Illustrator Photoshop Tutorials

Stop motion animation in Photoshop

Stop motion animation in Photoshop.

Recently I have been experimenting with Photoshop animation, and found out about creating stop motion style animation in Photoshop. In this tutorial, we will be exploring how to create this kind of animation.

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Stop motion animation

First we will create our elements in Illustrator, and then transfer them to photoshop to animate. We will be creating 2 images, one filled with flower buds and the other filled with fully bloomed flowers. Once you have the images ready, open them in Photoshop. You can do ‘place embedded’ for the 2nd image.

  • Make sure that the image with Buds is the bottom most layer.
  • Now click on the flower layer and select layer mask.
  • Click on mask, use the brush tool (adjust the brush size if you have to) and draw to slowly reveal the flower on the layer. Continue doing this until all the flowers are visible.
  • Now click on Window>Timeline>Create from frames
  • Click on the eye icon next to the bud layer and click back again, this makes the bud layer as the base for all the layers.
  • Select the timeline menu, select all frames > copy all frames> paste all frames > select the option to ‘paste after selection’
  • Click on the menu again and select reverse frames.
  • If you feel the animation is too fast, select all frames and then change the delay option in the drop down menu.
  • Once you are happy with the animation, click on file > export > render video to export it as a mp4 file.

Now your animation is ready to be shared with your friends or social media!

If you want to learn more things in photoshop, I have multiple other Photoshop related tutorials on various topics.

Click here for Photoshop Tutorials

Watch the video tutorial here:

If you cannot view the video, you can find it here.

While you are there, don’t forget to hit subscribe!

Check out all my digital art adventures on my instagram account @thinkbeyondcolor

My Watercolor and Gouache paintings can still be found on my other account @printmesomecolor

Adobe Fresco Tutorials

Adobe fresco Tutorial – import free brushes and paint

Adobe Fresco Tutorial

Adobe Fresco Tutorial

Have you used Adobe Fresco? In this tutorial you will learn to get hundreds of free brushes and draw this illustration using various tools in the Adobe Fresco app.

Adobe Fresco tutorial free brushes

First we will import free brushes onto our Adobe Fresco app. Fresco comes with a set of built in brushes, but something that not everyone knows is that Adobe has a huge set of Kyle Webster Brushes available for free on their page! These are all pixel brushes, but they provide the yummiest textures! You can check out how you can download all these brushes in this tutorial.

If you want to learn more about how to work with Adobe Fresco and integrate it with Adobe Illustrator, I have a tutorial on how to create a pattern with Adobe Fresco and Illustrator. We will be using the ‘live paint’ brushes to create our base designs and then transfer it to Illustrator to create a seamless pattern. This tutorial covers the basics of using Fresco, so don’t miss checking it out!

Click here to check out the Fresco Seamless pattern tutorial

You can watch the tutorial here:

If you cannot view the video, you can find it here.

While you are there, don’t forget to hit subscribe!

Check out all my digital art adventures on my instagram account @thinkbeyondcolor

My Watercolor and Gouache paintings can still be found on my other account @printmesomecolor

Procreate Tutorials

How to animate in Procreate

Animate in Procreate

Since the update to Procreate 5 in December 2019, we can now animate in Procreate in few simple steps. This has been such a huge advantage as we now don’t have to master complicated applications to create animation.

In Procreate, animation works by considering each layer as a frame. You can have multiple layers, but only the ones set to ‘visible’ will be used in the animation. Hence, we will create our animation, layer by layer!

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Procreate animation

Here are a few things to remember:

  • Each layer is a frame. Make the layer invisible if you don’t want it to be included in the animation.
  • There are multiple options to export your video : MP4 or GIF, choose the one that best suits you. MP4 would be the best choice for Instagram
  • You can set the animation to be fast or slow by adjusting the frame rate in the animation setting
  • You don’t have to draw each layer from scratch, swipe right and duplicate the layer and then make the minute changes to get a smoother animation
  • Choose the colors and create a palette before starting to draw the frames, this way it would be quicker as you don’t have to set the color each and every time

Click to watch other procreate Tutorials

Colors used:

I have used just the primary colors in this tutorial, feel free to use other colors if you please.

Yellow: #fed76a

Blue: #467abd

Red: #e14f42

You can watch the video tutorial here:

If you cannot view the video, you can find it here.

While you are there, don’t forget to hit subscribe!

Procreate Tutorials

Painting in Procreate – how to paint a landscape

Painting in Procreate

Painting in Procreate

So what’s this tutorial about?

A procreate tutorial for beginners who want to learn to paint with procreate. Painting in Procreate has never been easier! A complete step by step guide, including details about brushes and techniques to paint a beautiful landscape with iPad, Apple Pencil and Procreate app.

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paint in procreate

Colors used in this tutorial:

Wondering how to easily get all the colors onto your procreate? Worry not, you can download all the colors here for free! This will lead you to a procreate color swatch and a sketch download. If you don’t know how to import color palettes into procreate, here’s how:

  • Download the color palette (swatch) onto your iPad.
  • If download it to your dropbox app, you can just select the swatch and click on ‘send to Procreate’.
  • If it’s not with dropbox, select the swatch > share > open with procreate.
  • Now, go and open procreate and you can see your swatch. Just a heads up, it might not be on the top of list, so scroll and check if you cannot find it.
If you don’t want to do that, you can copy paste the following color codes to get your colors:

You can find the option to input hex codes in the ‘Values’ menu.

67b997   96c43b   23353b

135d40   3e7b3e   d2c9aa

bdaa8b   bfd1eb   587b89

59af5b   ffffff (white)

I have a lot more tutorials on procreate, don’t forget to check them out!

Click here for more Procreate tutorials!

Now that you have imported the color swatches to your procreate, it’s time to paint!

Create a square canvas (I used the one which came by default in procreate). We will be using a special brush for our painting, so that we can mimic the paint brush. Don’t worry it’s absolutely free! Go to Brushes > Artistic > Leatherwood. For the rest of the tutorial, watch the video below!

Watch the video tutorial here on Painting in Procreate:

If you cannot view the video, you can find it here.

While you are there, don’t forget to hit subscribe!

Photoshop Tutorials

Photoshop Animation – create a moving background

Photoshop animation

Photoshop Animation, Adobe Photoshop tutorial on how to add animation to your artwork. Learn in animate in Photoshop. Beginner friendly animation tutorial using Adobe Photoshop

In today’s tutorial we will learn how to animate the background in Adobe Photoshop. All the resources needed for this tutorial are provided for free here. Download it before you begin watching the tutorial.

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photoshop animation

  • Download a suitable image or create your own in Illustrator or any app that you have. I downloaded mine from here. I modified it in Illustrator to make it suitable for the tutorial.
  • Create an illustration to fit this type of animation. I created mine in Procreate and exported it as a PSD file.
  • Open your Illustration in Photoshop. Each object in your illustration must be in different layers, so that you can add animation to each object in the illustration.
  • Click on Photoshop > Preferences > General and uncheck ‘Resize image during place’
  • Select the layer you want to animate and click on File > Place embedded and choose the image/pattern that you downloaded.
  • Right click on the pattern and select Make clipping mask.
  • Click on Window > timeline to open up the Timeline window.
  • Click on create Video timeline.
  • Go to the layer which contains your pattern and click on the drop down menu.
  • Bring the header all the way to the start and click on transform. This will create a keyframe indicating start of the animation.
  • Drag the header to the end of the animation, click Ctrl (or Command) T.
  • Click on the triangle shape and change the X and Y values to move the pattern.
  • At the top of the toolbar, click on the ‘settings’ icon and select ‘loop’.
  • Preview your GIF by pressing the play icon.
  • Save and Export Your GIF by clicking File>Export as>select GIF in drop down menu.
    • If you want to export as a video/MP4 file, click on File>Export>Render Video

You can watch the video tutorial here:

If you cannot view the video, you can find it here.

While you are there, don’t forget to hit subscribe!

Procreate Tutorials

Create simple banana leaves in Procreate

banana leaves in Procreate

Create simple banana leaves in Procreate

Today’s tutorial is going to be a Procreate tutorial, where we will learn how to create Banana leaves in Procreate.

You might have seen people draw these amazing leaves in procreate which create an illusion of being layered one above the other. Let me tell you something, this is actually super easy to create!

We will first be drawing these simple Banana leaves using a procreate default Brush called Mercury,  then we will apply shadows using an airbrush (which we will modify slightly to get the effects we need). Then we will talk about how to add texture and enhance/adjust colors to achieve that almost-real-looking banana leaves!

You can download the Color swatch here:

You can open this page on your iPad to download directly onto your iPad.

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create banana leaves in procreate

A step by step on what we will do in this tutorial:

  1. Draw the leaves in different layers with our Mercury Brush
  2. Modify the airbrush
  3. Apply Shadows using the Airbrush
  4. Group the different layers and create a copy
  5. Flatten one of the groups
  6. Adjust hue, saturation, brightness setting to make it more vibrant
  7. Optional – Apply texture
  8. Export the artwork

This is how your simple banana leaves in Procreate will look like:

Watch the video here:

If you cannot view the video, you can find it here.

While you are there, don’t forget to hit subscribe!

If you like watching Procreate tutorials, you can watch this tutorial on how to create cute stamp brushes in Procreate.

If you would like to get free sets of procreate brushes, don’t forget to sign up for our monthly Newsletter. You get access to the Newsletter Freebies section on this Blog, which is filled with free printables, Procreate brushes, coloring pages, art tutorials and much more!

Painting Tutorials

Painting COVID-19 in watercolor

Painting COVID-19 in watercolor

Painting COVID-19 in watercolor

I hope you and your loved ones are all keeping safe! COVID-19 is creating havoc in our lives and it pains me to see some people just not realizing how essential it is to practice physical distancing. You might be the healthiest bloke on the block, but you can spread to the most vulnerable percent of the population. Stay home and stay safe!

We don’t have to stop living just because we are locked up at home!

Here are some things you could try to do to ease through the quarantine.

  1. Cook delicious things – restaurants are closed anyway, why not build your cooking skills!
  2. Watch those movies/TV series you’ve always wanted to watch but never found time!
  3. Read! Could be books, or audio books or even blogs!
  4. Learn something new. I’m learning Arabic on Duolingo and HTML on codeacademy (both free!)
  5. Find a hobby! There are so many youtube channels out there to teach you any kind of hobby that you want to learn, all you need to do is search! If you want to learn about Adobe tools, checkout my Youtube channel. If you want to learn to paint, check out my skillshare classes (this link gives you 2 free months of premium access)
  6. Don’t forget to exercise! Our mental health can get really bad during isolation and working out definitely helps boost the mood

In today’s blog post, today we are painting COVID-19 in watercolor (or commonly known as coronavirus). Why paint? because why not!

Here are the materials used:

Sketchbook: Escoda Watercolour sketchbook

Brushes: Escoda No. 2 and 4 brushes (they are the best brushes I have ever owned – and No, they didn’t pay me to say that :D)

Paints: Danielsmith watercolors

Masking Fluid: Schmincke masking fluid

So let’s paint now!

If you cannot view the video, you can find it here.

While you are there, don’t forget to hit subscribe!

Do you like such painting videos? I have more on my blog. Click here to check out all the painting videos.

Stay safe!

Illustrator Photoshop Tutorials

Smart objects in Photoshop

smart object

So what are Smart Objects?

Smart objects are layers that could contain Photoshop/Illustrator objects, such that the original properties are preserved and you can perform a non destructive editing on these layers. To edit a smart object just double click on that layer and it will open in a new tab in Photoshop if it is a Photoshop element and in Illustrator if it is an Illustrator element.

Why use Smart Objects?

  • If there are multiple files with the same smart object, updating one updates all instances
  • Use vector objects as vectors, meaning more flexibility with quality, you don’t have to convert them to raster
  • Edit the object as much as you like, rotate, skew, or scale without affecting the original file

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smart objects in photoshop

How do you know a layer is smart object?

These layers have a special icon on the right corner which indicate that they are smart objects.

vector smart object

If you see a warning sign on the layers, it just means that the original file was updates, but this smart object needs to be updated. You can fix this by clicking Layers>Smart Objects>Update Modified Content.

Error in smart object layer

fix warning sign

What will we learn in this tutorial?

  1. We will learn how to link photoshop objects into other photoshop files
  2. Find out the difference between place embedded and place linked
  3. How to use Illustrator vector elements in Photoshop as smart objects

Things mentioned in this tutorial:

The Photoshop mockup tutorial

The Newsletter Freebies

You can watch the video tutorial here:

If you cannot view the video, you can find it here.

While you are there, don’t forget to hit subscribe!

If you want to learn more about Photoshop, check out these Photoshop tutorials.

If you are interested more in Illustrator, here are some Illustrator tutorials for you!

I hope you create something awesome with the knowledge you gained today!

Painting Tutorials

Watercolor landscape – Joshua Tree National Park

Watercolor landscape Paint with me

Let’s paint a watercolor landscape together! I know it is quite boring right now, so let’s paint something!

I do a lot of painting and digital art on my instagram. And sometime I record these painting sessions. My most favorite thing is to watch painting videos which are sped up, but I recently got to know that people like watching real time painting videos as well. So I have been making these real time videos and adding some ambient music to create a relaxing atmosphere for you to paint with me.

I would be super delighted if you would checkout my instagram!

instagram

instagram feed

Skillshare:

If you like painting, don’t forget to check out my classes on Skillshare! You can get 2 months free premium access with this link:
https://skl.sh/33fjZzt (it also lists all my classes).

skillshare classes

Materials used for today’s painting:

Sketchbook: Escoda Watercolor Travel Sketchbook

Brushes: Escoda brushes

Watercolor: Danielsmith watercolors

Watch me painting the Joshua Tree National Park here:

Here is a relaxing real time footage of me painting a Joshua Tree National Park landscape with watercolor, I hope you enjoy watching it :).

If you cannot view the video, you can find it here.

While you are there, don’t forget to hit subscribe!

Let me know if you want the exact list of colors or my swatch card!

You can watch more painting videos here.

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