Free stuff for you

I have some really cute looking holiday themed freebies for you through the Share the Memories affiliate program. These links will take you to the my memories store, but you don't need the my memories scrapbooking software to make the freebies work. They will work in any image program. They look like they would make some great cards. I think I'm going to grab them myself and see what I can do with them this year.

VM Distortion Example Gallery

Please remember, these are not finished artwork.  All I did was choose a free public domain image and run the filters to give examples of what they can do.  You can click the thumbnails for a better look.

Most of the VM filters have several sliders that greatly vary the effects.

How I use the VM Distortion Collection

Tumbler, The Black Hole, Center Mirror, and Gear are all useful for water effects in photomanipulation.  The Black Hole is probably also useful in space art, but I haven't done much of that so I can't say.

Flip Chop, Mosaic Ripple, and Vision Impossible are good for surreal art and some textures

Radiator, Sausage, Radial Pox, Smallpox, and  Distortion By Transparency are useful abstract art when you want to keep the source colors but not the structures.

Original Image
Full size here on the photographer's Pixabay

VM Extravaganza Example Gallery

Please remember, these are not finished artwork.  All I did was choose a free public domain image and run the filters to give examples of what they can do.  You can click the thumbnails for a better look.

Most of the VM filters have several sliders that greatly vary the effects.

How I use the VM Extravaganza Collection

White Lines, Shoutin! and Vasarely are the ones I find most useful in making textures and brushes.

Cyberdelic, Edgeburner, Hallucination, Aura Detector and Psychedelic are useful for--you guessed it--trippy colorization in photomanips.

The other ones in this collection are pretty stylized in what they do.  You might find them useful if you're looking for the kind of image they generate, but they're not really my thing.

Original Image
Full size here on the photographer's  Pixabay

Gallery Below

Stuff I use: Visman Filters

The three graphic software products I'm most familiar with all come with some nice built-in filter effects.  Photoshop seems to have the most, which is probably one reason it's become the industry standard.  I've found that there are ways to reproduce most--if not all--commonly used filter effects in Paint Shop Pro.  Sometimes PSP has similar built-in effects, and sometimes it requires a work-around.  A lot of filter effects can be done manually, but the filter makes them quicker.  In addition to built-in filters, there are user-made plugins, and collecting them can get a little overwhelming after a while.  It's hard to remember which ones do what, and there are many similar ones out there.

My go-to filter set is a freeware collection (Visman or "VM") that I've been using since I first got Paint Shop Pro.  I found it on a tutorial site that no longer exists.  There are several sets and a total of around 70 filters in all.  In PSP, they appear in your Effects menu and each set has a submenu titled VM (something.)
These are primarily distortion filters.  If you're looking for artistic, painting effects, etc I recommend Xero Filters.

As for the VM filters, some are more useful than others depending on what you do.  For the most part, I make 2D collages and photomanips, or I make graphic resources.  So the ones that are useful to me may not be useful for someone else.  Some produce similar effects while others are really unique.  So what I want to do is provide an example gallery for each set.  There used to be some good ones online, but I haven't been able to find one, so I decided to make one myself.  It's going to take me a while to get them up, so check back if you're interested.

These example galleries do not contain finished artwork.  All I did was choose a free, public domain image and run the filters on them to show what the effects look like.  When I use the filters for finished work, I will link to it from here.

VM Distortion
VM Experimental
VM Extravaganza
VM Instant Art
VM Natural
VM Toolbox

Go To Galleries

I remember a time when it was almost impossible to find quality stock and resources without having to pay for them.  Digital designers spent small fortunes on CD libraries full of images and brush tips etc.  Now the opposite is true.  With the advent of high speed internet, anyone and everyone can start sharing their resources--and that's great! Especially when the people are kind enough to share them for free.

I like resources.  I find them every bit as fun to make as the designs we use them for.  The difficult part is that I make more than I can ever use (or post) and I download a lot more than I can realistically sort through when I'm looking for something specific.

Sometimes I just browse through what I've got to find something that sparks inspiration.  When I'm looking for something specific, though, there are relatively few places I go.  (Usually even when I'm just looking for random inspiration, I start with the same places first.)

So, I decided to compile a list of places I go a lot. This isn't a "credit and resources list."  Credits are listed in my individual posts wherever possible.

 -Quick tip- I've learned the hard way that it's a good idea to save all downloaded resources and stock images in a subfolder with the maker's name attached.  I have folders for each resource type, then a subfolder by style.  Inside that, there are subfolders with each resource maker's name, so (hopefully) I don't lose track of who made what.  I started doing this about 3 years ago, but I've been doing digital art for a lot longer than that.  Some of the older resources that have survived my computer disasters don't have a maker's name on them and sadly I have no idea who made them anymore.

So, without further ado.  Listed in order of use:

Celestial-star.net-Most of the brushes I use if I didn't make them come from this website.
Hybrid-genesis.com-A majority of textures I use  (except for mine) come from here.  It's the first place I go when I'm looking.

Intellecta Design-This is the publisher of the ornament fonts I use in some of my designs.  Really cool fonts.

Billy Alexander- My favorite stock artist, rgbstock gallery.  (RGB stock is a cool site because the licensing terms directly allow derivative use with credit to the stock provider.)

Nemo -Huge gallery of cool high quality clipart in public domain.

Hans Braxmeier-A new stock photographer I've found this month on pixabay, but considering how much I have been drooling over his gallery in the past few nights, I think it's safe to include him on the go-to list. (Pixabay is awesome for high quality public domain images.)

Elandria @ Deviantart-Wonderful stock photography and gorgeous costumes for the fantasy-lovers out there.  Also a Labyrinth fan, which is an extra win in my book.  Another newer gallery I've discovered, but as I've used 3 of her stocks in the past 2 weeks, she deserves to be on the list too.

Fuzzimo.com-This is where I got the Compass Rose Design In my headers and logos.

Apophysis Tutorial-Not a gallery, but a tutorial that I think exemplifies what a tutorial should do.  It explains, clearly, what the program is doing and why the user's actions work the way they do.  It's simple, straightforward, and easy to follow along.  (Note: I'm not much of a fractal artist right now, mainly because I feel like I spend most of my time in fractal explorers going "No...no...no...no...ooh, that's promising...DAMN, what did I do to it?" This tutorial helps with that.)

---Some new sites I found this week: 12/6/12--


Thinkdesignblog.com-Just found this site earlier in the week, but I love it.  I've downloaded a bunch of freebies.  Definitely worth checking out.

Obsidiandawn.com-I haven't looked much at the other stuff, but there are some really cute sketch brushes I've been playing with.  I'm sure I'll be spending a lot of time here.

Texturemate.com-Nice high res photo textures to play with.

WebtreatsETC-Lots of high res textures and patterns here (with imagepacks for non PS users, yay!)


And that's it.  I'll update the list as I find any other go-to folks.