Illustrator and Photoshop Tutorials Roundup – January 2014

Illustrator and Photoshop Tutorials Roundup – January 2014

As the saying goes: “we live, and we learn”. This is a general fact of life, but nowhere is this saying more true than in design. Truly mastering something requires that you never think you mastered it. This makes you study, practice, and research harder, and all of that makes you a better designer.

We’ve discussed before how the Adobe suite is hard to master. The reason why it is so hard is because it’s versatile. A veritable Swiss knife for designers. Thankfully, there is no shortage of tutorials you can find on the web. But since there’s so many of them, it’s hard to find the tutorials that you’re looking for.

We will assume that you already know a thing or two about Illustrator and Photoshop, so we’re not going to bore you with basic tutorials, but rather we’re going to show you a list of nifty mid-level and advanced tutorials to up your game, and also inspire you in any future projects you might have.

Without further ado, here is this year’s first Illustrator and Photoshop tutorials roundup.

1. How to Create a Flat, Subtle Textured Fox in Adobe Illustrator

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That fox is simply adorable! It’s easy to imagine it in a children’s book, and that makes this an excellent tutorial if you want to branch out, and explore your inner child in design.

Since the colors you’ll be using are flat, this is also a great tutorial for learning how to design for flat UI, especially since 2014 looks like it’s going to be flat design’s year.

2. How to Make Your Own Custom Shapes in Adobe Photoshop

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If you’ve ever found Photoshop’s custom shapes lacking, then this is definitely the tutorial for you. This is a short and concise lesson in how you can get that little extra more from Adobe Photoshop, by creating your own personal Custom Shapes with it.

3. Dispersion Effect Using Adobe Photoshop

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Dispersion is a flashy photo manipulation effect that’s really useful to have in your “toolbox”. This tutorial teaches you how to achieve this effect in a few easy to follow steps, and so you won’t have visualize everything, a video is also provided, so you can see each step as it unfolds.

4. Create a Vivid Winter Aurora Landscape Using Adobe Photoshop

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So that your projects don’t look slap dash, or (even worse) amateurish, you need to be able to seamlessly combine different stocks, and blend them together in such a way that will make the scene cohesive, not forced and hasted.

Recreating the landscape presented here is a fantastic exercise for learning all these things, and will surely help you when faced with any similar photo manipulation project.

5. How to Draw Hair and Clothes for a Virtual Dress-Up Doll in Adobe Illustrator

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Playing dress-up is tones of fun, and it only gets even more fun if you can design the clothes yourself, especially if you don’t have to sow them.

This tutorial will teach you hot to make hair and clothes for a virtual dress-up doll, and although that might sound like it’s just a fun way to waste time, it’s actually a great way to improve your Blob Brush Tool and Blend Tool skills. This tutorial also comes equipped with a few “saucy” images, so be warned.

6. Discover Hidden Depths in Type Illustration Using Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop

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This is a real delight as far as tutorials go. Charles Williams shows you how to make a logotype with a 3D finish, and also how to integrate it into a picture, so that it will look natural.

You will be using both Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator for this tutorial, so it also helps with your cross-platforming skills, teaching you how to get the most out of this suite.

7. Create a Detailed UFO Illustration in Adobe Illustrator

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A good tutorial takes you through the basic, all the way to the advanced functions of the program you are using, and you would have a real hard time finding one that does it much better than this tutorial we have for you here, now. You’ll be learning how to set up a grid and build the UFO’s main components, using basic tools.

After that, the tutorial takes you through shading, highlights and subtle textures, this time using rectangles and circles. Finally, you’ll be learning how to make a beam of light with basic blending techniques and a linear gradient.

8. Create a Marvelous Night Landscape with Waterfalls in Adobe Photoshop

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A bit more photo manipulation for you good people. Another landscape, only this time with a little Twin Peaks vibe to it. In this tutorial you will be working on your combining, color balancing and dodge & burn skills, to name only a few.

The tutorial comes with a PSD file, so you can just start following the steps, without having to waste time making the setup.

9. Create Lush, Glossy Vector Images in Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop

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Vectors needn’t be flat, as Thomas Burden (aka …There Will Be Unicorns) teaches in this tutorial form making glossy vector images with a simple color pallet and Illustrator’s own Gaussian Blur effects. Like the tutorial for the 3D logotype, this tutorial also trains your cross-platforming skills.

Once you’ve finished working on the elements in Adobe Illustrator, you can import them in Photoshop for a spot of extra tweaking, just to give them a little more tender, love and care, and make them look as good as they could and should.

10. Painting Spider Web Covered Objects in Adobe Photoshop

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You can’t be all rainbows and sunshine all the time, sometimes you just want to do something creepy, but you can’t have creepy without spider webs, and they are a real journey through hell to draw and adapt to you design.

This brilliant tutorial from Nate Hallinan teaches you step-by-step how to easily add cobwebs to you painting, providing you also with a brush, so that all you have to do is follow the steps.

We hope you find these tutorials eye-opening, and that they’ll help you fill the web with great design and paintings. We look forward to seeing how useful the tutorials were for you, so make sure to share your results in the comment section below.

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