Halloween Design – 35 Last-Minute Resources for Graphic Designers

So October 31st is coming closer and so are the yearly obligations for graphic designers. Ah yes, Halloween design – how much we love this time of the year! Friends call and ask for Halloween invitations. Your client remembers that it’s only 10 days until he has to throw that party – and asks you to design some Halloween cards real quick. And have them printed yesterday please.

So where to go for all those clichés that people want in a Halloween design? Well, here comes Beeex.net, your collection of strictly free resources for graphic designers and web developers. And today, we have collected some great Halloween design resources for you. For that last-minute call for a professional Halloween graphic.

We have searched and listed a total of 35 Halloween design resources for the ambitioned designer: Halloween icons, Photoshop brushes, free Halloween vector art, and of course, free fonts. Some might want to rather refer to some of the features as “Halloween Clip Art” – that’s fine. Some graphic designers tend to turn up their noses at anything clipart in general – these are meant to inspire you, friends! So be nice.

We’ve also collected some Halloween ideas for you: Halloween wallpapers and backgrounds. You can either use these for inspiration, or to scary up your computer desktop.

And finally, we found some great Halloween tutorials for Photoshop, which will take you through the steps of designing some spooky Halloween invitations and cards.

So here goes: Let’s cut to the chase and come up with some great Halloween design today! Fire up Photoshop, fire up Illustrator, get creative! Continue reading Halloween Design – 35 Last-Minute Resources for Graphic Designers

Posted in Photoshop Brushes, Tutorials, Tutorials, Vectors, Wallpapers | 5 Comments »

Welcome New Sponsors!

While we’re working hard on writing the last lines on our next post, we noticed that we hadn’t properly welcomed our new site sponsors and affilliates yet. As you know, Beeex.net features only the best strictly free resources for graphic designers and web developers, and our work wouldn’t be possible without the support of our sponsors and referrals. So we would like to take this opportunity and introduce our readers to some great stuff out there – that won’t necessarily cost you something, but can even earn you some money.

This is the great thing about being in graphic design and web development. There are lots of opportunities you can use to make a decent buck – without having a solid client base: Continue reading Welcome New Sponsors!

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10 Little Broken Links

Just a couple of minutes ago, we discovered that all 10 anchor links we had placed in the last post, 77 essential Photoshop Techniques for creating photo-realistic textures, are broken and lead to 404 pages. Shame on us for not finding out earlier… And we still don’t know why! On quick sight, they look as if they are good and they should be working.

Now this is not the case for the links to the Photoshop tutorials (or any other resources), just the anchor links within the page. And that is now fixed!

We edited the post and took out the anchor links. If they had worked, they would have taken you to the corresponding part in the post. We thought we’d offer a form of easy navigation because it’s such a long list… Oh well.

We are sorry if you encountered any difficulties and ended up on a 404 page. If you see something wrong on our site, please do tell us by either leaving a comment or just send us a quick message, we’d appreciate it!

Thank you for your patience and again, we’re sorry and we hope you still enjoy our site

Yours truly,
~ Beeex Happy Team

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77 Essential Photoshop Techniques for creating photo-realistic Textures

It is well known in graphic design that texture is a necessity in many types of artwork. In our previous post about textures, where we featured 47 free textures – packs, kits and websites for textures of all types and colors (do take a look if you haven’t seen that post yet!), we collected the best free textures, seamless background patterns, pattern generators, and free backgrounds that you are able to download and either appy as-is to your website (or computer desktop), or use them in your graphic designs. Today, we’re taking textures one step further with 77 Photoshop Techniques for creating photo-realistic Textures from scratch.

There are 77 Photoshop techniques and Illustrator tutorials across 10 categories.

Photoshop Textures

It is always good to know how to create Photoshop textures from scratch. Especially if you want to make the texture as realistic as possible, you’ve got to have some skills. You will not always find a decent free texture around – although the post mentioned above should help to prevent that in most cases -, or you might not always find exactly what you’re looking for.

Why should you be familiar with these Photoshop techniques?

• You don’t have to rely on third party artwork
• You don’t have to credit third party work because it’s your own
• You don’t have to pay for resources
• You learn to work with texture more
• You improve your workflow
• You improve the quality of your artwork
• You are far more flexible
• You can use the exact texture or pattern you want
• You learn a bunch with these Photoshop tutorials – techniques that you can apply to all your artwork
• You become a better designer with better and more skills

We’re sure you will find a lot more reasons for making use of these Photoshop techniques we present to you. These techniques are just what they sound like – solid, sometimes very quick and basic, and other times quite sophisticated and advanced Photoshop techniques. Not only for creating textures, but for using them as new skills on every one of your artworks; adapt, transform, merge, create, design!

A word in advance

• The following collection of 77 Photoshop Techniques for Textures features Photoshop tutorials, and we also added a few great Illustrator tutorials on some textures. That’s because sometimes, you want to create the same design in Adobe Illustrator (which is part of Adobe Creative Suite anyway) – for a variety of reasons. If you are one of the people who like to use Illustrator in your designs, you will know what we are talking about
• Whenever it’s an Illustrator technique, it’s noted as such.
• Some tutorials are video tutorials. Also in this case, you will find a little note stating that.
• We did not attempt to collect the entire internet. We made an effort to search and put together for you a collection of only the best Photoshop tutorials and Illustrator tutorials on creating textures, patterns and backgrounds – from scratch. That means that none of the following techniques uses stock photography or free textures that you have to download in advance. That’s the point of this post: to show you how to create your own photo-realistic textures from scratch.
• And finally, one more thing: Sometimes, you will find a Photoshop tutorial on creating a text with that texture, for example. In these few cases, we featured the tutorial only because of the creation of the texture in Photoshop (thus it’s a Photoshop technique), and the tutorial itself continues with further steps to apply that texture to an object or another piece. Just remember that the main goal is to create your own Photoshop textures!

Let’s get to it. Continue reading 77 Essential Photoshop Techniques for creating photo-realistic Textures

Posted in Tutorials | 28 Comments »

Ultimate Collection of Free Textures on the Web | Background Patterns | Seamless Tiles | High Resolution

When it comes to website backgrounds, background tiles or tile patterns, you may have a hard time finding high resolution textures on the web. Sure, you could go to one of the stock photography sites and search for paid website graphics, but how do you know if you have found the best web page backgrounds available, and you haven’t missed any free textures out there? Doing a search on Google won’t always bring the best results, and most of what you’ll find are backgrounds that cost money.

That’s why we made this post. The ultimate collection of background patterns, background tiles and free textures for your website. All high quality. All for graphic designers. You can download them for free and use them in Photoshop to fit your web pages.

Definition of Texture

Let’s first take a look at what the difference is between patterns and textures. Basically, these are two different expressions in design, describing different elements, and they are not the same. And as this post is about website backgrounds, we should make the difference clear before we start.

Background Patterns

Background patterns are tile patterns with which you can create a seamless pattern. This means that the borders of this kind of graphics fit into each other seamlessly, without revealing to the eye where one tile ends and where another one starts. We covered techniques on creating patterns in Photoshop and how extend that knowledge and play around with Photoshop patterns in the past. Adobe Photoshop comes with a pattern function that is intended for seamless tile patterns, and we recommend you read these website background tutorials first. It is always better to know how you can create your own graphics.

Background Textures

Background textures, on the other hand, can be a seamless pattern, but they don’t have to. Don’t be confused – the secret lies in the definition of texture in graphic design. Texture is an element of design and is best described as “the feel of an object”.

Interesting reads on the elements of design can be found here:

• Using Texture: Real World Examples at Creative Curio
• Textures and Patterns Design Showcase at Smashing Magazine
• The secret Rules of Composition in Design at Nubloo’s Graphic Design Blog
• Design Notes: Texture by James T. Saw

It is important not to confuse the element of design (texture) with web backgrounds (textures). We can put it this way:

• Background textures make use of texture.
• Background textures can be patterns.
• Background patterns can be seamless.

Whoa. Confused already? Don’t be. Let’s just get to the most extensive list of textures you’ve ever seen on the internet. Continue reading Ultimate Collection of Free Textures on the Web | Background Patterns | Seamless Tiles | High Resolution

Posted in Patterns & Backgrounds | 33 Comments »