It’s a dog’s life! A third idea for HTML email

If you don’t know what this is about please look here for the first two HTML emails.
This is for a client that do graduate IT recruitment. They send these HTML emails out to 20,000 addresses with a click-through to their site where visitors can search for job, sign up, apply, etc. Well, the first one [...]

How to make PowerPoint presentations and Word documents look beautiful

If your client hands you a .PPT from MS PowerPoint or and .DOC Word and says: “The presentation/print deadline is tomorrow, make this look nice”, what are you going to do?
The answer is to use other programs such as Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Quark, Premiere or Keynote and get creative!
Here are a few tips I’ve picked [...]

Creating a country’s flag inside its map outline

Quite often I’m looking for a simple iconic device to represent a country without having to just reproduce the flag alone. So, as you can see above, why not put the flag inside the country’s shape. Also, it’s free!
It’s relatively easy to find a country’s flag and shape on the internet and tracing the flag [...]

Pop art effect turns photos into icons

I used a slightly different technique for the above picture of David Beckham than my earlier pop art example.
This time I put the Threshold layer (Image > Adjustments > Threshold) on the top and set it’s Layer Style to Multiply. Some of the underlying image was coloured in, some was Posterized (Image > Adjustments > [...]

How to create paper, receipts or newspaper with torn edges

I was asked by a client to present their final figures in a pitch they were doing in the form of a receipt. I thought it was quite a nice little Photoshop trick and a nice idea. Here’s how.
Draw the outline of the receipt, or piece of paper, with the Pen Tool (P), and turn [...]