Moving in…

Excuse the look of the blog right now. I realized after getting this far that most of the HTML and CSS I learned in college has buried itself deep into the bog that is my memory and my old notes and textbooks are proving to be a poor shovel. But progress will come.

The goal of this blog is to showcase tools, tips, and techniques that may help you, the reader, become a better graphic designer. Lest you think me arrogant, I’m not saying I’m better than you. As I start to upload some of my portfolio that will become readily apparent. So when I say it may help, know that I am really hoping it may help me.

So, let’s get started.

The first tool of which more designers should be made aware, is a set of Photoshop Plug-Ins called Eye Candy, available from Alien Skin Software. Now I know that most Photoshop filters just don’t work. Aside from Gaussian Blur, I almost never travel into that menu. But the developers over at Alien Skin seem to get that. What makes their tools so good is that they’ve more or less just automated many of the effects we’ve created manually in the past.

A couple of examples:

Perspective Shadow

A seamless transition from crisp and dark to soft and diffuse, it beats sitting there with the blur tool and messing with transparencies.

Gradient Glow

Helpful for highlighting webbuttons and such. Sure Photoshop’s layer styles accomplishes something similar, but the functionality of this filter makes it stand out.

A few of the texturizing filters need tweaking in future editions to keep you from making your project look like it’s been slapped around by the filter monkey, I think, but overall the set is solid. Definitely a time saver.