Draw the Bamboo Body

Draw the Bamboo Body

Create a path like the image below with the Pen Tool and fill it with the color green. Select the Mesh Tool and click on the lower left corner of the bamboo body (pt. 1) to add a mesh point. Then change it to a lighter tone of green (yellow-green). Now add another Mesh point at the upper left corner of the bamboo(pt. 2). Add another point above pt. 2. Add a final point beside pt. 2 and select a darker green tone for the shadow.

2. Create the Bamboo Stick

Select the bamboo body you’ve created in the previous step, hold down the ALT key, drag it up to make a copy (you can use Copy & Paste if you like). Then resize the new bamboo body horizontally with the Selection Tool. Send this new bamboo body behind the first bamboo body by selecting Object > Arrage > Send Backward or press Ctrl+[. Repeat this step until you get a stack of 5 or 6 bamboo bodies.

3. Duplicate the Bamboo Stick

After you’ve finished the first bamboo, make a copy of it by ALT drag or Copy & Paste. Select the new bamboo stick, apply Filter > Distort > Twist(Angle=3) so that they don’t look identical.

4. Draw a Bended Bamboo

We want the bamboo to look natural, so we need to create some bended bamboo. Repeat Step 1 & 2 to create a bended bamboo like the image shown below. Now we 3 different forms of bamboo: straight, bended, and twisted.

5. Duplicate More Bamboo

Make more bamboo by ALT + drag. Flip and resize them around so they don’t look alike.

6. Create the Bamboo Leaves

Create the basic shape of the bamboo leaves. Use the Mesh Tool to apply a mesh gradient on it.

7. Make a Bamboo Leaves Symbol

Drag the bamboo leaves to the symbol panel to create a new Symbol. If your symbol panel is not visible, go to Window > Symbols or press Ctrl+Shift+F11.

8. Symbol Sprayer Tool

Create a new layer and lock the bamboo sticks layer(Layer 1). Select the Symbol Sprayer Tool and pick the bamboo leaves Symbol. Spray it on Layer 2 by dragging the mouse.

9. Symbol Sizer Tool

To create various sizes of bamboo leaves: use the Symbol Sizer Tool and randomly click on the bamboo leaves object. Tips: hold down ALT key+click to reduce size.

10. Symbol Spinner Tool

Use the Symbol Spinner Tool to rotate/spin Symbols.

11. Symbol Shifter Tool

Use the Symbol Shifter Tool to spread out the bamboo leaves by dragging your mouse around.

12. Symbol Stainer Tool

Select a lighter green color and use the Symbol Stainer Tool to tint the symbols.

13. Symbol Screener Tool

Use the Symbol Screener Tool to reduce the opacity of the bamboo leaves. This will result in a transparent effect.

14. Make More Leaves Behind

After you done with the leaves on Layer 2, make a new layer(Layer 3) behind the bamboo stick layer. Lock Layer 1 and Layer 2, use the Symbol Sprayer Tool to create more bamboo leaves(refer to Step 8-13).

15. Add More Bamboo Sticks

Duplicate more bamboo sticks. Resize and send them behind the big bamboo sticks.

Final

Here is the final image.

Interlocking Rings

This tip is a great exercise in using COMPOUND PATHS and the PATHFINDER PALETTE for the sometimes difficult task of making interlocking objects. Give it a try!




Open a new document, I started with a custom document 400 pixels wide by 400 pixels high. 

 

Select the ELLIPSE TOOL. Remember, to view a tool that is hidden, hold down the mouse button on the visible tool. To select a hidden tool, continue to hold down the mouse button, drag the pointer over the tool you want to select, and then release the mouse button.

 

Hold down the SHIFT KEY, click and draw a circle the size you want your rings to be.

 

Click on the RADIAL SWATCH on the SWATCHES PALETTE. If the SWATCHES PALETTE is not visible, click on SWATCHES in the WINDOWS MENU or press F6 (This will open the swatches palette).

 

You will notice that the circle now appears to have a glow as if it was a sphere.

 

To create the illusion of a ring we need to change the way the GRADIENT is arranged. Click and drag the left GRADIENT SLIDER until it is at approximately the location shown below.

 

Add an additional SLIDER by clicking under the GRADIENT BAR. Move your cursor to the black side of the COLOR BAR. Your cursor will turn into an EYE DROPPER.

 

When you click the EYE DROPPER on the COLOR BAR your SLIDER will turn black. Notice how the GRADIENT THUMBNAIL is a ring of light around the black center.

 

Your circle should now look like this. If you need to change the width of the highlight go back to the GRADIENT PALETTE and adjust the SLIDER positions to your satisfaction.

 

Select the ELLIPSE TOOL and position the cursor in the center of your circle. If your first circle is still selected, you will see a blue square in the exact center of the circle. Align your cursor with this dot, Hold down SHIFT + ALT (PC)/OPT (Mac), click and draw a circle the size of the original circles black area as shown below.

 

Use the SELECTION TOOL to select both circles.

 

Press CTRL+8 (PC)/CMD +8 (Mac) or choose COMPOUND PATH>MAKE command from the OBJECT PULL DOWN MENU.

 

You will now notice that the inside of the circle has been deleted.

 

Duplicate the ring by selecting it and while holding down ALT (PC)/OPT (Mac), drag the new ring to the right.

 

Duplicate one more ring and place it above the bottom two.

 

Select all the objects. Now we will use the PATHFINDER tools to break our rings into individual segments.

 

If the PATHFINDER PALETTE is not open, click on WINDOW>PATHFINDER or click SHIFT+CTRL+F9 (PC) or SHIFT+CMD+F9 (Mac). Click on the TRIM button to break the rings into individual shapes depending on how they overlap.

 

Click SHIFT+CTRL+A (PC) or SHIFT+ CMD+A (Mac) to deselect all objects. Notice that there are fine lines indicating the separate visible segments.

 

To make the rings interlock, we will need to create the illusion that as we look at a ring, it appears to go over, then under, over, and under the other rings. To do this, SELECT the section of a ring that you want go under and click the DELETE button to remove this section.

 

The example below shows what your rings should now look like.

 

SELECT the segment that needs to go under and click DELETE.

 

The rings now appear to be interlocked. The only thing left to do is to get rid of the lines that separate the individual segments.

 

SELECT the segments that are adjacent to each other as in the example shown below.

 

Again, go to the PATHFINDER PALETTE, but this time, click on the MERGE button.

 

Continue to SELECT and MERGE the next set of segments.

 
Continue doing this until all segments are joined. Your interlocked rings should now look like the example below.

 

If you want your rings to have more of a three-dimensional look, Open the EFFECTS MENU and select DROP SHADOW.

 
In the DROP SHADOW DIALOG BOX make sure the PREVIEW box is checked. Adjust the settings until you are happy with the appearance of your design.

 
There you have it, I hope this tip has inspired you to think of inventive ways to use COMPOUND PATHS and the PATHFINDER PALETTE.

Creative CVs

The importance of a resume cannot be over emphasised. Your resume is your surest channel of communication with a prospective employer. Given the number of resumes of potential candidates that a recruiter scans, the chances of your resume being overlooked are high. 

THE CREATIVE ADVANTAGEEnter the creative CV: A resume that breaks the norms of regular, boring resumes. A creative CV, as the name suggests, is daring and different. It has spunk and personality. It will help you stand out, get noticed among the sea of resumes and get you noticed by a potential recruiter. 

Explains HR manager Sheela Shetty, “We have to screen scores of resumes for every position. It’s just not humanly possible to pay specific attention to each application. So when we see a resume that’s different and stands out, it forces us to stop and give it a second look. Most often, we are intrigued and end up calling the candidate in for an interview. This is one of the cases where it pays to step away from the herd.” 

The beauty of a creative CV is that it allows a candidate to display his/ her creativity, innovation and original thinking. “When applying to fields where creativity is something an employer is actively seeking in a recruit, the creative CV works fabulously. Say you’re applying to an advertising agency or media house. A creative CV shows prospective employers that you have put thought into your CV, and that you are serious and deeply passionate about the field,” explains Dennis Matthew, account planner with an advertising agency. 

DO IT DIFFERENTLY So you’ve decided to make a creative CV—but don’t quite know how to go about it? You could start brainstorming keeping two things in mind. Firstly, what are your distinctive talents, interests or strengths? Secondly, what is the industry, profile or field you are applying for jobs in? Develop your CV based on this to ensure that it remains relevant at all levels. 

Journalism student Priya Kejriwal, while applying for summer internship jobs, designed her CV to resemble the front page of a newspaper. “I had sent in my CV at several newspapers, but hadn’t received any response. I decided to try something different, and so came about the idea of a newspaper CV. It also gave me an opportunity to showcase my skills on designing software to potential recruiters. I’d say it paid to do something different because I received three interview calls after sending in my creative CV.” 

There’s no dearth of ideas when it comes to making a CV that doesn’t follow standard formatting. The timeline approach is very popular—graphically depicting major educational and professional milestones. Multimedia CVs (popularised by Barney Stinson on the TV show How I Met Your Mother) are making waves as well. Right from building 3D models to placing resumes inside baked cakes (as a corporate folklore goes) the sky is the limit! Textile designer Ruchika Gupta printed her CV on a piece of fabric, instead of a boring sheet of white paper. She says, “I added a touch of embroidery on the borders as well. Using fabric allowed me to add an interesting yet relevant touch to my CV, without coming across as overly gimmicky or compromising on the content.” 

KEEP IN MIND 
While designing your creative CV, do keep certain points in mind. Creative CVs may not be appropriate for all companies, job profiles or industries. For example, a creative CV would be more appropriate for a job in advertising or media than in the banking and financial services sector. Make sure that being unconventional is acceptable in the field you are applying. 

Ensure that the content of your CV is the most important thing—do not sacrifice content for the sake of design. A creative CV may attract attention, but it is the content in it that will get you that interview call—and ultimately, the job. Try not to go overboard in the name of creativity. Being bold is one thing, but being over-the-top or overly flashy will not help your cause. Remember, certain professional standards must be maintained. Finally, be practical—a three dimensional CV may be interesting, but will the company store or file it? 

Take some time to review your CV and examine whether you can add an element of creativity. Dare to be different, and the rest will fall into place.
Source : education times 

10 Killer Adobe Photoshop Tips For Designers

Believe it or not, if you’re using Photoshop to design website, you’re on the right path to become a successful web designer. This is simply because Photoshop is one of the most advanced tool in the design industry that can make your creative imagination comes true with its plethora of professional tools which boost your productivity at the same time.
But how well do you know about Photoshop? Sometimes we’re wondering why certain web designer can design a website layout with extremely heavy graphics in 5 days, while we need around 10 days to complete that kind of design. It’s probably not about how fast you can click, it’s about how well you know about Photoshop, how you gonna unlock its full potential to boost your productivity.

We want you to know how to unlock its full potential. Yes, that’s why we created this post, to provide you 10 extremely useful Photoshop tips to boost your design speed. There can be shortcut, feature or setting you don’t know about, but not anymore. With this article you gonna learn them all, and you will design faster, and faster.
Note: Shortcut keys mentioned in this article are in Windows Photoshop format. If you are using Mac, be sure to know that Ctrl = Cmd (Command) and Alt = Opt (Option).

10. Undo, More Undo Please

I totally believe that we designer are very addictive to undo something, even until when we made a mistake on sketching, we tend to ‘undo’ it.
Well as you might know by pressing Ctrl + Z in Photoshop you can undo the previous action you made, but when you press the same key combination again, it will redo the previous action. This is quite unnatural and troublesome as you always need to undo multiple times to get to the state you want.

Believe it or not, Photoshop has a specific button for multiple undo, and it is Alt + Ctrl + Z. Yes, by using this key combination you can undo multiple times, according to the value of History States you set in Edit > Preference > Performance.
If you’re used to common Undo’s key combination which is Ctrl + Z, you can simply press Ctrl + Shift + Alt + K to access Keyboard Shortcut panel and change Undo’s key combination under the Edit section to Ctrl + Z.

9. Sampling Color, anywhere!

Stumbled upon a nicely designed website and wondering which exact colors is it using? This happens very often when I’m seeking inspiration during the time I’m doing site layout in Photoshop. For me I will launch a color picker, pick the color and get its hex number, then click on the color palette in Photoshop, then input the hex number then get the color, pretty annoying isn’t it?

Well you don’t really need to suffer like that, you can actually just click on Eyedropper tool or pressing I to activate it, then click on the Photoshop’s work screen and drag the Eyedropper icon to anywhere on the monitor screen to get the color you want. Yeah, it’s really that easy.

8. Flexible Guide

Tip #8 is actually combination of 2 tips, I hope you don’t mind about getting more tips. As web designer we have to deal a lot with guide to position an element correctly, in other words is pixel perfect.
How do you create a guide? Click on View, New Guide then decide it’s horizontal or vertical guide, input its position and click Enter? Alright, you can save these works by just pressing Ctrl + R to activate the Ruler tool, click on the tool and drag it down to create a horizontal guide, or vice versa.

Besides instant guide creation, here’s another useful tip for you. While dragging a guide with Move tool which can be activated using V key, press and hold Alt key to change the horizontal guide to vertical guide, or vice versa. Now you can probably consider yourself as professional on using guide.

7. Fun Layer Style Cloning

Layer styles are very entertaining when you can just apply them to make, let’s say, a social media icon looks pretty charming and unique, but it will be very tiring if you want to apply same layer styles to all social media icons which usually come in multiple pieces.
Have you ever realized that there’s an fx icon beside your layer? Well everything exists for a reason, if you press Alt and drag the fx icon to another layer, it will copy first layer’s styles to the one you dragged to, convenient isn’t it?

Also if you are interested about the common use of that fx icon, it allows you to move a layer’s styles to another and all you need to do is simply drag the icon to another layer without pressing Alt key.

6. Element Centering Made Easy

In order to achieve a pixel perfect design, we oftenly have to position element to exactly where it should be. This seems easy as you can just create some guides and snap the element to those guides, but it will be daunting if you want to absolute center an element in certain area, which requires a lot of guides, measurement and focus.
In fact you have a way to make this entire process a lot more easier, click on the element’s layer which you want to absolute center, then press Ctrl + A to select the entire document. After that, fire the Move tool and you will see some icons beside the option, Show Transform Controls. Click on the 2nd icon to vertical center the element, then click on 5th icon to horizontal center the element, there you go, an absolute centered element.

You can not only absolute center the element in entire document’s area, but also absolute center it in certain area. Let’s say I want to absolute center an element in footer area, I can simply select the footer area by using the Selection tool which can be activated by pressing M key, then absolute center the element in that specific area.

You can study other alignment options beside the Show Transform Controls option, they are very useful for aligning your elements in a wide range of situations.

5. View Selection, One At A Time

Often in designing a layout you need to check how an element looks exactly by its own or by few elements, for example in website layout below, I want to check slider’s buttons to confirm that they do not have transparency so they look exactly the same with or without slider’s image.

In past I have to turn off the visibility of slider image’s layer, slider background’s layer and even content’s background layer, but now I can just simply hold down the Alt key, then click on the ‘eye’ icon beside the button group to turn off all layers’ visibility so that I only view those buttons. After I checked them, I can just repeat the trick again to bring all layers’ visbilibity back.
This trick is also extremely useful while it comes to image slicing. You want to slice slider’s button without any other element like slider image, so you can use this trick to turn off all layer’s visibility to just slice the button, then repeat the trick to recover all layer’s visibility so it saves a lot of time wasted on turn on and off layers’ visibility.

4. Customize Font’s Tracking, Anytime

This particular tip shows you how to increase the font’s tracking in certain part of the type easily, so it might only be used on certain specific situation like logo or button creation, but it’s a professional tip that can save lots of time on finding fonts with suitable typography for your logo or button creation.

Alright, let’s say I want to decrease the tracking of the type, ’360′ so my logo’s type looks unique that visitor remembers it easier. I can select ‘POLO360′ by using Type tool which can be activated by pressing T key, then hold down the Alt and press < button to start decreasing the type’s tracking, which will bring the result above.
You can use this trick to tackle tracking issue of some artistic fonts, so there’s no worries about tracking next time you want to find graphical fonts for your logo creation!

3. Instant Layer Selection = Win

Layout design is an exhausting job as we have to tackle lots of issues such as typography, spacing and graphic, but it will be overwhelming if we want to find a specific element’s layer from hundreds of layers.

Let this trick makes your designer’s life easier. Activate the Move tool using V key and hold down the Ctrl key, then click on the element and you will automatically select the element’s layer. It’s really that simple but keep in mind that if you put elements into a group, then by using the same trick you will be selecting the group’s folder that contains the element you clicked, as shown above.

2. Smart Object For Smart Designer

Just as its name, Smart Object makes your editing smarter by carrying out 2 primary functions: perform nondestructive transforms and perform filtering. This feature comes in very handy especially when you’re producing a site layout with heavy graphics like stock photos, social media icons and UI kits, and all you need to do is right click a layer, then click ‘Convert to Smart Object’ to enjoy its benefits.
The first function says that once a layer is converted into a Smart Object, you can transform it anyway you want without losing its original quality. In our case we want to make the image slider smaller so we convert image slider’s layers to Smart Object and transformed it into something smaller.

Ouch, it’s just too small so I decided to change it back.

Looks like everything’s okay and nothing happened right? Below is the result if you applied a backward transformation without converting layer to Smart Object.

So you can probably see the difference here, especially slider’s buttons part. The backward transformation without Smart Object applied on layers makes the slider and slider’s buttons lose their quality. So by converting a layer to Smart Object, you can transform it to any smaller size you want but once you regretted about your decision, you can change it back without losing quality.
Another benefit by converting layer into Smart Object is once you applied filter on a Smart Object, a filter’s layer will appear under the Smart Object’s layer so you can disable filter easier by just turn off the visibility of the filter’s layer, and that’s called nondestructive filtering, great time saver for your project.

1. A Snapshot Of Beautiful Past

Now you learned how to undo multiple times, copy layer styles, faster layer selection and using Smart object these great time saving tips. Well, these are really handy skills that greatly boosts your productivity but how about after 2 hour’s work, you regretted your editing and decided to start from the middle? Redo it completely will be very exhausting and boring even you applied all killer tips you learned before, so that’s when Snapshot kicks in.

Snapshot allows you to create a temporary copy of any state of your editing so when you have trouble on improving your design and decided to go back, you can simply click on a snapshot to bring you back to the state you desired. To take a snapshot, you just have to open History palette, and click on the 2nd icon you see on the bottom of the palette.
There are also some useful features for snapshot like you can take multiple snapshots so you have more choices and you can name them so you remember them easier. Ultimately you can also use these snapshots to compare different effects you created for your design.
However, be sure to remember that once you closed the document, snapshots will be deleted instantly so if you want to keep those states, you can click on each snapshot and save the document as another file.