Why we don’t skip Photoshop:

3. No clients. This is a big one. 37signals is not a client services company. Rather, they build products. 37signals is a small team of people who all understand the web and web development very, very well. It’s easy for them to visualize things and move on — but it’s not so easy for many of our clients. A big reason we do visual comps at Blue Flavor is to facilitate communication and sign-off with our clients.

This is exactly what we thought when we first read the 37signals blog post. They can afford to skip comps because they don’t have clients, they have customers. It’s a subtle difference but an important one.

There is some really nice work over on Worth1000.com (and some not so nice), for example:

“The Photoshop curves tool is perhaps the most powerful and flexible image transformation, yet it may also be one of the most intimidating.”

Curves has always seemed like black magic to me (I’ve always relied on Levels for brightness and contrast adjustments) and is the only thing that keeps me from calling myself an expert Photoshop user. This tutorial goes a long way towards explaining the tool.

This Fire effect is one of the better ones out there.

Reminds me a little of Lavallee’s “Tru Fire” airbrushing technique.

Technical Illustrator Student Lessons & Tutorials - Kevin Hulsey Technical Illustration Crazy amount of work. Almost seems like it would be easier to use 3D modeling rather than 2D illustration programs.