Remember the Smashing Textures Contest? I joined the contest and 2 high resolution textures got picked (out of ten).

Even though the leftover eight didn't get picked, I still think some of they are really great to use as a texture. I personally picked my favorite four textures for your Photoshop needs.

You can download the four textures in one big pack from the download section, free for all kinds of use.

All photographs are taken with a simple camera on a bright day. None of them are edited in any way, exept some have non-texture parts removed. The pictures are taken in a very high resolution, perfect for Photoshop artwork.

One of the coolest new features of Photoshop CS3 extended is the possibility to import 3d models. Together with vanishing point they can really give you a good 3d look-and-feel in Photoshop.

In this tutorial, we'll be creating a nice 3d scene using 3d models. This was my first time working with this technique, so I haven't perfect it (yet). Still, it's pretty fun to play around with and if you've never worked with 3d models before, you'll learn a whole lot of new things.

My PSD file of this tutorial was to big to put online (83 MB) because of the many 3d models, but you can download a wallpaper pack containing my final result in high resolution in 2 different sizes (1440x900 (widescreen), 1600x1200 (normal)).

On the 9th of May 2008, Smashing Magazine announced a Smashing Textures Contest. The goal was set to let all readers take beautiful pictures that can be used as textures.

It was one amazing contest. They received in an enormous amount of e-mail from over 600 participants. The results speak for themselves: The Smashing Texture Gallery is one great Photoshop Resource.

My girlfriend (Amber from DressYourAss) and I were two of the 600 participants. The sun was shining and we took the afternoon to take some photo's with my camera to enter the texture contest. Two out of the ten that we send were selected by SmashingMagazine.

All photographs are taken with a simple camera on a bright day. None of them are edited in any way, exept some have non-texture parts removed. The pictures are taken in a very high resolution, perfect for Photoshop artwork.

A couple of days ago I recieved an advertisement from a store that has just opened his doors. Normally, I would throw those things directly away, but the simplicity of the design did draw my attention. I wanted to recreate the Web 2.0 looking ad and here I'll show you how.

So start up Photoshop, it won't be a long ride. There's no shame in always improving your Photoshop skills, so get ready to create a simple starry Web 2.0 ad with Photoshop.

A couple of days ago I placed an article about a parallax illusion with CSS: The Horse in Motion. Today I'll show you how I created such an image so you can do it yourself.

In this example, I'm going to use Photoshop for the actual image and Illustrator for the 3D effect. I wanted to try something else instead of the "frame by frame" (Like the Horse in Motion). Be creative! The final example (demo of the effect) looks pretty amazing and maybe even better than my previous one.