Wednesday, August 27, 2008

40 Dark and Futuristic Photoshop Tutorials

40 Dark and Futuristic Photoshop Effects

In Articles, Effects by Danny Outlaw

A question: what do exploding planets, energy spheres, ethereal lights, ruined cities, telepathic warriors, gloomy nebulas and light-rays all have in common? Answer: they look freaky awesome when you build them in Photoshop.

Here's how to do all of the above and more, for a total of 40 excellent cyberpunk and Sci-fi style effects.

1. Aurora eclipse effect

Top quality tutorial that teaches you how to create a flashy eclipse.

2. Create a 'Bionic Diver' using photo manipulation

Create a half-man half-robot diving machine. This effect could easily be applied to any human form.

3. Design a space scene in Photoshop

Learn how to create a realistic space scene.

4. Design a futuristic laptop advert

Create a laptop ad with a modern and futuristic look.

5. Transformers text effect

Learn how to make the cool futuristic text from the Transformer text.

6. Scan-line text

Add a Matrix-style feel to your text with this tutorial.

7. Create a fiery space explosion

Probably your only chance to blow up a planet outside a video game/nuclear warfare.

8. Seamless compositing in Photoshop

Get some top notch advice on blending photos into a realistic surreal image.

9. The making of Mystic

Another high quality tutorial on creating a sci-fi style facial effect.

10. Wicked alien-entity text effect

Add a simple alien type effect to your text.

11. Glowing orb with dial

Create a detailed glowing orb that has a wide variety of uses.

12. Space lighting effects

High quality tutorial that teaches some basic lighting techniques.

13. The Dark Knight grunge wallpaper

Create a dark poster that mimics the design of the new Batman movie.

14. Create a futuristic building interior

Create a futuristic looking interior for a hi-rise building.

15. Make a realistic star field

Neat tutorial that helps you create a realistic star field in outer space.

16. Create a futuristic smoke-like effect

A hyper-modern smoke effect to compliment a dark background.

17. Add speed-strails to a vehicle

The perfect effect to add to a super-fast futuristic vehicle.

18. The magic night

Create the sunset of the future. Learn how to create a surreal landscape.

19. Good and evil photo effect

Another good tutorial on turning people into something else.

20. Create meteoric text

Turn your words into a fiery space meteor bearing down on the viewer.

21. Robotic frog

Create a robot frog of the future with this tutorial.

22. Creating an awesome space effect

This is another cool tutorial for creating a neat space effect.

23. Create a futuristic daytime cityscape

This could easily appear on the cover of a Sci-fi novel.

24. Making of an abstract art piece: "Lonium"

This tutorial will teach you how to create a futuristic abstract image.

25. Creating energy spheres

Turn anyone into a someone with super powers with this cool tutorial.

26. Supernatural text effect

Create a dark and eerie Sci-fi text effect.

27. Transform a person into an alien

yet another good tutorial to turn people into aliens.

28. Reflective bubble

Create some neat bubble with reflections of your alien person from the tutorial above.

29. Windows Vista aurora effect

Learn how to create the spacey windows vista effect.

30. Chroma wallpapers

Create a cool futuristic type wallpaper and learn some neat techniques from a pro.

31. Deep space nebula

Make a slick nebula to add to your space tutorials from above.

32. Space tutorial

Here is another cool space tutorial on creating a realistic space scene.

33. Abstract light rays

These abstract light rays can add a futuristic feel to any advert.

34. Planet with rings

A nice tutorial that helps you create a realistic planet.

35. Create a powerful mental wave explosion effect

Another neat tutorial to turn everyday people into super heroes.

36. Our future

Create a image that depicts an end of the world scene.

37. Create an abstract space image

A sweet abstract image that has an awesome outer-space look to it.

38. Star Wars text effect

What's more futuristic than the Star Wars text? A great text tutorial.

39. War movie poster

A top quality tutorial that teaches how to do dark well by creating a war movie poster.

40. Create a mysterious nebula

Another good nebula tutorial that will help add spice to a space scene image.

  • Subscribe to the PSDTUTS RSS Feed for the best Photoshop tuts and articles on the web.

NOTE: Please Digg using the button directly below this sentence only.

Monday, August 25, 2008

Monitor Your Website

13 Free and Cheap Website Monitoring Services
    August 25, 2008 — 07:38 AM PDT — by Rob Diana

livewatchEveryone seems to have their own website or blog nowadays. But do you want someone else to tell you your site is down? So what do you do? Corporate IT shops can install some fancy monitoring software suite that can track hundreds of types of software, servers, ports and hardware devices. That monitoring software also normally costs hundreds of thousands for dollars. Most likely, you want to monitor your website for free, or at least cheaply.

Not surprisingly there are a wealth of free and cheap website monitoring services available. Just do a Google search for "free website monitor" and you will get plenty of services to look at. For most of the services, you only need an email address and the URL that you want to monitor. Of course, when it comes to free and cheap you have a wide range of services offered. To make your job easier, we've put together this list of 13 services that will help you monitor your website.

pingdom

Pingdom - Has a good set of cheap packages, but alas, nothing is free. They come highly recommended by just about everyone.

LiveWatch - A German service that allows you to monitor one server free. The free notifications package contains email alerts, 10 SMS notifications, and Yahoo Messenger. The only problem with the service is that it requires a script on the server in order to monitor it.

Observu - A really, really basic service. You register, add a website monitor with the text that should appear on the page and save the monitor. There are no reports and nothing flashy. You will be emailed if there is a problem.

ServerGuard24 - The prices are not that expensive and there is a free plan. However, the free plan only polls every 40 minutes and you need a banner ad for them as well. Otherwise, it looks like a very professional service.

SiteUptime - One free and two cheap premium levels are offered. The free plan allows only one monitor, but it does have a very clean and professional user interface. The service only monitors from location but it does fall over to another location if needed.

Host Tracker - The free plan enables monitoring for two URLs in two different domains. The main issue with the service is that the navigation is hard to work with. It does use the most distributed network of monitoring servers of the services listed, as it currently monitors from over 50 nodes.

mon.itor.us - Yes, it has a cute name, but cute does not mean limited. The service is completely free with email alerting. There are basic reports for uptime and response time. The user interface may look simplistic, but the service delivers with a more complete offering than most.

reportInternetSeer - "My site has been down for how long!?!" The free offering monitors one URL and polling every hour. The professional plans look to have some really nice features, but the free plan is fairly limited.

WatchMouse - You have to like a service that uses a mouse as its mascot. The free plan monitors one URL every hour. Disappointingly, the premium plans are more expensive than most listed here.

ServiceUptime - They have a nice free service that monitors one URL. There are seven different sites polling every 30 minutes to determine whether your website is alive. ServiceUptime also has a decent reporting package and very reasonable premium packages.

Montastic - Montastic allows free monitoring for up to 100 URLs! Your websites are monitored by two different servers about every 10 minutes. They also have a cute colored logo you can put on your site. Sadly, there are no cute colored reports.

FreeSiteStatus - The free service has nine separate locations monitoring you servers every minute. Various additional features can be purchased for little cost, as well as a service configuration wizard to help you create your monitoring service. One cool feature FreeSiteStatus offers is the ability to create one-time or recurring maintenance windows where monitoring of the servers can be suspended.

Site24×7 - It is free to monitor two URLs that are polled every 60 minutes. This is another service that allows you to create maintenance windows for your server. The premium plans also offer reasonable prices for various levels of monitoring.