The Adobe® Design Achievement Awards celebrate student achievement that reflects the powerful convergence of technology and creative arts. Winners represent work by some of the most talented and promising student graphic designers, photographers, illustrators, animators, digital filmmakers, and computer artists from the world’s top institutions of higher education.

Research Calendar of the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences 2008 - Winner of Digital Illustration category by Jörg Block, Hamburg University of Applied Sciences.” I created all the forms using the rectangle and ellipse shapes, the pencil tools, or by combining shapes with the Pathfinder. I defined colors with CMYK values and built a color library. My illustrations feature pure color surfaces, linear and radial gradients, adjustment objects, transparencies, and various fill methods. ”

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Client : Insight Borneo Incentive & Tours

Offering services of luxury boat charter at affordable price for those who love a luxury island or sunset cruise. The services provided along Tunku Abdul Rahman Park like Manukan, Sapi, Mamutik and Gaya island, Sabah Borneo Malaysia and company also offering a boat charter packege for fishing.

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Usually I not a Windows person.. this afternoon while browsing on Digg’s image section, I found this desktop wallpaper which I think is pretty much cool. Found this from Shareapic.net.

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Any true Macfan should have a mailbox like this.

read more | digg story

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Photoshop is one great + powerful platform software for editing pictures using by most designers + also photographers around the globe. Photoshop has one good function of effects on picture editing call ‘Filter’ and one of the easiest and fastest way of editing your picture is Artistic Filter, one of my favourite was ‘Watercolor’ effect. But, I find this filter technics has not giving me a perfect results and that’s why here I would like to share with you guys on How To Make Watercolor Effect on your picture with Advance technic.

STEP 1 - Choose any picture of you like, ( recommended, scenery pictures ). Here I use this photo taken on Manukan Island, situated near my place here at Sabah, Borneo Malaysia. Will takes you about 30 minutes boat ride from the Kota Kinabalu city jetty.

STEP 2 - Now copy the Layer name (Background) simply by dragging the layer towards the ‘create a new layer’ icon on the lower part of the Layer’s pallete and place it on top of the first layer. Then, delete the first layer (Background) and copy again the new layer (Background copy) and place it on top. Name this new layer to ‘Watercolor’

STEP 3 - Now, with the new layer selected (Watercolor), set the new layer to Luminosity mode and then go to Image>Adjustment>Desaturate. You’ll see nothing much is changing right, be patient my dear fellow apprentice.

STEP 4 - Now go to Filter>Stylize>Find Edges. Do not panic as this is really how your photo will look like.

STEP 5 - This time go to Edit>Fade Fine Edges. Please note that this action can only be done at one time, if you’ve mistakenly apply any kind of different action before applying this, you may not be able to do the Fade Fine Edges. However, don’t get yourself panic again, just go to History’s pallete and select to the previous action and then you can be able to do the command (Edit>Fade Fine Edges) one more time.

STEP 6 - Now the Fade window appear and change the mode from Normal to Color Dodge and set the Opacity percentage to around 25% - 45% depending on how best you like, for this tutorial I choosed 30%.

STEP 7 - Now you’ll see the different from original picture to this result. Now you need to make some extra adjustment where you can make color to be more outstanding. With the ‘Background copy’ layer selected, press (Mac: Apple+U / PC: Ctrl+U) and adjust the Saturation to be more color by draging the pointer to the right. Next, you need to select Level (Mac: Apple+L / PC: Ctrl+L) to make the photo more balance in terms of black and white tone. Adjust the pointer until you’ve satisfied with it. You can also set the layer Opacity or Fill on ‘Watercolor’ layer to be lesser at 85% or 75% if you still not satisfied about it.

Tips : for Levels, drag the left pointer towards the middle will get you a darker tone while the pointer on the right will get you a brighter tone.

Original Photo

Standard watercolor effect

Advanced watercolor effect

STEP 8 - Here are the comparison between standard Watercolor filter effect and my custom Watercolor filter effect. Take a closer look at the texture on the tree, the sea surface and the sand.. now that’s what I call good Watercolor effect. If you guys just curious.. to apply a standard filter for watercolor effect, just go to Filter>Artistic>Watercolor.

STEP 9 - Actually the Tuts not just stop here, If you find the result still not that so outstanding.. Let’s do some more advanced treatment. First, carefully observed and study the ‘LOGIC’ elements on your picture. For this photo, the sand just seems not so impressive, some part looks so white.. just select Eraser tool (Press E) on the Tool’s palette and simply erase the area where you want to make the picture looks more clearer, make sure the ‘Watercolor’ layer is selected. Set the Opacity + Flow to be 75%, 55% or even lesser 35%, depending on how best you like the result will be.

STEP 10 - There’s still one more.. this picture has a very blur sky.. what you need to do next is to act like a god, where you need to create a sky. Select Brush tool (Press B) on the Tool’s pallete and set the Fill color to light Blue sky while the Opacity + Flow is set to 55%. Select the correct size of your brush, for this tutorial I use 65 and start brusing gently on the sky. To choose brush size, while the cursor on the picture right click and the Brush option windoe will come out.

There you! one nice Water Color effect for your favourite photo. Practice a lot, play photoshop frequently and sure you’ll master this simple technic very fast. Send me your watercolor photo once you’ve done okay.. see you all!

Checkout my Flickr’s photostream for more sample of Advance Watercolor Effect.

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While browsing to one of the news.com articles today about..

Why do Apple customers care so much?

written by Tom Krazit, I stumble upon this pic which I thought is very interesting to share around. The pic shown above is Allen Paltrow, a 13 years old boy showing off his haircut in front of the new Apple store on New York’s Fifth Avenue on the opening day, back in May last year. That’s really touching I might say.. How about you guys?? How much would you say that I Love Apple..

Pic (Credit : David Brabyn/Sipa Press)

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The story was made for children’s reading material and it was about a young girl named Missie who has a sick mother and cannot do anything. So, the burden is on Missie’s shoulder where she has to go out to the jungle to find some food for her sick mother. One day she met this talking black bird who later invite her to it’s house tree. Missie later came to visit the black bird’s tree house and having her dinner there, the black bird seems pity about Missie’s poor life story and rewarded her a box of golds and diamonds from a selection of 3 different boxes size. Missie then have enough money to buy food and medicine for her mother.. and like all fairy tales, it’s all ended up happily ever after.

Missie & The Tree House Storybook
Client : Local Publisher
Size : 21cm x 29.7cm (A4)
Contents : 10 pages

View artwork

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Have you ever wonder who’s behind the movie posters like E.T or Star Wars or even Indiana Jones?

Drew Struzan, an illustrator and also a living legend artist for over 30 years in arts industry has made most of his artwork portfolios as an icon since you and me was a little kid until now. Drew’s has made a great collection of good quality movie posters drawings like Back To The Future, E.T. the extraterrestrial, Star Wars Episode 1, Harry Potter, Cuttroat Island, Hell Boy, Pan’s Labyrinth and the latest one was Indiana Jones and the Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull.

Most of Drew’s drawings are made by acrylic and some are made by colored pencil, here are some of the collections of Movie poster that Drew has brilliantly drawn.

Browse more of Drew’s artwork portfolios at drewstruzan.com

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Magazine Ad sponsored page (Borneo Section)
Size : 21cm x 29.7cm (A4)

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How many of you own a Digital camera with cybershot function? How many times of you took a picture with this cybershot which the result is very dark not good and you want to delete the file right away. Well.. dont just delete the file yet.. here I’ll share with you a very simple tutorial on How to Adjust Your Dark Photos to become more outstanding photo.

Take a look at this photo for instance.. I took this photo (well she’s the same model again from my previous tutorial) at the KLCC using SONY CyberShot T5 but the lighting is not like what I want, actually this happens sometimes when you’re lazy to set the correct setting on your CyberShot or you’re just lousy to do it.. BTW, on the second picture is better highlights + contrast.. No! I didn’t took the photo for a second time if that’s what you think.. the answer is Photoshop treatment! read on..

STEP 1 : Open the photo that you want to adjust File>Open. In this tutorial we start using a scenenary photos something like this..

STEP 2 : Go to Image>Adjustments>Shadow/Highlights. Adjust the ‘Amount’ of Shadows to be how many percent which you think the best, click the preview box several time or press ’space bar’ to see the effect. In this tutorial I increase the amount of shadows to 50% while amount of Highlights I leave it 0%.

Tips : the more percent the more dark shadows will reveal.

STEP 3 : Now you’ll see a brighter shadows and highlights on the photo. If you still not satisfied.. click the Show More Options box for more Highlights + Shadows adjustment.

Can you see the difference clearly?

STEP 4 : There you go..very simple right!! Checkout this two photos.. You see clearly so obvious the different after we done the adjustment of Shadows/Highlight where the sun reflection on water is become more brighter + the leaf stands out clearly.

STEP 5 : Hmmm.. actually you can make further adjustment by setting the Color/Hue/Saturation to make your photo more outstanding. Go to Image>Adjustments>Hue/Saturation or press (Mac: Apple+U / PC: ctrl+U). Now adjust only the Saturation to the right means to increasing, the rest just leave it 0.

STEP 6 : Now.. you see the different after a few treatment? amazing right!! still not satisfied? Okay.. go to Image>Levels or press (Mac: Apple+L / PC: ctrl+L). Now as you can see the little tiny white thing on your right is light tone and on the left is dark tone while the middle is neutral tone. Adjust the light + dark tone by dragging the tiny thing towards the middle.

Tips : The less light tone you drag on the White arrow towards the middle the brighter the photo will be, while..the more you drag on the Black arrow towards the middle the darker the photo will be.

STEP 7 : There you go..Waalaah! Practice this simple tutorial on as many as your dark + ugly photos that you took until you master this valuable technique. But remember, this technique can only be apply when you using Adobe Photoshop CS + newer, old version doesn’t have this simple function yet.. err but I think not many of you now using Photoshop 7, Hey! its Photoshop CS3 already man.

Log back in next Friday for another simple tutorial.. have a good day, enjoy + play alot!

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