This logo is a vector logo and hence scalable without harming its quality. You can download the Illustrator file of the logo.

Lets get started.

1. Set the Fill to none and choose a nice bright Stroke color. I have used the shade #D7DF23 of green. Using the Pen tool (P), draw paths similar to these:

This shape will be the head of the pin.

2. Go to Effect > 3D > Revolve… In the 3D Revolve Options window, turn on the Preview, set the Offset to 0pts and Surface to Plastic Shading.

3. To give an angle to our push pin, hold down the cube illustrated in the window and revolve it until you get a perfect angle, like this. Else you can enter the values for X, Y and Z axis in the boxes.

To modify the highlight, click on More Options and change the Highlight Intensity (100%) and Highlight Size (95%). Also play around with other Light options.

4. Now we will draw the tip of the pin. Choose a light shade of grey as the Stroke color. I have used #F1F2F2. Then with the Pen tool, draw a path like this;

5. Go to Effect > 3D > Revolve… In the 3D Revolve Options window, turn on the Preview. The Revolve Options that were set earlier will now be applied to this shape (unless you have made any changes to the settings).

6. Now move this tip just below the pin’s head and send it behind the head (Object > Arrange > Send to Back). See below;

7. Next we will create a shadow of the pin. For that select the entire push pin, right click and say Group (or CTRL + G). Then create a copy of the pin. Hold down ALT and drag a copy. Then Object > Expand > Appearance.

8. To get rid of the 3D effect, open the Pathfinder palette – Window > Pathfinder. Under Shape Modes, choose Unite. This would flatten the pin.

9. Now we will rotate and skew the shadow and place it below the push pin at a correct angle.

10. Next we will add a gradient to the shadow to make it look realistic.

Our push pin is ready.

1. Launch Photoshop and open the picture over which you want to create the rain effect.

2. Create a new layer using the Layers palette (Window > Layers or F7). Choose the ‘New Layer’ icon (next to the bin icon) at the bottom of the palette.

3. Go to Filter > Render > Clouds. Then reduce the Opacity to 50.

NOTE: You can also convert the layer for Smart Filters (Filter > Convert for Smart Filters) in case you want to revert/modify the filters applied on the layer.

4. Go to Filter > Noise > Add Noise. The Amount of noise will decide the intensity of rain. I will go with 75%, but feel free to experiment with the values. Choose ‘Gaussian Distribution’ and ‘Monochromatic’.

5. Next we will add motion by Filter > Blur > Motion Blur… Adjust the angle for the rain drops and distance as shown below or to values of your choice.

6. Lastly set the Blending mode of the layer to ‘Screen’. This is how our picture will look;

Wasn’t that absolutely simple. Create such cool rain effect in your art work and write to me about it.

In this tutorial, I will show you how to create a Page Curl effect in 5 easy steps.

Lets get started.

1. Launch Photoshop and open the picture/photograph on which you want to add the page curl effect. I am using the ‘Chrysanthemum’ picture from Windows Picture gallery.

2. Double click on the Background layer in the Layers palette to unlock it and create a new layer. Click OK in the New Layer dialog box, leaving the default settings unchanged.

3. Using the ‘Rectangular Marquee Tool’ draw a selection at one of the corners, where you want to curl the page.

4. Choose the gradient tool from the Toolbox, choose a black to white gradient and drag the gradient in inside-out direction of the selection. See below:

5. Now deselect the selection; Select > Deselect or Ctrl + D. Then go to Edit >Transform > Warp. You should be able to see a grid on the picture. Now drag the corner of the picture as shown below:

Click Enter to exit from Warp. This is what we get;

Lets get started.

Follow these steps:

1. Choose the ‘Blob Brush’ tool from the Toolbox.

2. Draw a shape like letter ‘J’,with color of your choice.

3. Now go to Effect > 3D > Revolve… and with the default options selected, switch on the Preview (by checking the Preview box). If you are happy with the shape of the bowl, click OK.

This is what I got from the above shape.

The shape is still editable, using the handles you can modify the shape of the bowl.

4. Our next step is to create apples. Read 3D apple in Adobe Illustrator CS5 in 3 easy steps to learn how to create apples. We will create 3 in this example and color each one with a different color, but do not color your apples in blue or black =)

Our apples are ready, but before we proceed with placing them into the fruit bowl, I would like to show you how you can change the angle of these apples to make them look more realistic when they are placed in the fruit bowl. We will create one more apple, by selecting one that was created earlier, holding down the ALT key and dragging the shape apart. Consider this apple;

At this point we are not drawing a stem to it, we will do that once we rotate it. Now with the apple selected, open out the  Appearance palette. Then click on the ‘3D Revolve’ layer to open the ‘3D Revolve Options’ dialog box. At first, you may see that your shape is flattened back to an ellipse, but switch on the Preview, and you should be able to see your apple.

NOTE: Any changes to be made to effects that are already applied should be done through the ‘Appearance’ palette. If you try using the Effects menu again, Illustrator will ask you if you want to replace your older effect with a new one.

Now drag the cube manually to adjust the angle on enter values for X,Y and Z axis as shown below:

Click OK to close the dialog box. Then once you draw the stem, it would look like this:

5. Group each apple and its stem so that it is easy to move them together. Select the apple and its stem, right click and choose ‘Group’.

6. Arrange the apples the way you would want to place them into the bowl. At this stage we will add a drop shadow to them, which will give them a depth when they are placed into the bowl. By selecting the apples, go to Effect > Stylize > Drop Shadow… Make any necessary changes in the settings and click OK to exit. (Always preview before you finalize them)

7. Now we are ready to place our fruits into the bowl. Drag them onto the bowl and arrange them again if you feel its necessary.

8. We need to create a clipping mask to clip the portion of fruits that are outside the rim of the bowl. To do that, draw an ellipse, of the exact shape and size of the rim of the bowl. See below:

Make sure you cover the rim of the bowl, where the fruits should be clipped. Also make sure your ellipse covers the top portion of the fruits since we do not want the upper portion of the fruits to be clipped.

TIP: Color it with a different (contrast color) to make it easy to draw the exact shape. Alter the shape with the help of the handles.

9. Now select the ellipse and all the three apples below it. Then go to Object > Clipping Mask > Make or Ctrl + 7.

1. Choose the Crop tool from the Toolbox.

2.  Now drag your cursor over the image to crop it. The crop selection would look like this:

The handles around the corners and centers of the four sides will help you adjust the crop size.

3. To crop the image, either hit the ‘Enter’ key or right click anywhere over the image and choose ‘Crop’. If you want to cancel cropping, choose ‘Cancel’ from the same menu or hit ‘Esc’ key.

These steps were easy. If you want some advanced usage of ‘Crop’ tool then set the resample options in the Options palette (seen above). The Crop options would be active on the Options palette when you choose the Crop tool from the toolbox.

What is resampling?

Resampling is changing the amount of image data as you change either the pixel dimensions or the resolution of an image. When you downsample(decrease the number of pixels), information is deleted from the image. When you resample up (increase the number of pixels, or upsample), new pixels are added. You specify an interpolation method to determine how pixels are added or deleted. For further details, read here.

If you want to crop the image without resampling, make sure the Resolution box has no value. To resample image during cropping, enter the values of width, height and resolution in the palette. Use to switch values of width and height. Another interesting cropping option is to resample your image based on the dimensions and resolution of another image. To do that, open the other image, choose the Crop tool, and click the Front Image button in the options bar. Then make the image you want to crop active.

When you use the crop tool to make a selection on the image, the Options palette looks like this;

a. Cropped Area: ‘Delete’ will discard the cropped area whereas ‘Hide’ will make the area hidden. You can make it visible by using the Move tool. Cropped Area option won’t be active, if your image has only a background layer. You will have to convert it to a normal layer (double click on the background layer in the Layers palette) to activate these options.

b. Crop Guide Overlay: The default value if ‘Rule of Thirds’ that adds guides at 1/3 increments. Whereas ‘Grid’ displays fixed guides with spacing depending upon the crop size.

c. Shield: Cropping shield will gray out the area that is to be cropped. You can select a different color and opacity.

d. Perspective: This option of the Crop tool lets you transform the perspective in an image.

1. Open a picture on which you want to place water droplets. I am going to use the Chrysanthemum picture which comes with Windows 7 OS.

2. Create a new layer using the ‘New Layer’ icon in the Layers Panel. Rename it as ‘Drop 1’.

Then click on the Rectangular Marquee Tool and hold down for a moment for the fly out menu. Choose the Elliptical Marquee Tool from the list or key in the shortcut (M). Then make a selection on the picture, where you want the water drop. The ellipse need not be a perfect circle, it should look natural.

3. Next we will fill it with a black-white gradient. Make sure your foreground color is set to black and the background color is white. Then choose the gradient tool from the Toolbox and drag it across the elliptical marquee selection to define the angle of the gradient. You can experiment with the angle of the gradient depending upon the source of light in the picture.

4. Now we will add transparency to the drop. With the ‘Drop 1’ layer selected, set the Blending mode to ‘Overlay’.

5. We will add some effect to this drop. Double click on the layer ‘Drop 1’ in the Layers panel. In the ‘Layer Style’ window add following effects:

a. Drop shadow: Choose a darker shade of the picture. For instance in this example, I have chosen a dark red. Experiment with the other settings.

b. Inner shadow: Choose a darker shade of the picture. It could be same as the shade used for Drop shadow. Experiment with the other settings.

6. Our water drop is almost ready and we will add a highlight to finish it. Create a new layer and rename it as ‘Highlight’. Then using the Eyedropper Tool (I), choose the lightest shade in the picture. Then using the brush tool with a size of 7, draw a small highlight at the top of the drop. (See image below)

7. Doesn’t this look natural. To give even more real effect, we will duplicate the layer ‘Drop 1’. See the difference.

8. Now you have 3 layers creating one drop. If you want to create similar multiple drops, you cannot duplicate each and every layer and try remembering which one does what. Since ‘Merge layers’ will not work, we will group these layers into a group. This will make it easier to manage and when you want to create a new drop, just drag and drop the group on to the ‘New Layer’ icon in the Layers Panel.

9. Now that we have learnt how to create basic water drops in Photoshop. You can create more such drops by duplicating this layer. Since all the water drops are not even in size and shape, we will have to tweak them. Lets see how.

Duplicate the layer ‘Drop 1’ and with the layer selected in the Layers Panel, move the drop to another appropriate place on the picture. To tweak the drop follow either of these methods:

a. Edit > Free Transform (Ctrl + T) and resize the shape.

b. Filters > Distort Wave. The wave filter creates a natural effect. If you are not happy with the effect, repeat the same filter (Ctrl + F) several times until you get what you like.

NOTE: You will not be allowed to use filters on the the group. Filters can be applied only to layers, so you will need to apply wave filter to individual layers. But the effect is amazing as you can see.

I hope you enjoyed reading the tutorial as much as I enjoyed creating it. If you liked the tutorial, do subscribe to the RSS feeds.

In this tutorial, I have used Specified Steps Blending option.

Follow these steps:

1. Draw a rectangle and fill it with a gradient. I have used the Color Harmonies Color Swatch from the Gradient library. The gradient name is ‘Analogous 2’.

2. In the Layers Palette, create new layer. To do that, either click on the New Layer icon in the palette or Alt + click the icon to open the Layer Options dialog box. Enter a name for the layer like ‘Lines’.

3. Now with the new layer highlighted, choose the Pen Tool (P) from the toolbox. Set the ‘Fill’ to ‘none’ and a ‘Stroke’ of ‘white’. White would look nice on our dark gradient. Start drawing curved line, as shown below:

The lines you draw need not be exactly like shown here, use your creativity. To release the line, press Ctrl + click on the other part of the art board.

4. Draw another curved line, like this;

TIP: Use the above image and trace the lines.

5. Our next step is to blend both these paths together. Use the Select Tool (V) and select both the paths. Click on one path, hold the Shift key and select the other path. Then go to Object > Blend > Blend Options… or double-click the Blend Tool (W) from the Toolbox. In the Blend Options dialog box, choose ‘Specified Steps’ under ‘Spacing’ and enter ‘50’ as the number of steps. This would add as much as 50 lines that connect these, giving a great effect. Click OK to close the dialog.

6. Once you set the blending options, go to Object > Blend > Make or Alt + Ctrl + B (Win) or Option + Command + B (MAC).

7. These lines are still editable. By using the ‘Direct Selection Tool’, you can choose any anchor point and move it, to restructure these curves and lines. I feel the lines on the left have lot of distance in them, so I am going to edit the paths a bit.

8. And now comes the best part; transparency. Select one of the paths, choose the ‘Transparency’ palette and change the opacity to ‘0’. This is what we get.

If you make the other path transparent, this is how it will look.

Hope you liked it!

1. Open the image/photograph in Photoshop.

2. Go to the Filter menu > Render > Lighting Effects…

3. From the ‘Light Type’ drop-down, choose Omni. You can leave the other settings as they are, or experiment with them. In the Preview window on the left, a circular ring shows the exact area that will be lit up. You can pull or push the handlers to increase or reduce the area. With default settings, you will get this effect:

NOTE: You can add Directional or Spotlight effect through the same window.