Photoshop is one handy tool that the web designers today use to give shape to their ideas. Whatever wonders they wish to do with their creative ideas, Photoshop never disappoints them. You all know that there are lot many options readily available to create amazing designs but that doesn’t mean its as easy as to handle Photoshop as it sounds to be.

Most designers on a tight budget can get an uncontrolled rapid heartbeat by considering what an investment in a Photoshop license will do to their economy. While it is difficult to argue against Photoshop being the top pick for nearly any photo manipulation, non vector design job etc. there are actually some pretty OK alternatives you can use without spending a single dollar. Question is of course which alternative to use and to help you out I have collected a set of Open Source Photoshop Alternatives you need to be aware of. One of the serious disadvantages you face when not using Photoshop is that you can’t learn and self study using the huge number of excellent free tutorials you can find for Photoshop online. Depending on what alternative you pick there may be some tutorials available, but it will never really match Photoshop. Another thing to be aware of is file formats. Adobe PSD, the Photoshop file type is almost an industry standard for exchanging layered designs e.g. in the web design niche. In GIMP, one of the tools covered below it is possible to save layered files to PSD in stead of the GIMP native format XCF which is useful. Make sure you consider stuff like this when you evaluate your free Open Source Photoshop Alternatives.

Every designer and developer wants cheat sheets to speed up their work and for fast reference. There are plenty of cheat sheets available online, but today I have compiled a collection of cheat sheets which can be used as desktop wallpapers; for super fast reference. You just have to click “Show Desktop” button and your cheat sheet will be in your sight. I hope you will like this collection.

If you’re working on a holiday-themed design project and need more resources to finish it up, you can download these Christmas Photoshop brushes we’ve collected for you. No need to scour the web for free brushes because we’ve got you covered in today’s post featuring 25 sets of Christmas Brushes for Photoshop.

Is there a time that you really don’t know the easiest way to create your design applications? Then there are things that could help you, these are cheat sheets. Cheat sheets give you a good refresher on the topic you want to learn. Just google on your keywords and surely you will find a bunch of cheat sheets that will help you. You’ll find cheat sheets on graphic design applications such as Photoshop, Illustrator, and Fireworks.

In this article, I’ll be featuring 40 useful collections of cheat sheets for designers

Everyone has heard of Adobe Photoshop. It is one of the most popular and expensive image editing programs you can buy. For those of you who do not have the hundreds of dollars to plop down on software I have compiled a list of nice photo editing applications you can use instead.

Photoshop tutorials are one of the most popular subjects on the web, as the digital art community continues to grow and new designers bring their unique skills. However, quality Photoshop tutorials that teach you a useful effect, have a quality finished result and are well explained are harder to find, and with the large number of tutorial sites available, it can be hard to sort the quality from the mundane.

In this massive roundup, we’ve collected the top 100 best Photoshop tutorials that have ever been created, that yield professional results, teach you a useful effect, are well explained, and will have you designing like a pro in no time. These tutorials are collected from niche tutorial sites around the web, and range in age from creation in 2008 to a few tutorials that were created just last week. So, if you think you’ve seen all there is to see from Photoshop, guess again and check out this post.

We all love Photoshop and many of you will use it for hours on a daily basis. The question is, have you ever been in a situation where Photoshop isn’t installed on a computer you are using?

Of course you have. This is why this post is important.

More and more designers are into creating their own blogs and websites either to showcase their works or to advertise. At this pace, it is quite important that as designers who are interested in blogging, one should learn the basics in PSD to HTML, turning Photoshop designs into HTML format. If you are equipped with this technique, you will be able to simply turn your designs into codes that are good enough to turn into active blogs or sites.

This new post is a compilation of tutorials on converting PSD into HTML. Learn the basics of this technique to apply them to your designs and be one-step ahead from the rest… Enjoy!!!

In this tutorial I’m going to show you how to use actions in Photoshop. It’s important to know how to use actions because they help automate a process in Photoshop. Say you took a picture of a tree and wanted to make it look dirty and grungy. Well you could take an hour playing around with levels, contrast, brightness and any other thing you can think of or you can use an action specifically made for that task.

The easiest way to use actions is by going out and downloading a pre-made action set up for a specific task like making a photo look dark. Follow these steps and you will learn how to use Photoshop Actions like a pro.

Tutorials can often be your greatest source of inspiration when trying to design that project you have been putting off. In this post, I have rounded up a collection of very useful tutorials from around the web from the month of May and June 2010. You’ll find everything from creating a distressed vector typographic poster design, to creating an adrenaline filled car chase scene. So what are you waiting for…why not try one out?