*Bling Bling* Simple Gold Text Effect

How To Create A Gold Text Effect In Photoshop

Gold Text Photoshop Tutorial

Shiny Gold Text Effect in 10 steps using Photoshop

Grand Gold Text Effect

Carbon Fiber, Chrome, and Gold Text – Photoshop Tutorial

Ancient Rough Gold Effect, Perfect for Game Logos and Text

Gold Text Effect in Photoshop

Simple & Effective Golden Text

Gold Plated Text

Design a colorful Northern Lights landscape

Create a Space Explosion From Scratch in Photoshop

True Flames

End of the World Photo Manipulation

Create Cool Neon Effects

Create a Glowing Light Painting Effect

The Brush Experiment

Photoshop Abstract Lighting Effect

Photoshop Colorful Tornado

Create Burst of Light or Blast Effect

Abstract Walkthrough Tutorial

Crazy Lighting in Photoshop

Signature Backgrounds

Photoshop Tutorial Abstract Light Rays

Windows Vista Aurora Effect Photoshop Tutorial

Creating a Mac-Type Background in Photoshop

How to Create an Interplay of Abstract Light Streaks

How to Create Intense Light Streaks in Photoshop

Photoshop Abstract Image

Amazing Photoshop Light Effect in 10 Steps

Create an Underwater Scene

Chroma Wallpapers

Create a Star-skinned Playstation 3 with Nebula Background

adass Bling Effect in Photoshop/

Photoshop: Light Beam

Iphone Light Beams

Photoshop Sparkles: Add A Sparkle Trail To A Photo

Water Spirit – Drawing Fire

Create an Abstract Design with Curved Light Streaks

Super Creation for a Magic Crystal Ball

Making of an Abstract Art Piece: “Lonium”

A Cool Lighting Effect In Photoshop

How to Make a Stylish Glowing Box in Photoshop

The Magic Night

This article features some of the coolest ligihting effects tutorials done on men, women, planets, text, abstract designs and more. If this list inspires you to create anyything based on the tutorials you read then please do post a link to your creation so that our users may see as well.

Design a Coldplay/Apple Inspired Portrait in Photoshop

Creating Energy Spheres in Photoshop

High-Tech Swirling Aurora

Design a Vibrant Blackberry Inspired Ad in Photoshop

Dazzling Dance Photo Manipulation

Iron Man View Interface Effect in Photoshop

Magnific Light Effects in Photoshop

Fantastic Disintegration Effect inspired by Watchmen in Photoshop

Make an Apple Coldplay Style Ad in Photoshop

Photoshop Glowing Words and Beams Tutorial

Seriously Cool Photoshop Explosion Effect

Into the Light

Lighting Effects in Photoshop

Beautiful Lady Effect

Transform Your Doodles Into Art

Trendy Lightburst Motion Trail Photoshop Tutorial

The Ocean Girl Photo Effect

Light Effect On A Model

How to Create A Glowing Neon Girl in Photoshop

Freedom, Explosion Energy

Create Breathtaking Fantasy Light Effects

Plasma in the Lake

Sparkling Hot Girl in Photoshop

Use Lighting Effects to Make Photos Sparkle

Create a Glowing Effect Scene in Photoshop

Creating Light Motion Trails & Glowing Sparks

Flying Girl in Photoshop

Add Another Dimension with Photoshop

Design an Awesome Space Dancer Scene with Nebula Texture in Photoshop

With the recent announcement that Photoshop Express will include FlickR support, Adobe has realized that it missed an opportunity that Picnik quickly took advantage of. Mistakes by one company in business breed success for another and this case is no different.

Picnik is a company that build a web application that allowed people to edit images online similar to the way applications like OSX’s Preview or Adobe’s ImageReady allow you to do for the desktop. It doesn’t have the advanced features of Photoshop but it’s all most people need for uploading stuff to Flickr. There should have been a thousand groans from the offices of Adobe when they found out Picnik had partnered with FlickR. Mark Evans wonders aloud why FlickR/Yahoo just didn’t buy Picnik. Perhaps they saw this coming? Is it possible that Adobe plans leverage it’s marketshare to steal that Flickr/Yahoo partnership?

An even bigger mistake, is perhaps Corel’s (Adobe’s next largest competitor) similar slowness to embrace the web. There are plenty of web start-ups out there waiting to be purchased. If your team isn’t producing results, buy someone out who can! Cloud computing is in, if you aren’t on board then you’re out!

Pixel

Developed over the last eight years by Kanzel Berger, Pixel Image Editor is one of the strongest applications i’ve ever used to come from a single developer! It’s also available for Linux and Windows in 32 and 64-bit versions. The 64-bit OSX runtime is still forthcoming. My only problem with Pixel is that it looks and operates so similar to Photoshop. I wish someone would try to rethink the whole image editing UI.

PhotoLine

Photoline is a viable alternative but honestly, who wants to use a numerical input UI while designing? That feature alone keeps a large segment of the population from ever even considering it. Too bad because it’s a good program. Here are some of the features that it offers that a lot of it’s competitors don’t from MacApper.

* Pixel accurate drawing and selection tools
* 16-bits per channel
* CMYK and Lab color
* Full masking support
* Fully editable text layers with proper typographic controls (such as kerning and paragraph spacing)
* Shape layers with solid bezier tools
* Layer effects (drop shadows, etc.)
* Noise
* Difference Clouds
* HDR image support (including creating HDRs from multiple source photos)
* Image slicing, image maps, and animation tools for web designers
* Useful web export tools with presets, previews, file size info, etc.
* Recordable Macros
* Useful named presets for most filters
* Ability to name and save your own presets for most filters
* Text (paragraph and character) style sheets
* Launches in less than 1s on my MacBook Pro
* No product activation

A nobel effort by the developers but these days UI is everything and this one simply doesn’t have it.

Corel Draw and PaintShop

Corel has always been a bit like Hillary Clinton. They’ve got a lot of supporters, they’re well respected, hugely influential but no matter what they try they always come in second place. Some people will even argue that it’s better than Photoshop but the industry will tell you otherwise. The very fact that it’s been around so long and hasn’t quite made it says to me that they’ve still got a long ways to go. If you’re looking for an application as stable as Photoshop, with a huge userbase, and customer support to match, this is it.

Pixelmator

Ahhh, finally a competitor to Photoshop that gets it right on both levels: interface and function! In fact, I’ll argue that the UI looks better than PS’s. Things operate a bit differently but usability is great and I never once felt like I should switch applications. The fact that it opens PSDs is a HUGE plus. As far as how it stacks compared to PS, Macteens makes some great points:

In order to transform your image, you must use an overcomplicated interface to scale your image or whatever else you’re doing to it. This process could have been simplified by just using something along the lines of Photoshop’s Free-Transform tool activated by “Command + T”….There really isn’t any pretty way to say this, but Pixelmator offers no real power over managing text in the interface.

Gimp: GNU Image Manipulation Program

If Photoshop is the king of design applications, GIMP is the king of open source alternatives. Adobe really messed up when they ignored the Linux market because it created an opening for GIMP to build a huge fan-base and a legion of diehard supporters. I like the fact that it doesn’t operate exactly like Photoshop, because If I wanted anything that was just like Photoshop…I’d be using Photoshop.

Faux Posterization

1. Open your image and duplicate the background layer (which should be your image).



2. Under “Layer Style” change the topmost layers Blend Option value to “Vivid Light”.



3. Set the Opacity of the topmost layer to “50%”. done the resulting image should be pretty high contrast and washed out.



4. If you so choose change your Image>>Mode setting to grayscale for a posterized black and white version.

Brilliant Color and Haze

High Contrast

Keep in mind these techniques aren’t the best ways to do this, but if you just want to spice up your photos and have no interest in truly learning Photoshop then they might work for you!

Well, no one is sure yet but the new features in some of the products in Adobe’s may provide some insight as to what the future holds.

Adobe has just announced that the newest versions of several Creative Suite titles, namely, Dreamweaver, Fireworks, and Soundbooth, can now be downloaded for a test run.

There’s a catch. If you’re not currently using the CS3 versions of Dreamweaver and Fireworks, the trial period for these programs will end within 48 hours. Otherwise you can request serial numbers to use them during Adobe’s prerelease period.

CNet has a more in depth run down of the new features available in some of the Betas but doesn’t quite have the scoop on Photoshop.

We took a quick test drive of the Dreamweaver trial and liked some of the changes. Among the touted enhancements are a Related Files Toolbar and Code Navigator. The Properties panel integrates HTML and CSS coding, which could save time for those who edit dynamic sites. A new Live View Mode, driven by Webkit open-source rendering, previews pages within Dreamweaver, eliminating the need to open a browser. Adobe intends for this feature to make it easier to debug JavaScript as well as to work with Flash animation.

There’s no word yet on whether the next rough draft of Photoshop will be available for a free trial. However, Photoshop’s next iteration may become available in widgets, enabling users to mix and mash up some features with third-party content, according to a blog post last week by Photoshop product manager John Nash. We suspect that there will be more opportunities to blur the lines between the desktop, the Web, and mobile platforms within the next Creative Suite.

I have a theory that Adobe will aim at integrating all of it’s products into sister web applications like Photoshop Express (above), but that’s just my own speculation. However, some type of interface like Google’s Gears would be the big step towards cloud computing that Adobe has yet to take.

With the growing use of web apps for professional work, it’s inevitable that Adobe enter that realm.

1. Unlimited Undo.
   When you’re applying filters it used to be that there was no real way to undo a string of actions unless you had a high system memory that allowed for a long ‘undo’ list. Either that or you would have to duplicate a layer before you worked on it to keep one that you could always go back to. With Smart Layers and Smart Filtering you can apply filters at your heart’s content and non-linearlly undo them. For istance if I started my object with a ‘Blur’ then I applied a ‘Poster’ effect, I can rearrange the order in which they were applied to the image.
2. Unlimited Scale.
   One thing I do for photographs or scanned illustrations and art is make the actual image I’m working with a Smart Object at the highest resolution. That way when I’m working with composition, scaling things down, warping them and editing, the ‘Smart’ layer never looses any fidelity.
3. Vectors.
   If you move between Illustrator and Photoshop a lot, smart objects are especially useful. Dragging a vector object from Illustrator to Photoshop will result in the vector being preserves as a smart object. Now you can use non-destructivly edit, change it’s colors, or size.
4. Recursive Actions.
   Another use for smart objects is for creating layers that reference the same source file. This allows you to update your one smart object and have the actions recursively distributed through all the ‘copies’. One real world examples is for people who create web page mockups. you might have one style of button that appears all over the. what if you want to change the color of all those buttons at once? Well if these button layers were all duplicates of the same Smart Object, when you update one, you update them all!
5. Recycling Designs.
   If you use Masks in combination with Smart Objects, Smart Filters and Unrendered Text for a design, you’ll never have to “recreate” a design. You can simply go in and replace one ojbect and instantly all the effects and filters you applied in the past are now applied to the newer image. I’ve included an example below. A client wanted me to change the “X” in one picture to a “S” in another picture. Updating the design literally took me about 15 seconds, but I still got paid for a ‘redesign’.


Before:


After: