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Graphics.com has an excerpt from the book Black and White Digital Photography Photo Workshop By Chris Bucher. Here's the intro from Create Toning, Coloring and Special Effects in Photoshop and Lightroom: When many people think of black-and-white images, they think of old images that are monochrome, but still have an overall slight color to them. These tones could be due to how the chemicals and paper react to age and the environment, just as much as they could be an added effect. Adding color to black-and-white images can add interest and feeling to an image. And it can be a great way to emulate the look of old images. There are a few effects that make images look vintage. The darkened corners, called vignettes, are from lenses that were not quite up to par on old cameras. Additionally, older photographs tend to have some color tones to them from the developing process and from age. The tones can range from warm to cool, and can even be a bit blotchy. One of the first things that I notice in older photographs is the contrast. Many old photographs were taken with very simple cameras by photographers with very little technical expertise, or without techniques that we take for granted now, such as flash. Few photographers had their own black-and-white darkrooms; the photographs were sent to the Kodak factory to be processed. Because of this, either the contrast of these images tends to be full of dynamic contrast because they were done well, probably well exposed with plenty of light, or the images are a bit dull and washed out in order to show plenty of shadow detail. Additionally, because cameras from before the 1950s used much larger film than 35mm, and much of it very large sheet film, the depth of field in many images can be quite shallow, especially with photographs of people. Note: Remember that if your camera has a preset old photo or antique photo setting, shooting JPEG+RAW can be a good first step in getting the image to look vintage. It may not give you the perfect old-time look, but if you still have the RAW file, you will have optimal image-processing opportunities. To create old-time looks digitally, it is important to think about how those images appear now. It is more than being black and white; it is a mix of many things. It is good to make a plan for the look you desire before you take the photograph. Keep in mind that the contrast in old photos won’t always match up with what you think your regular histogram should look like; and in the case of the image below, the pixel bars are pushed out to the very edges of the graph, meaning that there are a lot of lights and darks, and minimal middle grays. The washed-out look of the background suits the flat tone of an image on an overcast day. Contine reading Create Toning, Coloring and Special Effects in Photoshop and Lightroom. (posted by Jennifer Apple for www.PhotoshopSupport.com)

Bittbox is offering an assortment of free textures you can download:Today I've got a great grab bag with five completely diverse and highly usable textures for you. Each texture is super hi-res at 4500×3000, enjoy! (posted by Jennifer Apple for www.PhotoshopSupport.com)

This week, that ever-wily Deke thinks of an ingenious way to cover your Photoshop tracks. If you recall, last week’s techniques were about combining photos of three real-world creatures to create one other-worldly one. But as we all know, no missing link photo is ever going to be credible if it’s not noisy, blurry, and oddly exposed. Turns out, the key is to actually shoot an unstable picture of your Photoshop screen with your camera, then add a few more helpings of weird exposure (inside Camera Raw), grain (the noise filter in Photoshop) and more blur (of the Gaussian variety). (posted by Jennifer Apple for www.PhotoshopSupport.com)

You can download a free set of Light Grunge Photoshop brushes from Bittbox. Here's some more info: This is a set of five super high-res subtle grunge Photoshop brushes. They're perfect for adding just a little bit of texture to your work without overdoing it. (posted by Jennifer Apple for www.PhotoshopSupport.com)

There will be a new Adobe One Day Deal that will be offered Tuesday August 9th only. The offer is for one of their best selling products, Photoshop Lightroom 3. This offer will not be available anywhere else and will be the best offer online at the lowest price Adobe has ever offered. One day only - $150 savings off the full version of Photoshop Lightroom 3 in the Adobe North America Commercial Store. No coupon code necessary. Originally $299 now $149 after 50% discount. (posted by Jennifer Apple for www.PhotoshopSupport.com)

Ben Long at creativepro.com has written an interesting article on the deluge of "photoshopped" images. From the intro of "Has that been Photoshopped a lot?": I sometimes hear that question when showing one of my photos to someone, and I have to confess that it bugs me. Not because it's prying into my photographic process, or because it's a technical remark rather than a response to the actual image, but because it reveals how little the viewer understands about the medium of photography. In that question, "Photoshop" is being used to mean "edited" or "manipulated" or "altered," and the subtext of the question is, "Has this image been edited or manipulated? I need to know because I want to know if the image is true." The answer to the question is always "yes" because all photos are edited and manipulated. They always have been. Even photos that are very realistic are no more an objective, "real" representation of reality than is a watercolor painting. Photography is an abstract medium, and the more you understand that, the better your shooting will be. "Image editing" starts as soon as you lift your eye to the viewfinder. What you choose to include in the frame is a massive edit of the scene before you, and it's important to understand just how powerful this "cropping" of the real world can be. Continue reading "Has that been Photoshopped a lot?". (posted by Jennifer Apple for www.PhotoshopSupport.com)

From Obsidian Dawn, a beautiufl set of free Photoshop brushes with a paisley motif. From the description: These are all high resolution images at about 1900 pixels. It has various paisley shapes, as well as some of the little ornaments that you’ll frequently find accompanying a paisley pattern. They are all hand-sketched. They look pretty in just one color, but if you really want to get the most out of them, try using the paisley brushes on a new layer and painting different colors on a layer beneath it. Be on the lookout for a tutorial on some shortcuts to create this multi-colored effect with these brushes soon! (posted by Jennifer Apple for www.PhotoshopSupport.com)

Big Foot, Loch Ness Monster, Tigerilla. Sometimes, when you let your imagination run away with you, you learn some really useful Photoshop techniques in the process. This week, Deke delves into cryptozoological pseudo-documentation — that is, Photoshop put to use to create false evidence of a non-existent creature. Why, other than trying to spice up your vacation photos with fake monsters, would you want to do this? Well, first, mixing this gorilla, tiger, and cute little puppy is an exercise in mind-expanding creativity: And more practically, in this week’s free movie from Deke’s Techniques, you’ll see how to carefully use Photoshop’s healing brush in order to mix key features of these three animals to create something wholly other. Learning how to heal from one layer to the next, with proper alignment, is a skill that’s bound to take you beyond the creation of fake evidence for your tall tales. (posted by Jennifer Apple for www.PhotoshopSupport.com)

Adobe today announced the first public preview release of Adobe Edge, a new HTML5 web motion and interaction design tool that allows web designers to bring animation, similar to that created in Flash Professional, to websites using standards likes HTML, JavaScript and CSS. Because of rapid changes around HTML5, Adobe is adopting an open development methodology for Adobe Edge and is releasing the software on the Adobe Labs site much earlier than normal in the development process – before it even reaches beta – in order to allow user feedback to help shape the final product. While in public preview, Adobe Edge will be a no-charge download that web designers are encouraged to explore and provide feedback on, to help shape future preview releases. To download the software, visit www.labs.adobe.com. Adobe Edge, first shown at Adobe MAX 2010, is ideal for designers who want an efficient way to leverage Web standards like HTML to create Web content with motion and transitions. Adobe Edge is being designed as a fast and lightweight professional-grade tool that complements Adobe’s existing Web tools, such as Dreamweave CS5.5, Flash Professional CS5.5 and Adobe Flash Builder 4.5 software. The Adobe Edge preview works natively with HTML. It enables users to add motion to existing HTML documents without hampering design integrity of CSS-based layouts, and it also enables users to easily create visually rich content from scratch, using familiar drawing tools that produce HTML elements styled with CSS3. Users can import standard Web graphics assets such as SVG, PNG, JPG and GIF files and style them using CSS3. The design stage utilizes WebKit to enable design, preview and manipulation of content with incredible fidelity. The innovative timeline feature is both familiar for creative professionals and breaks new ground in animation productivity to enable users to define and customize motion applied to HTML elements with extreme precision. Content created with Edge is designed to work on modern browsers including those on Android, BlackBerry Playbook, iOS , HP webOS and other smartphone mobile devices as well as Firefox, Google Chrome, Safari and Internet Explorer 9. For more information including system requirements, visit www.adobe.com/go/edgepreview. (posted by Jennifer Apple for www.PhotoshopSupport.com)

Optics geek and avid photographer David Huckabay sent us the infographic below along with this note: Not many people understand the science behind a diopter and how it really works. So I have created this easy to read "Infographic" that I think can be very helpful to photographers having problems with manual focus. (posted by Jennifer Apple for www.PhotoshopSupport.com)

I really like these messy paint textures from Bittbox. Here's the story: This week I’ve got some really cool dried paint textures from a local welding shop. Someone decided to use a giant piece of plex for a painting palette. I found it in in a back corner of a shop and snapped some images. (posted by Jennifer Apple for www.PhotoshopSupport.com)

You can find a complete list of known issues with Adobe products running on Mac OS 10.7 Lion. Among them are some issues with Photoshop in regard to droplets. For that issue, read Droplets don't work | Photoshop CS5, CS4, CS3 | Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion). For everything else, read Known Issues with Adobe products on Mac OS 10.7 Lion. (posted by Jennifer Apple for www.PhotoshopSupport.com)

You don't have to settle for the ordinary, even when it comes to creating a starburst in Illustrator. In fact, this week Deke shows you two techniques for giving your stellar compositions a customized effect in this single movie. In the first example, you'll start with a simple star shape path, then use such unintuitively named features as Roughen and Pucker, in order to create a celestial body to contend with. And even better, these are dynamic effects you can assess and adjust to your own taste: In the second example, Deke shows a less adjustable—but no less effective—means of customizing the star shape he used in last week’s technique. By using a much more intuitively named feature, the Crystallize tool, you can make iterations of your original path, adjust the opacity, and end up with this effect: Either way, you’ll end up with a couple of techniques in your bag of star-based tricks that allow you to take your celestial creations to new heights. Deke's Techniques is taught by computer graphics guru Deke McClelland, and presented in his signature step-by-step style. The intent is to reveal how various Photoshop and Illustrator features can be combined and leveraged in real-world examples so that they can be applied to creative projects right away. Click here to see all the free clips from this series at lynda.com. You can get a free 7-day trial to the lynda.com Online Training Library. The trial membership entitles you to 7 days of access to all 986 courses in the lynda.com Online Training Library for free. Click sign up on the subscription plan of your choice to get started. After your free 7-day trial period, you will be automatically upgraded to the membership selected, unless you cancel before your trial is up. A credit card is required to ensure uninterrupted access to lynda.com, if you choose to remain a member after your free trial ends. There is no long-term commitment required, and you can cancel any time. After signing up for the free 7-day trial to the lynda.com Online Training Library you'll gain access to over 59,000 video tutorials instantly. Subscriptions to the lynda.com Online Training Library provide anytime access to tens of thousands of video tutorials covering Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, web design, digital imaging, 3D, digital video, animation, and many other topics. View free video clips. (posted by Jennifer Apple for www.PhotoshopSupport.com)

As a graphic designer, you can never be sure of what your next project will entail. Here's an interesting story from Iconwatch that had me pondering what it would be like creating the virtual grocery products with Photoshop: Home plus, a Korean retail chain, broke ground in mobile marketing using a promotional campaign that created a virtual grocery store in a South Korean subway station. Aiming to boost online sales, Home plus duplicated the look of product-packed grocery store shelves, and consumers shopped by scanning QR codes on the "products" with their smartphones. The scanned items were placed in a virtual cart, and after the consumer checked out, Home plus delivered the order to the consumer’s home. (posted by Jennifer Apple for www.PhotoshopSupport.com)

At Photoshop Daily you can read a nice simple tutorial on how to create a Lomo Effect In Photoshop. From the intro: Although we work within the digital realm, there is lots of inspiration to be found by looking at traditional photographic effects. Whether it’s a processing style or a camera type, paying homage to retro effects can be a great way to get more from your images. Here we look at a quick and easy way to replicate the lomo (or lomography) style. Traditionally created with a lomography camera, the style has come to be recognised for its strong, contrasting colours and vignette corners. You can still buy lomo cameras relatively cheaply but it’s cheaper still to create the effect in Photoshop! Here’s how it is done... (posted by Jennifer Apple for www.PhotoshopSupport.com)

From Bittbox, a nice set of free watercolor Photoshop brushes: This is a set of watercolor brushes that measure 2500px on the long side, big enough for nearly all of your projects. Try layering a few of the brushes on top of each other to gain a natural look and feel. Enjoy! (posted by Jennifer Apple for www.PhotoshopSupport.com)

No real theme this time, just another nice collection of random free textures from BittBox. Make sure you read below on how to get the high res versions! (posted by Jennifer Apple for www.PhotoshopSupport.com)

Here is lesson 4 from Power User Essentials from the Total Training Photoshop CS5 lessons: Batch Processing Images. (posted by Jennifer Apple for www.PhotoshopSupport.com)

Adobe today announced the immediate availability of Adobe Photoshop Elements 9 Editor in the Mac App Store, providing Mac users with powerful yet easy-to-use photo-editing tools for creating extraordinary photos. Based on the industry-standard Adobe Photoshop software, Photoshop Elements 9 Editor helps users take their photos from ordinary to phenomenal in seconds. “The powerful capabilities in Photoshop Elements 9 Editor complement iPhoto perfectly, for users who want to take their photos to the next level with advanced compositing and stunning effects,” said Winston Hendrickson, vice president of Digital Imaging Products, Adobe. “Photoshop helped pioneer creativity on the Mac, so it’s appropriate that this special edition of Photoshop Elements is Adobe’s entry into the Mac App Store.” Photoshop Elements 9 Editor includes popular editing features available in the full version of the No. 1 selling consumer photo-editing software. Adobe Photoshop Elements 9 Guided Edits offer easy-to-follow, step-by-step instructions for creating artistic effects such as Out of Bounds for making photos leap off the page, Pop Art for creating retro-style images, or Perfect Portraits for easy retouching. Users can instantly remove clutter from photos or repair imperfections with one stroke of the Spot Healing Brush, which uses powerful content-aware technology adapted from Photoshop CS5. For the perfect group shot, Photoshop Elements 9 Editor combines the best facial expressions from a number of different shots into a single perfect photo. And, the new Adobe Photomerge Style Match analyzes stylistic characteristics of any photo, such as contrast or color tone, and automatically applies them to another photo. One-step shortcuts provide quick fixes such as whitening teeth or creating vibrant blue skies, and automated layout options quickly showcase selected photos. Users can also create and print customized calendars, cards and photo books right at home. Adobe Photoshop Elements 9 Editor can be downloaded immediately for US$79 from the Mac App Store. (posted by Jennifer Apple for www.PhotoshopSupport.com)

Get some free vintage balloons from Bittbox: Today’s freebie comes from our fine friends at VintageVectors.com. They’ve provided us with an awesome set of vintage balloon and airship illustrations that were carefully converted to vector format. Theyare perfect for illustration work or adding a little vintage flair to your website. (posted by Jennifer Apple for www.PhotoshopSupport.com)