Last month I featured the incredible Photoshop and design work of Marco Peis here at Photoshop Roadmap. Let me say that I was literally flooded with emails and comments asking for more from Marco. Well, here’s an interview and a and incredible tutorial from him. Enjoy!

Hi Marco, thanks for taking the time for an interview! Let’s start with your background. Tell us a little bit about your job.

Well, I work for an international agency called EuroRSCG Vienna. We have international clients like Vichy, Peugeot, Citroen, and some else. But my first job was in a bank as a graphic freelancer.

It was a nice time, but veryyyyy boring. No conceptual, and only two colors. After that, i started tutoring in a graphic design school in Innsbruck. I made adobe training with the students – Primary photoshop ;D

It’s Christmas time and here’s a new roundup of snowy, bright, cheerful and beautiful Christmas related tutorials filled with white trees, ornaments and all kind of colorful effects. Each year, this kind of tutorials get more and more creative, reflecting the newest design trends. Hope you enjoy these ones, and Merry Christmas!

Whenever I have to research for new Photoshop tutorials for my compilations, I always focus on stunning, complex and difficult tutorials mainly targeted for pros. But most of the time you need to perform basic tasks such as red eye removal, or changing a color in a photo.

This list is about basic photo manipulation techniques for beginners. Some of these techniques require a bit of work, but many do not. Remember that good results require good starting photos!

Marco Peis - Junior Art Director & Specialist for Graphic Arts from Austria is using Photoshop, zBrush and C4D to create such amazing and breathtaking works. His portfolio is an eternal source of inspiration and ideas. His experiments have a strong and deep impression with remarkable effect combinations besides his sense of balance.

Born in Tirol (Austria), he started as a freelancer for some little but well-known agencies. Now he is working at the EuroRSCG Vienna on international clients like Peugeot, Vichy, Telekom, and some more. He told us, that in his job there is demanded much creative conception in ideas.

Since version CS3, Photoshop has the ability of import and render 3d objects created by third party 3d modeling software. This addition is a godsend specially for those who love creating complex action and sci-fi scenes and had to rely on external 3d software to render the basic layout of the scene and then finish it in Photoshop.

This article gathers 45 impressive free Star Wars 3d models that can be opened, tweaked and rendered in Photoshop. These models are free for all projects. But to be sure, check the download page to see if the author has indicated some restrictions. Some of these models require a free subscription to download, other ask for a donation if you liked the model. But all of them are absolutely free to download and use, and no payment is requested whatsoever.

Most of these models are available in different formats. Just download the format that is compatible with your version of Photoshop.

if you are a Star Wars fan and love paper crafting, you will also like to check these16 awesome Star Wars paper models I compiled for my other blog Creative Closeup.

In each new version of Photoshop, Adobe is pushing the limits of photorealism offering new tools to create 3d images or realistic special effects. But those features don’t create anything by themselves. The power is in the ever evolving imagination of Photoshop artists. And this compilation is a demonstration that in most cases, you don’t need any fancy tools other than your creativity and imagination to achieve photorealism with certain ease.

I’ve already created other interesting text effects compilations that you may want to check: The 80 best Photoshop text effects on the web, 30 Awesome Photoshop Text Effects Tutorials, and Complex and Sophisticated Lettering Designs Photoshop Tutorials.

This tutorial will show you how to create a simple additive two color Technicolor filter for Photoshop using Filter Forge plugin. Filter Forge is a fantastic tool to create your own Photoshop filters without writing a single line of code or know how to program in any language.

You don’t need to buy FilterForge plugin to follow this article. You can download a 30 day fully functional demo here with absolutely no restrictions. If you want to know about many other Photoshop plugins that offer fully functional trials, just read my previous article: 22+ Stunning Commercial Photoshop Plugins With Fully Functional Demos.

One of the most fascinating aspects of promoting your twitter account is that you don’t need to stick to a predesigned logo or badge. The Twitter bird is so widely known that you can design whatever you want, as long as you include a happy singing bird in it. Just let your creativity flow and that’s it.

Photoshop artists and masters have been using videos to transmit their expertise to students for a long time. But with all the new video hosting services that have been showing up during the last few years, video has become an extremely popular and effective free training method.

This is a list of 20 high quality Photoshop tutorials videos created by very popular Photoshop masters. These videos have very detailed explanations that are easy to follow.

After you are done with these videos, you can visit the new Photoshop videos section at this site with more than 800 videos available for free.

There are a number of times where you need a specific special effect for a job, and you are on a deadline and on a tight budget (as usual). If you are lucky, a free Photoshop plugin that can create that special effect you need may be available, but chances are that it is not compatible with your Photoshop version or operating system.

Outsourcing the job or buying a commercial plugin could be the solution, but when you are out of time or money, those are not options.

Here’s a list of awesome commercial plugins, some of the best available, that offer fully functional demos usually for 30 days or so. Keep this list handy, you won’t regret it.

If you are an average Photoshop user, you may wonder if you could ever create one of those complex scenes you frequently see while browsing the web or reading design books. One of the new trends Photoshop effects is destruction and apocalyptical scenes creation. This selection of tutorials featuring explosions, debris, chaos, infernal creatures and general mayhem, will keep you very busy for a while in you way to become a Photoshop master. If you find some of these tutorials difficult to follow, you may want to check the 64 essential guides, tips and tutorials to definitely master Photoshop like a pro to become more familiar with Photoshop basic, intermediate and advanced tools and commands.

During the last years I’ve been compiling resources for Photoshoppers. Since I’m the Editor of Photoshop Roadmap, I have to check for new tutorials every day and so I have a good knowledge about Photoshop resources being produced continuously.

That’s why I decided to gather all the compilations of Photoshop Resources I created for this blog. The most popular subjects are present in this collection: Photo effects, Photoshop brushes, text effect, lighting and grunge effects, etc. But also you will find other very specific topics covered such as: Videogames related tutorials, superheroes themed tutorials, complex lettering, movie posters and horror photo makeover.

Take a look at these more than 800 Photoshop tutorials, plugins and brushes. I’m sure you will definitely bookmark this page as a future reference.

I’ve been compiling Photoshop resources for about nine years for this site, always focusing on specific subjects. Some of these compilations became very popular, such as The best 80 text effects on the web, 100 wonderful Photoshop photo effects tutorials, or 40 Extravagant Surreal and Fantasy Scenes Photoshop Tutorials, to mention just a few of them. But all of them turned out to be constrained to a single subject, be it a very general one or to something more specific such as 30 Fascinating Video Game Inspired Photoshop Tutorials and Brushes, or Spectacular Superheroes Themed Photoshop Tutorials.

What about learn how to actually use Photoshop? There are hundreds of resources that teach you how to master the different Photoshop tools or commands. You probably never noticed many of those just because they look boring and have no flashy images to capture your attention. But believe me that these tutorials can teach you some unbelievable tricks that will ease your way to become a Photoshop pro.

Some time ago, I wrote a tutorial showing how to create a papercraft text effect based on a design created by Mario Hugo for Wired Magazine.

This time, I created another text effect based on paper craft. A popup paper craft effect such as those found on kids books. The process is fairly simple. A couple of gradient layers and the bending of a shadow is enough to give the basic effect of a paper cut word inserted on a folded paper.

Hope you like this effect and share your results in the comments section of this post. There is a lot of room for enhancement of this effect by playing with paper textures and brushes.

25 tileable textures for your multimedia, web, 3d, game or print designs. Bricks, stones, furs, metals and other materials. These tiles were created digitally, so you won’t get the dirt and impurities normally found on scanned images.

Lettering design is probably the area in which artists have most noticeable pushed Photoshop to the limits. Designers such as Tony Ariawan, Alex Beltechi, or Nik Ainley have been contributing lately to the Photoshop community with tutorials explaining how they create their excellent work of art.

This is a compilation of the best of lettering design tutorials created using Photoshop with the assistance, in some cases, of other illustration and 3d software.

My first video game console was an Atari Super Pong. A brand new one, not a retro gadget purchased on Ebay. It was 1976 and I was a kid. Opening that white box with deep black strong lettering and blue stripes was an unforgettable experience.

A year later, my brother bought a Fairchild Channel F console. Colors! Higher resolution! Controls! Loads of games!

But that was it. The era of the personal computer started at home with an Apple II+ and we never bought another console after that. In fact I only played video games at the arcades when on vacations.

32 years later, I purchased the third console in my life for my kids. A Nintendo Wii with two sets of controls. Although my kids didn’t go nuts, they were incredibly happy.

I’m having so much fun playing Mario Kart and Wii Sports that I decided to compile a list of 30 Video Game Inspired Photoshop Tutorials and Brushes for this new roundup of Photoshop resources.

Yeah, real life situations are my source of inspiration. Have Fun!!

Adobe Photoshop Elements is a slimmed down version of Photoshop. As irreverent as this may sound, it is more a feature than a drawback. Photoshop Elements shines in simplicity and power at the same time. Photoshop Elements is mainly oriented to amateur designers and casual photographers and it lacks all the print production features among many other tools. On the other side, it offers a number of simplified tools aimed to the beginner or casual user but with the same professional results you can achieve with a full version of Adobe Photoshop.

This article is a compilation of some of the best Photoshop Elements tutorials around the web and some of the best Photoshop Elements web sites. If you know about any Photoshop Elements tutorials that have not been included here, please share them with us by leaving a link at the comments section.

I always stated that Photo Effects and Text Effects were the most popular Photoshop topics around. When I decided to create this list I thought that I’d have a hard time to find tutorials with a reasonable quality.
Well, that was not the case. In my way I found Mysterious woods inhabited with magical fairies, dragons and mythical creatures flying on fantasy night skies, magic crystal balls, hats and other objects hidden in strange houses. Making it short, an immense amount of imaginative scenes that filled my senses and made my work not only easier, but enjoyable too!

Superheroes illustrations and posters are always related to cool special effects, fast and explosive action scenes and artistic illustration techniques. It is a surprise that not many Photoshop artists decided to create tutorials about this topic. Yes, you can find a lot of superheroes signatures tutorials that rely on an image created by another artist or speed painting demonstrations that have little or no value other than making us villain green with envy.
Despite of that, here’s a list of spectacular superheroes themed Photoshop tutorials that don’t require superpowers to complete.

Some years ago, the cool people at Photomorphix sent me five awesome high resolution rustic backgrounds to offer for free to my visitors. In the last few years, Photoshop Roadmap had an explosive growth and these backgrounds got buried under a lot of new resources.

For more cool royalty free ultra high resolution digital backgrounds, textures and stock photos for the photoshop artist, photographer and graphic designer, just visit Photomorphix web site and I’m sure you will like what you will find there.

I’m sure we all share the frustration of trying to get some acceptable results from the Watercolor Photoshop Plugin that is bundled with the default Photoshop installation.
As with most of those plugins, to achieve reasonable results you have to go farther than applying a single plugin. These 15 watercolor effects Photoshop tutorials will show you how to create beautiful watercolor paintings from your photos.

Portrait effects are no longer constrained to vignettes or simple stencil effects. This area has vertiginously evolved to an unbelievable level of creativity and complexity. So, don’t expect to find your average two step special effect. Many of these require a lot of work, which in the end will result in a lot of Photoshop techniques learned.
As usual, don’t try this with your average bad quality family photos. These effects require good quality high resolution images to obtain optimum results.

You know what I like most about twitter? That it has the power of RSS feeds while keeping the conversational (and fun) aspect that made chat and email so popular.

Twitter has become so widely adopted that as a researcher you can find very useful info in real time. And fortunately, technology and design are two very popular subjects in Twitter. For this article, I selected a group of 20 great Twitter accounts you should follow to be up to date, and in contact, with top quality Photoshop, Photography and Design informational sources.

An outstanding collection of 60 unique paper backgrounds, in high resolution image files. Each image shows a different type of paper that can be use in as a background in your favorite layout software.

Each one of the 15 different paper textures is presented in four styles. The plain texture, scanned from original high quality papers, plus three different folding effects for a total of 60 high resolution backgrounds. The folds and creases were applied using AutoFX Crease plugin from the DreamSuite Series I Collection

These textures are free and can be used in your commercial works. More information here. If you use any of these textures in your website, a link to Photoshop Roadmap will be appreciated. You can’t sell these textures.

In this selection of Photoshop tutorials, we are going to explore the creativity behind posters creation. Blending typography with images in a creative way, the proper usage of color and the effective communication of the message are, without a doubt, some of the most important lessons we can learn from poster design. Let’s check some interesting movie, music and art posters Photoshop tutorials.

Some time ago, I wrote this article for PSD Magazine. It was published in a special Photoshop Starter issue of this magazine on January 2007. For those who didn’t have the chance of reading it, here´s the full article:

The Color Replacement brush is a tool that lets you paint with one color over another color, keeping the brightness and contrast of the image. This way you can easily change the color of an object without using complex masking and color correction tools.

We are going to replace the color of these beach parasols from blue to red and leave the yellow part untouched.

It is true that Photo Effects is perhaps the most popular Photoshop topic today. And it is also true that after we applied an effect to a photo, we are tempted to "wrap it up" like a gift.

Adding frames to photos is a way to enhance the image in an artistic way. This article is a selection of some beautiful frames, edges and borders Photoshop resources you can apply to your photo albums.

Two years ago I wrote some articles and compilations about Photoshop plugins: How to apply a texture with Squizz Photoshop plugin, Create a wet and muddy rocks texture with FilterForge plugin, Programming Photoshop Plugins, 5 unique Photoshop plugins you should be aware of, and 3D plugins for Photoshop.

This time, I decided to gather a list of 15 incredible and absolutely free Photoshop plugins. And when I mean free, I mean it. You can use them for your commercial projects. Of course, you cannot sell or redistribute them without written permission of their authors. These are only a handful of plugins that stood out from the rest. But there are lot more free plugins around there, and one of the best sources to find them is The Plugin Site free plugins list. I simply had to check each one from that list and decide which one was worthy to be included in this list. Enjoy it!

I’m passionate about textures. I’ve already published some compilations, such as 30 free paper backgrounds and textures at my Creative Closeup blog and 10 grunge, rusty and dirty tileable textures at this site.

Now it is time for a new roundup of incredibly cool high resolution textures. These textures belong to different authors. All of them can be used in commercial projects, but it is safer to check the term of use of each texture before doing so.

There’s an interesting book called Crumble, Crackle, Burn: 120 Stunning Textures for Design and Illustration that comes with 120 high resolution textures on a bundled DVD.

A couple of months ago I wrote an article for my Creative Closeup blog about 20 Irresistible Gadgets You´d Love to Own. One of those gadgets that caught my attention was a cute little CD printer: DYMO DiscPainter. The article was a hit and generated a lot of traffic, specially from Reddit and StumbleUpon.

The nice people at Dymo were so pleased with this mention that they sent me one to try it. I was instantly hooked on it. The ease of setup and use of this printer is amazing. Believe me, the installation was a breeze and within minutes I had my first CD colorful label printed.

Last year, I compiled a very popular list of 80 Photoshop Text effects. Since then, a lot of new and spectacular text effects tutorials have been created. Not much more to add to this statement. Just take a look at this new roundup of 30 Awesome Photoshop Text Effects Tutorials.

The Photoshop Roadmap publishes a good amount of tutorials and downloads each day. For some, the load of information of this site is overwhelming, for others, well, not enough.

So I set up different ways and frequencies to be up to date with the contents of this site:

Wired Magazine introduced on the September 2008 issue a new headline design created by Mario Hugo. This cool headline design struck me with its beauty and simplicity. So I decided to turn this effect into a Photoshop tutorial. Although the effect is a bit different, all credit should be given to Mario Hugo.
Since he designed a custom typeface for these headlines, I had to find some similar typefaces to apply this effect. The first and obvious choice was the popular Baby Teeth font. Fortunately there are a lot of free alternatives, and one of them is Disco Deck by Iconian Fonts.

This article is a compilation of the most cheesy effects in Photoshop. But instead of showing some ugly examples, I tried to find some of the best and coolest works using these effects. These examples prove that when correctly applied the results are far from cheesy.

As time went by, the need for more complex, better looking and usable effects began to prevail. Tutorials writers replied with a new wave of awesome, eye catching well designed tutorials with loads of cool ideas inside them.

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.

Time passed by and I didn’t become a special effects makeup artist like Tom Savini or Rick Baker, but I still enjoy a nice horror movie with some decent gore and splatter effects.

Lately I’ve been noticing that many Photoshop artists are mastering the horror makeup techniques and believed that it was time to gather a nice (er, sort of…) list of Photoshop tutorials filled with gore, splatter and blood. Some previews have been blocked just because the final effect was too explicit. Have some fun with your photos, but don’t scare your kid brother too much, please.

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.

Designers are collecting them like mad. Not to mention that finding the most unique or bizarre set is a must.

And believe me, in this case, size does matter… So, here’s my contribution to all the Photoshop brushes starving hordes of designers and artists, including myself: 100 Awesome High Resolution Photoshop Brushes. And don’t forget to check the list of brushes sites and directories at the end of the article!

This tutorial will show you how to give a comic book look to your photos using a couple of filters and some additional decorations.

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.

For those like me that love text effects and have the courage to admit it, here’s a thorough guide to the best 80 text effects available on the web.

To some these may be not the best tutorials on the web, but certainly they are some of the best around. I had to eliminate those that looked nice but had very little preview images. This guide includes 78 Photoshop tutorials and 2 impressive collections of Photoshop Actions, plus 3 books on the subject.

If you have created a cool text effect and you believe it should be mentioned in this list, just leave a comment with the link to your tutorial or resource in the comments section.