All the photoshop tips i can give you
  • Don't ABUSE eyecandy, stay away from fire, inner bevel blows.
  • Make a selection, do a linear gradient, contract the selection, do another linear gradient, and it looks 3d, sort of.
  • For plastic looking balls, do the sphere gradient in a circular selection, then add highlights with the brush angle stretched, and then apply a gaussian blur.
  • Save every selection, even the ones you don't think you need.
  • If you save a selection, then load the selection, render a lightsource with that selection channel turned on, you get a 3d/lighted effect.
  • Less is more.
  • Eyecandy glass is apparently useful, sin and faust use it all the time. i can't get the damn thing to work. it does metal and whatnot.
  • Eyecandy cutout can make selections looked raised and not cheesy.
  • If a filter looks bad in normal mode, try it in quickmask, go back to normal and play with the brightness.
  • To get the edge of a unaliased picture to look better, select the outside of it with the magic wand, contract it, then blur it.
  • If you expand a selection by 16, then contract it by 16, it isn't the same, its a little changed. Save every selection.
  • Take a basic shape as a selection, go to quickmask, load the quickmask selection, do a eyecandy glow, unselect, filter->pixelate->color halftone.
  • If you think something looks wierd, get a second opinion, after you stare at the same image for 2 hours, everything looks bad.
  • Kai's power tools is a pretty useless set of filters. The only group of good plugin filters is eyecandy, and it has some low points.
  • Layer effects, although they seem lame, can be pretty handy.