Best of the Web—April

May 2nd in Web Roundups by Sean Hodge

Some great work is available from multiple sites this month. There are tutorials that will complement the skills you're learning here at PSDTUTS. There are fantastic freebies to check out as well as inspirational and informative articles. Let's check out some super material available on the vast "interwebs."

Author: Sean Hodge

Hi All! I recently moved to the outskirts of Orlando, Florida. I'm the editor of Psdtuts+ and Vectortuts+. Also, visit my blog AiBURN where I feature some of my creative work and ideas. Or follow me on Twitter: @seanHodge.

Tutorial Wrap

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  Create Amazing Photomontages

  Nik Ainley shows us how to blend images to make a really cool effect. He takes images of water and superimposes them onto an image of a man. The blended effect is great and he gives really clear instructions. This is a must-see tutorial this month.

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  Create Cool Neon Effects

  Tony Ariawan shows us how to make a high-tech effect glowing effect. "Whether it's the speeded-up glow of car headlights in a night-time city scene, an alien spacecraft or a deep-sea jellyfish you're recreating, this far-out neon look is a highly useful trick to master. It conveys a sense of movement and energy, and the colours can be tweaked to give a surprising range of effects."

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  Making a Photoshop Crystal Ball

  This tutorial from Mark Mayers shows handles reflections through a crystal ball really well. There are techniques on refracting curves and some great pointers on how to handle the bending and flipping of images to make them appear realistically through curved glass.

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  Create a Stunning Undersea Painting Using Vector Packs

  Dave over at GoMedia shows us how to go about coloring a piece of artwork. The tutorial starts by fusing some elements from their recent vector pack. Then it's mostly airbrushing in Photoshop from there. The results are great. He paints in the image really well and gives the background a textured feel.

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  Ford Mustang Wallpaper

  This tutorial covers some simple techniques for create a retro design. You'll work through creating background texturing and linear designs, masking out the car, and you'll create a small sign with the shape tools and layer styles.

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  Creating the Windows Vista Lighting Effect

  "This Vista Lighting Effect, sometimes referred to as the Aurora Effect, can really transform an ordinary wallpaper to something extraordinary." This tutorial shows some simple techniques on how to achieve this effect.

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  How to Design the Firefox Logo in Photoshop

  If you need some practice with the Pen Tool in Photoshop, then this is a tutorial for you. Learn some techniques that are usually used in icon design to recreate the Firefox logo.

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(FREE!) Download Picks

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  Freebie Roundup: 12 Places To Download Free Textures

  Bittbox often puts out great free textures. This article though points to twelve other places to find great free textures. You can never have enough free textures. This roundup is a resource worth reviewing.

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  Wallpaper of the Week #3

  The newest wallpaper over on Fabio's blog Abduzeedo is really cool. It's called La Femme, and is made by artist James White. It has an attractive use of simple rainbow colored shapes that are manipulated to replace the hair in the composition. The design has great flow, current style, and subdued elegance.

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  Ultimate Brush Pack No.3

  There are a bunch of brushes available in this brush pack. There are seven sets in this single download. There is a good mixture of natural media brushes, textured brushes, and linear brushes.

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  Metalista

  Fontshop has released another free Open Type font. "From award-winning designer Tomás Brousil, Metalista is a contemporary expression of metal culture." Rock on!

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  Colored Vector Elements

  Dapino is a vector artist that gives away loads of free stock graphics, icons, and illustrations every month. It's well worth your time to visit her site. Featured here is a collection of swirling colored vector patterns.

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Article Wrap

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  Adobe Photoshop Tutorials—Rainbows, Glows, and Light Effects

  This roundup of lighting effects tutorials has tutorials from PSDTUTS and a bunch from across the Web as well. "Lighting effects in Adobe Photoshop are used to add flare and polish to images. They communicate feelings of creativity, technology, magic, and fantasy."

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  Alberto Seveso Interview

  We had a few comments about Alberto Seveso in this tutorial Creating a Vector Composite Effect from a Photo. Learn more about this inspirational artist. "Alberto Seveso is a graphic designer and illustrator from Italy who has simply created a fantastic style by mixing colourful vectors with black and white photos known as "sperm shaping". It's very hard to look at his work and not say WOW."

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  Inspirational PDF Magazines

  This is the first article I made the front page of the design section of Digg with. The article covers freely available PDF design mags. There are about twenty mags pointed out in this Smashing article. Lots of downloadable inspiration in those PDF pages.

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  DYT Choice: Best of Wallpapers Made in Russia

  This is a collection of stunning wallpapers made by Russian artists. A wide assortment of styles and themes are on display—all of ultra-high quality.

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  May 1st RSS Awareness Day: Get Involved

  RSS Day was put together to promote the understanding and use of RSS technology. "The objective of the RSS Awareness Day is to get as many people as possible talking about RSS and its benefits on May 1st." If you need to brush up on RSS technology, or learn about feeds, visit the RSS Day Website. We're helping to promote the technology by mentioning it here. What's your favorite feed reader? I use Vienna. It's a freely available Mac application and works great.

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