Illustrator and Photoshop Tutorials Roundup – July 2014

Illustrator and Photoshop Tutorials Roundup – July 2014

“The critical distinction between a craftsman and an expert is what happens after a sufficient level of expertise has been achieved. The expert will do everything she can to remain wedded to a single context, narrowing the scope of her learning, her practice, and her projects. The craftsman has the courage and humility to set aside her expertise and pick up an unfamiliar technology or learn a new domain.” – Dave Hoover

We love looking at wonderful, smart, and creative designs all day. But to look at them, they need to actually exist, and there is no way that they will just magically appear, without a good designer putting in the effort to make them.

Learning is not a short process. In fact, learning never stops. There is no actual goal of learning, because learning is the goal. We do it because we want to get better at what we do, because it is fun, and because it expands our horizons.

This, of course, is true for designers as well. Dare we say, ever more so.

Like any profession, design comes with its own particular set of tools, and more often than not, those tools are the Adobe Suite, specifically Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop.

They really are tremendously versatile tools, with enough features to ensure that, given the right amount of knowledge them, designers can create the image that they have stuck in their head.

Being such powerful tools, however, comes with a problem: its difficult to master them, and use them at their true potential to create the stunning designs you want to make. But we are here to lend a helping hand.

Each month, we go looking for tutorials, and showcase some of the best ones we have seen, all so you do not have to go around completing tutorials you will not find useful, and because, as we said at the very beginning, we love gawking at great designs, and we are anxious to see yours.

Let’s get started!

1. Blend Different Illustration Styles in Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Photoshop

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Fairytale Asylum is a marvelous collaboration between Stephen Chan and Adriana Katsiki (or Wundercloud, as she is also known). Drawing inspiration from the same things, but having radically different styles, the project brilliantly blends the two artists’ styles, creating a weird and wonderful mix of modern minimalist and gothic pagan, and the will show you exactly how they do it in this tutorial.

You will be using both Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator for this tutorial, so it is good practice for cross-platforming, as well as a great way to learn how to mix photographs and hand-drawn elements digitally. It will, however, take you between 6-8 hours, but it really is well worth it.

2. Create an Animated Interface GIF in Adobe Photoshop

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The goal of this next tutorial is to help you make you presentations a bit more flashy. Sure, a simple screencap of the app you are designing (or have designed already) will give potential clients an idea of how good you work is, but an animated GIF will bring that demo to life.

This tutorial takes you through all the steps you need to create the animated GIF, from actually designing the user interface, down to animating the image, all done in the most recent version of Adobe Photoshop.

3. How to Design a Kawaii Squid in Adobe Illustrator

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Kawaii is probably the cutest thing Japan has to offer, apart from the bunny island, and whether you might want to add cuteness to your designs, or make an adorable little gift card, this tutorial will help out in no small way.

The tutorial is really well organized, and will take you step by step, holding your hand all around the way, making it good for both beginners and seasoned users.

4. Create a Photo Manipulation of an Emotional Dancer in the Forest in Adobe Photoshop

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Photo manipulation is Adobe Photoshop main purpose, so learning how to do it properly is paramount in becoming a proficient Photoshop user.

In this tutorial, Jenny Le will show you how to create a fantastic photo manipulation of an emotional dancer in the forest. Along the way, you will learn how to combine different stock photos in a cohesive scene, manage lighting, adjust color, user layer mask, and more.

5. Create an Epic Godzilla-Inspired Movie Poster in Adobe Photoshop

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The most recent Godzilla movie benefited from some absolutely amazing promotional artwork that really got the hype going, and this tutorial will show you how to pull off a moody movie poster, whether for a monster movie, or any other kind of movie.

The tutorial has links to all the assets you will need to complete, and you will be completely awestruck at what a great blending tutorial this is.

6. How to Create a Seamless Vintage Nautical Life Pattern in Adobe Illustrator

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If you are anything like us, summer could not have come soon enough for you to get on your sail boat and take a quick ride from Marseille to Saint Tropez. And if you are going to do that, you will, of course, need a good-looking themed wallpaper on your laptop to match.

Rather than loose precious nautical adventure time looking for the perfect wallpaper, why not create your own?

This tutorial will teach you how to use the pencil tool to create great elements, and how to blend them together perfectly to create a great pattern wallpaper.

7. How to Create a Washed Out Vintage Matte Photo Effect in Adobe Photoshop

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Like we said in our hot trends for 2014 article, manipulated images are becoming more and more popular. Instagram has a large part to play in this, but it does have its limitations. The programs filters are cool and all, but nothing can quite compare to a carefully crafted photo effect done in Photoshop.

In this tutorial, you will learn how to make a great vintage matte effect by building up adjustment layers and blending modes to stack multiple levels manipulation. This method is non-destructive and, as you can see, the results are absolutely gorgeous.

8. Playing with Glows and Blurs – Fairy in the Woods in Adobe Photoshop

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Like the title suggests, this tutorial will teach you a thing or two about lighting and blur effects in Adobe Photoshop. You will also learn how to make amazing depth of field, and how to do matte paintings, and became better at photo manipulation in general.

9. How to Create a 3D Soccer Field in Adobe Illustrator

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In light of the recent World Cup, we thought it would be fun if we included a football-themed tutorial on this list.

The tutorial is really good, but we have to admit that the score played a big part in why we decided to include it on our list.

10. Create a Photo Manipulation of a Lonely Child in Adobe Photoshop

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The last item on our list is a regular Photoshop tour de force. You will be blending, retouching, playing with lighting and filter, and much, much more, all to create the lovely illustration-like image.

That wraps up the Illustrator and Photoshop tutorials roundup for July. If you want to see more of our roundups, you can check them out here, where we also have separate, stand-alone tutorials.

We hope you will find the items on our list useful, and that you will be flooding the internet with fantastic designs in no-time at all. Please leave us your thoughts, and the results you got by doing the tutorials, in the comment section below.

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