Official Colin Smith Blog (kiwicolin)
News and views from inside the Visual Arts Industry
PhotoshopCAFE.com Acquisition of Leading Publisher, Software Cinema
PhotoshopCAFE.com, one of the leading online Photoshop, design and photography resources announced today the acquisition of the industry leading training company Software Cinema. Software Cinema (http://www.software-cinema.com) is rich in heritage being founded by the much celebrated late photographer Dean Collins, who was the leading educator in photographic lighting techniques. Dean pioneered photographic seminars and created [...]
Adobe features Colin Smith and PhotoshopCAFE on their site as a Success Story
Despite his busy schedule, Smith is always willing to share his ever-expanding expertise with the Photoshop community. To this end, he founded one of the world’s most popular Photoshop resource sites, PhotoshopCAFE.com. The site started as an outlet for writing tutorials and tips on Photoshop and has since grown into one of the most popular Photoshop sites on the web with more than 20 million visitors since it was launched nearly ten years ago.
Newest Posts
Apple iBooks Textbooks. The end of books?
Text books are heavy, If you have ever carried around a bag full of books, you’ll agree. Text books are obsolete the minute they come out. Thirdly they are expensive, with little resale value, as they are always changing. On another note, in some places, there aren’t enough textbooks to go around. For example, I grew [...]
Colin’s 10 Principles for Better Type Design
This isn’t a comprehensive article on the art of typography, it’s more of a “quick tips for better type design” kind of thing. I don’t like to use the word “rules”, because it makes people think they will go to jail for breaking them. I prefer the term principles, because they are a guide to [...]
Digital Darkroom at the Annenberg Space for Photography
Today I had the honor to attend the VIP advance preview of the Digital Darkroom exhibit at the Annenberg Space for Photography. Russell Brown, senior creative director at Adobe, is the curatorial advisor who – along with Patricia Lanza from the Annenberg – has thoughtfully selected 17 artists from the US, France and the UK to [...]
Facebook: Tell Your Story with Timeline
Tell Your Story with Timeline. An interesting article on Timeline that I though was worth sharing.
Photoshop Curves explained in plain English
I can’t count the amount of times I have been asked how to use curves in Photoshop. They are the most powerful way to adjust your photographs. They appear really hard to use, but they are easy once you know how. Check out this video I created to explain curves in Photoshop. Photoshop Curves explained in [...]
Create a filmstrip in Photoshop from scratch
Here is a tutorial submitted from Hermie (One of our Community Managers at the forums) This will show you how to create a filmstrip from scratch. This is really useful and requested tutorial. You can paste your photographs into it. You can use it as a design element, or for displaying your photographs. Create a [...]
2,000,000 views on our Youtube channel
Pop the cork! Celebrating 2 million! I’ve been on youtube for a while now. To be honest, I wasn’t sure what to expect when I started it, so I only uploaded a few videos. Crazy things is, without really trying, we just hit 2,000,000 views. Is there a secret? Not really, just good content I [...]
The elevens have it – we are in LA
Funny thing is that we celebrated 11-11-11 last week. I posted a little hello video at 11:11 am the most 11 in the world? Here is what makes it nuts, not just the time, the location! We just moved our office to downtown LA. at 1111 S. Grad to be exact, on the corner [...]
RAW or JPG? Beginner’s guide to file formats
This is a question that surprisingly I still hear thrown around. In this post I discuss each of the camera formats in Plain English. I also talk about tools used to decode RAW file and some suggested workflows. I hope you find something here that helps you through the labyrinth of confusion. It’s always been [...]
Blogging or state of the blog
Last week I had the opportunity to attend the 2nd annual Blogworld conference. Since I’m (The PSC Studio) only 3 blocks for the Los Angeles Convention Center, the commute isn’t that hard. It was a rich 3 days of networking and education on blogging and new media. One of the things I realized is just [...]
About Colin Smith
Colin Smith is a best-selling author, trainer, and award-winning new-media designer who has caused a stir in the design community with his stunning photorealistic illustrations composed entirely in Photoshop. He is founder of the world’s most popular Photoshop resource site, PhotoshopCAFE.com, which boasts over four million visitors.
With over 12 years of experience in the design industry, Colin was formerly Senior Editor and Art Director for VOICE magazine. He is a regular columnist for Photoshop User magazine, PlanetPhotoshop.com, and the official site of the National Association for Photoshop Professionals. He also contributes to a number of other graphic art publications and Web sites, such as Mac Design magazine, Web Designer magazine and Computer Arts Magazine.
Colin’s graphic design work has been recognized with numerous awards, including, MacWorld Digital Design and 3 Guru awards at Photoshop World 2001 and 2002, for his work in both Illustration and Web Design. He’s authored or co-authored more than fifteen books on Photoshop, including the best-selling How to Do Everything with Photoshop CS and CS2 (McGraw-Hill/Osborne, 2005) and award-winning Photoshop Most Wanted: Effects and Design Tips (APress/Friends Of Ed, 2002).
Colin is also creator of the Photoshop Secrets Video training series (PhotoshopCD.com).
He is in high demand across the United States as a lecturer, presenting his Photoshop techniques to Photographers and graphics professionals across the nation. He is a speaker at Flash Forward, Creative Suite Conference, Pixel Conference, DL Expo, PIDE and others. He had his own (Flash Summercamp) Tour sponsored by Adobe and Lynda.com. Colin has consulted such companies as Adobe Systems, NVIDIA, Edison International, Apple and ABC Disney Studios.
Colin was formally the Senior Editor and Art Director for VOICE magazine. Voice is a full color magazine that is published monthly in 27 languages and 150 countries.See more of Colin’s portfolio at pixeloverload.com
AWARDS
- Nominated for Photoshop Hall Of Fame 2X
- 1st Place – Illustration: Guru Award- Photoshop World Convention 2002 in San Diego
- Finalist – Web Design: Guru Award – Photoshop World Convention 2002 in San Diego
- 1st Place – Illustration: Guru Award – Photoshop World Convention 2001 in LA
- Finalist: Macworld Design contest 2002 NY
- 1st Place Adobe Design Contest
- Winner: Dynamic Graphics, Bright Ideas design challenge.
- Citation: Graphex 33 Tulsa OK
MAGAZINES featured in
- Computer Arts Magazine
- Photoshop User
- MacWorld Magazine
- After Capture
- Digital Photographer
- Computer Arts Projects
- Focus Guides
- Advanced Photoshop
- Photoshop Creative
- PSD
- MacDesign Magazine
- Layers Magazine
- Practical Web Projects
- Web Designer Magazine
- Digital Imaging
- SBS Digital
- Internet Life
- Studio Multimedia