From CreativePro.com –CreativePro Tip of the Week: Drawing Instant Abstract Art in Illustrator:

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Did you know the tilde key has magical powers in Adobe Illustrator? Yes, the humble, unassuming tilde key that sits near the top left of your keyboard. By pressing and holding it as you drag with any of Illustrator’s shape tools, you can draw instant abstract art. When the tilde key is pressed, Illustrator creates a new shape each time the screen redraws. So if you move your mouse or pen tablet slowly, you get a lot of densely packed shapes. If you move it faster, you get fewer shapes spaced farther apart. The results look a little bit like an old school Spirograph (if you’re a child of the 70s-80s). Experiment with different strokes and different starting shapes, like polygons and stars…

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From PSD – Latest Tutorial Listings For 2D Graphics –How to Use the Dodge and Burn Tools in Photoshop:

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In this tutorial, we’ll show you all the techniques needed to effectively lighten and darken photos for retouching or manipulation.

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From Graphics ? CreativePro.com –From Paper to PDF: Vectorizing Hand-Drawn Artwork with Photoshop and Illustrator:

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I have a close friend, Mike Manoogian, who is a brilliant lettering and logo design artist. Every so often, we get to collaborate on a book cover or an identity program, and have way too much fun. Despite our similar tastes and sensibilities, we live in separate design worlds: I’m the computer-savvy Photoshop, InDesign and Illustrator ninja; in his world, “cut and paste” involves an X-Acto knife and rubber cement, and his MacBook is strictly for email. We make a good team. A little while back, Mike got a call from the Lawrence Anthony Earth Organization?a non-profit founded by the late Lawrence Anthony, the famous “Elephant Whisperer.” They needed a logo for a new ecology-centered education program that was already on the launch pad. Could he help? Rush? Of course he could. Could I turn whatever he came up with into a multi-purpose vector file really, really fast? Of course I could. The first rough wasn’t for vector conversion, but was enough to get all concerned excited about the idea: the Vitruvian man in the negative space within a collage of living things. My work started with the first “serious” sketch. Meticulous inking wasn’t an option, given the time constraints…
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From 123RF – Latest Tutorial Listings For Photoshop –Creating a Caricature in Photoshop:

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Cartoonish and silly caricatures are a lot of fun to create and admire! You can make your own caricatures with Photoshop’s distortion and editing tools.

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From PictureCorrect – Latest Tutorial Listings For 2D Graphics –How to Remove Shadows in Photoshop:

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There are a number of ways to make pesky shadows disappear in Photoshop. We’ll teach you a few of them in this tutorial!

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From Graphics – CreativePro.com –Creating a Pop Out Effect with Photoshop and InDesign:

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At the 2016 InDesign Conference in Washington, D.C., Nigel French reminded me of a classic layout effect where an image pops out of its frame to interact with other page elements. It’s simple, effective, and can be used in all kinds of situations to add some “pop” to a page. Begin in Photoshop, by creating a new layer for the part of the image you want to pop out of the frame. Silhouette that part of the image using whatever technique you like. In some cases, you don’t have to be very fussy since the rest of the image will be cropped using the frame in InDesign. In this example, the surface of the water will never show in the silhouetted version of the image, so I don’t care that’s not masked correctly. But I did want to preserve the drops of water coming off the whale’s tail. Save the layered Photoshop image with just the silhouetted layer visible, and place the image into InDesign. Copy the image and paste it in place, so you have two stacked copies. Select the top copy and choose Object > Object Layer Options. In the dialog box, turn on the visibility of the background layer. With the Selection…

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From PSD Vault – Latest Tutorial Listings For 2D Graphics –Create an Erupting Lava 3D Text Effect in Photoshop:

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Here`s an explosive little tutorial! We`ll create text that simulates lava bursting out of an active volcano in Photoshop with just a few stock images, custom brush painting, and filter effects.

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From Astute Graphics – Latest Tutorial Listings For 2D Graphics –Create a Regal, Engraved Style Portrait With Illustrator and WidthScribe:

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In this tutorial, we`ll create a portrait of Queen Elizabeth in an engraved style. We`ll do this in Illustrator, using tools like WidthScribe, Width Selector, Width Stamp, and more. Once you learn the…

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From PSD Vault – Sculpt Surreal Landscapes With Mountains and Waterfalls in Photoshop: