I recently moved from verdant but overcast Portland, Oregon, to dry and sunny Phoenix, Arizona. The transition inspired me to devote this and next month's installment of Free For All to two contrasting collections of environment-inspired textures, photos, Photoshop Actions, and other freebies. This month I'll focus on the beauty of the American Northwest; next month I'll compare and contrast it with free resources celebrating the American Southwest.

These resources are only inspired by the regions; they'll almost certainly prove useful additions to your resource libraries for a variety of projects, whether related to the region or not.

Note that page 1 has free photographs, textures, color palettes, and patterns. For free Photoshop Actions and Photoshop brushes, go to page 2.

Photography and Textures
I've collected 120 free stock photos and textures into two Stock.Xchng lightboxes: FFA Northwest 1 and FFA Northwest 2. The images, which range from textures to people, nature to manmade structures, and even a few odds and ends that are unique to the American Northwest, represent life in the corner of the United States dominated by Portland and Seattle.

Note: You need a free membership to Stock.Xchng to download the images in these lightboxes.

FFA Northwest Lightbox 1 (60 images)

FFA Northwest Lightbox 2 (60 images)

Palettes and Patterns
Every climate, every geographic region, can be examined and expressed by the artist's eye in terms of color and pattern. The colors and patterns (from ColourLovers AND Kuler) below dominate the Pacific Northwest. You can download and import them into any creative professional application, including Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Fireworks, Painter.

Click any of the images to go to their download page. You'll need a free membership to either ColourLovers or Kuler to download the palettes.

Go to page 2 for Photoshop brushes and actions.

Return to page 1.

Photoshop Actions
The Pacific Northwest is about greenery and grey skies, rivers and rain. These Photoshop actions create effects inspired by that environment.

Photoshop Brushes
Vegetation, precipitation, bicycles, and quirky people are the Northwest's most abundant resources. Here they are in Photoshop brush form.

Don't miss next month's Free for All, when the imagery, palettes, brushes, and more will be inspired by the American Southwest!

What can I find free for you? Want more free fonts? More Photoshop brushes? How about more online applications that do this or that for free? Tell me in the comments what you'd like to see in future installments of Free for All, and I'll do my best bloodhound impression to track it down for you.

Please note: Free for All will often link to resources hosted on external Web sites outside of the control of CreativePro.com. At any time those Web sites may close down, change their site or permalink structures, remove content, or take other actions that may render one or more of the above links invalid. As such neither Pariah S. Burke nor CreativePro.com can guarantee the availability of the third-party resources linked to in Free for All.