Thorsten Schmidtkord has a new series called Head on Top. You can see from the images below that Schmidtkord must have had a fun time working these images. It's definitely an interesting series where he reverses your head picture with surprising results. It also makes you wonder how he went about manipulating these images. Check out more of his projects.






via: Qurated

I came across Ben Heine who is a Belgian painter, illustrator, portraitist, caricaturist and photographer. Will just call him a man with many artistic abilities. In his collection Pencil vs. Camera I was enjoying his use of photography and then his use of his creative drawing style and then combining them into one. Take a look at some of these pictures from his collection. You should also checkout his other works on his site.

I'm always on the look out for new artists and designers that catch my attention. Drew Rois is one of those artist that caught my attention with his collection of Space Posters. He started a little studio called Rokk Hard which he states is a amalgamation of two very different genres of music; Metal and Disco. With powerful visual hailing from both genres, they are inseparable in my mind, and this is what drives my work.

What I like about his space poster collections is that what seems to be a simple design can really be seen as a multitude of layers which comprises to make a modern simple look. I would have to say though my favorite one is the Astroknot posters with its vintage style look and its great choice of colors to match the style in which he was going for. It's like looking at a rip in the universe and you only get a strange glimpse of Earth. (Sorry had to geek out for a minute). If you want to check out more of his work or follow him on his social networks check out his website.

I have been reading up on some styles of typography lately and learning some more in-dept understanding of type and fonts. So that I can have a better understanding of typography and to assist in my creativity when it comes to design. Then while I was doing my research I came across some typographic posters that I wanted to share.

Good/Bad Typography by Craig Ward

Children of the Idiom by Pablo Alfieri

Beauty by Mrgraphicsguy

The Gift v2 by MrBadger

TechnicalLove by Mrgraphicsguy

Here we are again with another great Playlist to fill your ears. This one is a special playlist from the past. Playlist-13 is a playlist that was made back when I was about 20. I came about getting my hands on this copy of the playlist from my old roommate. When I last visited Ohio I went out on a nature walk with her and her son. So on our little journey to the park I was looking through her CD's and found a CD labeled "Damion Mix". I thought it was going to be like a CD of me mixing back in the day. Nope. It ended up being this playlist which I use to listen to none stop back in the day. So it was awesome to find a treasure of music from my past that has a lot of great memorizes attach to them. It not only made my trip home more meaningful but I now get to share the sounds of distance past. Hopefully some of these songs will bring up some memories of good times when you have a listen to Playlist-13.

On a side note if someone can tell me the artist and name of the first track. I will burn you a copy of Playlist-13 with the album cover art.

If you want to check out any of the other playlist then click on Archived Playlist in this post or on the right hand side of this blog.


Cover art by: Damion Schweizer

Tracklist

1. Unknown
2. Imagine by John Lennon
3. Film by Aphex Twin
4. It's a Fine Day by Miss Jane
5. Careful Where you Stand by Coldplay
6. 6 Underground by Sneaker Pimps
7. Love Song by The Cure
8. Bitter Sweet Symphony by The Verve
9. Only In Dreams by Weezer
10.Yellow by Coldplay
11. Isobel by Bjork
12. GodSpeed by BT
13. Nannou by Aphex Twin
14. Bigger Stronger by Coldplay
15. Trouble by Coldplay

It has been a while since I have put up some tutorials on Photoshop. So I thought why not do one today. Photo manipulation is an art that requires lots of patience along with the expertise in Photoshop and other photo editing tools. With your creative mind and your imagination, you can manipulate any photograph the way you see fit.

Blend a Planet Transparently into a Photo Manipulation

In this tutorial Artist will show you how to use different blending modes to blend flying hairs easily and to make semi-transparent planet. He will also show you different techniques of adjustment to get the most realistic results in your photo manipulations!

Design a Dramatic and Surreal Rainy Scene with Photoshop

Learn all about how to manipulate images and combine them to create surreal scenes, in this case a rainy scene. Also, numerous details are covered in this tutorial such as adding highlights, shading, excellent photo-manipulation techniques, and more. Learn all about it at the jump!

Create amazing water-drenched photo-montages

Nik Ainley shows you how to make a splash, blending two very different images to create this amazing underwater effect, complete with a dissolving figure of a man.

Dazzling Dance Photo Manipulation

In this detailed and lengthy Photoshop tutorial, you will learn how to combine photos and add special effects to turn a normal photograph into a stunning artwork. You will also learn several tricks to reduce your Photoshop document file size and number of layers and layer styles.



Via Source: Noupe.com

In today's post I wanted to share with you some brushes that I think are pretty inspirational and could be useful in your Photoshop brush collections. I have search for these brushes on Brusheezy due to the large collection of brushes available. I also found that they are of good quality. If the brushes listed below don't fit your fancy then check out Brusheezy for more brushes available.

Birds of Feathers

Dragonfly Brushes

Party Brushes

Blood Brush

Appendix Halftone Brushes

9x Clouds Brushes High Res

"In computer graphics and photography, high dynamic range imaging (HDRI) is a set of techniques that allows a greater dynamic range of exposures (the range of values between light and dark areas) than normal digital imaging techniques. The intention of HDR is to accurately represent the wide range of intensity levels found in real scenes ranging from direct sunlight to shadows." - From Wikipedia.

If applied carefully, High Dynamic Range-technique (HDR) can create incredibly beautiful pictures which blur our sense of the difference between reality and illusion. HDR (High Dynamic Range) Photography is a technique that is becoming very popular at the moment, an HDR photo is created using software such as Photoshop or Photomatix and produces images with more detail in the highlights and shadows.












Via: Smashing magazine,Wikipedia

In June of last year, I wrote a blog about "Useful Tools for Choosing Your Color Palette". One of the sites I wrote about was ColoRotate. Well I received an email from Michael Douma of ColoRotate who wanted me to know that they are now out of the beta testing phase and now have a working Photoshop CS4 Plugin.

Michael stated, my colleagues and I developed ColoRotate because, while color is inherently three-dimensional, all color pickers were flat. From the feedback we received during beta testing, it seems that those who engage in computer color selection and design also felt that vacuum. They found some features of ColoRotate especially appealing, such as gaining more control over foreground and background colors through fine-tuning with sliders, and easily creating meaningful palettes.

The plugin is available at http://plugin.colorotate.org/ for ($39) -- Plugin users can also subscribe to the ColoRotate Cloud for ($49/Year), which enables users to sync palettes between multiple computers and share palettes with colleagues, collaborators, and clients.

Being one who loves graphic design and web design. I'm always looking for new ideas and creativity when it comes to finding some new inspiration for a new project. It is also fun to search for different designers and styles to sit and try to figure out how they were able to make that or what gave them the inspiration to create their works. So today we are going to look at some creative photographers and try to figure out their inspiration.

Jan von Holleben

Lina Scheynius

Aneta Kowalczyk

Cosmin Bumbut

I did a blog last week of some strange and funny images that used Photoshop to give it a creative and different approach. One of the last pictures of that blog was done by Romain Laurent. I thought it was an interesting concept and was intrigued to see more of his work.

Romain Laurent is talented French photographer, who has been known to work with large commercial agencies. He has interesting ideas and a deep sense and understanding of his ideas and they are captured in his work. These photos below are some great inspiration to get your mind wondering and thinking of new ideas. So enjoy the works of Romain Laurent.