Archives for the Photoshop category

Huge news coming from Adobe in the last week. After 10 years of service, it will be dropping its Creative Suite product entirely, in favour of pushing the Creative Cloud service that was introduced last year.

Here at Silicon Beach, we’ve already updated to Creative Cloud and so all our Adobe Courses, including our Photoshop Courses, will be completely up to date.

This is a massive shift in focus from Adobe, whose business model had until the release of Creative Cloud, followed the ‘traditional’ software licencing model. So what exactly does all this mean for consumers and what’s new?

What is Creative Cloud?

Last year Adobe released Creative Cloud which at first appeared to just be an alternative payment option for existing Adobe products, rather than an entire product in itself. As it has transpired, Creative Cloud will be the sole focus of Adobe from now on.

The next release in June will see them scrap the ubiquitous CS (Creative Suite) moniker that has been attached to Adobe programs since 2003 and instead each product will be branded as CC (Creative Cloud).

There will be no ‘full’ update system in place as their is currently (CS4 to CS5 to CS6 etc) but rather more frequent, less substantial updates each remaining under the CC brand.

Read the rest of "Adobe Drops Creative Suite to Focus on Creative Cloud"

Posted by Aaron Charlie in eBooks, Illustrator, InDesign, News, Photoshop, Print Design on May 13th, 2013| 1 Comment »

Minimalist movie posters have almost become an art form in themselves as a way for fans of the films to show their appreciation creatively. The best designs summarise everything you know about the movie while remaining simple and stylish.

With that in mind, we thought we’d take a look at some of the best minimalist posters of some of the best movies of all time, as judged on IMDb. (Attribution has been given where possible.)

If you’d like to be able to create iconic re-imaginings of movie posters like the ones below, come on our InDesign Training Course which will teach you all the skills you need. If textual design is more your thing, try our Flaming Text Photoshop tutorial.

So let’s start with number 10 -

10/ Fight Club by Pedro Vidotto

Movie posters don’t get much more minimalist than this – a grey background, a bar of soap and exactly 6 words. This might be IMDb’s 10th best movie but the poster would be challenging for top spot in this list!

Read the rest of "Top 10 IMDb Movies: Minimalist Posters"

Posted by Aaron Charlie in Illustrator, InDesign, News, Photoshop on February 18th, 2013| No Comments »

We are pleased to announce that all of our Adobe courses have been updated and will now be running with the latest CS6 software.

With plenty of new features and an up-to-date format, now is the right time to learn with CS6!

Don’t worry though, if you’d rather learn Photoshop, InDesign or any of our Adobe courses in an older version, we can still tailor a course around your needs.

We can also run bespoke CS6 upgrade sessions, for those who have used Adobe software before but would like to get to grips with the latest version.

Contact us by phone on 01273 622272 or email info@siliconbeachtraining.co.uk

Why the Change?

We always strive to keep up-to-date with the latest products and versions of software available here at Silicon Beach Training but beyond that, upgrading to CS6 means benefiting from all of the new features which include:

Photoshop

• New interface
• Video editing
• Improved Blur function
• Dashed and dotted vector lines
• Auto Save
• Crop tool change
• Auto Adjustment improvements
• Layer Search/Filter
• Text Enhancements and Stylesheets
• Vector tool change

InDesign

• New Interface
• Liquid Layouts
• Alternate Layouts
• PDF Forms
• Flexible Columns
• Conveyor Tool
• Form Tools
• Epub Creation options

Read the rest of "Adobe Courses: CS6 Update"

Posted by Jackson Rawlings in Illustrator, InDesign, News, Photoshop on January 30th, 2013| No Comments »

With bonfire night approaching,  our trainer Sharon decided to write a piece on how to set your text alight, (almost) literally! If you really want to improve your Photoshop skills, why not try our Photoshop Workshop which can be booked with InDesign and Illustrator training in our 3 for 2 Adobe course package.

How To Set Your Text On Fire in Photoshop

Photoshop is great fun and about you achieving the result you want by simply playing around with its features. This burning type effect has been created with 3 images and a mixture of, layer styles, layer blending, masking and cloning. The end result will differ on the images you use and the effects you wish to apply, but here’s a blog to show you how I achieved this image from these images:

Read the rest of "Bonfire Night Special – Photoshop Flaming Text Tutorial"

Posted by Sharon in News, Photoshop, Print Design on November 2nd, 2012| No Comments »

Turning simple photos into Warhol-style Pop Art is a great way to impress people with your Photoshop skills. If you’re fairly new to Photoshop, you’ll find that following this tutorial helps you learn and understand more about cut-outs, layers, groups, colours and scaling.

Coming on our Photoshop course will teach you these kinds of techniques, along with useful keyboard shortcuts and what to do when things aren’t going to plan! We also offer Advanced Photoshop training and courses in InDesign and Illustrator.

There are 3 main tasks when turning a photo into Pop Art: preparing the main image; duplicating and arranging it; and adding colour. Read the rest of "Turn Your Photos Into Pop Art With Photoshop – Tutorial"

Posted by Aaron Charlie in News, Photoshop, Print Design on July 6th, 2012| No Comments »

One of the toughest jobs for in-house designers is choosing fonts. From the company logo (visible on all digital and print copy as well as signage) to copy on the website, it’s important to think carefully about the font you use to reflect your brand’s identity and establish a recognisable look.

Designers are fairly limited when it comes to web copy; you should set a fairly standard font so that it can be displayed by all browsers.

However, when it comes to print and graphic design you are free to play around with typography and can experiment with different typefaces or even create your own!

Periodic Table of Typefaces. Click for the full size version.

You can make small adjustments to a basic font (Arial, Helvetica, Tahoma etc.), download somebody else’s custom font from one of the many free font sites (check for commercial licensing first!) or even create your own custom typography.

As a branding tool, custom typography is the ideal solution. Customers will easily recognise media that belongs to you. Some people draw the line at creating custom text for just their business logo, but we recommend going a step further and creating an entire custom typeset.

You may need to hire in a typography expert but the tools are available for anybody to have a go using Adobe Illustrator. After attending our Illustrator workshop you will have all the skills needed to start creating your own typefaces, although we don’t cover typography in detail on the course. If this is something you are interested in learning we can tailor our courses to your requirements.

Once you have created your custom font, you can then use it in Photoshop & InDesign when editing and creating graphics for your web and print materials.

So why should you spend time and resources creating a custom typeset for your business? Here are my top 4 reasons! Read the rest of "4 Reasons to Use Custom Typography for Your Brand"

Posted by Aaron Charlie in Illustrator, InDesign, News, Photoshop, Print Design on June 27th, 2012| 3 Comments »

We have been using the Photoshop CS6 Beta for a month now and admit that it is an impressive release. Now, Adobe have revealed the full Creative Suite 6 Package will feature updates to all key products including Illustrator, InDesign and Premiere.

As anticipated, shelling out for the full CS6 Master Collection will be pricey – £2,668 for new buyers, £476 to upgrade – which puts CS6 out of reach for a number of potential buyers. This year Adobe have provided a solution to this problem: Creative Cloud.

Adobe Creative Cloud – Selling the Mobile Apps

Launched in 2011, Creative Cloud was originally marketed alongside Adobe’s range of mobile Apps. Signing up to Adobe’s cloud service would allow users access to all of Adobe’s tools on desktops, tablets and smartphones. Read the rest of "Adobe CS6 Prices Revealed: Creative Cloud Takes Centre Stage"

Posted by Aaron Charlie in Illustrator, InDesign, News, Photoshop on April 25th, 2012| No Comments »

After a few months of sneak peek videos on YouTube, Adobe have just released a Beta version of Photoshop CS6. Adobe have really gone to town on the popular image editing package and have not only added a host of new features but dramatically increased processing speeds. This is great news for those of you who thought the new features would slow Photoshop down and make it too clunky to use.

We downloaded the Photoshop CS6 Beta on the first day and have been excitedly getting used to it ever since, and over the next few weeks we will be showing our favourite features. In part 1 we look at the interface, video editing and blur functions in Photoshop CS6.

As with all our Adobe training courses we will start using CS6 on our Photoshop courses as soon as it is released in full. We always endeavour to keep our training as up to date as possible. This is even more important for courses such as Photoshop Training, InDesign Training and Illustrator Training where it is vital to use the most up to date packages and skills to compete in the market.

1. New Darker Photoshop Interface

The most striking change to Photoshop is the interface:

This new darker scheme is so that images stand out more when you are editing them, which actually works. This also brings Photoshop in line with other Adobe products that have used the dark grey interface for a while.

2. Photoshop CS6 Video Editing

It was only a month ago that Adobe posted a video on YouTube created with Photoshop. No information accompanied this video so it was mere speculation as to whether this huge step forward would appear in CS6 or in a later version of Photoshop.

Well, I can happily announce that it is present in the Beta and it is really easy to use! Read the rest of "Adobe Photoshop CS6 – New Features"

Posted by Aaron Charlie in News, Photoshop on April 2nd, 2012| No Comments »