Stunning vector images at Designious

In a previous post I linked to sites where you can buy and sell vector images. Those sites have big collections of vector images made by many different artists, but this means that the quality of the illustrations are not always the best. But there are also sites dedicated exclusively to vector images made by one person, team, or company. Designious is one such site, and they have a huge selection of beautiful vectors to choose from.

Designious sells dozens of $15 themed packs with many vector images in each one. The categories include Floral, People, Nature, Buildings, Skulls, Scrolls, Halftones & Grunges, Wings, and more. These packs are also available in Mega Packs and Giga Packs, which are great if you want to buy multiple normal packs, because you can get them for half price! They also have dozens of striking T-shirt designs for $10 each.

If you want to try before you buy, you can go to their free downloads page, where you can find free vector packs, T-shirt designs, icons, and some stunning illustrations.

My favorite floral design is "Floral vector pack 19", which is filled with beautiful vines and flowers! Most of them are meant to be used as abstract silhouettes, but you can still color the vines and flowers separately with a little more work. Just copy and paste your image, and remove the part of the drawing you don't need (for example everything except a flower). Repeat until you have separate images for each part you want to give a separate color to.

I have also tried the "Cartoon girls vector pack", which contains 17 vector images of women in different poses, with different hair and clothes, and of different nationalities. My first thought when I saw them was that they would be perfect to use in personal websites and blog designs! I really love using vectors instead of bitmap images, because it's so much easier to change the colors to my liking. I had great fun changing the colors of their hair, skin, clothes, and even their make-up! Try doing that so easily in Photoshop :P

Users who don't have Illustrator might have some problems with the parts of the images that are colored with gradients - I use VectorDesigner, and some of the girls from this pack were missing clothing or hair! :P Luckily I also have ZeusDraw, and was able to get around this problem by importing the EPS file as a PDF, and then converting the PDF to objects. But if you're lucky enough to have Illustrator, you shouldn't have any problems ;)

Browsing through the Designious vector packs has given me a lot of ideas and inspiration for new designs, and I can't wait to get started! :D

Where to buy and sell vector illustrations

You probably know that there are sites in which you can buy and sell stock photos, but did you know there are also sites in which you can buy and sell vector illustrations? There aren't as many as the stock photo sites, but there are still a lot of great illustrations available.

Must-have filters and plugins for graphic applications

Here is a list of great filters and Color Picker plugins that work in multiple applications, including Pixelmator and VectorDesigner. The essential ones are free, so you can power up your favorite graphic apps without having to spend a cent!

Converting Photoshop .abr brushes to .png using Gimp

Although it's not mentioned anywhere in the documentation, Gimp is able to use Photoshop .abr brushes. This means that we can save the brushes as .png images, which can then be used as brushes in Pixelmator.

ZeusDraw review

ZeusDraw is a vector application that I found a few days ago on MacZot. At first glance it didn't seem interesting, but I took the time to watch the demonstration videos and was blown away by the simplicity and intuitiveness of it's brush and color controls. I'm no expert with graphic applications, but brush capabilities are something even I have found sorely lacking in the cheaper (i.e. not made by Adobe) graphic applications for Mac. They all allow you to paint with a brush, but usually the only things you can customize are the size, color, and softness. With ZeusDraw, on the other hand, it's a different story entirely.

Interview with VectorDesigner developer Marco Pifferi

Marco Pifferi of TweakerSoft is the developer of VectorDesigner, a vector application for the Mac and winner of the Macworld Best of Show Award in January 2008. In this interview we will find out how VectorDesigner was born, and where it's going in the future.

Pixelmator 1.2 Draftsman released

It seems today is the day for graphic application releases - earlier today VectorDesigner was updated, and now the much-awaited Pixelmator 1.2 Draftsman has been released too! The updates include curves, grids and rulers, a masks palette, a polygonal lasso tool, a more in-depth help file, and many more Automator actions.

The masks palette makes working with selections and masks much easier, and the help file is great for beginners or for finding out the use or shortcuts of a tool. The images illustrating the effects of the filters and other tools are a very useful learning aid, enabling you to see what effects they will have without having to test each one. Unfortunately there aren't previews for the Quartz Composer filters, but I guess we can't have everything ;)

All in all I'm very pleased with Pixelmator Draftsman, and the regular updates give me confidence that Pixelmator will keep improving steadily. Keep up the good work, Pixelmator team!

VectorDesigner updated to version 1.2.0

Today VectorDesigner was updated to version 1.2.0. The core updates are:
- Smart snap on elements, points and intersections
- Export selection
New video tutorials have also been added to their website.

Unfortunately the Path Tips that pop up now every time you put your cursor over a line, point or intersection can get quite annoying and distracting - hopefully they will soon add an option to turn them off.

Update:
The option to disable Path Tips has been added. Thanks Marco for the super-fast addition!

Download: workflows to batch convert Pixelmator brushes

In a previous post I explained how to manually convert .png brushes for use in Pixelmator. After many trials and errors, I was finally able to make an Automator workflow to convert batches of brushes automatically. As Pixelmator doesn’t have the actions I needed in Automator, I had to use the new “Watch Me Do” feature, so these scripts probably won’t work in Tiger.

I was unable to get Pixelmator to apply the specified actions to each images in a batch, so I got around this by having it repeat the actions multiple times. Unfortunately it will continue repeating these actions the specified number of times even if there are no more images, so I made multiple scripts to enable you to choose the one closest to the number of images to convert: this way you won’t waste too much time waiting for it to finish. Read under the cut for step by step intructions.

How to convert brushes for use in Pixelmator

Most brushes available for download are offered in both the .abr format of Photoshop brushes and in .png format, the latter of which Pixelmator should be able to use. However, if you've ever tried using these brushes in Pixelmator, you know that all you get is a solid block of color. The reason for this is that brushes in Pixelmator need to have a transparent background to work. Unfortunately Pixelmator doesn't yet have the ability to turn white backgrounds transparent - but it does have a "Mask To Alpha" filter, which makes black transparent. We can use this filter to manually convert brushes:

$10 discount on VectorDesigner for Mac

Tweakersoft is offering a $10 discount on VectorDesigner for all ScreenCastsOnline readers, subscribed or not. Just click here to got to the ScreenCastsOnline VectorDesigner page, and follow the link. The offer ends on 23rd May.

Pixelmator tutorials

Last updated: 3 June 2008

Pixelmator is a relatively new but very promising image editing application. You can click here to read the Pixelmator user manual, or you can check out the following links to tutorials I have found:

Text & image tutorials

My tutorials:
Converting .png brushes for use in Pixelmator
Converting Photoshop .abr brushes to .png using Gimp
Batch converting brushes for Pixelmator

Wooster's tutorials:
Blueprint and Sketches
Reflection and Gloss
Disco Effect
Using the Color Picker
Using Automator with Pixelmator
Manga Scanlation

Other tutorials:
Abduzeedo.com

Video tutorials

Sebastiaan's tutorials:
Creating a Graduated Neutral Density filter
Removing red eyes
3 ways to sharpen images
Making a realistic drop of water
Creating rounded corners and a reflection
Creating a Badge

Other video tutorials:
JustinSeeley.com
Bernskiold.com
ScreenCastsOnline.com
Expert Village
Smokey's Video Tutorials
Agupoli on YouTube (Spanish)

The sites in the "Other tutorials" and "Other video tutorials" categories have links to their various tutorials on their own sites.

Abduzeedo has tutorials for creating some stunning effects, but unfortunately they are all missing some steps, and the author doesn't seem to answer questions in the comments. You can still learn new things by following the tutorials though, even if you aren't able to exactly replicate the effects.

The video tutorials mostly just walk you through basic features of Pixelmator, but check through them to see if there's anything useful to you.

If anyone knows where to find any other Pixelmator tutorials, please leave a comment! ;)

60 free stock photos from iStockphoto

For those of you who have never heard of iStockphoto, it's a site that sells quality photos, vector illustrations, flash files, and videos for use in websites, advertising, screensavers, etc. If you're a photographer or illustrator, you can sign up and sell your own work too.

While looking for some photos to use in graphics, I found the following links which I thought I'd share with you:

StockLayouts Promo - 10 free photos from a selction of 50

HP Promo - 10 free photos from a selction of 50

Scoopt Promo - 30 free photos from a selction of 60

iStockphoto Camera Hunt - Find the 4 hidden logos to get 5 free credits, which can be used to buy anything on iStockphoto

Free Weekly Photo - There's a new free photo every week, and at the bottom of the page are links to the previous 3 free photos

Free Monthly Vector - There's a free vector illustration every month, and at the bottom of the page is a link to the previous month's illustration.