Photoshop Brushes - fireworks, Swirls and Skulls

+ Some new and free Photoshop brushes to play with, while enhancing your graphic illustrations at the same time.
fireworks and Swirls
These two brush packs are designed by digital artists and brush designer Stephanie Shimerdla. Using firework brushes you can create some awesome n realistic "fireworks display" backgrounds etc. While Swirls is a set of brushes made up of various swirls, ornamental designs, and flourishes. Most of these will work great as corner brushes.
>> Download fireworks / Download swirls
Skulls - High Res. Brushes
Skulls brushes is high resolution free Photoshop Brushes set created and shared by Digital Design Cottage. This brush set has 6 high resolution brushes featuring skulls in different styles. The Photoshop brushes in this pack is about 2000 pixels wide and can be used for prints.
>> Download Skulls brushes

Microsoft HD Photo Plug-in for Adobe Photoshop

+ A file format plug-in to add HD Photo open/save support to Adobe® Photoshop® software. HD Photo offers compression with up to twice the efficiency of JPEG, with fewer damaging artifacts, resulting in higher-quality images that are one-half the file size. In addition, HD Photo offers increased image fidelity, preserving the entire original image content and enabling higher-quality exposure and color adjustments in the image. This new format offers the ability to decode only the information needed for any resolution or region, or the option to manipulate the image as compressed data.
This is the Windows BETA release of the HD Photo file format plug-in forAdobe® Photoshop® software with an updated EXPIRATION Date. It supports a wide range of pixel formats (including high dynamic range, wide gamut formats) and numerous advanced HD Photo features.This BETA plug-in is designed for use with the CS2 or CS3 versions of Adobe Photoshop software running under Microsoft Windows XP or Microsoft Windows Vista. Any other use is not supported. Because this is a Beta release, we recommend you use careful judgment before using this version of the plug-in for any production work. This Beta version will expire after August 30, 2007.
>> Download HD Photo Plugin

Using "Levels" in Photoshop

+ Just stumbled upon this great photoshop tutorial, which gives you a detailed insight on using Levels tool in Photoshop for enhancing lighting in any digital images. This is a very handy tutorial for photographers / image editing professional and can be used with other image editing programs. Basically the levels tool can move and stretch brightness levels in a histogram using three main components: a black point, white point and mid-tone slider. The position of the black and white point sliders redefine the histogram's "Input Levels", so they are mapped to the "Output Levels" (default is black (0) or white (255), respectively), whereas the mid-tone slider redefines the location of middle gray (128).
Using "Levels" in Photoshop - Tutorial Link

Animated gif from a quicktime movie

+ In this useful photoshop tutorial, Alan Hettinger shows you; how to easily create Animated gif from any quicktime movie. The process you learn in this tutorial can be used for creating various forum avatars and web graphics.

Snippet:"This tut will teach you how to make an animated gif from a quicktime movie. This is great for forum avatars or buddy icons. First choose a movie trailer with a scene you would like as your animated gif. I have selected the flying bats from Batman Begins. With your Quicktime movie open, and Photoshop open, go through the following steps."

Animated gif from a quicktime movie - Tutorial link

ADC Photoshop Brushes - Underwater

+ Some free photoshop brushes by the courtesy of Art Design Center. The free brush pack features Several large brushes based on pictures of underwater scenes. The PS brushes are Compatible Photoshop CS and above.

Download ADC - underwater Brushes

EXPOSÉ 5 Available

Source: cgindia.org

+ Ballistic Publishing has started shipping of Expose 5 , the fifth in its series of award-winning EXPOSÉ digital art books celebrating the creative talents of digital artists worldwide. Judged by an international team of industry leaders this year’s edition features 298 examples of the world’s best digital art prepared by 218 artists from 45 countries. For more information and preview of book, please visit - ballisticpublishing.com

Stefan Lucut | Featured Digital Artist

+ Have a look at the awesome portfolio of Stefan Lucut, a very young and talented freelance Graphic Designer based in Romania. He has recently updated his website, which features his commercial as well as personal work in multiple categories such as Print, Identity, Motion Graphics etc. Its quite hard for me to define his style, which changes with every illustrations he makes........So let the Art do the talking.

Featured Digital Artist - Stefan Lucut