This purple dandelion card art has been in my imagination for a long time. I finally put mouse to canvas.
My Work: Purple Dandelion Card
Photoshop Smart Object Stacking
There's always another layer to discover in Photoshop! I hadn't used Smart Object stacking before and was recently introduced to it at a conference. The stacking modes have mysterious terms like Entrophy, Kurtosis and Summation (Read Adobe's technical explanation of stacking modes here).
Some of the practical applications of Smart Object stacking:
- If you take multiple photos of the same road or fountain and then use stacking mode Median, you can remove moving objects like cars and people (layers must be aligned first)
- If you take photos of the same room with different light sources use the stacking mode Maximum to combine the light of all of these sources (layers must be aligned first)
How to use Smart Object stacking:
Open a new document in Photoshop. Drag in at least 2 images. Select the images in the Layers panel, right click and Convert to Smart Object.- Select Layer > Smart Objects > Stack Mode and choose a stacking mode.
- If you don't like the results, repeat the previous step to choose another option. Unfortunately, I couldn't find a keyboard shortcut or simpler way to access these options but you could always create custom keyboard shortcuts if you end up using this feature a lot.
I had fun playing around with these 2 photos and different stack modes as a creativity tool to see the different results.
Stacking mode: Summation
Stacking mode: Range
Stacking mode: Maximum
Note: Once something is converted to a Smart Object there is no way to ungroup it (at least that I could find in my research) and release all of the original layers (the way you can ungroup layers). To get back to the original contents, open the Smart Object and drag all the layers back into your document. Then delete the Smart Object.
Optical Illusion Artwork
As a kid I had a lot of fun with activity and game books with puzzles and optical illusions. I'm sure everyone has seen this classic:
Is it a vase or two faces?
To me these two pieces by ilovedoodle on Etsy have that same playful relationship with the negative and positive space. Charming illustrations and clever!
The Choir of Antarctica
The Pianist
MorgueFile — Free Stock Photos
The main free stock site I've used in the past is Stock.xchng but I've discovered another great free stock site: MorgueFile.
MorgueFile has a large collection of free stock photos, all of which are free for commercial use (see full license details here). The search feature can be a little clunky at first but it's because the site allows you greater search flexibility (search by color, file size, category, etc.). You can ignore the side filters and just search by one or more keywords using the search box on the top right.
I am having lots of fun looking for gems on this new site. A few favorites so far: multi-color, ferns, cherries, red bokeh
Indesign and ePub Resource List
I attended an excellent 1 day seminar on InDesign to ePub recently. Erica Gamet, the seminar presenter, has a great list of ePub resources on her website. It includes lists of:
- Desktop ePub readers
- Publishers and aggregators
- Reference books and websites
- Software for testing and working with ePub files
- InDesign scripts and plug-ins
- Useful code snippets
Great Food Covers by Coralie Bickford-Smith
Coralie Bickford-Smith brings beautiful color, whimsy and patterns to the Great Food series for Penguin books. My favorite things about this series are the colorful spines and the Love in a Dish cover.
Level Ground Trading Packaging
Level Ground Trading's coffee packaging is beautifully designed. I especially like the bold colors, texture, and black and white people photos. Designed by Subplot.
Detailed Ink Art by Valentina Ramos
I love the detail and color in Valentina Ramos's art. The peacock is definitely my favorite but all of these pieces have so much detail and style. See the full collection in her Etsy shop.
Mr Pavo Real
Moooo - The Cow
The Giraffe
Ganesha: Lord of Success
Font Squirrel - 100% Free Fonts for Commercial Use
If you're tired of searching through the thousands of fonts on sites like dafont.com (current free font count over 12,000) Font Squirrel is a great resource. They hand-pick free high quality commercial-use fonts. Their total font list is a manageable 659. It's such a relief not to plow through junk to find a few gems — the gems are already separated out!
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