Finding new free photos for your content is not easy. With copyright issues coming in and Google always trying to remove copyright materials from its search results, it is becoming harder and harder.

What sort of free photos you are looking for?

People who are looking for free photos is mostly looking for stock quality images. They might be for using in their college work or maybe for using in their artworks.

If it's for artworks or other things, some are searching for vectors instead of images. If you are a UI designer or a developer, chances are your are in the search of icons.

So here are top of my picks regarding the free photos/vectors and icons.

Unsplash.com

Unsplash.com is one of the best free images site available on the internet

Undoubtedly, one of the best free images offering site. It has a sleek and clean UI. Site loads really fast. You can download images without an issue instantly. No ads at all. Easy to find images. Great results.

Vecteezy.com

Best source for people who are looking for free vectors. There are thousands of illustrations freely available for the designers. If you want, you can even purchase premium designs at a lower price as well.

Iconspedia.com

This is the best source of icons you can find. They have both premium and free icons. What's even better is you can download icon packs in one go. That would be really easy for people who are looking forward to download icons together at once.

These are my most used sites which I use all the time. What are yours? Let me know if you use anything specific which is not listed above in the comment box.

Well, as a regular Photoshop user I faced a really weird situation few days ago. My Photoshop (I'm using CS3 extended FYI :D )  version hangs out every time it loads. It does not even load the standard UI. I had to use windows task manager to terminate the photoshop.exe process.

I was really astonished to see such a thing because I've never faced it before.So I took a moment and analyzed what is really happening. After loading and terminating Photoshop for few times, I became aware that it happened every time while "Reading Preferences" on the splash screen.  So, this has something to do with Photoshop's preferences. After search through on Internet (which Google did a really good job for me), I came up with an answer.

We have to delete the Photoshop's preference file manually. To do that, press Ctrl + Alt + Shift keys and open Photoshop using Right Click on Photoshop icon and choosing open. (While pressing those three keys, you won't be able to double click and launch Photoshop). 

And that's that!!! You are ready to go!

As I mentioned earlier in one of my blog post, designers face a critical issue while trying find good images for their designs. Previous blog post, I have mentioned few sites which are offering free stock images. Today I'm going to tell you about another service which offers free stock images. 

This service is Dreamstime. Actually Dreamstime is a royalty free stock image offering site. But , if you registered with them as a free user,  you can access their free stock images category. They are offering thousands of free images (but I must warn you. They are not in good quality as payed images). But something is better than nothing. You can use those images for your projects without paying anything at all.

So give it a try. Here is the URL :

http://www.dreamstime.com

Did you ever need to convert a raster image to vector format? Assume one of your client gives you his/hers logo in raster format (ex:- JPG, PNG, BMP or so...). You need to use it with a large scale design (a hoarding or a flex ad). But the problem is you cannot scale the logo to desired size since it is in raster format. When you upscale the logo, you loose quality.

So what should we do?

Here is the answer.
Use vector magic. It's a free service up to 2 nos of conversions raster image to vector. You can upload your raster image in to their service and convert it to a vector format such as AI(Adobe Illustrator), PDF, EPS. It also has a stand-alone desktop software which you have to purchase.

 image from vectormagic.com

Give it a try. It has number of settings to set while converting the image that preserves the original look of the image.

Link : http://vectormagic.com/

Did you watch pirates of the Carribian? If the answer is "Yes", did you ever thought "how the hell they created these environments?"

Well my friends, today is your lucky day. I'm going to give you a tip (this is only valuable if you are a CG artist or 3D designer) that worth your lifetime. The software used to develop great environment scenes in pirates of the Carribian  is Vue. It's a marvelous software created by "e-on software".

It's very easy to create such 3D environments using this software. You only should have some simple knowledge of 3D designing. Try it out. They are giving a never expiring PLE (Personal Learning Edition) of Vue. Here is the URL.

http://www.e-onsoftware.com/ 

I have added some sample works from their gallery. Look for yourself what Vue can do!!!!!

 

  

 

Let's face it! You need images. You need images to create your graphic arts, to create your web pages, to create your advertisements and more and more. Where to find these images? Of course! You can Google without a hesitation. But what about the legal issues? All the images appear in Google ( without watermarks ) can be used in our own work? Most of the time answer is "NO".

So this is where you need the support of stock photography. There are hundreds of sites in the Internet which are offering stock photography. But today I'm going to tell you about the best three sites which you can buy stock photography.

1.   iStockPhoto
This site offers nearly 5 million stock files. Including not only stock images, but videoes,            sound clips, vectors. Stock photography price starts from $2 and goes up according to the size.


2. ShutterStock

Sutterstock is another great site to purchase stock photography. It offers you nearly 8 million stock photographs to purchase. Shutterstock has an easy navigation method which offers you with quick results. You can choose many plans to purchase images. You can even subscribe to a 25 day plan and buy 750 high res images during the period.

3. Pixmac
This contains various sizes to choose images. This will be easy and cost effective for you, if you are looking for small size images and running on a budget. Prices are starting from as low as $0.90.