There are quite a few trends in web design right now. Some still use a lot of twirly flowerly ornaments, others, following the trends dictated by psdtuts.com and abduzeedo.com have proceeded to glowing lines and starry psychedelic effects but the problem remains with creating the shape in the first place. While some designers, like myself, prefer working with Photoshop shapes, it looks like brushes are still a far more popular and accessible tool for many, so here are the top 10 brushes releases for Summer 2008, which can help you greatly in your artwork or web design.1.  Twirly Glowing Lines Photoshop Brushes

 2. Abstract Glowing Lines Photoshop Brushes

3. Scanlines Photoshop Brushes

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The so-called “vintage” effect is becoming more and more popular, however, not everyone knows how exactly to achieve it. It takes more than a mere sephia effect and adding grain-like, semi-visible  noise. So, allow me to introduce: Hand-coloured Vintage Photoshop action. Action includes: Aging; Colour; Cracks; Bending and as a bonus you have the facility of adding Old Paper Style effect. Moreover, bending the photo, as well as adding the shadow, gives the picture not only a vintage-like result, but also a very nice 3D effect. This can ideally work for a minimalistic wallpaper, portfolio website layout or a collage.

TIP! If you want to see all the steps in the action and learn something (actions are great learning tools), check the “step by step” or “pause for XXX sec” on the playback options. Commands within an action can be also toggled on or off, giving you the option to play each command or bypass recorded commands within the action during playback.

Download the action over artist’s page here. Please remember that this action is for personal use only, if you wish to make use of it for commercial purposes, you need Jenny’s permission.

This action is currently the most popular ove the entire deviantART website. I guess so many artists can’t be wrong, but let’s see what’s so good about it? It gives a fantastic effect of 60’s and 70’s photos, the kind of effect you; get when you use old Russian Camera of the “Locomotive” type with high quality 70’s film. It’s somewhat greenish yet reserves the perfect contrast and shades of red. Turning blue into torquise and adjusting skin colour to beautiful sunlit effect.

If you are working with photos (people or landscapes) and want to enhance colors or bring your picture 30 years back in time, this Photoshop action is going to be your favorite.  Download here, and don’t forget to fav or comment on author’s page.

As you can see from the few examples in the Demo Image, this Vintage Wash Photoshop action gives your creativity and artistism a lot of space for customizing the result.. Each Action will create a layer on top of the one you’re working on, so that you can delete it in case you did not like the effect or want to try another one. Moreover, it’s it’s only one additional layer on top of your photo, it allows you to play with the opacity until you achieve the desired result. To download the Action set, please visit the author’s page here.

Although the title of this Photoshop action “Rock Music” slightly misleads, this is still an awesome action. We would probably except to see a high contrast image, but this action gives a more vintage-like effect, similar to what you’d see in perfume adverts on pages of Vogue magazine. It gives a nicely mild purple shade to the photo, using the gradients technique. The 22-years-old author put his logo backwards on this image… try to ignore artist’s mishap

Download the actions and read the details here.

Yet another fantastic Photoshop action that does not just enhance colours, but actually adds a unique and artistic effect.  Roughly speaking, it turns all the dark shades of the photo to a very dark green hue, and somewhat flattens the high contrast curves. It could be idea for signatures, landscapes, photos and portraits.

The downsides of this action is that it adds contrast and reduces the Saturation, which means images that has high contrast in the first place will end up having very light areas. It’s safe to say that this action works best with darker pictures.

Download the action on artist’s page at deviantART here.

This is a very generous collection of Photoshop brushes by a Czech guy — Ario Asten. The set includes 195 different brushes, ideal for DK and photo editing. Even though the set mainly concentrates on smudges, semi-transparent and somewhat grungy brushes, it also included lashes, blurry dots, and various smudged shapes. Unfortunately some brushes come in a very small resolution (like 15 pixels in diameter) which means enlarging them results in loss of quality, however others come in a huge format of over 500px.

Bottom line is, this is a very big and useful download that brings you almost 200 artistic and original brushes for rendering, creating effects, and polishing your art.

Download the brushes pack (.abr file)

This is yet another great action for adding glamorous look to an ordinary dull photo. Developed and offered freely by iScarlett on DeviantART. What does it do? It adds intensity to the colours (contrast), adds a bit of glow and lightens the image. As a result, any simple photo taken in domestic light conditions can be brought to a stage of professional photography.

It’s particularly useful because it applies same settings to ANY photo, which means you need not sit and reduce darkness or add contrast manually for each photo. The downside of the action, just like any other action, is that if your photo is originally too light, this action will add too much contrast and as a result the outcome will hurt the eyes.
The Skin Glow Enhancement action was made by the author in CS3, and has not been tested in earlier versions of Photoshop so I guess anyone with CS2 and lower version just have to try and see if it works.

Download and details about this release here.