Considered difficult to master, actions are often overlooked by most Photoshop users. It’s true that actions are not as simple to use as layer styles or even as Photoshop plugins, and that the concept of automation has always be beyond the scope of most users.
But if you take a closer look at Photoshop actions, you will find that they are easy to understand and can help you automate your hard work, such as applying a series of repetitive changes to a group of images, for example.
An action no more than a recording of a series of tasks performed in Photoshop. Once created, you can apply that action on an image or a series of images. You can even make an action to create an image from scratch.
The following list is a gallery of free special, color, photo and text effects actions ready to download an use in Photoshop. Although these Photoshop Actions are free, please read the terms of use in each download page.
Last year I compiled A Nice List of Christmas Tutorials, Brushes, Clip art and Icons which became very popular among Christmas resources available on the web.
To continue with the tradition, I’ve compiled another nice selection of Christmas Photoshop tutorials and brushes.
All the brushes featured on this article are free to use on personal, non-commercial, projects, but, as usual, check each download page to read the usage rights for each brush set.
This is a collection of ten 1000×1000 pixels seamless textures. These textures were created using Filter Forge plugin. And they are free. Yes, FREE.
Filter Forge is an amazing new Photoshop plugin that lets you create your own filters (Standard and Advanced editions) or to run already created ones (Basic edition) from a gallery of more than 2500 user submitted filters. You can read a tutorial I wrote about creating a rocks textures using Filter Forge, to learn more about this plugin.
You can also download a 30 days fully functional demo version of Filter Forge and try it yourself. Or you can download any of these ten huge 1000×1000 grunge, rusty and dirty textures.
This is something I always wanted to do. I’m turning 44 this year and I must admit that I still listen to progressive rock with passion.
And this is precisely what I love about Photoshop. You can turn anything you like into brushes and start writing about something that you normally wouldn’t, in your blog.
Sadly, it was only when I started this brush set that I noticed that except for a couple of bands, no one had a steady logo over time. Even YES had different logos. But there were cases like PREMIATA FORNIERA MARCONI, KING CRIMSON, MOODY BLUES, and even JETHRO TULL, that didn’t even keep the same typeface on two albums. On the other side, groups like ELO, YES, GENESIS, PINK FLOYD and some others, at some point of their history, had very renown logotypes.
It’s Christmas time and, as every year, it is a good opportunity to provide some quality resources to my seasonal graphics starving visitors. Not much to say in this case. I built this list gathering some new (and old) Christmas related tutorials, brushes, cliparts and icons. I tried to keep a high quality standard, but in some cases you will find some simple, yet nice, resources that can be of a great help for a quick work.
All these resources are free for personal use. Be sure to read the terms and conditions of each one of the resources site, specially when downloading free icons, before trying to publish anything on print or on the web. Click on each image to go to that tutorial or download page.
There is plenty of software to build virtual Lego models with your Mac or PC. These applications use properly defined Lego parts data in the form of 3d objects to help you create a lego scene or instruction booklet of a Lego model. Just for fun, I decided to render some of those bricks and turn them into Photoshop brushes.
These are the programs I used : LDraw (not exactly a program but it is long to explain), MLCad (to distribute a group of bricks all over a virtual floor), L3P and L3PAO (to translate MLCad file into a POVRay file) and POVRay (to render the scene). These applications are free, but they are somewhat difficult to use if you are technically challenged.
After rendering the scene, I opened it with Adobe Photoshop and started to create each brush.
A couple of nights ago, when I was updating this site, it came to my attention that, with the time, I have been able to build a little collection of exclusive downloads such as Adobe Photoshop brushes, layer styles, backgrounds and other interesting stuff that some time ago was password protected and now is open to everyone.
So I came up with the idea of creating a section in this blog where visitors could easily find these downloads. This initial post will showcase all the previous downloads available and from now on, each new download, made by me or created by an external designer or artist exclusively for The Photoshop Roadmap, will be announced in this section.
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