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Any tutorials?

PostPosted: June 4th, 2009, 6:04 am
by Chewy_Solo
Where do you guys find tutorials or the basics for making cool GUI and such? Im planning on making a few skins for XION... Just have never really made GUI before. Thanks!

PostPosted: June 4th, 2009, 12:19 pm
by xonenine
There is the Layer Keyword Reference chart as your best start. The skins are .psds and you can always look at how others implemented design aspects like buttons, panels, sliders, animations, etc.

Googling photoshop tutorials is probably the most useful tool in my designing kit because it offers more than one approach to most techniques.

So I'll get an idea for a spotlight for example, and then look at 4 or 5 and see which techniques I want to use.Sketches are useful too.The thing to keep in mind is that there are often multiple approaches to achieve an effect or design.

Also, there are tons of free .psds and GUIs available, if having a basic idea and a few layers to start with helps. Take a look at Lances website or guiStuff (it's got a new name I think.Also, look in skin resources here..)

You can even download complete GUIs and .psds and that is a pretty simple way to play around and learn, getting fast results you can work with in like 5 minutes. Then you can learn trickier stuff at your leisure.

Lastly, there will always be new tutorials, but in the meantime, any question I ever had or problem with a skin, it was always answered in this forum. :)

PostPosted: June 5th, 2009, 12:03 am
by Jikaru
pixel2life.com is a good place to start for most of the basic. Searching in deviantart will get you more advanced stuff most of the time and the trend now-a-days is "painting" which would be the most advanced approach to anything considering it requires either a tablet or a steady hand...in my case my mouse and desk just suck balls for this type of thing so I need a tablet
...shortcuts include shapes/gradients/styles/and actions and they can be time savers.

Interfaces are probably the most technique required because the different ways to do reflections, highlights, shadows, blending etc...

for blending your best friend is the smudge tool and eraser tool...(or gradient tool in a layer mask whichever you prefer.)

You'll learn all this playing around and the best way to learn is by experiencing and experimenting. Just have fun with it, if you don't it becomes a job.

PostPosted: June 5th, 2009, 5:05 am
by Chewy_Solo
Oh Im not new to photoshop at all. I just never have done GUI before and I wanted to give it a try for some things. I found GUIStation which im assuming you meant by lance's website. It seems to be the best for tutorials that i've found. Thanks :)