*** From the Archives ***

This article is from February 25, 2010, and is no longer current.

Free For All: Something for Nothing

Instant Photo Frames
The following free Photoshop actions add frame effects to photos. Although these actions were created with Photoshop CS4, they should work with CS2 and CS3, as well. Click on each image below to visit its download page.







Forms for Your Design Business
Form and contract creation is the last thing most freelancers and small agency owners want to do (except maybe taxes). Still, you need solid, clear, legal forms and agreements to protect yourself, your business, your employees (even if you’re the only one), and your clients. You can start your own documents from scratch, and there are plenty of books to walk you through the process. But if you don’t want the hassle and potential risk of creating your forms from scratch, start with templates and customize them to your needs.
The Business of Design (BoDo) blog is distributing seven forms to help you get started organizing and protecting your business. The free PDF forms include Acceptance of Proposal, Change Order, Client Questionnaire, Non-Disclosure Agreement, Print Project Release Checklist, Print Request for Quote, and Project Approval. You can download each of them individually here.

iPad Template and Design Kit
You probably know that Apple premiered its long-awaited giant iPod Touch iPad in January. The news was met with mixed reactions primarily because the iPad is not, as was anticipated, the Apple equivalent of a Tablet PC. Rather than running OS X, it runs the iPhone OS, meaning you can install apps on the iPad, but not full applications like Photoshop, InDesign, or Halo. (Plus there’s the whole controversy about Apple refusing to enable Flash content to run on the iPad.)
Still, the iPad is a major new product from Steve Jobs and Company, with all the marketing might of the Cupertino juggernaut’s lifestyle brand behind it. Even if it isn’t the next big thing in portable Macintosh technology for professional users, the iPad will find its way onto the streets, and developers will build apps for it. For designers like you and me, that means plenty of work to be had designing user interfaces and marketing for developers’ iPad apps.
Get in on the ground floor of iPad design now by familiarizing yourself with the environment of the iPad, its graphical user interface specs, and common elements. This awesome design kit from Geoff Teehan, a fully layered Photoshop PSD with plenty of scalable vector elements, will get you ready to propose, mock-up, and design for the iPad before the product actually goes on sale next month.

Do you prefer to do your UI comping in Fireworks? No sweat! Here’s Resoluut.com’s Fireworks PNG port from Geoff’s PSD.
22 High-Res Textures on Black
As the creator of these textures says, “Everything looks better on black.” After trying out some of these 22 free textures, I have to agree with him. They’re print-ready at 4,000 x 5,000 pixels, but with 300 PPI resolution they can easily be scaled in Photoshop, Illustrator, or Flash for Web or RIA use as well. You could even use them in your iPad designs because MediaMilitia.com has released them royalty free, including for commercial use!

You can see all the textures close-up before downloading here.
Unique Symmetrical Drawing
MyOats, an online drawing application now in beta, takes a unique approach to drawing. It won’t replace Illustrator and Photoshop, but it isn’t meant to; MyOats draws in a way that’s very different from your main tools, and in fact complements them. Rather than drawing each line individually as you would in a standard image editor or vector drawing program, in MyOats you draw symmetrically, creating shapes with different numbers of sides, and radial stars and spirals with differing point and curve counts. Then you modify those Spirograph-like drawings with effects to color, soften, and transform them.
The experience of drawing with MyOats is difficult to describe. To fully understand it, you’ll just have to give it a try for yourself.

What can I find free for you? Free fonts? Photoshop brushes? How about 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.

Pariah S. Burke is the author of many books and articles that empower, inform, and connect creative professionals.
  • Anonymous says:

    Thank You for sharing these Framing Actions – too too kewl for school! ;-)

  • Anonymous says:

    thanks so much :)

    how ’bout some more free designer fonts?

  • Pariah Burke says:

    You’re most welcome!

  • Pariah Burke says:

    Thank you!

    Keep watching Free for All. There’s a new all free fonts edition in the works!

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