High quality photo effects are not only reserved for professionals or tech-savvy image editing specialists, they can be achieved by anyone, as today’s design news demonstrates. We have collected four recent photo editing tutorials that can be easily followed and achieved by anyone with a digital camera and a desire to give a little bit of coolness and professionalism to there shots.

Give Your Photos a Vintage Look

This tutorial is for anyone who doesn’t have photo editing know-how, expensive editing software or a load of time to spare, and shows you how to create a retro profile pic in a matter of minutes using some absolutely free, entirely online services.
Give Your Photos a Vintage Look

How To Give Your Photos a Cool Retro Analog Effect

Back in the days of analog photography imperfections were part of the job. Colour washes, light leaks, vignettes and blurs were all common problems that appeared during the processing of your film, particularly from cheap cameras such as the Holga, or simply down to human error. While these problems don’t affect digital cameras, you can recreate the cool effects in Photoshop to give your shots that cool lo-fi retro effect.
How To Give Your Photos a Cool Retro Analog Effect

Foggy Window Effect in Photoshop

In this tutorial you will be shown how to create a foggy window effect in Photoshop, using stock photo, brushes, and layer styles to create the simple effect. The whole process is quite simple and it won't take you more than 30 minutes to achieve.
Foggy Window Effect in Photoshop

Quick HDR Effect Photoshop CS5 Tutorial

To create High Dynamic Range pictures, you typically need at least 3 different exposures of the same photo, but in this Photoshop tutorial you will learn how to create HDR from a single image.

This technique will make the bright portions of the image darker, and dark portions of the image lighter. This also gives the image a lot more realistic look.
Quick HDR Effect Photoshop CS5 Tutorial

By Paul Andrew (Speckyboyand speckyboy@twitter).

Photoshop brushes are an integral part of any any designers toolbox. Sadly Photoshop doesn’t come packaged with an abundance of high quality brushes, you do need to search and scour the web for quality brushes. On a positive note, there are no shortage of designers willing to share there brushes, meaning that there are literally thousands upon thousands of brush sets available for download.

In todays news round-up we have collected the freshest and the best Photoshop Brush Collections.

50+ Free Vintage Photoshop Brush Sets to Download

Vintage-inspired designs are becoming popular and many designers are finding different ways of recreating the old into new. In this post they have collected 50+ free vintage Photoshop brush for your vintage-inspired designs.

50+ Free Vintage Photoshop Brush Sets to Download

High Quality Rough and Grungy Photoshop Brushes

This set of rough and grungy Photoshop brushes take on a drybrush effect, with plenty of detailed whispy lines and long strokes. You can download them for free and you can use them in your personal and commercial designs.

High Quality Rough and Grungy Photoshop Brushes

200+ Free Abstract Brushes To Use For Light Effect

The author of this article has collected an impressive 200+ brush sets with abstract patterns and light effects.

200+ Free Abstract Brushes To Use For Light Effect

By Paul Andrew (Speckyboy and speckyboy@twitter).

There is one thing web designers are always in need of and that is good high quality inspiration. In today’s news we have collected the best recent articles with amazing, and sometimes exciting, inspirational web designs. One of the new trends in web design is the “one-page-contact-portfolio” web design style, a style that is gaining more and more popularity, and is featured prominently in this post.

30 Impressive vCard Web Designs

A vCard is an electronic business card that uses a standard format. Some individuals have taken to creating simple, typically one-page, sites that center around their vCard. These sites contain minimal content, usually just basic information about the individual (i.e. job title) and contact information. In this collection, you’ll find some impressive vCard sites for inspiration.

30 Impressive vCard Web Designs

40 Beautifully Designed Vintage Websites

Vintage styled web designs are a tribute to an era that exists only in the memories of many. What’s overlooked is that no matter how the standards for web design progress, more designers start to resolve back to old vintage styles.

40 Beautifully Designed Vintage Websites

20 Awesome Website Footer Designs

When creating your website designs, one element that shouldn’t be overlooked is the footer. In fact you can use this space to add some appropriate functions and content, this collection is a series of websites that use there footer space effectively.

20 Awesome Website Footer Designs

By Paul Andrew (Speckyboy and speckyboy@twitter).

Todays news covers manhole covers that can be creative and unique (yes, they can), a celebration of the hard work and art of vintage typography and todays final story is why IE6 must die…so that you don’t get a laptop thrown at you!

Creative, Unique and Funny Manholes

Traditionally manhole covers are expected to be boring, dull and ugly. Not the manhole covers in this post, they can actually be a customized into creative art as well as an effective advertising medium. Have a look for yourselves.

Creative, Unique and Funny Manholes.

50 Examples of Vintage Typography

“Vintage art reminds us of a time when we were dependent less on technology and more on skill and technique”, as is written in the opening caption of this post. Its spot on. This article is showcase and a celebration of vintage typography, and a chance for us to appreciate the hard work that went into each poster.

50 Examples of Vintage Typography.

IE6 Must Die for the Web to Move On

Internet Explorer is the thorn in every web designers side, just mention I-E-6, and you will have a laptop thrown at you. Yes, it is despised. Right or wrong, that is up to you, but this article from Mashable, puts forward a hell of a case to kill IE6. This is essential reading.

IE6 Must Die for the Web to Move On.

By Paul Andrew (Speckyboy and speckyboy@twitter).

Since so many people found all of the vintage textures and brushes useful, I thought it would be interesting to examine vintage style web design and how it has evolved. So, here is a showcase of this popular trend from the past 6 years, and a look at the original trend setter.

2008

2007

2006

2005

2004

2003 – The Origin

In 2003, which seems like an eternity ago in terms of web design, Ingo J. Ramin launched the portfolio site for 247 Media Studios. The site and it’s portfolio pieces were revolutionary in the way that finely detailed textures and rustic design elements were used to create a vintage look and feel.

Even though the site remains virtually unchanged, there has been a promised version 2 coming for about 4 years. With 135 pieces in the portfolio section, the lack of a redesign could be because Ingo is too busy, or because the design still holds up.

Vintage design, when done well, can make a user feel like they have been transported back in time. This particular style often uses design elements that look like they were found in the attic of an old house dating back to the 1920′s, 30′s, or 40′s. If you have a project coming up that requires this type of design, here is a big roundup of textures and Photoshop brushes, all found at deviantArt.

Textures

• Vintage Texture Pack
  5 textures
  
• Vintage II Texture Pack
  7 textures
  
• Textures02 – Vintage Floral
  24 textures
  
• Pretty Things
  38 textures
  
• Textures: art + vintage
  15 textures
  
• Vintage Bum
  20 textures
  
• Vintage Pattern Textures LARGE
  32 textures
  
• Vintage Sky Textures
  8 textures
  
• Old Paper Textures II
  10 textures
  

Photoshop Brushes

• Vintage Brushes 1
  13 brushes
  
• Vintage Birds
  20 brushes
  
• Old Paper Brushes 2
  9 brushes
  
• Ornamental vintage brush set 1
  7 brushes
  
• Vintage Pack 001
  6 brushes
  
• Vintage Toile
  21 brushes
  
• Vintage Essence
  12 brushes (these are not free, but since they are so nice and so cheap, I wanted to include them)
  
• Book Ornaments Brushes 3
  8 brushes
  
• Book Ornaments Brushes 2
  6 brushes
  
• Happy Spring Thoughts
  18 brushes
  
• Vintage
  16 brushes
  
• Vintage Polaroid brushes
  14 brushes
  

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