psFreak

If you're looking for a clean custom web design, then visit the incredible team over at Captain Marketing Thanks for visiting!

1. 3D Abstract Spiral

2. Abstract Light Rays

3. Exploding Planet

4. Alien Water

5. Organic Flesh Fan

6. Intense Solar Flare

7. Spiral Vortex

8. Plasma Ball

9. Organic Raw Flesh

10. Alien Organism

11. Cosmic Blast

12. Volcanic Background

13. Abstract Background

14. Energy Twirl

15. Abstract Designer Background

16. Digital Flower

17. Electric Plasma Gel

18. Light Burst Background

19. Trippy Wave

20. Fluffy Realistic Clouds

21. Waves and Bubbles

22. Milky Twirl

23. Easy Apophysis

24. Spiral Vortex

25. Ice Texture

26. Cool Background

27. Blue Waves

28. 3D Tubes

29. Smolding Gold

30. Realistic Ice Effect

We are currently redesigning psFreak, and a newer version will be up and running as soon as we finalise a few elements. The new version is planned for release by Christmas (hopefully much earlier than that). Till then, we hope you enjoy our posts.

Chinese Central Television building

Currently under construction in Beijing, this structure is to be the new headquarters of China Central Television (CCTV) and is one of the first of a series of buildings to be built in the city’s CBD. It is expected to be completed in time for the 2008 Summer Olympics. The building was designed by Rem Koolhaas and Ole Scheeren. It will stand at 234 metres tall and will have 54 floors.

Taipei 101

Taipei 101 is a 101 floor landmark located in Taipei, Taiwan. At 1670 ft. high, it has an aesthetically pleasing design and certainly brightens up the Taipei skyline. It is officially the world’s tallest building in the following categories – highest structurally, highest roof and highest occupied floor. (The Sears Tower in Chicago, USA is the tallest building in terms of overall height) The building was designed by C.Y.Lee & partners and constructed by KTRT Joint Venture from 1999-2004. It holds the honours of the highest building till the completion of the Burj Dubai tower as international architectural standards define a building as a structure that can be occupied.

Beijing International Airport

China is emerging as a new front-runner in the world with its rapid growth. It houses some of the world’s best designed buildings. The Beijing Int. Airport is just one such splendid example. It was designed by Foster & Partners, and is set to open by the end of 2007. To help passengers distinguish between different sections of the vast space, skylights cast different shades of yellow and red light across walls — a subtle but innovative navigational aid. The airport was designed with sustainability in mind. It has an environment control system that helps reduce carbon emissions, and it cleverly utilises the skylights on a south-east axis to keep the building cool.

Burj Al-Arab

At 1053 ft, the Burj Al-Arab is the tallest building to be used exclusively as a hotel. This iconic landmark resembles the billowing sail of a boat and is a symbol of Dubai’s urban landscape. For more information on specific design features of this building, visit Wikipedia.

Burj Dubai

The Burj Dubai, upon completion will be the world’s tallest man made structure by any measure. In September this year, it surpassed the CN Tower in Canada to become the world’s tallest free-standing structure. For more information, visit the official Burj Dubai website. Click here to view previous design concepts.

Dongtan Eco City, China

Designed by Arup, this city is planned to be eco-friendlyzero-greenhouse-emission transit and complete self-sufficiency in water and energy, together with the use of zero energy building (i.e. net energy consumption is zero over a period of time) principles. Despite receiving mixed reactions from people, it has a very positive outlook and provides fresh solutions for environmental sustainability.

Freedom Tower

The Freedom tower is the most symbolic of the new buildings planned for the World Trade Center site. “Incorporating the highest standards of design, safety, engineering and building technology, Freedom Tower will re-establish New York City as the epicentre of high-rise skyscraper design and serve as a symbol of the revitalisation of lower Manhattan. At 1,776ft, Freedom Tower will be over 400ft taller than the twin towers and over 100ft taller than Taipei 101 in Taiwan, currently the world’s tallest building.” (Source: Design Build Network)

National Grand Theatre, Beijing

Also known as The Egg, this is an opera house in Beijing, China. Located alongside the Great Hall of the People and the Forbidden City, it poses a stark contrast to traditional Chinese architecture. It was listed among the top ten architectural miracles by the U.S.-based Journal Business Week for its energy-saving and environmentally friendly design.

Shanghai World Finance Center

The building’s height and the gaping hole near the top makes it instantly recognisable. On September 14, 2007 the skyscraper was topped out at 492 metres (1,614 ft) and became the tallest structure on the Chinese mainland, as well as the world’s second tallest skyscraper (not counting buildings that have not topped out). Visit the official website for more information.

Linked Hybrid, Beijing

Linked Hybrid, which will house 2,500 people in 700 apartments covering 1.6 million square feet, is a model for large-scale sustainable residential architecture. The site will feature one of the world’s largest geothermal cooling and heating systems, which will stabilize the temperature within the complex of eight buildings, all linked at the 20th floor by a “ring” of service establishments, like cafés and dry cleaners. A set of dual pipes pumps water from 100 meters below ground, circulating the liquid between the buildings’ concrete floors.

Comparison of the world’s tallest buildings

Originality

1. Kulturbanause

2. N.Design Studio

3. Cult Foo

4. Mark’s Digital Farm

5. WebDesignerWall

6. bioLogica

7. Jesus Rodriguez Velasco

8. cabanadigital

9. funci

Simplicity

10. SimpleBits

11. 31Three

12. RIKCAT

13. farfromfearless

14. MassivePress

15. Design Disease

16. Challies

17. Bill C. English

18. aiAlex

19. Elitist Snob

20. blog.critical

21. PSDTuts

22. TNTPixel

23. adi Pintilie

24. Jamie Huskisson

25. the Geniant blog

26. BubblesSOC

27. Doug Dosberg

28. SuperfluousBanter

29. surfgarden

30. Cindy Li

31. hopking design

32. Rob Goodlatte

33. April Zero

34. SilentBits

35. LifeSpy

Other Cool Designs

36. Blogsolid

37. Jonathan – Snook.ca

38. NorthxEast

39. grantmx

40. Veerle’s Blog

41. Missy

42. Spoon Graphics

43. eleven3

44. Simply Fired

45. Elliot JayStocks

46. Naggle

47. Luis Alarcon

48. skykhan

49. Sylvia Loh

50. 64k

From 20 Photographs Taken at the Exact Right Angle.

Proper English

Make sure that you use proper english and do not use abbreviations, this is so that your readers can understand you easier and it looks a lot more professional too Also it is a good idea to go through the tutorial once you have completed it so that you can check if there are any errors in it (typos, spelling errors etc).

Use Steps

Use clear, concise and logical steps in your tutorial. This is so that your reader can understand you easily.

Try to have a balance of text and images, try to have an example of what the reader’s image should be looking at at each step. Most tutorials have this covered which is good

Also make sure that you do not miss out any steps so that the reader does not get left behind you and confused which leads on to my next point…

Teach Not Tell

Teach the reader how to do something, do not just tell them how to. Make sure that your tutorial teaches the reader how to use the tools and techniques so they can create more stuff afterwards, rather than a specific thing.

A good example of a tutorial which teaches the reader is Using Light & Shade to Bring Text to Life by PSDTuts. This tutorial provides lengthy explanations of the techniques and explains about the tools that they use in the tutorial.

And an example of a tutorial which just tells the reader what to do is Technical Interface by MickM.

More…

If you would like to learn how to submit a tutorial check out my How to Submit a Photoshop Tutorial post.

To have a look at some more good tutorials check out Good Tutorials which has (mostly) good tutorials on it (most of the bad tutorials are filtered out through moderation).

Step 1

We are going to start off by making a background for our navigation. Using the Radient Gradient Tool make a gradient using #6b0100 and #3f0000. To do this you set the foreground and background colours to the ones we want our gradient to have, and then select the Radial Gradient Tool. Now left click somewhere at the top right and drag to the bottom right of the document and release.

Step 2

Now on a new layer make a white box at the bottom (dimensions are 540 by 20 pixels) using the Rectangular Marquee Tool to make the selection and going Edit > Fill to fill the selection.

Step 3

Next we are going to be making the active link background. Create a new layer and select the Rounded Rectangle Tool and make a selection of 100 by 50 pixels with a radius of 5 pixels, and fill this selection with white.

Step 4

Now we are going to be making the other link backgrounds. On a new layer make three more selections of 100 by 50 pixels using the Rounded Rectangle Tool. Fill the selections with a Linear Gradient from #9c0303 at the top to #750202 at the bottom.

Step 5

We are now going to be adding a Gradient Overlay layer style to this layer so go Layer > Layer Style > Gradient Overlay.

Your navigation should be looking something like below now

Step 6

Move your first white layer above all of the other layers.

Step 7

Our last step is to add the text. The font type that I have used here is Tahoma, Bold and Regular, 14 pt, None, #3f0000 and #ffffff.

Step 1

The first thing we need to do for our orb is have a background. So using the Radial Gradient tool make a gradient from #333433 at the top left to #0b0b0b at the bottom right.

Step 2

Now create a new layer and make a selection of 300 by 300 pixels using the Elliptical Marquee Tool in the middle of the document. Make another radial gradient from the top left of the selection with #dfbe0d to the bottom right in the colour #a01301.

Step 3

Now we are going to be adding some effects to our orb’s layer. The first is an Outer Glow with the below settings.

The next layer style is the Stroke.

Your orb should now be looking something like:

Step 4

Create a new layer, and select the area of your orb and go Select > Modify > Contract by 3 pixels. Fill the selection with #ffffff.

Step 5

Now we are going to be adjusting our white circle so that it is in a bit on the sides. Go Edit > Transform > Distort and bring in the two boxes on the left and right.

Step 6

Adjust the blend mode to Soft Light and the Opacity of the layer to 70%.

Step 7

Duplicate this layer and go Edit > Transform > Distort again and bring in the sides even more.

Step 8

Now we are going to be applying a layer mask to this layer and using the Linear Gradient Tool make a gradient from the top in white to the bottom in black. This will make the layer fade out from top to bottom.

Step 9

Last of all we are going to be adding some text. I am using the font Fertigo and set the colour to #e56821. I have also set the Blend Mode of the layer to Multiply and the Opacity to 40%.

Preparation

Before we we start submitting our tutorial we need to prepare a couple of things. Firstly the title, think up something that will catch the readers attention (they will be scanning through about 20 tutorials listed on a page and you want them to read yours).

Secondly the description of your tutorial. Write out a short (about 20-30 words) description of your tutorial so readers know what is going to be in your tutorial, don’t include things like “in this photoshop tutorial” because they know what they are looking at is a list of photoshop tutorials Be precise and to the point.

Lastly the thumbnail of the tutorial. This is often the trickiest part (well it can be for me) because you need to make a small 40 by 40 pixel image which represents your tutorial in the best way. Try and select a larger area, maybe 160 by 160 pixels and then shrink it so that you can see more of the tutorial. Your aim is to try and find the busiest part of the outcome for the thumbnail so it shows off what you get to make.

Submission Process

On the various different tutorial indexes out there, there is one main way to submit a tutorial – go to the “submit” page and follow the steps Some sites use RSS feeds for automatic submissions, but not any large indexes.

Most tutorial indexes will have you submit the tutorial and then your tutorial will go in a waiting queue where the site owner will review it (usually within a week or two) and decide whether or not it is good enough for his/her tutorial index.

Although Good Tutorials has tried a new method over the last few months where there is a select group of users who are moderators which go through the pending queue and rate which tutorials are good and which ones are bad. After 24 hours the tutorial will have either a high enough rating to reach the front page or will be denied and not shown on the site (except for your profile page).

Where to Submit

I have gathered a list of tutorial index sites, and have listed them below, with the larger indexes at the top. But also remember if you submit your tutorial(s) to a lot of sites you will get a lot of links coming into your site which is always good from a SEO point of view. If you find any more index sites, comment on this post and I will add it.

AnotherTutorialSite
Good-Tutorials
Pixel2Life
Tutorialized
PSLover

TotalTutorial
Tutorial Index
Tutorial Outpost
TutorialKit
Tutorial Center
FSTutorials
FreshTuts
Life2Pixel