#rabbitpost!

You know one thing that would improve virtually every Photoshop tutorial I see on Tumblr?

Every tutorial maker asking the question, “Why?” And then answering it in their tutorial.

“Why did I add this Selective Coloring layer? What is its purpose in the overall coloring?” Because I want to enhance the reds and make them very bright, but I also want to target the yellows and make them bluer. The red looks even brighter by contrast when you do that!

“Why did I choose this paint texture? What does it add to my graphic?” The ‘X’ shape of these paint strokes helps me bring the focus to the main image of my graphic, just like underlining a piece of text. Plus, the color helps bring contrast to my composition!

Or even...

“Why did I add this Color Balance layer?” I have no idea, I was just messing around. That’s one of the best ways to develop original colorings!

By adding in the “why,” you help less experienced Photoshoppers get a context for what you’re doing. If you just say, “put on This Layer, This Layer, and That Layer and you’re done,” they’ve learned your method, but not how to apply it in different ways. Their knowledge doesn’t grow, and they don’t benefit.

This is important. More times than I can count, I’ve been happily reading a tutorial, excited to reblog it here, only to find myself running into a “now we add the texture!” step, where someone adds a painting, a graphic from Behance, a copyrighted piece from someone’s Flickr, etc. to their edit and calls it good. This is not acceptable.

Part of the problem is that texture makers on Tumblr are prone to going to Pinterest, Behance, Flickr, and other places where art is posted, taking copyrighted works, repackaging them, and redistributing them as “textures”--often with the caveat of “Don’t claim as your own! Don’t redistribute!”

I’ve been tripped up by this horrible practice myself. Once I heard of it, I went through texture packs I’d downloaded from Tumblr and reverse image-searched them on Google. Half of them had been stolen from Behance pages and artists’ galleries. This was stuff I’d used on my own graphics, thinking it was okay, that I was making use of a resource created and shared as such--when really it was stolen art.