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Did you know that the idea for Creative Sessions started way back in December 2008? We’ve added some of our best tutorials and articles ever to our Graphic Design and Web Design Sessions

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New Creative Session – Web Design

The first Session seed planted on Tuts+ was Web Design, featuring 10 carefully crafted articles and tutorials by Envato CEO Collis Ta’eed. The techniques and principles in each lesson are just as relevant today as they were when first published in December 2008, so we’ve decided to give them a new lease on life as part of Creative Sessions.

Here’s a quick look at three items from our Web Design Session

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  How a Simple Layout Can Be Mixed ‘n’ Matched with Patterns, Photos and Backgrounds

  It’s pretty amazing how much colour and background can change the look and feel of a website. In this tutorial we’re going to put together a quick, simple but effective layout and then create variations using backgrounds, photos and patterns. We’ll also look at how to make seamless tiled backgrounds out of a photo, methods for ending a single photo and simple ways to create pixel patterns. In short it’s a jam packed tutorial!

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  9 Information Design Tips to Make You a Better Web Designer

  It’s probably the least glamourous part of web design, but information design is by no means the least important. Locating and consuming information is the quintessential web task, far surpassing buying, playing and communicating, all of which include a good portion of information design themselves. How users find and then avail themselves of all that information is affected by how it is structured and presented. Thus every web designer should be equipped to make qualified and informed decisions on just how to do this.

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  Photoshop a Paper Texture from Scratch then Create a Grungy Web Design with it!

  This year has seen a big increase in grungey / textured / hand-drawn styled website designs. By nature I tend to design a cleaner look myself, but I thought I’d try my hand at grunge today and write up a tutorial on creating a simple paper texture from scratch in Photoshop then marrying it with a web layout to create a neat design.

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In fact, the website designed in Photoshop a Paper Texture from Scratch then Create a Grungy Web Design with it! is for sale on ThemeForest as Manilla.

You can browse the complete overview at Creative Sessions

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New Creative Session – Graphic Design

The second Session event on Tuts+ and the main precursor to the concept was Graphic Design Week, featuring an extraordinary 22 articles and tutorials, published in May 2009. A lot of these wouldn’t have been seen by readers new to the site so here’s some great items from Graphic Design Week

Here’s a quick look at three items from our Web Design Session

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  How to Create a Retro Boxing Poster in Photoshop

  As it’s Graphic Design Week here on Psdtuts+, let’s take a look at some basic Graphic Design principles and cast an eye over the Boxing Poster aesthetic from yesteryear.
  Creating a retrograde look is nothing new, but there are some things to keep an eye out for when mimicking Graphic Design from any decades past. We’ll be drawing inspiration from Poster Design from the 1960s, particularly Boxing Posters from that era. Let’s get started!

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  Spot UVs, Proofs, Roll Folds and Other Printing Terminology Explained

  The world of printing and all the techniques and terminology associated with it can be complicated. Often it can take a while to understand and learn these through years of graphic design experience.
  This article consists of a list of some of the most common printing terms with a brief explanation of each. To make it easier to understand I have divided the list into three areas: General printing, Bindings, and Finishings.

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  Communicating with Typography

  Type is always communicative, even if it wasn’t designed with that goal in mind, but there are some great ways to really make it shout. In this tutorial, we’ll explore some basic as well as some more clever ways to use type to communicate a feeling, message or idea.
  There are a variety of characteristics that can influence what type communicates, including but definitely not limited to: typeface & font, size, kerning, leading, capitalization, and color.

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Of course, you can view the full Graphic Design Session any time you like! Be sure to check Creative Sessions regularly for new Sessions being run each month.

The word bokeh is derived from the Japanese word boke. It’s a term used to describe the deliberate and creative use of lens blur in photography. In design, bokeh photographs or textures have many uses. They can be used as background images or even to draw interest to a specific part of a design. Today, we are giving away several unique grungy bokeh textures for you to use in your work for free.

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12 Free Grungy Bokeh Textures

This pack includes 12 grungy bokeh textures that were created by Nick Merritt from Thedigitalyardsale.com. Feel free to download these textures and use them in your work!

Photographs are excellent tools to show you how something looks. Tracing photos to create artistic pieces however doesn’t teach you much about shape, volume, lighting, and color. Today, I would like to demonstrate an alternative way to create abstract artistic pieces using a photo merely as inspiration. We will start by choosing and simplifying its components and then proceed to apply a retro-futuristic look. Let’s get started!

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Resources Used

• Reference Photograph – (EUR Neighborhood in Rome)
• Grungy Paper Texture

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Step 1

For this tutorial we need a photo of a landcsape that contains both natural and architectural elements. Any photo will do, really, provided the composition is potentially interesting. I say potentially because we are going to do a lot of interpretation and guesswork therefore we can improve on the initial composition if need be.

I chose a shot of a lake from the EUR neighborhood in Rome (1a). While the photo itself is nothing special, the composition has potential: the shoreline is interesting, there’s a curved bridge coming in from the left, a bunch of buildings in the middle, a couple of low rises on the left and trees on the right. When you analyze the photo, take notice of any element, not just the physical ones: there are triangular reflections on the water, we’ll definitely use those! (1b).

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Step 2

Grab the Brush Tool (B) and start blocking out the shapes you see using random but contrasting colors (2a). This is the first phase of the simplification process: choosing what to preserve from the plate. Block out the low-rise buildings on the left (2b), the bridge and the tall buildings (2c), the shore and the hill leading up (2d). Eventually you’ll have the entire photo blocked out into shapes. Introduce some variation by crosshatching over the vegetation. Keep it simple and clean and you’ll be all right (2e).

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Step 3

Now we can get rid of the photograph and put a black background behind the sketch (3a). Before analyzing the composition, though, we need to eliminate the colors because they might distract us. To do that, create a black layer above the sketch and set it to either Hue or Saturation mode (3b). Now the colors are gone and we can evaluate the composition better (3c).

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Step 4

I’ve drawn arrows to show the ideal paths formed by our shapes. It’s a good idea to have the composition lead the eye towards the focus point, in this case the center buildings (4a). As you can see we have three groups of shapes that pull towards the tall buildings and these in turn point upwards. We need to add a contrasting direction: that’s what the background and the empty spot at the far right are for. We’ll probably create a background pattern made of slanted stripes and we’ll put irregular shapes next to the rigid buildings (4b).

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Step 5

Start building shapes using paths, going directly over the sketch. For now keep the original colors (5a). When you’ve traced everything (5b) do all the tweaking you want, moving points, changing colors to group shapes chromatically and, most importantly, eliminating the smallest shapes that only add confusion to the composition (5c).

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Step 6

Let’s examine the final composition: a couple of low buildings seen in perspective on the left; a curved bridge coming in from the bottom left corner; a couple of roofs and a ramp leading up to four tall buildings placed roughly in the middle, strongly pulling upwards; a hole at the far right of the image, to be filled with organic shapes. This abstract landscape is the result of interpreting a plain photograph (6a).

We will start shading the tall buildings. Apply a bunch of layer styles to the shape layers: everything is editable and scalable at any time. A gradient overlay to make the top of the buildings lighter (6b), an Inner Glow with noise to create texture (6c), Outer Glow (6d). Since these buildings are the focus of the image, it makes sense to give them a bright appearance (6e). Apply the same layer style to the other buildings, changing the colors appropriately (6f).

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Step 7

For the roofs and the ramp we are going for a “neon and space dust” look. It’s just a matter of using layer styles in a slightly unorthodox manner to achieve interesting results. Take the first roof (7a) and turn down the Fill to 0%, effectively making it disappear: only the layer styles will be visible. Apply a Stroke and make it bright by choosing the Linear Dodge blending mode (7b). This is neon enough. The space dust effect is accomplished by turning on noise for both Outer Glow (7c) and Inner Shadow (7d). See? (7e).

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Step 8

Apply this layer style to the other roofs and ramps, each time adjusting the colors to match those of the parent shape. Tweak values like the amount of noise and the size of the glows to add variation and to suggest perspective: farther objects have less noise.

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Step 9

The green buildings on the left receive a strong blue glow from the adjacent building so add it with a noisy Inner Shadow (9a). Use the Size and Distance values to tweak the effect to your liking (9b). Since these are secondary elements I’ve decided to desaturate them from green to a pale water green (9c). Remember that everything you see on the screen is vector shapes and layer styles so you can change shapes, colors, effects and image size at any time without losing sharpness. There are pixel limits to layer styles, though, keep that in mind.

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Step 10

To make the green buildings more recessed in space let’s erase them partially. To do that group the layers and add a blank mask to the group. Click on the mask and paint with black on the areas you want to hide, using a soft brush (10a). Make the buildings fade behind the high-rises (10b) and out of the left side of the image (10c). Layer masks are raster elements so they’re not scalable but it’s easy to paint them again if you have to scale the image up for printing.

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Step 11

Hide the black background, leaving everything else visible. Hit Cmd/Ctrl + A (Select All), Cmd/Ctrl + Shift + C (Copy Merged) and Cmd/Ctrl + V (Paste) to flatten all the elements on a single layer. Turn the background back on. The image is pretty dense as it is so we won’t add any stripes to the background. Instead we will place the grungy paper texture in the document, resizing it appropriately (11a). Desaturate it (Cmd/Ctrl + Shift + U) and invert it (Cmd/Ctrl + I) (11b). Change the blending mode to Lighter Color and lower the Opacity to 25%. Now the texture is barely visible, giving a subtle variation to the boring flat blackness of space (11c).

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Step 12

You can color the texture by adding an Adjustment Layer to it. Check the Colorize option and move the sliders around until you find a suitable hue (12a). I chose a faint red tint, taking a hint from the triangular shapes at the bottom of the image (12b). This might be a secondary space dust made of finer particles that reflect the glow form the light objects. Always have a story to go with your illustrations!

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Step 13

We have to take care of the glaring hole on the right. Let’s put some slanted billows of smoke there. Select the Brush Tool (B) and enter the Brushes window (F5). Pick a textured preset (13a). Turn on both Size Jitter (13b) and Opacity Jitter (13c). You can control the values with a tablet (Pen Pressure setting) which I recommend. Tablets are not cheap but they are indispensable. Paint vertical lines in white on a new layer, varying their length, thickness and opacity (13d).

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Step 14

Rotate the smoke layer 45 degrees, scale it down and place it next to the high-rises (14a). Erase the parts that overlap the other elements (14b) and smudge the ends with the Smudge Tool (14c).

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Step 15

The final step is to color the smoke. Add a Color Overlay style to the layer (15a). Choose the color you want. I picked purple because it contrasts nicely with the bright yellow of the objects surrounding the smoke and it recalls the thin purple building in the main cluster (15b). You’re done!

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Conclusion

In this tutorial I’ve shown you how you can use a photograph as inspiration and a base for an abstract landscape. By interpreting the elements we see in the picture we created a highly stylized version of it which we then transformed into a totally unrelated image. In particular we have created an abstract space scene entirely out of vector shapes and layer styles, thus making the landscape scalable and tweakable. Unorthodox settings for mundane layer styles gave us an interesting "space dust" look that blends well with popular light effects. I hope you had fun and learned a useful workflow. Now go flip through your vacation photos and turn them into unique landscapes!

Back when Adobe’s Creative Suite 4 was launched, many people bemoaned the fact that an old favorite plug-in, Picture Package (Contact Sheet II) and its associated Web Gallery counterpart, had been retired. Well, not completely gone, because even in the latest version of CS5 you can still get the old plugins from Adobe, as explained in this post from John Nack.

However, while these plug-ins are euphemistically called “optional,” the smart thinkers will be reading between the lines and considering them “on their way out.” What’s a hard working creative supposed to do for contact sheets? The functions have been moved and enhanced, but you have to know where to look. And, “where to look” is in the Output workspace of Bridge CS5 (CS4 works similarly, if you’re still using that version).

In this tip, we’ll look at the Contact Sheet feature. If you want to see the best way to produce a flexible Picture Package, look to my previous tip on the subject.

In Bridge, select the images you want to want to include in your contact sheet. Then, at the top of the Bridge window, select “Output” to change to the Output Workspace.

Once in the Output Workspace, note several changes that have occurred:

• The “Content” panel has moved to the bottom and has become a filmstrip.
• The “Preview” panel is now front and center, containing all the images you have currently selected.
• The “Output” panel now occupies the entire right side panel

With this, we have what we need to create a contact sheet. Let’s start at the top of the Output panel, and work our way down. At the top, we see this:

With this panel, we select whether we are going to direct our output to a PDF (for printing, email, etc) or to a web gallery. For now, we will pick “PDF” and then click the dropdown list to choose the template. We’ll pick “5*8 Contact Sheet,” but notice the other options available (and note that you can save your own as well):

Now that we’ve selected the 5×8 contact sheet, let’s go ahead and click the “Refresh Preview” button, which will give us our first output preview:

Once you click “Refresh Preview,” a NEW panel opens, called the “Output Preview” panel. Note that the original Preview panel is still there, but now there are two tabbed panels. Within the Output Preview panel, is a rendering of our PDF contact sheet, first try:

Clicking on the Output Preview zooms in, Alt/Option clicking zooms out. Looking at the right side panel, we have an accordion panel with all sorts of options for customization of this PDF. The options in a quick summary are:

• Document: Set your paper size, background color, and image quality. You can also set a password for security in opening the PDF.
• Layout: The parameters are set for our 5 x 8 thumbnails, but you can customize the number of rows and columns, margins and gutters, and set whether to auto rotate for best fit.
• Overlays: For our 5 x 8 preset, the overlays are configured to display the file name and file extension. You can control the text font and color, and you can add page numbering as well.
• Header and Footer: allow you to add text per page, with options for text font, size and color.
• Playback: In the section, you can choose to create a PDF that will open in full screen, and can play as a slideshow (not particularly useful for contact sheets).
• Watermark: You can add a text or graphical watermark to appear on each image.

As you make changes, you can click the “Refresh Preview” button to see the results. Once you’ve set the options to taste, you can save the preset (as we mentioned above) by clicking the icon next to the preset name:

After you’ve created the settings you desire, simply click “Save…” at the bottom of the panel and you’ll be prompted to name your file and choose the location to save it. You can also check the box at the bottom to “View PDF After Save.” Once you’ve saved out the PDF, you can distribute it as desired:

The Bridge Output workspace is where all the heavy output lifting gets done in Creative Suite 4 and 5. Get to know this panel, as you can bet that Adobe will continue to add new features and functions here in the future. Next time here on TipSquirrel, we’ll look at creating a Web Contact Sheet, and after that, you’ll never fret over the old “optional” plug-ins again.