Varied brushes

23 brushes

20+ Colorful Tutorials to Polish Your Adobe Illustrator Skills

Hilde — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 13:00:49 +0000

Adobe Illustrator is probably the most popular vector graphics editor amongst designers today. The program has a lot of advantages when it comes to making scalable images, crisp designs, logos and illustrations. Here is a collection of some colorful tutorials to show you some of the great versatility of this software. We hope this can inspire you to do more work in illustrator. Maybe it’ll be the scene of your next website-header, logo or business-card?

No matter what you’re wanting to use Illustrator for, doing some tutorials can really help you feel more comfortable with the program and bring you a few new ideas. We hope you like these, enjoy!

Abstract Vector Design

Google Phone-Styled Background

Attractive Vector Butterfly

Colorful Vector Carnival Mask

Creating a simple Rainbow Brush

Icy Cocktail

Geometric Flower Effect Logo

Mouthwatering Chocolate-covered Strawberry

SuperCool abstract Vectors

Surprise Gift

Full Spectrum Spirograph

Crazy Cool Vectors

Colorful Hippie Peace Van

Cubist Masterpiece

Funny Swirls

Omspace 3d Cylinder Graphic

Colorful Abstract Artwork

Blissful Vector Scene

Eyecatching 3D Pie Graph

Swirl Mania

Diamond Flower

We hope you’ve found these tutorials inspiring and that you’ve been taught some new tricks as well!

Good luck with your designs

Top-Pick Tutorials: Logo Design – Creation and Process

Hilde — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 13:00:15 +0000

The art of logo design can be hard to master. In this collection I’ve gathered a great collection of logo tutorials for any designer to practice with. The effects you learn here can give you a lot of inspiration, not only for the logo of your business, product or website – but also for other design elements you want to stand out with a professional look.

What can also be helpful, is the fact that several of these tutorials give you some more info than just the specific design. They tell you about the process itself, and can give some valuable input on how to approach this kind of task.

Unless you’re a graphic designer yourself – I’d recommend that you get a professional to do the design. This way you’re most likely to get a high quality logo that will last.

Either way, these tutorials are great for practicing your Photoshop and Illustrator skills. We also have some tutorials in here that use other software for those who want to try that too! I hope you will find some useful new tricks and techniques here.

Let´s get started!

Farm Honey

Get a walk through some basic Illustrator steps in this easy and fun tutorial!

Logotype from Conception to Completion

This tutorial covers the process of designing a logotype in Illustrator. This particular logo created in the tutorial is for a fictional business named Purple Lemon, possibly a web/internet or design related company.

Silhouette Logo for a Steak House

Get walked through some of the steps of creating a logo, with a custom silhouette logo mark, for a fictitious steak house restaurant named “Lone Star Steaks”.

Origami Logo (photoshop)

Create a unique origami style logo in this easy tutorial. Not only logo material, but also something you could include in various types of design.

Origami Logo (illustrator)

A bit similar to the previous one this illustrator tutorial is probably more suited for logo design.

Multimedia Business Logo

Learn how to create a glossy and professional logo for a multimedia business website.

“Creating an awesome logo”

This tutorial takes you through the whole process, from gathering important info through actually drawing it (in Photoshop).

Quick Logos with Live Trace in Adobe Illustrator

One of the most underutilized features in Illustrator is Live Trace, which can convert any photograph into vector art in just a few clicks. In this tutorial, you’re learning to use Live Trace to vectorize a photo for a logo design.

Logo Design Process and Walk-through – Vivid Ways

Description of the design process and a walk-through of how the final logo is created in Adobe Illustrator.

Photoshop Logo Jelly Remake

In this tutorial you’ll learn how to make these versatile jelly-like elements that can be used for various designs.

Swan Logo

Very basic on showing a very popular approach with an element as part of one of the letters.

Goplan 2.0 logo creation process

The creative process behind the face lift of GoPlan.

Web 2.0 Logo Reflection

You probably know how to make a reflection in Photoshop, but do you know how to do it in Illustrator? learn it here.

Professional Web Design Studio Logo

Learn how to create a professional web design logo using several ways of working with text.

Elegant logo with Transparency

A nice and elegant logo with Photoshop CS4 using similar colors and transparency.

Business Solutions Logo

Create a semi-modern logo for your company or website.

Umbrella Corporation logo

The Umbrella Corporation is a fictional bioengineering pharmaceutical company appearing in the Resident Evil series of survival horror games by Capcom and in its film adaptions. In this Adobe Photoshop tutorial you will learn how to create the company logo.

Sikbox Logo Design Process

Great description of some of the ideas and design of this nice logo.

Step-by-step logo

This is a great work-through on the logo design process by Chuck Green.

We hope these tutorials and descriptions have given you a better understanding of the process of Logo Design. We also hope you’ve gained some new inspiration and creative energy!

Need FREE photos for your designs? – 10 Great Places to Start!

Hilde — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 13:40:22 +0000

If you’re an artist, designer, blogger – you most likely will run into the need for photos or textures. If you don’t have the budget to go to paid stock-sites, the good thing is that the free options out there are getting better and better!
In this article I’ve had a look at a whole bunch of free alternatives to save you some time and money.

Remember to read terms of use before using pictures though.

Here are 10 awesome places to start that can provide you with pretty much any kind of picture you want.
We hope these websites can be helpful for you – in your designs, when practicing your Photoshop skills and so on.

These websites are meant to give you a good variety of free photos. There are many, many more where they come from. If you start with these you should have most topics covered.
Enjoy!

Stock. XCHNG

Almost 400 000 pictures at the moment. This website is a favorite with many and I also use most of the pictures in my articles from this website. Most photos are good quality. Registration is required, but it’s completely free. Probably the biggest free stock photo website currently.

MorgueFile

More than 230 000 free images and great ways of sorting by category, color and more!

FreeFoto

FreeFoto currently has over 130 000 images available, in many categories. Good search feature, and usage is unrestricted. Just include an attribution link back.

PhotoRack

Over 27 000 files available in 149 categories. All pictures free for use, both for personal and commercial projects. No back-link required.

Stockvault

Over 18000 pictures right now. Pictures free for non-commercial use.

FreeImages

Over 5000 pictures on this site currently. All images at Free Images are free to use on websites and printed materials when you credit the site back.

Flickr (creative commons)

The creative commons section of Flickr is HUGE. We’re talking millions of pictures available under different licenses. Make sure you know the different licenses before you use anything!

Freerange

Photos found here can be used for personal and commercial use. Registration required to download high-quality, high-resolution photos (including textures). Photographers can get paid when users click on the ads next to their photos.

Photo laboratory (Photol)

Close to 380 000 pictures in their huge base. Between 10-15000 new images added monthly. 35Mb can be downloaded daily.

Everystockphoto

This final website we’re mentioning today – is Everystockphoto. It’s something as cool as a search-engine for Free Photos and indexes over 5 million images. Many useful features included here. Just make sure to read the licences!

These were the ten picks of where you can start to go for free stock photos. We know there are many competing sites out there and hope you find the list useful.

We’d love to hear what you think in the comments section below, and remember to share this article if you enjoyed it! Thanks

10 Awesome and Handy Online Image Editors for Designers and Creatives

Hilde — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 15:06:06 +0000

In this article we will show you 10 places online where you can edit your images. This can be very useful if you don’t have any proper software, if you’re on a different computer – or just need a quick and easy way to get some basic tasks done. This could be resizing, cropping and other options when heavier options aren’t really necessary. Some of these will even allow you to work with text and store a back-up of your images online.

Free Online Photo Editor

Re-size, rotate, use filters and effects. Very easy and versatile.

Pixer.us

Re-size, crop, rotate, brightness & contrast, saturation, blur & sharpen + a lot more!

Picnik

Picnik let’s you import pictures with ease from Flickr, Facebook, Picasa and more. You get all standard editing tools (like re-size, crop and so on) along with type tool, lots of effects and more adjustments. Pay for a premium version for even more functions.

Splashup

Formerly known as Fauxto, this is one of the better ones out there. Lots of options – and you can grab photos from Facebook, Flickr and so on.

Pixlr

Pixlr is one of the most popular options on this list, and not without reason. It starts quickly, without the need for any registration – both good things. User-friendly interface and standard functions. We also have to mention that if you get the paid version, a whole world of new functions is unlocked.

Photoshop.com

A great all-round program that now also is available for iPhone and Android. Not only is this a great editor, you can also organize and share your photos with a free account. Some ads for the “big brother” that is the actual Photoshop CS5 here and there, but this version is 100% free and a great option.

Online Photo Tool

If you register, you can also save images here. All the basic editing tools are here, along with some simple painting tools as well.

FotoFlexer

This one is also a very well known option. All the basic functions are here and work well, along with quite a few one click effects and other features – like recolor hair, animations, distortions, retouching, doodles and more.

FixPicture (beta)

This is still in beta, but seems to work really well. Basic options along with some effects. Not the most versatile one in the list, but the interface is good-looking and easy to use – making it a very positive experience for easier tasks.

Aviary’s Phoenix

Both basic and some more advanced features makes this one of the top picked online photo editors. Along with this, Aviary also has a number of other tools for vector, effects, audio and so on. Absolutely worth a try!

Conclusion

There’s a jungle of free web-based applications out there when it comes to image editing. A good handful of them are definitely giving you what you hope for, so there’s not really any excuse for not being able to do easier editing no matter which computer you’re on. Which you’ll choose as your top pick will very much depend on your preferences when it comes to the interface and so on. Our tip would be to have a look through this list, and try a couple of different ones to see what you prefer. Good luck!