Photoshop Masks are the cornerstone of this process. Not only do they preserve important pixel data, but they allow for the creation of flexible interface elements as well.
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Round-ups of beautiful and useful icons are almost legendary here, on Smashing Magazine. While some readers complain about the annoying “list”-style of some of our articles, we are confident that useful round-ups of relevant resources are very valuable and useful for designers. This is why over months we collect useful links and then present them in posts in the magazine. Like it or hate it, but the feedback that we get from the design community when we publish such posts is mostly positive which is why we keep doing it.
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We have showcased different media of art and the different routes that you can take to express your creativity. We covered vexel artworks, graffiti, light paintings, handcraft, Moleskine art and many more. Now, to provide you with some fresh perspective, we decided to showcase a list of some inpisiring watercolor artworks. We believe that watercolor art is a very powerful way to express your feelings — in particular, watercolor can be effectively used to represent the artistic vision on a piece of paper.
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Christmas is coming and, of course, it’s just the right time to provide you with some nice freebies to fresh up your designs. To celebrate the holidays, our friends from IconEden designed “Smashing Christmas”, a free icon set, dedicated to the design community and released especially for Smashing Magazine’s readers. The set contains 39 beautiful, well-crafted icons with warm and welcoming color scheme.
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Photoshop is a magical tool for digital artists and photographers, and it rules the digital imaging world. It is not just a tool, though; Photoshop is a blank canvas that invites you to perform magic with your creativity. It gives you room to creatively manipulate photos and explore the artist in yourself.
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When laid by a learned hand, brush strokes can convey a sense of energy, tactility and humanness. These qualities speak to your audience’s subconscious, whispering ideas that words alone can’t convey. In the digital realm, a website with beautiful brushwork is a welcome break from the stark precision of most corporate websites. [Updated February/28/2017]
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Art is not restricted to any medium, nor is digital painting. Yes, you read that right: “digital painting.” It is a new trend in today’s technologically brilliant world that won’t go away any time soon. Here, we’ve gathered 35 tutorials to inspire you to display your creativity through digital painting.
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As printed typography enjoys the fruits of high-DPI glory, proudly displaying its beautiful curves and subtleties, its on-screen counterpart remains stifled by bulky pixels, living in a world of jagged edges, distorted letterforms and trimmed serifs. Until display manufacturers produce affordable 200 or 300 PPI monitors, we’ll have to rely on software advances to fix these problems.
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Among all of the graphic designers in the world, many of them have probably had a go at designing some cool artwork for t-shirts. The t-shirt, after all, is one of the world’s most purchased products, and a lot of us wouldn’t know what to do without them.
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Most people who have designed websites or apps in Photoshop will, at one point or another, have had issues trying to match colors in images to colors generated by HTML, CSS or code. This article aims to solve those problems once and for all. So how can we achieve color management that matches colors across multiple devices? [Updated February/28/2017]
In the print world, color management typically involves calibrating your entire workflow, from scanner or digital camera to computer display to hard proofs to the final press output. This can be quite a tall order, especially when the devices use different color spaces — matching RGB and CMYK devices is notoriously hard.
When designing or editing for TV, calibrating the main editing display and using a broadcast monitor are common; these show real-time proof of how the image will look on a typical TV in a viewer’s home. In such a scenario, color management offers many benefits and is highly recommended.
When building Web and application interfaces, the situation is a little different. The final output is the same device that you’re using to create the artwork: a computer display (putting aside for now differences in gamma between Windows, OS X prior to 10.6 and the iPhone, which we’ll cover later.)
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