Over at bluevertigo.com you can find an ultimate list of free stock photos. This website has a list of all the free stock image website on the internet. There are over 100 different sites in the list which include: sxc.hu, everystockphoto.com and freerangestock.com. There are also a large list of commercial photo and videos available for sale.

The other free stuff you can find are lists of: textures, vector art, fonts, pixels, logo types, logo inspirations, corporate identity, sounds, brushes, icon, colour tools, text generators and patterns.

Each of the freebies sections has a ‘submit a site’ feature which allows you contribute to the list of freebies.

I found two free high resolution wallpapers of the Windows and Mac operating systems. I believe the wallpapers are hand drawn on paper which gives a very usually and interesting effect. The crinkle of the paper gives a feeling of depth as if the paper was real on your screen. The wallpapers are created by a designer called Rafiq Elmansy and are available to download for free.

The gradient editor is the panel where you create your custom or preset gradient. There are two ways to open up the gradient editor. Firstly, with the gradient tool selected you can right click on the canvas, and the editor will open up. Or you can left click on the gradient drop down menu on the options bar. The following gradient editor window will show up.

1. This is the list of default preset gradients. You can change the preview of the presets to: text, thumbnails or lists which displays the presets into a different format.
2. This creates a new preset gradient. The new preset will appear in the gradient preview.
3. This allows you to change the gradient from solid to noise. The noise gradient contains random colours from a specified range.
4. This is the colour sliders, notice there are two sets of sliders: the top two and the bottom two. The top two are the transparency sliders you can change opacities of each of the sliders. To create another transparency stopper you can click anywhere in between the two stoppers. The bottom two stoppers allow you to change the colours. Dragging the stoppers blends the colours together and clicking in between the two stoppers creates a new colour stopper.

Related
Gradient tool
Gradient styles

When you are using some else’s computer there is sometimes no photo editing software to edit your Photographs or images. A solution would be to install a free photo editing program such as GIMP or Paint.net. Luckily, there is no need to install free programs as there are tonnes of free online photo editors.



Below I will share a list of free online Photoshop editors:

• Fotoflexer – The worlds most advanced online image editor.

• picnic – Photo editing made fun.

• Photoshop express – A slimed draw version of Photoshop.

• pixenate – The Photo editor of choice for photo printing.

• aviary – A powerful Photo editor.

There is no shortage of free online photo editors below is an additional list of free editors. The great benefit of all these editors is that they are intuitive to use. No previous knowledge of how to use them is necessary. You can simply use them straight away.

• lunapic
• pixer
• flauntr
• snipshot
• splashup
• picture2life
• editor.pho.to
• pizap
• pixlr

I previously wrote a post on free Photoshop actions. In the post, the list of actions was mainly for automating image effects such as applying filters and adding different effects etc. It is also possible to automate the creation of text effect through Photoshop actions. This would save you time and avoid you having to create a text effect from scratch.



Below is a list of free places for Photoshop action text effects:

• Finessefx – A large collection of unique text effects.

• jeffjoneslive – 99 really nice action text effects.

• ctionaddiction – This website it a bit outdated, but still has some nice text effects.

• downtr – A grouped file of text effects.

• indigoproductions – A small selection of free action text effects

Some related Photoshop freebies
Free Photoshop texture
Free Photoshop actions
Free Photoshop gradients
Free Photoshop vector graphics

This is a continuation from the gradient tool part 1. There are three types of gradients you can choose from which are: foreground to background, foreground to transparent, and customs. Below I will discuss and show examples of the types of gradients.


Foreground to background

This gradient type uses the current foreground and background colours for the gradient. So, the example below has a red foreground and a blue background.




Foreground to transparent

This gradient type blends the foreground colour with transparent pixels. In the example below I have used an image to show the transparent gradient. As you can see from the image only the top section has colour while the bottom section is transparent.




Custom

This gradient type is any colour you specify from gradient editor. You can also use transparency in the custom gradients.

The opacity refers to the amount of transparency of a layer. So, if the opacity is at 100% the layer is completely opaque. Whereas if the opacity is at 0% the layer will be transparent, which will mean you can see the layer below.


How do you change the opacity?

Changing the opacity of a layer simply involves moving the slider shown in the example below. To increase the opacity you move the slider to the right. And to decrease the opacity you move the slider to the left.




Opacity example

The image below is at the opacity of 100% which is the default value.



The image below is at the opacity of 50%, as you can see the image look transparent.