In May Gurus Unleashed brought you 691 new Photoshop-related stories and videos from all around the Web. If you missed one or two, you can catch up with this wide angle lense on the important events and stories that happened in the world of Photoshop.

News

Early registration opened for Photoshop World Las Vegas, October 1–3 ath the Mandalay Bay. Save $100 when you register before August.

Yours truly launched another Website and project to inform, connect, and empower creative professionals: the Creatives Are Community and Toolbar (www.CreativesAre.com). The Creatives Are Community Toolbar is a browser toolbar add-on for Firefox / Flock / Camino and Internet Explorer / Maxthon–and later this month for Safari 4 as well. It was built to empower, inform, and connect creative professionals like you. The Toolbar puts–and keeps–the most important design-related information and resources at the fingertips of graphic designers, Web designers, illustrators, and other creative professionals. Read the complete list of features.

Speaking of Creatives Are Community, if you’re looking for the most up to date uber list of graphic, Web, logo, and other designers to follow on Twitter, don’t miss the constantly updated post, “Creatives on Twitter – the Uber Lists.”

You might also want to check out the list of graphics gurus on Twitter, published right here on Gurus Unleashed. The list includes Photoshop gurus Scott Kelby and Deke McClelland, Illustrator gurus Sandee “Vectorbabe” Cohen and Mordy Golding, InDesign gurus David Blatner and Chuck Green, and many, many more.

Following these graphic gurus via a Twitter app on your iPhone will ensure you’re never at a loss for great tips and tricks, but the iPhone is good for much more than just tweeting and retweeting. This month the Brushes app enabled an artist to draw the cover illustration for New Yorker magazine–on his iPhone! Jennifer Apple has the story at PhotoshopSupport.com.

The big announcements from San Jose were the launch of Photoshop Marketplace (coverage at Designorati) as well as update to Camera Raw that adds support for 24 new cameras from Hasselblad, Nikon, Olympus, and more. PhotoshopSupport.com has the complete list of newly supported cameras.

Several plug-ins updated this month–and one even became free! Topaz updated its venerable noise-reduction plug-in, DeNoise, to version 2.2. Dave Huss has the review over at Layers Magazine. Datamind released Jade, a plugin to automatically enhance color, contrast, and image dynamics while preserving overall quality, and Beryl, an automatic red-eye removal plugin. Nik updated Dfine 2.0 for Lightroom 2; complete details at NikSoftware.com.

Auto FX Photo/Graphic Edges 7.0 Platinum Edition was reviewed, as was Corel Painter 11. Alien Skin Software announced Snap Art 2 Artistic Natural Media Plug-in for Photoshop, and then offered up Bokeh, a plug-in that easily simulates bokeh effect background blurring (reviews here, here, and here). If you can’t afford Alien Skin’s plug-in this nifty tutorial at Obsidian Dawn will show you how to create bokeh background effects without a plugin. onOne Software is giving away a new Lite version of PhotoTools 2 Standard Edition with 14 of the popular effects from both the Standard and Professional versions.

New books hit store shelves this month, including Scott Kelby’s Photoshop CS4 Down & Dirty Tricks (New Riders, 2009) and Adobe Lightroom 2 – the Missing FAQ (ebook), by Victoria Bampton. Read the excerpt “Lightroom Top 10 Gotcha’s From The Lightroom Queen“. You’ll also find sample chapters on blending modes, dodging and burning, and History panel from Real World Photoshop CS4 for Photographers by Conrad Chavez and David Blatner (Peachpit, 2009). Designorati calls Lesa Snider King’s Photoshop CS4: The Missing Manual “the most comprehensive ‘missing manual’ in the bookstore today.” Do Good Design: How Designers Can Change The World by David B. Berman also received a favorable review.

There were interviews aplenty in the world of Photoshop this month. PSDTuts interviewed 17 year old Italian illustrator Leonardo Dentico, while Kerry Garrison and David Esquire interviewed Tom Hogarty, Product Manager for Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, on the Camerdojo.com podcast. Richard Roberts, Bechira Sorin, Barton Damer, Tim and Bram Vanhaeren, Zach Bush, and Angie Bowen of Arbent Creative Designs also sounded off about their work, their tools, and their experiences online and on Twitter.

Over on Designorati, Jeremy Schultz took a look at the return on investment of using Creative Suite 4 in his piece: “Adobe CS4 and ROI: Is Productivity the New Killer Feature?”

A developer identified only as “Paracelsus” complained heavily about the Photoshop PSD file format inside the code of his program. The program, Xee, a tiny image viewer created for OS X, was published to Google’s code library. Although the code and the rant it contains were written way back in September 2007, the re-emergence of the code sparked debate about the viability of the PSD format, leading some to call it “antiquated,” “goofy,” and a “piece of crap.” John Nack took exception to those claims and fired back. What followed in the comments to John’s post was a sometimes passionate but very interesting discussion about the potential future for PSD and Photoshop.

Tutorials

A few interesting trends developed this month in Photoshop how-to.

First, the debut of Photoshop Car Tutorials brings the common tasks of automobile makeovers and touchups to the fore. Instead of trying to decide which parts of a technique for building a city scape would apply to your automotive touchup project, you can add alloy wheels on the cheap, make any car into a stretch limousine, tint the taillights, lower your ride without chopping, and quickly preview new paint jobs all without having to even look at a building.

Text effects, of course, remain a mainstay of Photoshop tutorials, and this month is no exception. There aren’t any new flaming text tutorials–if this dismays you, wait an hour; a new one will be along presently, I’m sure. There are, however, tutorials for volcana lava text and smokey text, as well as elemantally opposing ice text and text on dripping water. Potentially flammable realistic wood text also appeared, as did ancient type with a dry soil texture and floral brushset. For the health conscious, there’s milk typography, which does a photobody good. Get down to Earth with textured text and grunge text. For something a little more fresh, try transparent shiny text and glittering, glowing text.

Web design with Photoshop is another popular theme for tutorials. Start simple with a clean white navigation bar, or jump right into full site development by creating a basic business Web layout, grunge site design, or even something with a hand-drawn style. Establish your online presence by making your own portfolio page or building a Web photo gallery. Before you finish your site, why not create and add coffee stain social networking icons?

Using Photoshop for illustration? Learn to build a realistic leather belt and brass buckle, vector-based 3D ribbon and bow, vector-like table and chair, a realistic balloon, a 3D ceiling fan, or “Use Over 40 Advanced Keyboard Shortcuts to Create a Reflective Timepiece.” And, don’t miss “How to Turn a Photoshop Into a Cartoon Effect” by Lorri Freedman, how to create abstract landscape painting, and adding double and triple strokes to text and other objects. Take a trip into a fantasy illustration with Johnson Koh’s “How to Create a Magical Painted Scene or create an “Original Art Painting On a Digital Canvas” with Lorelei. “Create a Sparkling Fantasy Photo Manipulation is another you’ll want to check out.

If you’re looking instead to create something new from an existing photograph you won’t be disappointed. Grab your favorite pic and try abstract special effects made easy (from Eyes on Tutorials), add a little darkness or edginess, convert it to notebook paper, add a jagged border effect, add a light trail, cartoonize it, or add an elegant soft focus effect. If you’re a fan of the timeless, give your photo a vintage treatment, infrared sepia effect, or
use gradient map layer for sepia toning. If you’re starting with an old photograph, you might need a little help repairing faded black and white photos.

Numerous print and video tutorials this month got back to Photoshop’s photograph touch-up and enhancement roots. In the area of portraiture there’s help for giving more contrast to eyes, whitening teeth, removing a double chin, retouching a plain Jane pic into a glamor girl, How to Turn Humdrum Photos into Cinematic Portraits” by James Davies, and mastering a fashion magazine photo style.

Both portraiture and general photos could benefit from an understanding of techniques forcorrecting perspective in Camera Raw images, using smart filters for dynamic adjustments, color and tone correction with nondestructive adjustment layers, and creating High Dynamic Range Imaging (HDRI) in Photoshop from multiple exposures.

As you work with Photoshop don’t forget to learn the basics. Understand and utilize color in Photoshop with 16 top notch tutorials, tools, and resources. “Teach Yourself Graphic Design: A Self-Study Course Outline,” is a wonderful place for new designers to catch up, or old hands to fill in gaps in their knowledge. Learn Photoshop CS4 basics with multiple images, rulers, guides, and grids and Note tool and Save for Web interface, videos extracted from the DVD Introduction to Adobe Photoshop CS4. Understanding the Background Layer from “Getting Started with Photoshop CS4 Layers” videos. Get up to speed with “Clipping Drop Shadows in Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign” by Mordy Golding. And, Let R.C. Concepcion walk you through taking Smart Objects from Illustrator to Photoshop to Dreamweaver.

Also check out:

• Content-Aware Scaling
• Add Scotch Tape to a Grungy Image
• Design a print-ready brochure entirely in Photoshop with the help of a Alvaro Guzman and PSDTuts.
• Video create panoramic photographs in CS3/CS4
• 5 ways of masking
• Create believable fabric and stitching from scratch with a little Brush Panel tweaking and work paths.
• Create a Five-Color Magazine Cover Using a Spot Metallic
• Video: Design in Photoshop Using Patterns from Illustrator” by Matt Kloskowski
• Get started with Adobe Configurator in Photoshop

Quick Tips

• Make an object float in air.
• Create new documents from Photoshop layers.
• One Button Layer Clipping
• Change the Default Eyedropper Sample Setting
• “Add Text to a Photo in Photoshop Elements“
• “Make a Colorful Postcard in Photoshop Elements“
• “Skin Smoothing Camera Raw Style“
• “Pre-Clipped Adjustment Layers“
• 100 tips on Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign and more from Adobe’s senior product managers compiled by Layers Magazine.
• Stretch (or Shrink) to Fit
• Easily mouse around an image while zoomed in
• Easily crop away transparent or solid color portions of an image

Design Inspiration

Stuck for ideas? Take a break and see what your fellows are up to. There are “30 Magnificient, Simply Stunning Futuristic City Matte Painting Artworks,” “22 Highly Creative, Ultra-Stylish Advert Designs for Apple iPhone,” “30 Absolutely Breathtaking, Beyond Awesome Digital Portrait Artworks,” “100 Obscure and Remarkable CD Covers,” “10 incredible wallpapers from Desktopography,” and “45 Stunningly Colorful Wallpapers.” Get inspired with PSD Vault’s 30 Mind-Blowing HDR Images collected from DeviatArt.com. Oh, and don’t forget self-promotion that is better than a business card.

Free Textures

Textures! Textures! Get your free textures right here!

This month we have…

• lines in plaster or cement
• color wheel
• grunge sheet music
• cracks
• bark
• animal fur
• tires
• recycled paper
• rust
• 10 red rock textures
• 50 metal textures
• community center outdoor textures
• concrete
• blurred
• paper and plastic packaging

Free Brushes

Free Photoshop brushes for everything from subtle touch-up to taking the place of stock photography and clipart. If you don’t find what you’re looking for, make your own brushes from any photo.

• High-resolution blueprints and schematics
• 25 Dynamically Generating Shapes Vol 2
• Bugs
• Grunge swirls
• Explosion brush
• Smoke and Ink
• Dollar bills
• Grunge shapes
• Paisleys and more paisleys
• Black angel wings
• Paint markers
• Abstract grunge texture brushes (and textures)
• Vintage Italian postcard brushes
• Bokeh brushes
• Vintage Postcards
• Random splatter
• Bat and demon wings

Other Freebies

Oh, yes! There is more free stuff!

• In CS4, Adobe removed several big features from Photoshop, most notably Picture Package (ContactSheet II), PatternMaker, Web Photo Gallery (WebContactSheet II), and Texturizer’s texture presets among others. Yours truly, Pariah Burke, shows you where you can download those missing features to add them back into Photoshop CS4–free, of course.
• Tango Web 2.0 Gradients
• Photoshop Action Set 82, 55, 66, hut, hut, hut! by Night-Fate.
• Picturenaut, free HDR image tool.
• Simple cross-hatched fabric patterns
• Hundreds of patterns ranging from screen and tone patterns to micro patterns, Washi paper to cutesy wrapping paper, flowers to stripes.
• Abstract purple background.
• vector floral stamps and tattoo patterns.
• Blank CD Photoshop template