Kristan Franco Graphic Designs and Web Resources

The "basics" of a good concept of a wallpaper are the fonts and colors. So this is the most simple way to establish a rhythmic wallpaper. In this blog post, i'm going to share to you a very simple font effect which can be of good use in certain graphic concepts.

Let's call it the wacky font. Chug, chug, chug. With just 5 Photoshop steps, you can create a font effect like this:

Recently, I came across Philstar's article about the beautiful and catchy iPhotos of Philippines' North to South vibrant colors. The shooters, equipped with a a photographer's arsenal, showcased the very unique sunrise, sunset, flavorful foods, and eye-catching beaches in the country.

"Makulay" is a tagalog term for "colorful". As what the article emphasized, the word "Makulay" has been the very appropriate word that could sum up all these beautiful iPhotos.

One of the many interests I have in Photography is distortion. Distortion is art, and it gives a more dramatic effect to a simple and dull photo. Wide-angle and fish-eye lenses are the main reason why distortion exists in photography.Equipped with a basic DSLR and a good fish-eye filter lens, I was able to apply distortion to my shots.

This is a very simple definition of Fish-eye in Photography:

Of or being a wide-angle photographic lens that covers an angle of about 180°, producing a circular image with exaggerated foreshortening in the center and increasing distortion toward the periphery.

Apologies for the delayed blog posts, I've been dealing with a slow computer in the past 2 weeks since my laptop crashed. So many wonderful ideas popping from my mind now, and this time, i'm going to share to you my own set of Bokeh shots which could be useful for Photoshop as textures.

In photography, bokeh is the blur, or the aesthetic quality of the blur, in out-of-focus areas of an image, or the way the lens renders out-of-focus points of light. Bokeh occurs for parts of the scene that lie outside the depth of field.

Woah! February had began, and time flies so fast. To start off this love month, I'm going to showcase my 4th wallpaper filed under Monthly Wallpapers. Most of us knew that February is the love month, and seems like I'm in the mood playing with Xara 3D this time, and the creative juice is flowing freely. This time, I got to create a LOVE Typhography wallpaper.

With only 2 years and running,Plurk today is now one of top social networking sites. Aside from it's interactive GUI, you can also reflect your personality and creativity through customizing your timeline and dashboard themes.

I've been a Plurker and Twitter user for about a year now, and losing Karma Points in Plurk might be the very heartbreaking news you'll ever get from Plurk. Tweeting on the other hand, is a must, updating my followers to check out my new posts.

• Available for 3 countries, Philippines, Singapore, and Malaysia. Each country has a unique gateway number
• Local SMS cost/charge for each Plurk or Twitter update
• You can type in different language based on your phone's specification
• Unlike Phplurk, gladlyCast don't promote their url in every Plurk made through the gateway
• Very easy registration process

ZAP!!! I got to play with my drawing pen again and this time, human-alike cartoon squids buzzed my creative juice. Just in case you wanted some sketched elements in your Photoshop canvas, you might want to use these as BRUSHES! Yes, brushes! This is my second brush set made in Photoshop CS4.

Terms of use: The brushes can only be used for personal and non-commercial purposes. Since these brushes are for free, no redistributing is allowed. Please do refer to this original blog post in order to share it to others.

Infrared Photography refers to the area of photography in which photos are taken with film sensitive to infrared light.

When these filters are used together with infrared-sensitive film or sensors, very interesting "in-camera effects" can be obtained. false-color or black-and-white images with a dreamlike or sometimes lurid appearance known as the "Wood Effect," an effect mainly caused by foliage (such as tree leaves and grass) strongly reflecting in the same way visible light is reflected from snow.

I found myself doodling and sketching while being admitted to the hospital for some medication, and after a week, examination took its toll on me. It's great to be back blogging again after a week of examination. One new post after a week or two!

Since i've been admitted for almost a week at the hospital, I was able to design two sketched canvas, with just pure sign pen. Anything out of imagination, 2 abstract drawings were made. Sketching is exciting, do you agree?


So, as you may notice that this drawing is so dull and looking at it might be uninteresting. To optimize this drawing, I decided to turn it into an cd album cover.

Music has been an inspiration to me. I've been into a band and making Album covers must be fun and exciting. With the use of certain splatter brushes and textures found around the web, I was able to make this hoax cd album cover.


Here are some tips in making awesome CD Album covers:

1.) Prepare your drawing.

You have to scan your drawing. In my part, I just shoot this drawing on a clean floor, with the highest quality as much as possible.

2.) Prepare the brushes and texture.

I was able to find some splatter brushes around the web, so go help yourself. In the texture, I've been a reader of Inspiredology and the author offered high quality textures.

So go download them.

3.) The genre of your Album cover.

You wouldn't want to entitle your album cover as "Lovely Hearts" when you notice that the design is pure grunge, would you? So decide for an appropriate theme for a title of the album.

For example, I just choose Chicosci's previous album title, "Method of Breathing" for my hoax Album cover. It is somehow related because my drawing is abstract, but can be seen and can be percept as people. Life is related to the album title.

4.) Setting the blending options to MULTIPLY.

You may notice that when you try to overlap your drawing into the texture, the texture will be covered with the canvas' white background, mainly the bond paper you scanned.

So the solution to this problem is, set the blending options of your drawn piece into MULTIPLY

5.) Splatter brushes over the layers.

To add a more dramatic effect, we use the splatter brushes. Complimentary colors are brilliant to see, so we get hold of these colors.

Be sure to create a new layer over all the layers, and brush as much as you want. After brushing, now you're almost done. Set the blending options to Linear Burn and see for yourself a good transformation out of the drawn canvas.

6.) Album Title has the impact.

For the finale, add your album title in a simple or complicated way. In my piece, I just use a very basic font in order to contrast with the grungy background. With this, contrast became an impact.

So here is my final work:



Credit for PSHero for the awesome slick cd container.

See? Just viewing your own work makes you want to be a rockstar!

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Recently, I posted my 15 Brilliant Tilt-shift photos, and just in case you don't have any idea on what a tilt-shift photo is, this is a shooting technique in photography that makes a scene looks like miniature.

Without using a real tilt-shift lens, you could turn a simple photo into a tilt-shift photo by using Photoshop. Photoshop is the most conventional tool.

In this basic tutorial, you can now make your photos look like miniature. With a knowledge on quick masking, filters, and saturating, your photo will now look like a real miniature!

To start of this tutorial, choose a suitable photo for this effect. Buildings are the best examples for this photo effect. I found this photo from Google.

Tilt-shift shooting is one of the most interesting photography techniques wherein a life-size photograph is manipulated to give an optical illusion of a miniature scale.

Real Tilt-shift photography is all about changing the angle of the camera to give a different perspective and to make something look bigger or smaller.