Smashing Magazine we smash you with the information that will make your life easier. really.

The Disturbing Beauty Of Oversaturated Pictures and Lomography

By Vailancio Rodrigues, April 20th, 2009 in Inspiration | 54 Comments

“Lomography” is a term quite unknown to most of us, but many practice it. The name was inspired and derived from the Russian “LOMO” cameras. Lomography not only refers to photographs taken with the LOMO camera, but can also apply to casual photography taken with any ordinary camera.

The characteristics of Lomo photographs are oversaturated colors, extreme optical distortions, rainbow-colored subjects, off-kilter exposure, blurring and alternative film processing, all things usually considered bad in photography. In short, Lomography is the act of taking photographs without thinking, and ignoring the established rules of “good” photography.

Just take your camera along with you anywhere and everywhere, and start taking photographs. Sometimes it will yield amazing and creative results. Because it often does, we have collected over 35 Beautiful Oversaturated Pictures (Lomography & Co.), from many amateur photographers.

The names and images below are all linked to their sources, so please feel free to check out some of the other works of these very talented photographers.

Read more...
40 Amazing Online Photography Magazines

By Andrew Gibson, April 17th, 2009 in Inspiration | 95 Comments

Whatever country we live in, we're probably all familiar with the well-known photography magazines available in our newsagents and bookstores. The UK has Practical Photography, France has Photo, the Italians have Zoom and the Americans have American Photo. What you may not know is that there are many more photography magazines that are only available online. And some of them are good, very good.

That's the great thing about online publishing. It's cheap, it's easy, and just about anyone with a PC and an internet connection can take part. The difficulty lies in putting together a quality publication, something that rivals the best commercial magazines for content and quality (we hope you think that Smashing Magazine just does that!)

As an introduction to the wonderful world of online photography magazines, we put together a list of the biggest and best that we could find. You won't find these magazines in your local bookstore, they're only available online. From photojournalism to portraiture, from landscapes to lomography (and everything in between), you'll find the most amazing photography and discover the work of some of the world's best photographers, both famous and unknown. Dive in and enjoy their work.

Read more...
50 Beautiful Winter Wonderland Photos

By Andrew Gibson, November 23rd, 2008 in Inspiration | 130 Comments

As winter approaches in the northern hemisphere and the nights draw in, our thoughts turn to the beauty of ice and snow. Winter photography, especially in the colder parts of the world, is a specialized niche. Photographers have to take care of their cameras and guard against frostbite and hypothermia. They often venture into remote wilderness searching for the perfect winter landscape. Their reward is stunning imagery.

As a tribute to these hardy men and women, we bring you 50 beautiful winter wonderland photos. We included both colorful photos (especially the colors of sunrise and sunset bring out the beauty of the winter landscape) and black-and-white photos (they bring out the contrast in tones between snow and the landscape). We’ve linked the photographers’ names to their portfolios or websites, so that you can explore their work. We’ve also listed some informative articles about cold-weather photography at the bottom of the post.

You may also want to take a look at the following related posts:
Read more...
Smashing Texture Contest Results

By Smashing Editorial, May 27th, 2008 in Graphics | 154 Comments

Last week was really full of hard work for us. The response to Smashing Texture Contest was impressive and overwhelming. We have received over 740 e-mails from over 600 participants, resulting in far more than 2000 photos. The result, however, is not just literally zillion of textures, but truly brilliant textures you can use in your private and professional projects for free. Thanks to all participants — without Smashing readers this texture gallery wouldn't be possible.

What came out of it? A variety of interesting, exotic or creative textures from all around the globe. Wood, stone, metal, nature, ice, sand, fabric, paper, glass, fire, food and plastic textures. A large number of daily routine things observed from a completely new perspective.

You can use all textures we present in the gallery for both private and commercial projects for free, without any restrictions whatsoever. However, you are not allowed to offer these files for download; please respect the interestes of over 300 participants of our contest. Please also consider the license information attached to the .zip-archives you download from our server. When it comes to usage of textures, different photographers may have different opinions and intentions.

Read more...
More (Really) Stunning Desktop Wallpapers

By Smashing Editorial, May 15th, 2008 in Graphics | 211 Comments

Desktop wallpapers are always nice to look at and to draw inspiration from. They may provide with some fresh perspective and offer you some eye-candy for tedious coffee breaks. We are regularly hunting for free high-quality icons, fonts and wallpapers and present them to you, so you don’t need to search for them. As long as we find something beautiful, interesting or useful, we let you know in our posts. And now it’s time for some sweet wallpapers designer’s toolbox.

In this post we present more (really) stunning desktop wallpapers related to typography, photography, illustrations, HDR as well as some abstract and fantasy-related wallpapers. Hopefully, everybody will find something interesting for his or her desktop. All wallpapers can be downloaded for free.

You can also scan through the following posts:
Don't forget: until 21th of May you can participate in Smashing Texture Contest, take a photo, send it to us and win a professional digital camera. We have received over 200 entries so far.

Read more...
(Really) Stunning Pictures and Photos

By Smashing Editorial, April 28th, 2008 in Inspiration | 814 Comments

Photography is a very powerful medium and a very difficult craft. Excellent photos don't only display some facts — they tell stories, awake feelings and manage to share with the audience the emotions a photographer experienced when clicking the shot button. Taking excellent pictures is damn hard as you need to find a perfect perspective and consider the perfect timing. To achieve brilliant photography you need practice and patience. However, it is worth it: the results can be truly stunning.

Below you'll find 50 brilliant photos and stunning pictures — some pictures tell stories, some are incredibly beautiful, some are funny and some are very sad.

All pictures are copyright of their respective owners. Please explore the further work of the photographers by browsing through their work. We've tried to cover different themes so that everybody will find something interesting and spectacular for himself / herself. All screenshots are linked und lead to the pages from which they've been taken.

You may also want to take a look at the following posts:
- (Really) Stunning Desktop Wallpapers covers desktop wallpapers related to typography, art, technology, photography and abstract themes,
- 35 Fantastic HDR Pictures presents 35 extremely beautiful and perfectly executed HDR-pictures.
Read more...
Adobe Photoshop Video Tutorials - Best Of

By Dirk Metzmacher, March 28th, 2008 in Tutorials | 174 Comments

by Dirk Metzmacher

The best thing about Photoshop video-tutorials is that they allow you to observe professionals just as if you were standing nearby and looking over their shoulders. You can see step-by-step how buttons, collages or even paintings are created. Instead of reading through books describing what needs to be selected, activated and clicked, you can simply imitate mouse clicks knowing exactly that you are actually doing the right thing.

The learning curve is easier to climb and the result is easier to compare. More than that: you can observe how it is done from the very beginning to the very end and (sometimes) you can get explained why it is done in exactly this way.

We've searched through dozens of video-sites, forums, articles, blogs, portfolios and communities. And we selected 80 excellent Adobe Photoshop video tutorials which you can use as a starting point to improve your skills or observe how professionals do their job. Among other things, below we present Photoshop video tutorials about speed painting, design of buttons and interfaces, beauty retouching, digital matte painting, photo manipulation, effects and much more.

Read more...
35 Fantastic HDR Pictures

By Smashing Editorial, March 10th, 2008 in Inspiration | 523 Comments

Applied carefully, High Dynamic Range-technique (HDR) can create incredibly beautiful pictures which blur our sense of the difference between reality and illusion. In graphics HDR imaging is a set of techniques that allow a far greater dynamic range of exposures than normal digital imaging techniques. The intention is to accurately represent the wide range of intensity levels found in real scenes, ranging from direct sunlight to the deepest shadows. This is usually achieved by modifying photos with image processing software for tone-mapping. And the results can be really incredible; in fact, many artists and designers come up with some pretty fancy results.

This post covers 35 extremely beautiful and perfectly executed HDR-pictures. Some of them might look surreal, too colorful, even magic or fake, but they are not — keep in mind that they've all been developed out of usual photos, and not a single image is an illustration.

Please notice:
- the selection isn't supposed to be complete which is why we encourage you to post links to further excellent HDR images in the comments to this post;
- there is no ranking, all pictures have been selected due to their outstanding quality and excellent execution;
- you can explore further works of the designers and photographers we've featured below by browsing through their sets on Flickr;
- all screenshots are clickable and lead to the pages from which they've been taken,
- you might want to take a look at the article (Really) Stunning Desktop Wallpapers we've published earlier.
Read more...
Grunge Style In Modern Web Design

By Smashing Editorial, January 29th, 2008 in Graphics | 214 Comments

Most design trends come unexpectedly, evolve over time, become pointless and finally disappear from the design landscape. This holds particularly for web design, which is — just as every other creative field — prone for over-hyping and over-usage of trends. Being used excessively (sometimes properly, but mostly without any reasonable purpose), trends lose their ability to communicate information, express something unique or innovative and consequently lose their visual appeal.

Web 2.0 style is an excellent example for this evolution in design. In the last months of 2007 we've observed a clear example of design abuse, as glossy buttons, colorful reflections, 3D-effects, rounded corners and xx-large font sizes could be found almost everywhere (and we've presented some examples a year ago). However, currently we've been observing a new step in this evolution. Web 2.0 elements start to disappear; they become more subtle, more user-centric, more content-oriented and less loud. Is it a sign for coming changes?

Below we've collected everything you would ever need for a perfect design in a grunge style — design examples, free fonts, icons, textures, brushes and even few tutorials.

Read more...
Flash-Based Galleries For Your Images

By Smashing Editorial, October 12th, 2007 in Graphics | 119 Comments

In many situations web designers should avoid Flash and prefer usual text-based presentation. For instance, in most tasks related to pure text presentation Flash is neither necessary nor user-friendly, and it also has some serious accessibility problems: in fact, "pure" text is easier to maintain and easier to copy and paste.

However, if you'd like to present some multimedia-content, particularly images, Flash can often be a feasible solution, with flexible image management for web designers and impressive visual presentation for users. Used moderately, Flash-based galleries can give the presentation a fresh spark and create a rich visual experience you might want to offer your visitors.
In this post we present some of the free, attractive and flexible Flash-based galleries you can use to present your images more effectively.
- You might find some useful references to further galleries in our article 30 Best Solutions For Image Galleries, Slideshows and Lightboxes.
Read more...