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July was an amazing month for Photoshop Tutorials around the web. You’ve seriously got to check some of these awesome links out.

Photoshop Tutorials

How to Create a Photo Manipulation of a Flooded City Scene

This tutorial will show you how to manipulate a few photos into a massive flood scene in a city. The result feels like a dooms-day movie poster.

How to Make a Dark, Post-Apocalyptic City Illustration

Our friends at PSDTUTS seem to have a thing for post-apocalyptic settings this month (and we’re definitely not complaining). This tutorial will show you how to transform a modern city into an abandoned wasteland like it’s straight out of a movie like “I Am Legend”.

Fantastic Digital Painting Image in Photoshop and Corel Painter

This is a great tutorial that demonstrates the workflow of Jill Tovey, a fashion illustrator from the UK. Learn how to mockup a design in Photoshop, then bring it to life in Corel Painter.

Creating a Super Detailed Illustration Step by Step with OwaikeO

This may be the best illustration tutorial we’ve ever stumbled across—and it’s a Photoshop tutorial none the less. Seriously, this is one you’ve gotta check out. Master illustrator OwaikeO goest step-by-step through one of his beautiful creations sharing some priceless tips along the way.

Amazing Video-Game Text Style in Photoshop

King of retro effects Fabio Sasso shares a sweet technique for creating some fantastic video-game inspired type in Photoshop. You can also grab it as a wallpaper if you feel so inclined.

How To Create a Retro Apple Wallpaper in Photoshop

Follow these simple steps in Photoshop to create a homage to Apple, combining the retro striped Apple logo with a range of soft grungy textures to produce a detailed design with subtle touches of colour and tone.

Handy Techniques for Cutting Out Hair in Photoshop

Chris Spooner details some techniques for isolating hair in Photoshop, even on busy backgrounds. If you’ve been struggling with hair in Photoshop, this ought to help you out.

80’s Style Design Using Photoshop

The 80’s have always had an iconic impact on Pop Culture. This is a simple tutorial inspired by the 80’s for creating some artistic designs of your own.

Speed Up Your Website with Better Image Optimization in Photoshop

In a tutorial I wrote over at UX Booth, I detail some important information when saving images for the web that can really speed up the load time of your websites. Remember kids, always optimize your images before uploading for the web!

Creative Photoshop Animal King Photo Manipulation Tutorial

In this photoshop tutorial, you’ll learn how to mash up a series of photos in a highly creative poster based on a famous painting from the 1800’s. Let’s get started!

Illustrator Tutorials

Create a Cute Furry Vector Monster in Illustrator

Utilizing only simple, predefined shapes, as well as tools like the Pathfinder and transformations, entire illustrations can be created from scratch. In this tutorial, we’ll create an icon suitable for portraying options, settings, preferences, etc., similar to OS X’s system preferences icon.

Mastering Illustrator Effects

Have you been missing out the Illustrator Effects? Did you know it is a powerful tool for creating symmetrical shapes or adding texture to vector paths? For example, with just one simple effect, you can turn a polygon path into a flower shape. You can also make paths look sketchy with the Scribble effect. Read this tutorial to learn how to save time by using Illustrator Effects and work more efficient.

Web Tutorials

How To Increase Site Performance Through A/B Split Testing

Ever had the desire to change something on your website, but you were afraid the change might have a negative impact on performance? Welcome to A/B Split testing, the practice of testing multiple variations of the same site to see which works better.

How to Create A Simple Web-based Chat Application

In this tutorial we will be creating a simple web-based chat application with PHP and jQuery. This sort of utility would be perfect for a live support system for your website.

Create a Twitter-Like “Load More” Widget

Both Twitter and the Apple App Store use a brilliant technique for loading more information; you click the link and fresh items magically appear on the screen. This tutorial teaches you to use AJAX, CSS, Javascript, JSON, PHP, and HTML to create that magic.

Date Display Technique with Sprites

Here’s a very creative way for displaying dates on a website using image sprites. You can always depend on Chris Coyier for breaking down these nifty CSS techniques into understandable instructions.

How to Build Quick and Easy Charts from XML Data

Data visualization is the key to how your data is perceived and acted upon by your audience. In this tutorial, you will be introduced to FusionCharts Free, which is an easy, convenient and free (in case the name did not already suggest so) way of converting all the monotonous data into animated Flash charts.

Freebies, Inspiration & Resources

Free Portfolio WordPress Theme: Creative by Nature

Creative by Nature, a unique and flexible high-quality portfolio WordPress theme for artists, photographers and designers. The theme was designed by .css{mayo} and released especially for Smashing Magazine and its readers.

Free WordPress Theme: Paper Wall

Paper Wall WordPress Theme, an original, beautiful, high-quality WordPress theme, designed by Adrian Lazariuc from Indeziner.com exclusively for Smashing Magazine and its readers.

Free Icons: Decorative Seasonal RSS Icon Pack

This Free Seasonal RSS Icon Pack was created exclusively for the viewers of Tutorial9 by Helloicon. Each icon is in .png format sized at 256×256px with transparent backgrounds. Pretty much everyone’s using RSS now. Wouldn’t it be cool to use a different seasonal themed icon for each season?

Beautiful Examples of Vexel Artworks and Tutorials

Vexel art is a digital art that is an entirely pixel-based form of raster art that imitates the vector graphics technique, but is distinguished from normal vector graphics or raster images.

30+ cool and unusual business cards designs

Here are some innovative and unusual interpretations of the humble business card; Using new materials, formats, and production methods designers are expressing identities in a more tangible way.

Three tips from one of the 20th century’s great communicators.

This month marks the 10th anniversary of the passing of David Ogilvy. Expelled from Oxford as a less-than-average student, he went on to become a sous-chef in Paris, a stove salesman in Scotland, a British Intelligence officer in Washington, and a farmer in Pennsylvania. Here are three things everyone can learn from him that can be very useful in putting together great copy.

45 Incredible Illustration Artists

Good illustration art is both bold and compelling. With such strong emphasis on subject over form, illustrations can visually tell a story that other art forms cannot. Making the impossible, possible and turning imagination into visual reality, Illustration art gives artists free reign to explore what is usually only possible in another world.

How To Climb Out of a Creative Rut

Ken Reynold’s has some insight for getting yourself out of a creative rut. Some great advice for designers having trouble getting inspired.

Digital Artist Awards 2009

Open to entries worldwide, the awards are aimed at anyone with a passion for digital art and design – from individuals to agencies alike. They aim to inspire, recognise and reward the highest standards of digital art across a range of genres and categories from concept art, illustration, architectural visualisation, and animation, to character and games design, providing the winners with massive exposure.

Get Featured in Creative Bookmarks

If you’d like to be featured in the next volume of Creative Bookmarks, simply send us you’re tutorial, resource, or article link before the end of the month. If we think it’s a top notch link, we’ll be sure to share it with all of our readers!

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