New Website

Hello everyone!  Long time, no post.

That's because we've been busy working on our new website.  That's right, we've graduated from a simple blog to a full-fledged website, full of all the bells and whistles you expect.  Well, it will be.  It's still under construction, but it is in working order.

What's more, the new site will contain a much larger variety of content.  We are expanding our focus.  We will still have all the great Photoshop content you know and love, but we will also be including things about Animate, After Effects, Premiere Pro, Adobe Mobile apps, and just lots of Creative Cloud stuff in general.  We will also step outside the Adobe sandbox from time to time to discuss things like Blender and the occasional pop culture event.  Additionally, we hope to be able to include articles and commentary as well as tutorials.

With that said, we will no longer be hosting new content on Blogspot.  From now on, please point your browser to Saberune Graphics and bookmark it.  All new content will be hosted there.  And don't worry!  All of our tutorials will always be 100% free, so no registering, or joining mailing lists, or any of that other shifty nonsense.

Thank you for using my tutorials through the years.  I look forward to many more.

Will Mahan
Saberune Graphics

Vector Portrait

Hello, everyone!  I hope you're all getting to enjoy your weekend.  I thought I'd share a little bit of what I've been working on this weekend.

Cheers!

Presentation: Photoshop Workflow Basics

Hey, everyone!  Here's a slide show I put together for an event I was invited to speak at.  The slides were composed for a specific audience, but other than the first 4 or 5 slides, any beginner can find something useful in here.  Enjoy!

3D Model of a Video Camera Created in Blender

Even though Photoshop is what you might call my "first love", in the interests of staying versatile I spend quite a bit of time working in other applications: After Effects, Flash, Illustrator, Audition, etc.  This weekend I found myself sitting in front of Blender, a 3D modeling program.  Here's what came out:

Full render

Rendered without materials

This camera is fully modeling, textured, and rendered from scratch.  For those who care, I used only one image at a single angle for reference.  It's rendered in Cycles.  The sample size is 1000 at 1920 X 1080 resolution.  No textures were used.  It's all done using Cycle's material engine with only a tiny bit of node work.  There is a bit of graininess.  It could have used some more time cooking in the rendering engine, but big renders take lots of time, and it's time to play video games, so couldn't have my computer tied up all night.

Anyway, there it is; a near-photo-realistic picture of a camera that was not taken with a camera.

Comments and feedback are welcome.

Enjoy!

2.5D Mario - A Homage to the Classics

Hey everyone!

I just can't seem to shake my fondness for 8-bit gaming.  No matter how advanced rendering technology becomes these are the characters I appreciate most.

In honor of that I've started a graphical series called "2.5D".  Here's our friend, Mario, being portrayed in the first installment.  As you can see we stayed true to the classic pixel art of the 8-bit era, then we gave it some depth and rendered it under realistic lighting.  It's a new twist on an old favorite.

Stay tuned as more of your favorite classic video game characters get the treatment.

Enjoy!

Minecraft Texture Pack: Update

I've made a couple of new items for the Minecraft Texture Pack.  Enjoy!

Minecraft Texture Pack

So I've got it in my head to try and put together a Minecraft texture pack.  I've done a few samples but haven't decided to go all the way.  What do you think?

Real-time Update Preview Window

Hello everyone!  In this tutorial we'll learn how to set up a live preview window so you can monitor your progress while zoomed in at extreme magnification.  With this simple trick you can spare yourself tons and tons of yo-yo zooming.

Enjoy!

"Resistance is Futile"

I wouldn't call myself a Trekkie, exactly.  I know very little Klingon.  I am a fan, though.  I just got a new workstation and decided it needed a custom wallpaper.  I quickly whipped this one up.  Enjoy.

CGP 2014 Promo Poster

Hello everyone!  Life sure is busy these days.  Here's a look at the project that's been keeping me occupied lately.

This is a promotional poster I designed for the Computer Graphics and Programming department at school.  This sucker is huge!  It's 3 ft wide and 6 ft tall.  I wish you all could see it live and in color.  It looks great!  Unfortunately, unless you live in the West Plains area, you're stuck with a tiny web image.  Oh well, we take what we can get, right?  Enjoy!

Thanks for viewing.

New Facebook Cover Image

We have a new cover image on our Facebook fan page.  Go have a look!

www.facebook.com/saberunedesigntutorials

While you're there remember to give us Like.  Help us spread the word!

Reality Bytes

A friend of mine has started doing comedy video commentary on video games, movies, and other sorts of entertainment media. If you're familiar with "Let's Play" it's something similar to that.

Pop on over to his Facebook page and give him a little support:
www.facebook.com/RealityBytesYT

Or go directly to his Youtube channel:
Reality Bytes on Youtube

While you're at it, don't forget to head over to our various social media outlets:
www.facebook.com/saberunedesigntutorials 
http://www.youtube.com/user/mentosthemage
https://twitter.com/Saberune 
plus.google.com/u/0/+willmahan/posts/p/pub 
  

Remember to Like, Subscribe, Follow, Circle, etc. in all the right places.  Your support is important!

Thanks!

Happy Holidays!

3D Barber Pole

Here's a barber pole I put together this weekend.  I don't know why I did it.  I felt the urge to make a barber pole.

For those interested in the technical aspects:  it was created 100% from scratch in Photoshop CC, starting with basic vector shapes which were then extruded and rendered.  No outside assets were used in the creation of this project.

Enjoy.

Should You Work For Free?

Should designers and developers ever work for free?

The short answer is "Not no, but hell no!"

The long answer is "Still mostly no, but there are occasional exceptions."

Have a look at this infograph for some useful tips on when it's OK to work for free.

http://shouldiworkforfree.com/

Link's Hylian Shield from Legend of Zelda

I had a little bit of spare time today so, as usual, I ended up in Photoshop.  Here's the end result.

For those interested in the technical aspects, it was created from scratch, starting with basic vector shapes.  The shapes were then extruded into 3D objects and combined.  Textures were added.  Rendering was done, and finally a little bit of post-process touch-up.

Generator

Have you ever done the "select layer, hide all other layers, crop, save for web, step back" dance?  Sure you have.

You know exactly what I'm talking about.  You use one project file to generate multiple images then you have to play musical layers in order to export those images one.... at..... a.... time....

You active your layer, select the content, hide all other layers, then you have to crop it.  Then you have to save for web, and THEN remember to undo/step back in order to recover the content you just cropped out.  That crazy dance has seen it's last days.

Meet Generator.  Generator is a plug-in that's bundled with the newest update to Photoshop CC (version 14.1).  All you have to do to get it running is download the latest update and toggle the feature on in the file menu once you've opened a project.

Generator allows you to export individual layers, yes I said layers, as .jpg, .png, or .gif.  It does it without having to do the silly crop dance, AND ... it does it in (almost) real time.  It creates a new folder in your project's directory, or on the desktop if you haven't designated one yet.  It then begins to fill that folder with whatever files you've directed it to.  In addition to exporting in various formats, you can output the same layer multiple times and in multiple formats.  You can even set the quality level and the size.  It's super easy and hassle free.  This tool might just be my new best friend.

I just did a little test run myself and so far it looks like it works as advertised.  I'll admit, it wasn't an extensive test, but the preliminary results are exciting.  I can see this saving me tons and tons (AND TONS!) of time that I had previously been wasting exporting little bits and pieces of a project.

Do you design UIs?  You need this!  Do you design icon packs?  You need this!  Do you always work in only one layer ever?  You ... OK, you might not need this, but pretty much everyone else does!

The folks over at Photoshop.com Blog have already put together a quick tutorial.  It's only a couple of minutes long, so be sure to check it out!

We've Moved to The Cloud

We've finally made the move to the Adobe Creative Cloud.  The only problem now is ... which one of these wonderful new toys am I going to play with first?  Decisions decisions.

Vectors in Photoshop: phase 03, Soft Shadows.

Vectors in Photoshop: Phase 2, Hard Shadows

Here's phase two, with hard shadows applied on top of the base outline.  It's amazing how such a simple addition can add so much life!

Stay tuned.