Halftones and Edging Effects

Photoshop Creative's December issue is on sale tomorrow from all good newsagents and online at the Imagine Shop. In it you will find a couple of quick tutorial pieces from me.

This first is a guide to Halftone filters in Photoshop CS3, showing you how to recreate comic strip effects using some simple filter applications.



Next, is a 3-page Big Technique on Edging effects. Here, you can find out how to transform your images with a number of different edge tricks including tears, photo corners, vignettes and stamp 'teeth'.

My last Advanced Photoshop projects

My final Advanced Photoshop projects are now on sale in all good newsagents. It's the end of an era. I spent my last few weeks putting together both Issue 38 of the magazine and compiling the new Advanced Photoshop bookazine. The hard work paid off as they're both corkers!


Issue 38 features a couple of challenging tutorials from talented artists Kirk Nelson and Mark Mayers and an insightful interview with Scott Robertson. After discovering the delights of Moo.com and Blurb.com I rattled together an article on self-publishing.

The Advanced Photoshop Premium Collection 2 is a compilation of all the best bits from 2006-2007. Really great value with stacks of gorgeous artwork and tips for £12.99 - it would make an excellent Christmas present for any aspiring digital artist.

Digital Photography School

Blogging is important. If you don't have a blog you're a nobody. Well, that's a bit harsh but I estimate that in 10 years time we won't be reading magazines and newspapers - carbon offsetting fines for publishers and printers will be so huge we'll all be reading online. I am clued up on this and that is why I've added another blog site to my monthly portfolio.



Digital Photography School is a thriving photography blog from Problogger.net's Darren Rowse. Every week I'll be contributing a couple of photography and Photoshop techniques to the blog. Of course, everyone is welcome to comment on the techniques at the end of the posts. It's OK, after years of moderating Photoshop forums my forum skin is thick and durable.

MSN - Gifts your teenagers will love

If you have an awkward teenager to buy for this Christmas then take a look at a couple of Shopping pieces I've written for MSN that are online at the moment:

Gifts for him



Gifts for her



It could save you hours searching for the ideal present...

N.B: I will not be held responsible for any Christmas morning tantrums and/or strops.

Christmas Gifts - Overseas Property TV

Like it or not, Christmas is only a few weeks away. To say I'm a fan of the festive season would be an outright lie. It's not so much the actual day as the mass hysteria that surrounds it. The bonus this year will be that I won't have to work in an office with seven different renditions of Chris Rea's 'Driving Home For Christmas' blasting out of my colleagues' iMacs whilst I am on PDF deadline. Hooray! I really am the 21st Century Scrooge.

I'm also egging on the weeks to Christmas. No... I haven't a visit from Tiny Tim to talk about my 'issues'...I'm going to San Francisco! I love to travel, write about travelling, talk about travelling and I generally think about travelling all the time. I'm very excited by the prospect of both escaping the torture of the Christmas and getting a chance to photograph, what I've been told is one of the most beautiful cities in the world. Fingers crossed the proposed BAA strikes don't put a dampener on things. Although, even if it does go ahead, I'll already be out there. If I disappear off the face of the earth you know where I am. It's not that I couldn't face coming home, it's that I physically couldn't.

This month I managed to put aside my thoughts on the festive season as I compiled and wrote a selection of different Christmas Gifts for the home and for the property mogul in Overseas Property TV magazine.



Overseas Property TV is a channel devoted to property development on Satellite Channel 287. The magazine itself is a glossy treat that's well edited and inspiring to flick through. Even if you don't have the cash or means to move abroad it can help you dream the dream.