Vintage & Retro Effect Tutorials

Ending the drafts!

This is the second out of my drafts folder! Earlier last summer, I was spending a lot of my free time browsing around and reading up on different Photoshop, Illustrator, and Photography tutorials. I had this amazing idea of compiling these wonderful links in one place so one had only to visit my page to have the pathway to digital arts guru at their fingertips.

Yeah, that page obviously didn’t happen.

However, that doesn’t mean that the below links aren’t still extremely helpful! I may yet undertake the journey to compiling my own little graphic design resource links subset though, we’ll see.

This particular set of tutorials has a vintage/retro vibe to them!

Tutorials –

GETTING THE X-PRO LOMO LOOK

PHOTOSHOP VINTAGE EFFECT TUTORIAL

MIX RETRO CURVES INTO PHOTOGRAPHS

MORE VINTAGE RETRO PICTURE TUTORIALS

I particularly love this last tutorial. I’m going to use it on some of my spring/summer photographs and show you guys!

Design Is – Knowing When To Stop

Full Poster Here | Full Poem Here

Day 15 – Transforming and Moving Objects

Day 15 Tutorial – Transforming and Moving Objects

Look, the key is back! 2 versions (: Background patterns and whatnot.

Day 12 – Transparency and Graphic Styles

Adobe Illustrator – Day 12 – Transparency and Graphic Styles

Only used custom graphic styles for this one. Major fun (: I also really love the transform tool, just sayin. I’ll work with it more for Day 13’s tutorial I believe, but it was an easy way to spread my star pattern around while randomizing it a bit as well.

Day 11 – Editing Objects, Layers, Groups

ADOBE ILLUSTRATOR DAY 11 TUTORIAL

Layers and Groups – This is one lesson that definitely carries over from Photoshop. The basics of layering and grouping objects to make my final piece is well known. I’ve been working with layers for years now, and if you get into even a semi complicated or larger piece, grouping these hundreds of layers into folders is what makes for a clean and easy-to-edit final project.

The same goes for Illustrator. The flowers I have made before are made of many different paths. It is always beneficial to combine the paths used to create one flower shape into a single object. Then I can group ALL of the flowers used on one layer of my artwork once more into a single group folder. This way if I hide the folder named "flowers" I can hide them all simply and work on other folders and other sections of my work. Similarly, by grouping all the paths in one flower shape together, its easier to move the flower around without accidentally only moving one petal or 1/2 a flower. Annoying to make sure every path is selected every single time you decide to make a change to the flower shape. WAY easier to combine em all into a single object while still having the versatility of the direct selection tool to change a particular path within my object or group folder.

No durrrr. All my work is in layers! Background layer, text layer, foreground effects layer, background effects layer, lighting layer, original stocks layer even (keep unresized stocks in there + URL’s to them in case I ever need them again)

That’s just the makings of good, clean and efficient art (: I got this!

Day 10 – Colors & Strokes

 It should be noted that the crash course itself provides only the ost basic of overview. It will not, by any means, be your sole guide to attaining mastery. What I have been doing is reading through tons more tutorials on how to achieve specific effects on Illustrator using the tool of the day. I know, for example, that although the crash course’s compound path tutorial taught me how to make a key, it was not the kind of key I actually made yesterday. To make MY key I read that tutorial to gain a basic understanding of the effects, but I also supplemented it with tutorials on how to create a heart, how to create custom swirlies/curly vectors, how to actually save a custom brush so you can use it forever, etc.

Tools take time and dedication (and tons of practice and ctrl+z) to master, so don’t feel stupid about googling tutorials fo the easiest things. They’re only easy once you’ve learned and practiced them. Until then, google away!!

That being said, here is day 10’s outcome.

Day 10 – Colors + Strokes

Day 9 – Compound Paths

 Outcome  

Process

AI Day 8 – Using Brushes

Day 8 – Using Brushes

I LOVE THE LIVE TRACE TOOL! You should use it, its how I gave my text that grungy look. I used the Glass Distortion Effect on my colored text and then used live trace to remove the background, leaving me with perfectly grungy text with a removable white bg. Fun fun fun!

AI Day 5 – Pen Tool

 Ahhh, the glorious pen tool. I have spent years using it on Photoshop and feel myself incredibly competent in its use over there. Illustrator however, is a different matter entirely. Here is what my effort has produced today with the help of my AMAZINGLYHELPFUL Dan. He listened to me whine, bitch, complain, and despair for about the 3 hours I spent practicing/doodling/learning on Illustrator and taught me things that were frustrating me and causing problems before. If you want to learn how to do the grungy text, here are some key words. "Glass" effect on a plain bold text followed by a live trace that will remove the extra white (with the write settings. Live trace in color with a max color setting of 2) and you have grungy looking text you can layer with other things. That was the basic premise behind the text in this little image.

The flower itself was an endeavor that took about 5 tears of frustration and an hour to master. ITS SO SAD, the Rotate tool refused to work with me. Then my anchor points kept getting messed up…my first thre attempts at flowers weren’t aligning properly or symmetrical enough or smooth enugh or petal-like enough. Probably all of the above. EITHER WAY when I finally got it to work, props on Dan for showing me how to merge everything and then set up and properly apply a gradient using the swatches + gradient palette to create my desired color changes and then using the actual gradient tool to apply it.

Thanks for bearing with me! And good night ❤

AI Day 4 – Pencil Tool

 I’ve been trying my best to incorporate previous lessons and technique with whatever the course gives me as the technique for today. And YESS I know its past midnight now but IDC its still going to be counted as Day 4. Because I haven’t slept yet and until I do, tomorrow hasn’t begun. That being said, here you go!

Day Four 
Drawing shapes using the basic pen tool. I also used the shapes + gradients tools to make myself some really cute clouds, couldn’t resist 🙂 The heart behind the cloud is drawn with the pencil tool. I had to move some anchors around to have my way and also smooth the line after I drew the path with the pencil initially but once I changed the colors and positioned it behind a cloud, I felt that it added the right amount of ‘extra’ to the piece. Which is, on the whole, still rather juvenile, I know.