I've been pretty vocal about my use of Photoshop in my design process. Lots of people have seemed to be interested in my use of it, so today I'm share a few videos with basic skills that I use in Photoshop. I don't claim to be a Photoshop expert, but expertise is relative, so hopefully you'll learn something! I'm not as comfortable in Illustrator, but I believe of the tools I reference in Photoshop are also available in Illustrator. Although it so happens that for me at this point, Photoshop is most easily accessible.

Video 1: Basic Document Setup

In my first video, I talk about basic document setup, including size, pixel resolution, setting up guides and grids, and creating basic shapes, which is primarily what I use in Photoshop.

Video 2: Smart Objects

In my second video, I show examples of grouping items, creating a smart object from a group, and then creating duplicates of that smart object with some type of repeat, in this case a repeat around the origin. I apologize for the flickering of the Windows navigation bar - that was coming from my recording software!

Video 3: Clipping Masks and HSTs

In my third video, I review grouping shapes again, copying (or screenshotting) in images from a website, creating a clipping mask from that screenshot, rotating the clipping mask content, and creating a half-square triangle from a rectangle (square).

Comments?!

Please let me know if you have any feedback. I'd be happy to create more tutorials in the future!