Top 40

Photoshop Top 40: The Final 10 Contest

Submitted by deke on 2 February 2010 - 12:30pm.



For those unaware, Photoshop Top 40 is my countdown of the most essential features in Photoshop, starting with Feature #40: Reset & Purge and working my way up to #1. And lest you think it sounds like a trivial concept ("hey gang, Feature #38 is Vector Type cuz type in Photoshop is scalable, ain't that just the swellest?"), I go into detail and share tips and tricks on every topic. For free, because my name starts with a G for Giver (not Geek, although I embrace that too).

Now that I'm poised to unveil the Final 10 Features, I thought I'd ratchet things up a notch with a contest. And not just any contest either. The best contest possible. One with a winner every week with gobs of prizes from a host of sponsors.

The Final 10

You'll need to be a member to see what's in store. Which is a lot. Read more » 

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Photoshop Top 40 Is Officially Complete

Submitted by deke on 17 January 2010 - 12:15am.

Ah, it feels so good. Tonight I finished recording the last of my Photoshop Top 40 podcasts, produced in association with my beloved video publisher, lynda.com. And while the most recent ones won't go live for months, I wanted you to have a sense for what's coming. The final two episodes, Features #1 and #2 (more than that I cannot tell you) feature the transformation of this image by Jason Stitt over at stock image vendor extraordinaire Fotolia . . .

into a full-blown Na'vi teen yearbook picture, a la the obscure art-house flick Avatar.

Click the image above for high-res. (I can't give you a high-res of the base photo; it's a commercial image for sale at a very reasonable price.) Read more » 

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Photoshop Top 40: The Contest Results

Submitted by deke on 27 December 2009 - 12:28pm.

Myyyy Photoshop, myyyy Photoshop, Top 40! Okay, so actually, it's the Top 3. That is, the Top 3 entries in our recent Photoshop Top 40: The Contest. I asked you to create a magnificent piece of artwork that celebrates no fewer than three of the features from my Photoshop Top 40 podcast. Happily, your response was overwhelming. Sadly, your response was overwhelming on Christmas Eve, while I and my sidekick Colleen were with our children. But eventually, we found time to review all 146 enthusiastically submitted entries. (Thank you, by the way! Nothing gets us going like a hot contest!)  From that, and with great difficulty, we have selected three winners.

I promised our choices would be purely subjective. And they are. But subjected to the things we love: Photoshop craftsmanship and creative ingenuity. And, go figure, we liked pieces that celebrated the theme of the contest, Photoshop Top 40. In other words, good art direction trumped precise execution, although our winners showed some mad skills. Read more » 

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Photoshop Top 40: The Contest

Submitted by deke on 13 December 2009 - 6:00pm.

My Photoshop Top 40 countdown continues. And now that we’ve moved into the realm of the Top 20 (drumroll please), the whole gang here at dekeOnline figured it was time for a contest. And the prizes are phenomenal!

This is no small contest. It's a grand, knock-down drag-out, show-us-your-talent contest in which three lucky winners will take home a jackpot of prizes just in time for the holidays. The Grand Prize winner in particular will receive a brand new Olympus E-620, the world's smallest and lightest image-stabilized digital SLR, as pictured below. I am seriously not kidding--someone's going to win an f'ing SLR! (You have to be a dekeOnline member to comment and participate.)

Read more » 

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Photoshop Top 40, Feature #40: Reset and Purge

Submitted by deke on 14 July 2009 - 12:10am.
Feature #40: Reset and Purge

Here it is, the first official entry in the Photoshop Top 40 series, "Reset and Purge."

I believe there's a joke in there somewhere, but I'll skip it for the moment to tell you two things: First, the image used in this video comes to us from photographer Galina Barskaya of image vendor Fotolia. To learn more, not to mention get a really great dekeOnline-only $18 for just $10 deal, check out fotolia.com/deke. Read more » 

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