Nov 19, 2020 Although Adobe Photoshop is a wonderful program, it can be overkill for everyday image editing. Let's look at the ten best Photoshop alternatives. We've chosen some Web apps, as well as apps for Mac OS X, Linux and Windows. PicMonkey (Web, free). Paint.NET is another Photoshop alternative for digital photo editing that was initially designed to be a free replacement for the Microsoft Paint software that came with Windows. Paint.net a good photoshop alternative. Fast forward to now, and Paint.NET is one of the most powerful yet simple image and photo editing tools in the market. If you're on Windows, and need a good Photoshop alternative, give Paint.NET a try. Originally created as a replacement for Microsoft Paint, the Windows' built-in image editor, Paint.NET has developed into a superb and easy to use image editor. ⌄ Scroll down to continue reading article ⌄ Get That Goal You've Always Wanted.
Learn Photoshop With the Best Photoshop Tutorials
Getting started in Photoshop isn't easy. It wasn't easy a decade ago when I got started with it. There were so many menus and filters that I didn't know where to begin. Back when I started, the method of learning was to go buy a book, sit down, and follow the book all the way through. Believe it or not, that is also how I initially learned to build websites. A decade later, things have changed a lot, and now you can go online and take video courses. You can also surf Youtube and watch tutorials on how to do just about anything. The biggest problem isn't finding actual tutorials, but finding quality ones that will teach you the best methods. I have compiled a list of great sites where you can find the best Photoshop tutorials.
PsdTuts+
Casino slots app. Psdtuts+ is a great place to learn Photoshop. They feature a lot of great content, including written and video Photoshop tutorials. Each tutorial is written out thoroughly, so it won't be likely that you'll miss a step or get stuck trying to figure something out. They also offer premium tutorials for a minor monthly fee, but it is worth it for the really in-depth tutorials that they provide. You'll watch Photoshop tutorial videos from some of the best Photoshop pros around.
Planet Photoshop
Planet Photoshop is one of the best places to go for quality Photoshop tutorials. Corey Barker is the man behind all of this, and he is an Instructor for the National Association for Photoshop Professionals (NAPP). His Photoshop skills are out of this world. If you just sat down and watched one of his Photoshop tutorials from start to finish each day, you'd be an expert in no time. Not only are the videos found on Planet Photoshop high quality, each project is actually fun and interesting, so you'll be pleased with what you end up with. Along with the great Photoshop tutorials, you'll also receive little tidbits and tips daily in your email when you subscribe.
Photoshop Lady
Digital pipe fitter keygen software. Photoshop Lady is a great place to go for Photoshop Tutorials. Here, you can vote on videos and add them to your favorites, making it easy to go back a view ones that you liked later. Another great thing about the site is that almost all of the tutorials found on Photoshop Lady are good quality, plus they tell you about how long it should take for you to complete each tutorial. On the left side, the tutorials are broken down into practical categories, so you can find what you are looking for quickly.
Lynda.com
Good Photoshop Free
Lynda is a great place to learn almost any type of software, honestly. You can learn Photoshop, WordPress, web design, web development and much more. Lynda features top quality videos that you can watch as much as you want. The only downside is that it isn't free. It requires you to pay a monthly membership. However, if you are serious about finding quality Photoshop tutorials, and you prefer videos, then Lynda is definitely worth the monthly price.
NAPP
Napp is a another great place where you will find some of the best Photoshop tutorials available. It is a membership though, so you'll have to pay $99 per year if you want access to them. The membership has added benefits though, like getting a magazine in the mail each month. The tutorials are hosted on a private site, which has extra features. Also, you'll get your own space online to host your portfolio. If you break down the monthly membership, it ends up being roughly $8.25 per month, which isn't bad if you want access to tons of great Photoshop tutorials, all in one place. Putting it into perspective, if you buy your lunch every day, if you packed your lunch once or twice per month, you could pay for the membership.
Good Tutorials
Good Tutorials features a lot of tutorials on different subjects, but they have a variety of different Photoshop tutorials. You can find anything from photo manipulations, to text effects and more.
PSHero
PsHero is a good place for Photoshop tutorials. You can find a wide variety of Photoshop tutorials ranging from text effects to grunge effects. You can find tutorials about making patterns and user interfaces. You can find all types of quality effects here that are actually useful.
Tutorial9
Tutorial9 is a great place for all types of tutorials, but if you go to their Photoshop section, they have a stellar collection of different Photoshop tutorials. You'll learn how to design layouts, interfaces, icons, vintage, text effects and much more. if you sift through these for a while, you're bound to find something that you like.
Psd Learning
Psd Learning is another site that features a wide variety of Photoshop tutorials. You'll find all kinds of interesting tutorials ranging from realistic product design to text effects, collages, retro effects and more. This is a great place to get going if you are a new/intermediate Photoshop user.
Photoshop Tutorials
Photoshop Tutorials is another great place to learn Photoshop. They have a wide variety of tutorials and resources that anyone could use. There are giveaways, resources, freebies, textures, and more. You will also learn text effects, photo manipulation, cartooning and much more. The site is laid out very clean and the tutorials are well written.
Conclusion
If you want to learn Photoshop quickly and easily, the sites above are all great choices. Learning for free is most peoples choice, but there are a couple of really stand out paid sites that you might consider as well. My favorite two are Psdtuts+ and Planet Photoshop, as they always have unique Photoshop tutorials. I am very experienced with Photoshop, but I still learn something new every time I go to either one of those sites.
What is your favorite site to visit for new Photoshop tutorials? If you have a good source, share it in the comments section below.
In this Photoshop web design tutorial, we are going to design a smashing, clean, and professional website layout in Photoshop. The layout we are doing in this tutorial can be used as personal or corporate website design. This design is pretty user-friendly, so it should be great for your site's reputation.
Update: This is the first part of a two-part series that will teach you how to create the layout in Photoshop, and then how to convert it to a standards-compliant (X)HTML web design.
The 'Clean and Professional Web Design' Series
- Part 1: Create a Clean and Professional Web Design in Photoshop
- Part 2: Coding a Clean and Professional Web Design
Final Preview
Have a look at the layout that we'll be creating in this tutorial. You can see the final preview of the image below or click here for a full size version.
Prepare your Photoshop document
1 Create a new document in Photoshop (Ctrl/Cmd + N) using the settings from the following image.
Set the units and rulers settings
2 Make sure that you are working in pixel units, which is the standard fixed unit for web design. Set up the following settings for your Rulers from the Preferences dialog window (Ctrl/Cmd + K); click on Units & Rulers and ensure that you have everything set as shown in the figure below.
Add guides to designate the content area
3 Activate Photoshop Rulers from View > Rulers. Toggle the visibility of the rulers by pressing 'Ctrl/Cmd + R'. Also open the Info panel from Window > Info (shortcut key: F8). The Info panel gives useful information depending on the selected tool. By pressing 'M', choose the Rectangular Marquee Tool and create a box that is 120px wide from the left corner of the canvas. You can adjust the size by looking into the Info panel while making the selection. Now click on the left ruler and drag a guide to the right of the marquee selection as shown in the image below.
4 Move this selection on the right edge of the canvas. Assign another guide to the left side of the selection.
Backyard baseball emulator. Your canvas now should look like this:
Creating the logo
5 Now we are going to create the logo for our website. The logo is going to be very simple and it will have a color gradient effect. Create a new group (Layer > New > Group) and name it 'logo'.
6 Select the Horizontal Type Tool (T) and type 'SMASHING Best free simple photo editor for windows. ' (or the name of your website) in capital letters.
7 Then in the Character panel, set the font to Arial, the style to Bold and the size to 42pt. Also set the anti-aliasing method option to Sharp and use the color #101112. You can also set these options in the Options bar when the Type Tool is the active tool.
8 Double-click to open the Layer Style dialog box. Select Gradient Overlay, click the Gradient Editor and use the settings as shown below.
9 Put the 'SMASHING' type layer at the distance of 35px from top and 0px from left guide. You can do this accurately using the Move Tool (V) and your arrow keys. Duplicate this type layer (Layer > Duplicate Layer). Move the duplicated layer right next to the 'SMASHING' word and edit the text to 'Dzine'. Repeat Steps 6, 7, 8 but use different gradient colors (Left color stop: #b27625, Right color stop: #e5ad27) for the word 'Dzine'.
10 Select the Horizontal Type Tool (T) and add a tag line under the logo with following settings.
11 The final logo should look like the image below. To activate/deactivate the guides, go to View > Show > Grid or use the shortcut Ctrl/Cmd + ;
Creating the navigation bar
12 Create a new group and name it 'navigation', it should be above 'logo' group. Drag a guide from the top ruler, 150px below the top edge of the canvas. Download adobe photoshop for windows 10 64 bit. Select the Rectangle Tool (U) and draw a horizontal line of 4px height with a color of #e3ab27, across the canvas.
13 Add navigation links at 12px-high from this horizontal line and 20px to the right of the left guide. Select the Rounded Rectangle Tool (U) and draw a box with the size of 72px by 35px. Move this layer below the text links and name the layer 'hover'. Straighten the bottom rounded corners with the Convert Point Tool. Move the sides of uneven edges below with an 8px margin to make the edges equal to other inner edges at bottom. Double-click the 'hover' layer to open the Layer Style dialog box and add gradient colors (Left color stop: #e5ad27, Right color stop: #b27625). Select the Horizontal Type Tool (T), select the text, 'Home' and change color to #ffffff (white).
Creating the 'call us' section
14 Next we are going to create the 'call us' section at the top-right of our design (exactly opposite side of the logo). Download this phone icon and place this near the right guide. Name this layer 'phone icon'. Select the Horizontal Type Tool (T). Add a phone number on the left of the phone icon using the font Arial, with the size set at 20pt and the color #292929. Add some related text below the phone number using font Arial, set at Bold, with a size of 11pt and a color of #595959.
Creating the header
15 Now we are going to a create the header section. Create a new group and name it 'header'.
16 Select the Rectangle Tool (U) and create a rectangle shape with the size of 1200px by 440px. Put this rectangle at a distance of 1px below the navigation bar and name this layer 'header bg'. Double-click the 'header bg' layer, select the Gradient Overlay layer style and have these two colors in the Gradient Editor (Left color stop: #2e2226, Right color stop: #7a7556). See the image below for the rectangle position and colors detail.
17 Create another rectangle from the Rectangle Tool (U) with the size of 960px by 360px. Put this rectangle at the distance of 40px from the top of the 'header bg' layer and 0px from the left guide. Name this layer 'header container'. Preview below what we have done until now with the design.
Creating the 'featured project' section
18 Next we will create the featured project section. Create a new group inside the header group and name it 'fp'. Select the Rectangle Tool (U) and create a rectangle with the size of 630px by 340px at the distance of 10px from the top and the left of header container. Give this layer color of #000000 and name it 'fp container'.
19 Open an image in Photoshop to place here as your featured project. Go to Select > All (Ctrl/Cmd + A), then Edit > Copy (Ctrl/Cmd + C). Come back to the our web design. Create a new layer above the 'fp container' layer and go to Edit > Paste (Ctrl/Cmd + V) to paste in your featured project image. Rename this layer to 'fp image'. Right-click the 'fp image' layer and select Create Clipping Mask. Now the image is visible only inside the rectangle ('fp container'). Make adjustments so that your featured project image is similar to the one shown below.
20 Go to Edit > Transform > Scale (Ctrl/Cmd + T). From the Options bar, click in the rotation box and type -4 and press enter twice to adjust the angle. Stay on the same layer ('fp image'), and select Luminosity as the blending mode of this layer.
21 Next we are going to create the title and description bar for the featured project image. Select the Rectangle Tool (U) and create a rectangle shape with the size of 630px by 90px using color #161718. Change opacity of this layer to 90% and name it 'title bg'. Place this rectangle as shown in the image below.
22 Create another rectangle with the size of 630px by 1px using color #9c9c9c and name it 'title horizontal line'. Place this rectangle on the top edge of the contents of the 'title bg' layer.
23 Add a title and description inside the rectangle we created in Step 21, using the following settings for title and description.
For the title:
- font: Arial, color: #ffffff, size: 25pt and anti-aliasing method option: Sharp
For the description:
- font: Arial, color: #a4a4a4, size: 12pt and anti-aliasing method option: None
Creating the 'quick quote' section
24 Create another group inside the header group and name it 'quick quote'. Select the Rectangle Tool (U) and create a rectangle with the size of 300px by 340px. Place this rectangle at the distance of 10px to the right of the featured project section and name it 'qq container'.
Good Photoshop Websites
25 We will copy a Layer Style from another layer we created in a previous step. Go inside the 'navigation' group, right-click the 'hover' layer, select Copy Layer Style, go back to the 'qq container' layer, right-click and select Paste Layer Style. We have the same Layer Style of the 'hover' layer for our 'qq container' now.
26 Select the Horizontal Type Tool (T). Write 'Quick Quote' inside 'qq container' at the distance of 20px from the top and left edges of the containing box. Set the font family to Trebuchet MS (or a web-safe font of your preference) with thecolor of white (#ffffff) and anti-aliasing method option set to Sharp. We are going use the Rounded Rectangle Tool (U) to create three form fields. Select the Rounded Rectangle Tool (U) and set the radius to 3px. Then create two rounded rectangles with the size 260px by 35px using the color of white (#ffffff). Then name the shape layers as 'field1' and 'field2' respectively. Create the third rounded rectangle with the size of 260px by 75px using a white color (#ffffff) and name it 'field3'. Select the Horizontal Type Tool (T) and create labels for each form field.
27 Select the Rounded Rectangle Tool (U) and create a box of 80px by 35px and name it 'submit btn'.
28 Double-click the layer to open the Layer Styles dialog window and tick the Gradient Overlay checkbox from left. Click the Gradient Editor and change colors of the gradient as shown below.
29 Select the Horizontal Type Tool (T) and type 'Submit' using the font Arial, style Bold and size at 13pt. Select both layers in the Layers panel ('submit btn' and 'Submit text').
30 Choose the Move Tool (V) from the Tools panel and click Align vertical centers and Align horizontal centers from the Options bar. (Alternatively, you can get the same result by going to Layer > Align > Vertical Centers and Layer > Align > Horizontal Centers).
Creating the main content area
31 Create a new group and name it 'content'. Select the Rectangle Tool (U). Create a rectangle of 300px by 175px and name it 'c01'. Place this layer 30px below the header and 0px from the left guide. Double-click the layer and use the settings from the following image.
32 We are going to add content to this box now. Select the Horizontal Type Tool (T) and add the text, 'About SmashingDzine'. Make a selection of the 'About' word using the Horizontal Type Tool (T), and then change its color to #b47825. Then make a selection of the 'Smashing' word, and then change the color to #2f2f2f. Add a little description and a link text beneath the title. The following options were used for the title, description and link text. (You can adjust these options as needed).
For the Title:
- Font: Trebuchet MS, style: Normal, size: 24pt, anti-aliasing method: Sharp
For the Description:
- Font: Arial, style: Normal, size: 12pt, anti-aliasing method: None, color: #767676
For the Link text:
- Font: Arial, style: Bold, size: 13pt, anti-aliasing method: None, color: #252525, Underline
33 We will add a square box next to the description now. Select the Rectangle Tool (U) and color #ffffff, hold down the Shift key to maintain the proportions and create a square with the size 88px by 88px. Move this square at a distance of 10px from the left of rectangle ('c01'). Name this layer 'border'. Double-click the layer to open the Layer Style dialog window, and add a Stroke layer style with the following settings:
34 Create another box with the size of 82px by 82px and place it in the center of the 'border' layer. Name this layer 'box' and change the color of this square to #d5d5d5. Select all layers in this group ('content' group), go to Layer > New > Group from Layers (Ctrl/Cmd + G) and rename this new group 'about'.
Note: The inside grey square box is a place holder for an image and can be replaced with any image of your choosing.
35 Duplicate the 'about' group (Right-click on the group and select Duplicate Group) and name it 'services'. Right-click on the 'services' group and select Duplicate Group again and name it 'portfolio'. We have three groups now ('about', 'services', and 'portfolio'). Move the last group ('portfolio') to the right guide as shown below.
36 Select all three groups in the Layers panel, and then go to Layer > Distribute > Horizontal Centers to space them out equally. Click here to see the full size image of the following image.
37 Change the titles for the 'services' group (center) and 'portfolio' group (right) as shown below. (You can change these titles according to your requirement.)
Creating the footer
38 Create a new group and name it 'footer'. Select the Rectangle Tool (U) and create a rectangle with the size of of 1200px by 100px at the bottom of our design layout. Name this layer 'footer bg'. Use the same Gradient Overlay style as the 'header bg' layer by right-clicking the 'header bg' layer and choosing Copy Layer Style. Go back to the footer group, right-click the 'footer bg' layer and select Paste Layer Style.
39Select the Horizontal Type Tool (T) and add copyright text and footer links text on the left using the font Arial, size of 12pt and a grey color (#dddddd).
40 We are going to add the email subscription section on the right. Create a new group inside the 'footer' group and name it 'subscribe'. Select the Rounded Rectangle Tool (U) and create a rectangle of 85px by 35px. Name this layer 'subscribe btn'.
41 Repeat Step 26 for adding the form fields and labels.
42 Select the Horizontal Type Tool (T) and type 'Subscribe' using the font Arial, style set to Bold and size at 13pt. Select both layers ('subscribe btn' and 'Subscribe text').
43 Repeat Step 28 for creating the subscribe button.
44 Select the Rounded Rectangle Tool (U) and set the radius to 3px. Create a rounded rectangle with the size 210px by 35px using a white color (#ffffff) and name this shape layer as 'email field'. Add a text line above 'email field'.
Final Result
OK, that's it and we are done. Here is the final result. Click on the image below to see the full size layout.
Thanks for following along with my tutorial. I hope you all enjoyed and learned something new from this tutorial. Kindly leave your comments below and share your thoughts and opinions, I would love to hear them. You can also share this design tutorial to your friends if you think it could be helpful to them!
Download the source file
You can download the Photoshop file (PSD) of this tutorial from the link below as a ZIP archive.
- clean-professional-weblayout (ZIP, 2.4 MB)
Summary
If you decide to use this design, be sure optimize the images to reduce load time. This decide should be great for small sites such as one for a golf course because it's simple, easy to use, and user friendly.
Related Content
- How to Create a Clean Blog Design with Photoshop
About the Author
