Sharing PhotoShop techniques.

I was working in photoshop today and I was trying to get some realistic looking flames, without using any custom plugins or filters. After playing around a bit, I got something worked out that I am pretty happy with. I don’t know if this will be of use to anyone else, but if it is, then here you go:
http://www.scottydelicious.com/blog/photoshopflames.html

-sD-
Dr. Scotty Delicious, Scientist.

Woot is that a new design on your website ?
It rocks !

Nice tuto, though I never really wrapped my head around photoshop and work with Fireworks, and also sometimes GIMP... but sure nice to get tips !

Thanks David! Not a brand new design, but pretty recent.
I am in kind of the opposite situation of you. I have been working with PhotoShop since version 5, but I have seen some of the really great graphics done with fireworks. I know FireWorks has a particular "specialization" in web graphics. I want to get into it, but PhotoShop is really expensive (part of the reason I do not have an intel mac yet). I might have to download the demo of FireWorks just to play around. I really have a lot of tricks with PhotoShop though, and I plan on sharing them in a series of blog posts at my website.

As far as the GIMP goes, I tried GimpShop which was a bit more comfortable to move around in than in plain GIMP, but I disliked the X11 interface, and sometimes you get what you pay for. With photoshop, I get a world class application that works the way I work and I know how to use it, so for simplicities/comforts sake, I am planning on using PhotoShop long term

-sD-
Dr. Scotty Delicious, Scientist.

Really nice tutorial Scotty.

About Photoshop I really agree with you.
I can’t think about my job without photoshop.
I’ve started with photoshop 4 years ago and tried a lot of other products (Fireworks, Corel, Gimp..), there nothing like Photoshop.
I’m a multimedia designer and all my work using Photoshop.
- Video : all graphics, titles and animation done in photoshop (imported and animated in after effects)
- Multimedia : all UI for Director (multimedia cdroma) and all DVd menu made in photoshop
- 3D modelling: there’is nothing better Photoshop to create texture and to give more realism to rendered images.
- Web....


My old boss (in a big Italian Web Agency) always said : there is no plugin/fx that you that you cannot reproduce only with Photoshop 4

Sure for people who have time to self-train with Photoshop, sure is the industry standard by a long shot... yet, I found FireWorks much easier to learn (and way less expensive too ), I especially like the vector part of it and also the easy way to access layers...

But I am no graphist, just a self trained guy who happens to also do (simple) graphics...
I sure enjoy those tutorials, they might help me go past the first steps in photoshop

Playing with the beta of PS CS3, and actually having done a technical edit on The Official Guide to Photoshop 2.5 from Random House, I can say without question that I couldn’t live without Photoshop. And CS3/PS 10.0 beta screams again on my Intel Mac, like it should.

Wowee wow wow!
I hadn’t checked the Adobe site in a bit and I usually spam all my adobe email cause it’s mostly ad-crap... somehow I missed the beta for PhotoShop 10. I am downloading ASAP!

thanks for the heads up Thrash-man.

-sD-
Dr. Scotty Delicious, Scientist.

I second any votes for Fireworks as a web design tool. When I was self-learning design apps, Fireworks was by far the easiest to dive in to. I’m now using Photoshop well, but not after a long battle of learning how things work in PS.

Here’s something that should help put things into perspective for people debating Photoshop vs. XXXXX. Photoshop is a raster-based design tool, whereas apps like Illustrator are vector-based. What does this mean? Well, simply put, Photoshop is great for editing things like... photos. Illustrator is best for creating things like boxes and drawings and such. This is important especially when you step outside of web design and create things for print work (like when you try to increase a design from an 8x10 to 22x48).

Where does Fireworks fit in all of this? It too is a raster-based design tool, but don’t think for a minute you can truly compare it to Photoshop (as I see many people do when it comes to web design). Fireworks is not Photoshop. It cannot do half the functions that Photoshop can (and this is coming from a Fireworks fanboy). I use Fireworks every day for web design. It’s quick, easy, and can get the job done well. If I need to edit photos or perform advanced tasks, I use Photoshop. There’s a reason Adobe is keeping Fireworks around (BTW, don’t try and use Fireworks for print work... it just doesn’t cut it).

Bottom line, there’s many tools available for creating and designing. Don’t lock yourself into using just one. Pick one that you can master and start there while you learn what each can do.