The Ultimate 2011 Collection of Photoshop Tutorials, Freebies and Resources

We’ve collected a good amount of tutorials, freebies and inspiration from year 2011 that you can look trough on your holiday vacation. If you missed any of them, it’s now a good time to make up for it, brushen up your skills and get ready for new year with fresh ideas. Happy new year!

General Photoshop

Photoshop Mastery: 25 Techniques Every Designer Must Know Learn the most useful techniques from WeGraphics.
 
15 Extremely Useful Photoshop Basic Tool and Command Tutorials for Beginners If you just started learning Photoshop, it’s very important to have a understanding of these basic tools and practice them, and I’m sure they will benefit you greatly in the long run.
 
(Another) 5 Interesting Little Photoshop Tricks to Add Extra Elegance to Your Design In this post, I will show you yet another 5 Interesting Little Photoshop Tricks to Add Extra Elegance to Your Design.

Digital Painting and Illustration

Create Custom Rims For Your Ride in Photoshop Customizing your ride can be a lot of fun for those of you who are into that sort of thing. In today’s tutorial we will demonstrate how to create some custom rims for your ride and then show what they would look like if overlaid on top of an image of a car. Let’s get started!
 
How to Create a Delicious Green Apple Illustration In this tutorial, I’ll be showing you how to draw a shiny green apple.
 
How to create a packing box Creating still life objects in Photoshop is often great practice for learning how to create other objects. In today’s tutorial we will demonstrate how to create a packing box using layer styles, dodge and burn Tool. Let’s get started!
 
How to Draw a Shopping Bag Icon in Photoshop In this tutorial you will learn how to drawn a red shopping bag icon. This tutorial will cover the basic techniques of drawing such as creating the shape, shading, and adding shadows.
 
How To Create A Green Button Isolated In today’s tutorial we will demonstrate how to create a green button isolated.
 
Draw a Realistic Steam Iron in Photoshop This Photoshop tutorial will show you how to create a realistic Steam Iron from scratch. You’ll learn how to create realistic shadows & highlights on plastic and metal.
 
Learn To Create A Camera Lens In Photoshop In todays detailed tutorial I’ll be showing you how to create a cool camera lens in photoshop.
 
Create A 3D Push Pin In this Photoshop tutorial I’ll show you how to create a 3D Push Pin using Photoshop Extended’s 3D drawing and rendering capabilities. Put your 3D glasses on and enjoy the show!
 
iPhone Gift Ribbon Learn to make an interesting ribbon for an iPhone gift.
 
Creating an Expressive Painting Using a Freestyle Method in Photoshop In this tutorial I will share my process for what I call Freestyle Expressive Painting in Photoshop.
 
Robotic Eye In this tutorial I will be showing you how to create a futuristic robotic eye.
 
Design a Vintage Radio Icon in Photoshop In this Photoshop Tutorial, you’ll learn how to design an old vintage radio using simple shapes, gradients, patterns and textures.
 
How to Create a Photo Realistic Camera Photoshop is a great tool to work with both vector and pixel shapes. In this tutorial we will demonstrate a powerful combination of vector shapes, layer styles, and manual drawing to create a photorealistic camera. So realistic you’ll think it’s just an ordinary photo.
 
Skin Painting Tutorial Good and easy skin painting tutorial from a Deviantart user.
 
Create A Slow Motion Bullet Shot Effect In this tutorial I’m going to show you how to make a nice bullet shot effect. I decided to use a technological object such as a remote control to show a lot of tiny parts flying off after the impact: the circuit board, the buttons, a few chips…
 
Create a Paint Brush in Photoshop Creating still-life objects in Photoshop is often great practice for learning how to create other objects. In today’s tutorial we will demonstrate how to create a realistic-looking paint brush using layer styles, clipping masks, and the not-so-commonly-used blend if sliders. Let’s get started!
 
Colorize Lineart With Cell Style Technique In this tutorial I will show you how to color a line art using minimum color and just brightness and contrast to achieve a clean, yet effective look… This tutorial is meant for beginners who just started photoshopping… However, some knowledge of the pen tool is recommended… For those who never used the pen tool, I included a mini tutorial explaining the very basics.
 
Glowing Superhero Photoshop Tutorial By using the pen tool, blend modes and textures, you can learn drawing a mask for your character. Create a Realistic and Fancy Digital Photo Frame How to use pen tool, layer styles and filter in photoshop, are the major things you will learn by reading this tutorial. We are going to create a digital frame. I will describe clearly the use of pen tool, layer styles and filter so that it will not be painful for beginners to follow and will be inspiring for advanced users to use their creativity.
 
Create an Ultra-Realistic Tea Cup From Scratch In this tutorial, I am going to design a realistic looking tea cup, filled with black tea.
 
Awesome Amp Controls in Photoshop So in this tutorial I will show you how to create an awesome amp controls using only Photoshop.
 
Easy 3D Globe in Photoshop So in this tutorial I will show you how to create a nice 3D globe in Photoshop using basic tools and the Spherize filter. This whole tutorial won’t take more than 30 minutes but the technique is really useful especially for icons and logos.

Retouch and Photo Manipulation

Selecting & Extracting Hair – Masking Tutorial – Extraction Tips One of the most challenging montage or masking jobs in the profession of post-production editing is the hair lift.
 
Trap Your Friends in a Jar Using Photoshop http://psd.tutsplus.com/tutorials/photo-effects-tutorials/trap-friends-in-jar-photoshop/ This tutorial is a lot of fun and is something that you can do with practically any digital camera and Photoshop. Let’s get started!
 
Angelina Jolie as a Na’vi from Avatar Movie I must warn you: this is a VERY advanced tutorial. I do go through every step… but good Photoshop skills are going to be needed if you want a high quality result.
 
How to Make a Car Advertisement Poster Design In this graphic design tutorial, we’ll cover the essential advertising workflow. By following along with this Photoshop ad tutorial, you’ll see how to take just a simple stock image and build a pixel perfect artwork around it, while also communicating valuable information about the brand to viewers.
 
HDR Tutorial This HDR Photoshop tutorial shows quite easy way to fake HDR photos in Photoshop. You don’t need to shoot into RAW or take multiple photos – one JPEG file is enough. HDR Photoshop effect gives a cool painterly style to your photos.
 
Add Ultra Realistic Colors to Any Gray-Scale Photo In this tutorial we will be exploring one of many ways to colorize a photo…
 
How to Create a Severed Arm in Photoshop In this tutorial we will be learning how to create a severed arm with fleshy stumps and strings of sinew.
 
Glass Ball During the course of this Photoshop tutorial we’re going through 9 major steps to create a glass ball.
 
Making Mini Cars In this tutorial we will have fun making mini cars that still look realistic. It is fairly simple and only requires moderate skills in using layer masks. The tutorial is done using CS3 but can be done with most version of Photoshop. Shortcut keys are for PC users. If you can’t use layer masks (which I will not explain as I am assuming that you know how) then carefully use the eraser.
 
Create a Photo-Realistic Orange from Scratch In this tutorial I want to share with you how to paint and texture an Orange. This is the basic procedure for achieving a photo-realistic effect.
 
How To Create A Circle Polyorama Circle Polyorama are cute, tiny ‘planets’ made of a photographic panorama. In this tutorial we’re going to make such a polyorama with a bunch of photos. It is pretty basic and works for photoshop CS and over.
 
Create a Lost Fantasy Micro World with Powerful Photo Manipulation Techniques in Photoshop Today we will take a break from the ordinary stuff and go into a fantasy world. Learn how to build up your own micro society using many different pictures and some cool photo manipulation techniques.
 
How To Create A Beautiful Indian Sunset Scenery In this tutorial, I will guide you to create a beautiful sunset, in a rocky scene with teepees. We will use the pictures provided by Lelaina, member of pxleyes, and the picture of a teepee provided by pxleyes for a contest.
 
Apply Awesome Realistic Snow Effects to Your Photos This tutorial will show you in detail how to add realistic looking snow to your photos. We will be using a house in a sunny green environment to apply our snow effects to.

Design And Icons

How to Create Fake Glossy 3D Typography NOTE: ks is short for Key Stroke, the shortcut for making the process move faster by using your keyboard. See how to create fake 3D glossy text in photoshop. This final result, when done right can be VERY convincing… I came across this technique while I was working on a current project and wanted a cool 3D type effect, so this is what I came up with, and thought it would be fun to share with Pxleyes…
 
Create a Jaguar Style Folder Icon In this tutorial, we will show you how to cover an object in a Jaguar style fur texture. In this example, we’ll cover a computer folder, but this technique can be used with any other object, like a CD cover, a mouse, or even a computer.
 
Creating Retro Folded Typography Using Photoshop In this Photoshop tutorial, we’re going to create retro-looking text that seems like it’s constructed using folded strips of paper.
 
Create a realistic folded paper text in Photoshop Today we will learn how to realize a folded paper text effect from scratch in Photoshop.
 
How to Create Candy Cane Typography with Photoshop and Illustrator In this tutorial we will create a superb candy cane type design using Illustrator and Photoshop.
 
Design a Delicious, Shining Circle Play (Web) Button in Photoshop In this tutorial, I will show you the steps I took to create this interesting Shining Orb Circle Play (Web) Button in Photoshop.
 
How to Make a Badass WordPress Logo Learn how to apply a badass effect to WordPress logo.
 
Create a Rocky Text Effect with Space Background In this Photoshop tutorial, I will show you the steps I took to Create a Rocky Text Effect with Space Background in Photoshop.
 
Master 3D effects by Nik Ainley Nik Ainley of Shiny Binary shows you how to add the wow factor to 3D text using Photoshop’s art tools.
 
How to Design Mini Icons Numbers of people have asked me how to design my popular Mini Pixel Icon pack. In fact, they are relatively easy. All you need is just some basic Photoshop skills.
 
Draw a Roll of Camera Film in Photoshop Icon design can be a lot of fun. In this tutorial we will demonstrate how to create a roll of camera film using Photoshop. Let’s get started!
 
Stars Candy Text Effect This Photoshop tutorial will show you how to use a stars-candy texture to create a nice stars candy text effect.
 
Tron-Inspired 3D Text Create futuristic 3D text with a hypnotizing blue glow in Photoshop CS5 Extended. This tutorial will show you how to use Photoshop’s repousse tool to create real 3D text, apply a blue glow, and finish it off with a grid background and bokeh effect. To follow this tutorial, you’ll need Photoshop CS5 Extended (Not the regular version).
 
Create a Minimalist Blog Layout in Photoshop In this tutorial you will see how to create a minimal and clean blog layout using Photoshop. You will also learn some useful methods and practices for creating web layouts in Photoshop.
 
Vintage Typography Experiment in Illustrator and Photoshop So in this tutorial I will show you how to create a nice vintage/retro typography based on an artwork from the book New Vintage Type: Classic Fonts for the Digital Age. The whole process will take you 2-3 hours, but it’s quite simple. However it requires time. I hope you enjoy it and keep practicing always.
 
Radar Icon in Photoshop So in this tutorial I will show you how to create a Mac style radar icon in Photoshop.
 
Trendy Geometric Lines Design Tutorial Learn to design a cool retrish poster.
 
Vintage Badge in Illustrator and Photoshop I have received quite a few emails since I published that asking me how I did the effect, so in this tutorial I will show you how to create a vintage look badge using Illustrator and Photoshop.
 
Simple Golden Text Effect Alright, here’s a quick and easy way how to make some nice golden text. I know this tutorial isn’t the most unique or special thing around, but I thought I’d make a nice, quick and easy tutorial for you.

Freebies

Watercolor Splatters Photoshop Brushes
 
15 Realistic Sky Photoshop Gradients This set contains 15 precise gradients that mimic the sky from morning to night. These gradients can be used to change the sky in photos or to create your own.
 
Cup Stains Photoshop Brushes Add realistic cup stains to your website templates, prints, and photos! This set of Photoshop brushes contains a variety of both thick and thin cup stains. Download this set of 105 high quality Photoshop brushes to add to your collection of Photoshop brushes.
 
100 Essential Brush Strokes A hundred brush strokes created using a variety of paint brushes and acrylic paint. This set of Photoshop brushes contains everything from simple brush strokes to smiley faces. Add this essential set of Photoshop brushes to your collection.
 
Freebies From the Vault: High Resolution Brick and Stone Texture Pack Welcome to the second post in “Freebies from the Vault” section here on PSD Vault! Here I have 17 High Resolution Brick and Stone Textures available for download.

Inspiration

19 Fantastic Vector Illustrations For this post, I have collected a couple of vector illustrations to feast your eyes on for inspiration. The artistry in these vectors is amazing, and the artist’s vision is awe-inspiring.
 
Imagination Unleashed: Best of PSD Vault DeviantART Group – Vol. 16 Welcome to the 16th volume of “Imagination Unleashed: Best of PSD Vault DeviantART Group”, which is a showcase I run regularly here on psdvault.com featuring some fantastic, highly-creative digital artworks in the PSD Vault DeviantART group.
 
30 Amazing HD Wallpaper to Spice Up Your Desktop In this post, I will share 30 amazing high definition wallpaper from wallpapers-room.com to spice up your desktop.
 
20 Ultra-Creative, High Quality Free Wallpaper for Your Beloved iPhone In this post, I will showcase 20 Ultra-Stylish, High Quality iphone Wallpaper, absolutely free to download from iphone-room.com.