Today, 19/02/10, Adobe Photoshop is 20 years old. Photoshop has remained successful for the whole 20 years. It started as a black and white image editing program and now it has grown to a multi-product franchise with many different products in the Adobe family. As the years have progress Photoshop has develop new features with every new release and each time the interface get even better and more refined.

Over at the photoshopuser.com you can find details of an event which will take place to pay homage to this program. I believe Adobe are putting on an event to celebrate the 20 years since the first release of Photoshop 1.0.

When you take Photographs outdoors, the weather can be misty, cloudy and hazy which can have a dull effect on your Photographs. You can try manually adjusting the contrast, brightness and gamma of the image, but this can take some time to tweak. A quick method of fixing the contrast in Photo is to use the Auto Contrast feature. The auto contrast works by adjusting shadows and highlights values in an image and then set the darkest and lightest pixels to pure black or pure white. This makes the highlights appear lighter and shadows darker and improves the appearance of your photographs.

To use the Auto contrast feature, follow the steps below.

1. Open up an image you wish to edit in Photoshop. To quickly auto up an image, checkout quick tip 3.

2. Then select Image > Auto Contrast if you are using Photoshop CS4. If you are using CS3 you may have to select Image > Adjustments > Auto Contrast.

Keyboard shortcuts have major benefits in improving speed and efficiency when working with Photoshop. Shortcuts allow use to quickly switch to a different tool without going to the tools panels. This can save a considerable amount of time when working with PS.

I previously wrote a post on the keyboard shortcuts for Photoshop which can be found here. The shortcuts from this post were from the default Adobe website. However, I found an excellent resource for shortcuts over at: morris-photographs. The photographer Trevor Morris has a great series of Photoshop keyboard shortcuts for most versions of Photoshop. I believe the version range from PS5 to PS CS4 which is seven series. These shortcuts are available to download in PDF format for free. To download these files, simply right click and select save as.

If you want to find out about quick tip for Photoshop then checkout this series.

The tagline for Photoshop in a Day is: “Clear, easy, and fast” which is exactly what this eBook delivery.

Photoshop in a Day is an eBook specifically created to make learning Photoshop as easy as possible. This eBook is basically a complete beginner’s guide on how to use Photoshop within minutes. All the tutorials in this book are clearly laid out with step by step instructions similar to the tutorials you find in this blog. By having a clear layout means you will save time and avoid being confused by any instructions. The tutorials in this book are set out in way that moves along with the learning process which will slowly build up your knowledge of Photoshop.

This eBook is suitable for all levels of Photoshop users from complete beginners to experienced users. In no time you will become a master Photoshop user, and will be able to retouch any image. So, why not pickup a copy of Photoshop in a Day ?

I previously wrote a post on hand drawn icons. This time I will provide a list of graphically created social bookmark icons. All the icons are available to download to free.

Social.me – jwloh




Social.me contains of 30 individual icons of the popular social networks/Web 2.0 sites out there some of the icon include: blogger, digg, myspace etc.

Social Media Mini Iconpack



The icon include 30 (16x 16) social icon all free to download.

Web 2.0rigami – I Am Paddy



This is a collection of 15 Origami style.


Social Icons Made of Wood



These social icons have the appearance of wood. There are 11 icons in this set.

Social Bookmark Iconset: Part II



A collection of 10 icon style social bookmarks.

We function icon set

When you are using some else’s computer there is sometimes no photo editing software to edit your Photographs or images. A solution would be to install a free photo editing program such as GIMP or Paint.net. Luckily, there is no need to install free programs as there are tonnes of free online photo editors.



Below I will share a list of free online Photoshop editors:

• Fotoflexer – The worlds most advanced online image editor.

• picnic – Photo editing made fun.

• Photoshop express – A slimed draw version of Photoshop.

• pixenate – The Photo editor of choice for photo printing.

• aviary – A powerful Photo editor.

There is no shortage of free online photo editors below is an additional list of free editors. The great benefit of all these editors is that they are intuitive to use. No previous knowledge of how to use them is necessary. You can simply use them straight away.

• lunapic
• pixer
• flauntr
• snipshot
• splashup
• picture2life
• editor.pho.to
• pizap
• pixlr

I previously wrote a post on free Photoshop actions. In the post, the list of actions was mainly for automating image effects such as applying filters and adding different effects etc. It is also possible to automate the creation of text effect through Photoshop actions. This would save you time and avoid you having to create a text effect from scratch.



Below is a list of free places for Photoshop action text effects:

• Finessefx – A large collection of unique text effects.

• jeffjoneslive – 99 really nice action text effects.

• ctionaddiction – This website it a bit outdated, but still has some nice text effects.

• downtr – A grouped file of text effects.

• indigoproductions – A small selection of free action text effects

Some related Photoshop freebies
Free Photoshop texture
Free Photoshop actions
Free Photoshop gradients
Free Photoshop vector graphics

We have all seen computer generated graphic icons on various websites, but hand sketched icons are becoming very popular. Sketched icons are basically icons which have been hand drawn by artists. The sketched icons work particularly well with the web 2.0 style websites.

Below I have provided a list of places for free hand drawn icon:


ColorStroked freehand Icon



ColorStroked freehand Icon contain over 22 graphicsicons for your personal needs.
This pack includes many social media icons such as Delicious, Digg, Flickr, StumbleUpon, Technorati ,Twitter, WindowsLive and more.


Handy Icons



Handycons are hand drawn social media icon that contains 12 icons.Package contains icons for del.icio.us, Digg, Mixx, DesignBump, StumbleUpon, Reddit, Developer Zone, DesignFloat, Technorati, Twitter and RSS feed & Email icon.


Social Icons hand drawned



The sketched icon include: Blip.fm, LastFM, Blogger, Gmail, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Digg, Facebook, Firefox, Flickr, Myspace, Twitter, Wordpress and Youtube.


Sketch'd up



Hand sketch icon set, free to use for both private and commerical.


Hand-Drawn Icons



Hand Drawn in pencil and paper. The icon are in the following sizes 16x16, 32x32 and
48x48.


Children's Drawings Icon Set



Icon drawn in the style of children drawing.

A Vector graphic is a graphic which is created using primitive shapes such as lines, curves, polygons etc. Did you know there are places on the interest where you can download free vector graphics? Artists from around the world have created amazing vector graphics, free for people to use.



Below I have provided a list of places where you can download free vector graphics. All of the websites shown below have a submit feature, so if you are feeling particularly generous you can share your own vectors with the vector graphic community.

• Vecteezy – Stupid name, cool vectors.

• qvectors – quality vector graphics.

• vectorportal – everything vector, everything free. There are 13 different category of vectors.

• 123freevectors – Over 800 vector which are organised by categories.

• freevectors – Source for vector graphics

• vector4free– a site dedicated to free vector graphic ( What a surprise!)

• freevectorgraphics – like the name says, free vector graphics.

• vectorjunky – 0ver 15 different category of vectors

• vectormix – a modest selection of vectors

Gradients are basically two or more colours blended together. You can create lots of wonderful gradients from the different colours in the Photoshop palette. If you are lazy or not feeling adventurous you can also use the default gradient in Photoshop. However, there are some complex gradients which can be downloaded for free. This avoids you having to create the gradients yourself. Checkout this guide to install Gradients in Photoshop.



Below I have provided a list of places where you can download free Photoshop gradient:

• Emmaalvarez – 50 Free Photoshop gradients.

• free4photoshop – 9 interesting Gradient sets. Every set contains 30 unique gradients.

• designerpie – Large collection of interesting gradients.

• dezinerfolio – Ultimate web 2.0 Gradient

• thefreelogomakers – 150 gradient preset available.

• graphic-host – 1000 web 2.0 gradients.

Photoshop actions are basically ways of performing repeated tasks easily. An action is a recorded sequence of commands that can be saved and played at a later stage. You can add actions for pretty much any procedure such as resize an image, adding filters, changing colours etc.

To use/install an action you can drag the .atn file directly into the action panel or you can drag it into the Photoshop action folder in the Photoshop directory. Another way is to select the "load Actions" from the actions panel which will load the action anywhere from your hard drive.



There are places on the internet that provide free Photoshop actions created by other Photoshop users. Below is a list of free Photoshop actions.

• visual-blast - 124+ Free Photoshop Actions to Boost Your Designs.

• The Ultimate Collection Of Useful Photoshop Actions - like the name says, the Ultimate Collection, over 350 actions available to download.

• turningturnip - A reasonable list of Photoshop actions.

• designreviver - 400+ Time Saving Photoshop Actions.

• Actionfx - 100+ free photoshop action. Work in all version.

• deviantart - many different Photoshop actions.

Sometimes it is easier to download a high resolution texture rather than creating your own texture in Photoshop. There are all sort of free textures available to download such as wood, stone grass, metal etc.




Below I have provided a list of places where you can get free textures in Photoshop:

• Photoshoptextures – A popular place to download many different categories of textures.

• z7server - There are over 1350 texture in this site which are separated into catalogues.

• Grsites – They claim they have the largest collection of textures on the internet

• freephotoshop – Contains four main catogories which are grunge, rocks, rust and wood.

• Archivetextures – Over 3500+ textures with many new textures added daily.

• Change-books – Textures include metal, nature, sky, stone, textile and wood

• Cgtextures - The world largest free texture site.
  

If you are a regular user of Photoshop, you will find it rather time consuming to select each tool from the tool bar manually. To save time, you can use the shortcut keys which can speed up the process of selecting the tools.

Below is a link for Photoshop keyboard shortcuts for both windows and mac:
http://help.adobe.com/en_US/Photoshop/11.0/WS24E993BC-E1F3-4ac6-8225-7685C3B17669a.html

You can also customise your own Photoshop keyboard shortcut. This avoids you having to use the default shortcuts. To customise the shortcuts you can either select:

• Edit > Keyboard Shortcuts (Windows)
• Windows > Workspace > Keyboard Shortcuts (Mac)

To find more information on keyboard shortcuts checkout:
http://help.adobe.com/en_US/Photoshop/11.0/WSfd1234e1c4b69f30ea53e41001031ab64-76b7a.html