*** From the Archives ***

This article is from April 20, 2011, and is no longer current.

Free For All: Spring into Photoshop Freebies

Optimize Photoshop CS5’s Performance
Released just last week by the Photoshop Performance Team, this PDF whitepaper will help you make the most of Photoshop CS5, squeezing the last drop of performance and speed from it. The whitepaper explains the differences between Photoshop running on 32-bit and 64-bit computers. It also helps you optimize your RAM, graphics processor, and CPU(s) to get the most power and fastest response from Photoshop CS5, and demystifies best practices for working with Scratch Disks and disk caches.

Rarely do I say anything is a must-have, but if you work regularly in Photoshop CS5, this document is just that.
Grid Guides, Margins, and Center Points for Photoshop
“After many hours spent meticulously nudging nav elements and building grids for layout in web comps, I began to wonder why Photoshop didn’t have a grid tool like InDesign. At a certain point I decided to stop thinking about it and just build a tool to do it for me.” That’s what Cameron McEfee said was the inspiration for GuideGuide, a free Photoshop add-in.
GuideGuide’s three major functions:
* Creating midpoints. With a single click, you can set a guide at the horizontal or vertical center of a Photoshop document, or set both horizontally and vertically centered guides.
* Margins. If your document needs margins—say, for photo borders or to create margins for website layouts—all you have to do is define the size of the margins in pixels, inches, or a percentage of the overall document size. GuideGuide will place guides at those locations, defining one, two, three, or all four margins.
* Rows and Columns. Dividing a page or area of a page into equal width or height columns and rows is easy in InDesign via Create Guides and in Illustrator using the Rectangular Grid tool and the Make Guides command. Photoshop? No such feature… until GuideGuide. In GuideGuide, select either the entire document or just an area of it, enter your desired number of columns and/or rows, set the gutter or distance between columns and/or rows (or leave the value empty to have no space between them), and click the Create Guides button. Voila!
GuideGuide is an invaluable enhancement to Photoshop CS4 & CS5, for both Windows and Mac. Here you’ll find GuideGuide’s complete description, instructions for installing it, and, of course, the download link itself. And you can even watch Adobe’s own Russell Brown demo GuideGuide in this QuickTime video from the Russell Brown Show.

Textures!
What would a Photoshop-centric edition of Free for All be without textures to enliven your designs?
15 Lens Flare Textures

5 Grunge Textures

10 Cloud Textures

12 Denim Textures

6 Dirty Paper Textures

13 Found Paper Textures

46 Graffiti Textures

10 Grungy Textures

15 Lens Flare Textures

7 (More) Wood Textures

27 Playdough Textures

10 Rust & Stardust Textures

10 Sky Textures

7 Snow Textures

44 Summer Garden Textures

5 Torn & Stained Paper Textures

10 Wood Textures

40 Random Textures

Go to page 2 for oodles of image-editing actions.


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Pariah S. Burke is the author of many books and articles that empower, inform, and connect creative professionals.
  • Anonymous says:

    You might want to check your profile page links – they are all in the format https://creativepro.com/articles/author/”https://www.iamPariah.com”this isn’t a valid link – you need the target tag in there…

  • Tom M. says:

    Cool! Also check out my free Photoshop templates, textures and actions over here https://newevolutiondesigns.com/photoshop

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