Download GIMP 2.7.5 for Windows 7 (pre-2.8)
The GIMP 2.7.5 release is the last step before the final 2.8 version, that should arrive in the upcoming February 2012.
This is more stable than the previous 2.7.4 and 2.7.3 versions.
As you know the main feature is the introduction of the single-window mode, which is a very important step in GIMP usability.
Download is available below. Have fun! 
FREE 85+ Vector Foliage-Plants Photoshop / GIMP Brushes Download
Description:
Brushes: 35 + 50 extras
Version: Photoshop 7+, Photoshop Elements 2+, GIMP 2.2.6+
A set of Photoshop brushes made up of various foliage and plants in vector designs. Includes several grasses, flowers, plants, branches, cherry blossoms, bamboo, leaves, vines, and much more! Sizes average about 900 x 900 pixels.
Enjoy!
FREE 85+ Vector Foliage-Plants Photoshop / GIMP Brushes DOWNLOAD
2000+ FREE Photoshop / GIMP Brushes Download
Description:
Over 2000 Photoshop brushes compilled in this mega pack available for free for all Web Design Blog readers.
Remember to subscribe to our feed and join over 20.000 feed readers to receive more free stuff every day.
FREE Swirl Photoshop / GIMP Brushes Download
Description:
Awesome collection of Photoshop brushes featuring various swirl and curl designs. Whether it’s curly brushes, foliage swirl brush set contains 15 classic swirl decorations. Free for personal use, or you can buy a high res here. The swirl brushes don’t look extraordinary in their presentation but after you put them in a design project they are magical, they add a certain vintage or artsy.
Enjoy!
Photoshop Tutorial: Energize Your Graphics with Abstract Energy Lines
In this tutorial, I’ll show you how to create some energetic lines you can use to create more lively digital creations. Effects such as this are great for enhancing abstract compositions!
What We’re Making
A preview of the effect we’re going to create in this tutorial can be seen in the back of this graphic:
The purpose of this tutorial is not to actually recreate this exact graphic, but rather show you how to add similar lines into your own compositions. For this reason, I’m not going to explain how to design this specific background, but you are free to download the background here if you’d like to follow using our example.
Step 1 – Start with a Flare
Create a new Layer.
First, we’ll create a large, bright flare where our lines will sprawl out of. Using a large, soft brush (0% hardness, 100-200px, or greater for large documents), and a white foreground color, dab a bit somewhere in your document as a starting point for your lines.
Set this layer to Overlay. If need be, duplicate this layer several times to get a more intense effect. Here is the flare after 3 duplicate layers:
Step 2 – Adding Some White Lines
Create a new layer above your flare. Still using a white foreground color, set your brush size to 1-2px, and your brush hardness to 100%.
Plan out a path for your lines. Decide which direction you want your lines to flow, how many sets (directions) you want your lines to flow in, and how you want your lines to interact with any subjects you may have in your composition. I want to have 3 groups of lines, two shooting upward out of my flare, and one coming out the bottom as if the flare fuses those groups together.
Now, making quick, smooth strokes (a Graphics Tablet really can help), draw your groups of lines into your new layer (Video Below). With a mouse, you need to be sure to make fast flicks to create a smooth looking line. Alternatively, you can create dozens of paths with the pen tool, and then stroke those paths with a 1-2px white brush. This approach will almost alway look better, but is more time consuming.
Here’s a quick demonstration video:
Step 3 – Adding More Lines
Continue to build upon your lines with additional colors as you see fit. Try to choose colors which compliment the other colors in your image, or are similar to the colors used in your graphic. Yellow is a nice complimentary color for blue, so I’ll add some extra yellow lines.
Step 4 – Scribbles
Create a new Layer.
Using a 1px, 100% hard, white brush, draw in some scribbles that closely follow your line work completed in steps 2 and 3. Add some extra scribbles that shoot out further than the rest near your flare, as if it is filled with electrical energy (you’ve gotta love the terms I’m using to describe such things in this article by now, but really, thinking of ways to compare your linework to real world examples can help you put your ideas to paper).
Step 5 – Add Depth with a Shadow
Duplicate the layer of white lines, and move the layer underneath your flare layers. Apply a Gaussian Blur with a radius of 5-10px. Change the color from White to Black by going to Image > Adjustments > Invert.
Using a shadow is a great way to create an illusion of depth in a graphic. After applying your shadow, the lines and flare should appear to pop forward a bit from the canvas.
Step 6 – Adding a Vibrant Blur
While holding Ctrl, select every line layer and flare layer you’ve created so far. Once every layer is selected in your layers palette, right click one of the selected layers, and choose to Duplicate layers (or Layer > Duplicate Layers).
You should now see a group of layers above your layers you just duplicated (all still selected). Merge these layers (Ctrl + E, or Layer > Merge Layers).
Set this new layer to Overlay. Apply a Guassian Blur with a radius of 10-20px.
This will simply five your lines a more ambient light feel, as if they are actually glowing a bit.
Step 7 – Adding Sparks
On a new layer, using a 1px, hard, white brush, paint in some small sparks (just quick dabs of paint), which increase in number as they approach closer to the flare and lines.
Wrapping Things Up
That’s really all there is too creating this sort of effect. The real creativity is not in the effect itself, but how you tie it into your design work. You can use the lines to wrap around objects in your compositions (would require some extra work with the eraser or masking), to direct attention to different parts of an image, or even use the lines to frame something.
As usual, you can grab the PSD that shows how we created our graphic shown in this tutorial if you’re having any trouble with the effect on your own!
Resources Download
Empty Background Image | Download
Photoshop PSD File | Download
Final Energy Lines PNG | Download
Photoshop Tutorial: Colorful Light Effect in Photoshop
Last week I was waiting hours in airports, as usual, I was wandering and checking out banners and signs when I found a beautiful Sony ad of a cel phone called Xperia. The thing that really caught my attention was the wallpaper of the phone. It was a colorful light bean crossing the screen . I really like the effect and thought to myself, that is a good idea for a tutorial.
Fabio Sasso
So in this tutorial I will show you how to create a super easy but at the same time beautiful light effect.
Step 1
Open Photoshop and create a new document, for the size I used 1920×1200 pixels. After that fill the background layer with a very dark grey (121212).
Step 2
With the Rectangle Tool (U) create a rectangle in the middle and crossing the canvas, use white for the color.
Step 3
If you are using Photoshop CS4, convert the rectangle to Smart Objects so you can apply Smart Fllters. Then go to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur. Use 10 pixels for the Radius.
Step 4
Add another layer and then with the Brush Tool (B), use a very soft brush, with 0 hardness. Select white for the color and then start painting some spots. Use the keyboard shortcuts [ and ] to reduce the opacity of the brush, that way you will be abel to create more variations.
After that select the rectangel layer and this layer you have just painted and then go to Layer>Group Layers. The layers will be in an folder on the Layer Panel. Change the folder’s Blend Mode to Color Dodge then.
Step 5
Add a new layer on top of the backround layer but beneath the other layers including the group with the light effects. Then fill the layer with any color and go to Layer>Layer Style>Gradient Overlay. Use Multiply for the Blend Mode, 90% for the Opacity , 180º for the Style and for the Colors use purple, red, yellow, and green. Also over the Blending Options, change the Fill Opacity to 0, that way the layer will have just the Gradient Overlay.
After this step you will be able to see a very nice and colorful background already.
Step 6
Add a new layer, on top of the gradient layer but beneath the others. Then go to Filter>Render>Clouds. Make sure you had black and white for the background and foreground colors. After the clouds filter, go to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur. Use 20 pixels for the Radius. Change the Blend Mode to Soft Light, then with the Eraser Tool (E) using again a very soft brush, delete parts of the layer. The idea is to make the gradient less uniform, like a smoke.
Step 7
Create a new document using 100 pixels for the width and 10 pixels for the height. Resize the background layer so it’s half of the height, 5 pixels. Select all and go to Edit>Define Pattern. Name the new pattern the way you want it, and you will have a very cool stripe pattern.
Back to our design, add a layer on top of the background layer but beneath the others. Then with the Paint Bucket Tool (G), change the type from foreground to pattern. Select the stripped pattern you have just created and fill the layer with it. After that change the Opacity to 2% and go to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur. Use 2 pixels for the Radius.
Conclusion
Press Command(mac)/Control (pc) + Alt + Shitf + E, and you will have a new layer with all the layer merged. Then go to Filter>Noise>Add Noise. Use 1.4% for the Amount and Gaussian for the type. Now it’s all about adding your brand and you have an awesome wallpaper. Once again we have just played with Blend Modes and basic filters. Most of the light effects use the same process, so it’s all about trying and playing with the tool.
Tutorial made by Fabio Sasso on Abduzeedo.
Resources Download
Photoshop PSD File | Download
Final Colorful Light PNG | Download
GIMP Tutorial: Create a stunning “Rainbow Circles” wallpaper in GIMP
Hi all. In this tutorial you’ll learn how to create a stunning “Rainbow Circles” wallpaper, like the one aloft, using GIMP. This tutorial is inspired by a wallpaper made by Fabio Sasso.
Notice that you can find all resources downloads at the end of this tutorial.
Step 1. First, you have to “Create a New Image”. So, go to “File”>”New”. Then the same settings as the following thumbnail.
So, you have to set the image resolution to 1600*1200, but you can use any other resolution. For example, we usually use 1920*1200 resolution.
Step 2. Now, you must fill the Background color to black.
Step 3. So, you must select a purple color. For example, we used “ba008f” color. Maybe we were wrong, since we would had use a darker one. If you use the same color as we did, we advice you to set the Layer transparency to 50%. But we will do it later.
Step 4. In order, to make a fading purple circle, you must change some settings on “Gradient tool“. So, select it from the toolbar and select “FG to Transparent” from “Gradient” menu. Note that purple color must be set as Foreground color.
From “shape“ menu, select “Radial“, then create a new Transparent layer and select it. Hance, click on the center of the image (on the New Layer) using the gradient tool, and start dragging it over the top of the image, like the thumbnail below. (Remember that thumbnail can be enlarged by clicking them ).
Step 5. Now we should start painting the “circles” 
. So select the “Paintbrush tool“. Then, select the “bokeh_circle” brush. You can download it from here.
Now let’s change the “Dynamics” settings. Enlarge the Dinamics menu and check “Opacity” from “Pressure” and “Size” from “Random”. Then, check “Apply Jitter” checkbox and set the “Amount” to 10,00. In order, you must write it, since the default values go from 0,00 to 5,00.
Step 6. So, create another transparent layer and start painting some circles, but a little bit, since we will paint on different layers.
Step 7. This is the deeper layers, so we must add a blur effect to make it seeming more far than the other ones we will paint later. Hance, go to “Filters“>”Blur“>”Gaussian Blur“. A new window will pop up now. Here, set “Horizontal” and “Vertical” Blur radius values to 50,0 and click OK.
You will get something like this:
Step 8. Now create another transparent layer and paint some other circles. Then go to “Filters“>”Blur“>”Gaussian Blur” again, then set “Horizontal” and “Vertical” Blur radius values to 25,0 and click OK.
Step 9. Hance, create another transparent layer and paint some other circles (for the last time since they are the nearest ones ). So, go again to “Filters“>”Blur“>”Gaussian Blur“, then set “Horizontal” and “Vertical” Blur radius values to 1,0 and click OK.
Step 10. Now, select “Gradient tool” and set “Gradient” to “Full saturation spectrum” and change “Shape” to “Linear“, like the following picture shows off.
Step 11. Then, create a “New Layer” and select it as editable. So, click on the left-down corner and drag it till the right-up one. The thumbnail below could help.
Step 12. So, change the “Blending mode” of the layer to “Overlay“.
Finish. You created your own “Rainbow Circles” wallpaper using GIMP. Enjoy it!
Resources Download
Bokeh_Circle_Brush | Download
GIMP XCF File | Download
Circles Wallpaper PNG | Download
Latest GIMP version | Download
