I found this simple tutorial through an e-Newsletter that I subscribe to from StockExpert. Using half-tones in Photoshop is an excellent way to get incredible visual effects.

This tutorial will help you go from this:

To this:

Several effects added to a photo can take a normal photo and make it extraordinary. Click here to go to the tutorial.

Unless you have been formally educated in color chances are you may not fully understand the difference between Tints, Tones and Shades.

I'll never forget learning this principle during one of my first art classes way back in high school.  The teacher handed us 3 bottles of paint. 1 Red. 1 Black. and 1 White. She further instructed us that we would be creating a monochromatic painting.

Is your photoshop work lacking a little something? Could it be that you need a some new brushes to spice up your designs? Here's a list of some of my favorite resources for photoshop brushes. The one I use the most? Brusheezy! They  have great stuff! So I made them number 1!

Free Photoshop Brushes at Brusheezy!

Photoshop Brushes - Brusheezy is the a HUGE collection of Photoshop Brushes and Photoshop Patterns to download, or upload your own!

Photoshop Brushes

Photoshop brushes, patterns, custom shapes, tutorials, styles and gradients - all for free - just download and enjoy this great collection!

PS Brushes.net - Photoshop Brushes, Your Number one source for ...

We offer over 500 photoshop brushes all for free, with those kind of numbers why would you search for photoshop brushes anywhere else?

Free Photoshop Brushes - Grunge Brushes and Photoshop Tutorials

Grunge Brushes, photoshop brushes, Free photoshop brushes.

Free Photoshop Brushes - Adobe Photoshop Brush DIRECTORY ...

Directory of free Photoshop brushes, with information on how to create and install Photoshop brushes.

Top 50 Free Photoshop Brushes Resource Sites : Speckyboy - Web ...

Free (cca 50) Photoshop Brushes sets that are even free for commercial use.

100 Awesome High Resolution Photoshop Brushes

A great contribution to all the Photoshop brushes starving hordes of designers and artists, including myself: 100 Awesome High Resolution Photoshop Brushes.

Photoshop Brushes: 150+ High Quality Free Photoshop Brushes

Featuring the best Adobe Photoshop brushes on the net and their authors, free PS brush downloads.

We all want to be faster. We look for the shortest check out lane, the quickest restaurant and the fastest cars. Unfortunately, when it comes to our design work, there are few areas we can "fly" through.

Thankfully, thanks to automation, masks, and layer comps we can save a lot of time, by simply thinking "speed" when we design.

One of my goals as a designer is to offer good quality at an affordable price. The way I do this best is by working quickly and allowing the computer to "work for me".  You will often finding me in my office "using" two machines!

How? I set one up on an automated task and do manual work on the other and vice-versa.

Automation. What is it and how can it work for you?  You may not realize how many things you can easily automate in photoshop, but before I discuss that, let's talk briefly about what it is and how you use it. Automation in Photoshop is done efficiently by creating "Actions". An action is a sequence of events that you "record" and play back to apply to an image or graphic. This sequence can be something as easy as changing the color mode, to a detailed series of color mode, sizing, saving and closing.

In case you're not familiar with actions, here's the palette you're looking for in Photoshop:

There are any number of tutorials on creating an action out there, so rather than re-iterate that information, here are some links:

http://blog.paranoidferret.com/?p=18
http://www.dpandi.com/actions/
http://www.photoshopcafe.com/tutorials/actions/actions.htm
http://www.tutorialsroom.com/tutorials/graphics/photoshop_actions.html

Now that you know HOW to create an action, let's discuss some great uses for them. I recently was asked to create a series of Flag icons for a Ministry with a large international reach. Needing over 65 countries I found it difficult to find an icon set that had all the flags I needed. Rather than purchasing an incomplete set, I decided to create my own.

Once the initial flags had been created, I opened all the files in Photoshop and set up actions to save them into a variety of sizes and file formats. By the time I had finished I had over 2000 different icons. Guess how long it took to convert and save them? About 2 hours of hands-free work. Photoshop did it all for me.

Learn to work smarter, not harder.

Ever wished for a visual "cheat sheet" of blending options and their effects in Photoshop?

Wanna save the time of having to click through all the effects to find the right combination? Look no further! At the end of this post, you can download a handy PDF of these images that will show you an at-a-glance reference of blending options and their effects.

Enjoy!

For the sake of this example we'll be using to different images to clearly illustrate the blending options!

Image 1: A simple tree!

Image 2: A Hot Air Balloon.

One by one, we will go through each blending option. Without moving the images or changing the placement. Some results may be hideous, but the purpose of this exercise is to provide you with a visual example of each of the blending options located in this palette.

Darken: Darkens the areas that overlap.

Multiply: Combines the hues of the overlapping images.

Color Burn: Accentuates the brighter areas of the photos.

Linear Burn: Accentuates and darkens the lighter areas.

Darker Color: Shows the darkest common color in both images.

Lighten: Overlaying parts of the images are lightened and washed-out.

Screen: Similar to the "Lighten" mode, but creates a brighter sheen.

Color Dodge: Still brighter than the "Screen" mode.

Lindear Dodge: Washed out further.

Lighter Color: Removes the darker images within the composition.

Overlay: The top image is lightly displayed over the image.

Soft Light: Similar to the "Overlay" mode except lighter.

Hard Light: Shows the drastic difference between the top layer images.

Vivid LIght: Colors are show in their brightest hues.

Linear Light: Brighter lights colors on the top layer.

Pin Light: Removes and combines similiar colors between the layers.

Hard Mix: Colors are combined and then exagerated.

Difference: Great for creating mystifying night scenes.

Exclusion: The inverse of the difference mode.

Hue: Breaks the composition down into basic colors.

Saturation: Determines the vividness of the composition's colors.

Color: Changes color below the top image to reflect the image's hues.

Luminosity: Creates a dark, yet vibrant color layer on the bottom image.

If you want a downloadable copy of this cheat sheet, click here.

So how realistic are these blending options? Well, here's a recent project I did for an upcoming book that will be released in January. You may notice the iStockWatermarks on this copy as I haven't yet converted this to finished product with the purchased images. However, in this piece alone, I have 10 images and I have utilized a variety of blending options in the piece.

As a designer chances are one of your weaknesses is the "details". As artists we tend to look at the big picture. The details get lost somewhere in our need to be expressive and let "it all out"! Unfortunately, not paying attention to the details is one of the fastest way to lose a client. It only takes one print job that gets cut off, or messed up for you to lose good business. So how can we avoid this? 1. Use templates. Hang on now. When I say templates I do not mean for the design but rather for the document setup. For each printer I use I have a folder on my machine filled with Photoshop, indesign and illustrator documents that include the bleed settings and trim sizes. By doing this, not only do I insure that my designs will be the right size but additionally it saves me the time of gathering specs for every basic job. 2. Use master files. I've said it before but it bears repeating. When working with a file that contains multiple pages take advantage of the master file feature in InDesign. By using those master pages you can easily set up running heads ( the chapter titles that appear on the top of each page) that will be uniform, consistent and best of all quick!! Again keep in mind that paying attention to the details DOES not mean that your design time will be increased. 3. Know your color space. One of the biggest issues I see with student designers work is print files that are built as RGB files and web files built in CMYK. When this occurs they are often upset with the quality of the end result when the price is finalized. Pay close attention to your colorspace. If you need to use a filter that is only available in RGB you can convert using the option " do not merge", add your filter and then convert back to CMYK. As you do this you may realize that the RGB version appears more vibrant. You're right. It does BECAUSE YOU ARE VIEWING IT ON A SCREEN. Avoid the temptation to assume that those colors will print properly.