This is my first set of free grunge textures. I just got a new camera and have decided to release grunge textures and some free photo stock. These textures are grungy and rough and can be used in any of your designs. The next set of high-res textures I hope to release is wood detail. I find myself needing wood texture often, so I feel I should release a set of those as my next textures. I hope to have time to release a set of free images weekly. If you wish to share these with others, please link to this post and not directly to Flikr. And of course let me know what you think by commenting below. Note: To download, click on a texture photo and you will be directed to flikr where you can download the original texture size or smaller versions. Free Texture: Extreme grunge paint texture. Free Texture: Rough, grunge bumpy stone texture. Free Texture: Grungy painted aged wood. Free Texture: Grunge concrete texture. Free Texture: Rough, Grunge paint splash concrete.

The Illustrator Pathfinder pallette is a simple and Powerful set of tools for manipulating shapes and creating other shapes from multiple shapes. I use illustrator on my Job all day; I find myself using the Pathfinder at lease once for each job I do. I will first take you through the general information on how to use the Illustrator Pathfinder Pallete. I will then list all of the buttons with a description and a visual before and after. Illustrator Pathfinder Basic Tutorial: The Pathfinder palette is very simple to use. Each of the buttons interacts with 2 or more shapes. Each button has a very specific action. These buttons can be confusing because some of them do the same thing. I show examples later in this tutorial which aim at showing the differences between each button. To begin, I will show you how to use the first button “Add to Shape Area” to make an obect out of a number of different objects. 1. Make a new Illustrator document and draw a circle, a long rectangle and...

I have been working with Illustrator for some time and I have had a lot of people ask about problems with the color black. There are several problems that can crop up when using black in Illustrator, understanding how to use the “Appearance of Black” settings should help clear this up. As a note, this setting also shows up in Adobe InDesign and is imporant. What do the “Appearance of Black” settings mean in human terms? Appearance of black is a setting in Adobe Illustrator that allows you to change how the color black is shown on your screen and how it is output to your printer and exported RGB images. What is “Rich Black”? Rich black is a deep black that is very dark. Regular black is a very dark grey. The difference mainly matters in printing. A typical rich black mixture might be 100% black ink, and 50% of each of the other three inks (Cyan, Yellow and Magenta). When you use the “Black” swatch in Illustrator, you get regular black (100%...