Media Militia

Thought and Speech Bubbles Pack – 104 Free Vectors and Images

jeya — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 08:54:35 +0000

This gigantic pack of 104 different styles of thought and speech bubbles is a fun addition to your collection. The styles include comic book, 3D, hand drawn, modern, and more. It is available for download as vector (EPS) and images (PNG w/ transparent background). The images are 4000px at 300 ppi.

As with all of our resources, personal and commercial use is welcomed and encouraged!

Previews:

Get Inspired – #031

jeya — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 08:16:55 +0000

Here is another amazing selection of designs for your inspiration, enjoy! If you would like to submit something to Media Militia, please use Twitter and include @mediamilitia in your tweet or email contact@mediamilitia.com

Halftones Pack – 55 Free Vectors, Brushes, and Images

jeya — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 08:43:18 +0000

This pack has 55 halftone style elements. There are all sorts of different types in this pack like circles, colored gradients, boxes, patterns, and more! It is available as either vector (EPS), images (PNG w/ transparent background), and Photoshop Brushes (ABR). The images are 4000px wide at 300 ppi.

As with all of our resources, personal and commercial use is welcomed and encouraged!

Previews:

Related Packs

Did you like this pack? We have a ton of amazing freebies you should check out. Download all of them and start your collection of awesome resources.

Radial Pack

Radial based shapes are a great addition to any design. Included in this pack is a wide assortment of different radial styles that are sure to make your designs pop!

Decorative Elements Pack – 33 Free Vectors, Brushes, and Images

jeya — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 08:08:40 +0000

This design pack comes with 33 unique decorative elements such as flourishes, swirls, motifs, and more! They look great as text dividers or as a border surrounding your design. They are available for free as vector, brushes, and images. The images are PNG files with a transparent background. They are all high quality and handmade.

As with all of our resources, personal and commercial use is welcomed and encouraged!

Previews:

Related Packs

Did you like this pack? We have a ton of amazing freebies you should check out. Download all of them and start your collection of awesome resources.

Radial Pack

Radial based shapes are a great addition to any design. Included in this pack is a wide assortment of different radial styles that are sure to make your designs pop!

Get Inspired – #030

jeya — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 08:44:04 +0000

Taking Type to the Next Level with Alternate Characters

jeya — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 08:02:41 +0000

Are you sick of your type looking plain and boring? Many OpenType fonts have alternate characters built into them that can transform your type into a beautiful piece of art. By using these alternate characters you can add things like flourishes and flair to your type with ease. Some type faces have alternate characters that can help out with legibility at smaller sizes. Even some handwritten fonts have alternate characters to change the style of a characters to make it seem more handwritten. In this article we will take a deep dive into using alternate characters.

How do you tell what fonts have alternates? Well most likely the fonts you are downloading from free font sites like DAFont.com will not have alternates. You have to pay money for a good font, where the designer of the font put in extra characters into the font family. At the end of this article, I have listed some of the most amazing fonts that have alternates.

Types of Alternates

Ligatures – This is where two or more characters are linked together. If you look at the example below the T and H characters are linked together. The font used in this example is Aphrodite Slim Pro.

Logotypes – This is where a word is stylized as a logo to be included in your type. You will usually find these in the Show Entire Glyphs and not as an alternate.

Biform characters – These alternate characters can make capital letters have a lowercase look or lowercase letters with capital letter look while keeping the same size and weight. The font used in this example is Press Gothic Pro.

Swash characters – This is where a certain letter can have a fancy look to them. You will see swash characters in lot’s of calligraphic fonts. They are very useful at the beggining and end of a word. The font used in this example is Burgues Script.

How To Access Alternates

To gain a better understanding of how you can benefit from using alternate characters, we should first look at how you can access them. Both Adobe Illustrator and InDesign have a great way to access these alternate characters. Unfortunately, Adobe Photoshop does not have a way to access them via a Glyphs panel. In this tutorial we are going to use Illustrator.

Step 1

The font I am going to be using is Aphrodite Slim Pro. It is an amazing handmade font full of alternate and ligature forms designed by Sabrina Lopez and Maximiliano Sproviero. You have to purchase it, but it is well worth your money. You can buy it from myfonts.com here. Make sure you buy the Pro version as it includes all the different alternate characters.

Step 2

Using the Type Tool, type out Media on one layer and change the font to Aphrodite Slim Pro. I set the font size to 72 pt.

Step 3

Using the Type Tool create another type layer and type in Militia. Place it where you feel fit.

Step 4

Open up the Glyphs panel by going to Window > Type > Glyphs

This Glyphs panel gives you the ability to see all of the characters as well as the alternate characters for any given font. This panel is the heart to this tutorial. It opens by default showing all the characters available for the font.

Step 5

It is great to see all the different characters available to us, but the real power of the Glyphs panel is being able to show the Alternates for a selected character.

With the Type Tool, select the first "e" in Media. In the drop down box for Show change it to Alternates for Current Selection. This will show all the alternates for the letter e. Find one you like by clicking on each of the different thumbnails.

Step 6

Continue going through and selecting different characters and seeing which ones look the best. Don’t over do it though!

Step 7

You may have noticed while selecting some of the characters that there are ornaments included with the type. I created two new type layers and found two ornaments that fit in perfectly with the type. The letters I used were X and Y. Using the selection tool I put them up against the other letters.

Tip:

While Photoshop does not have a Glyphs panel, you can create your typography inside of Illustrator and copy and paste it into Photoshop to manipulate.

Great Fonts With Alternates

Aphrodite Slim Pro
This font as seen in the tutorial above has more than 1000 glyphs. It a beautiful calligraphy based font.

Ministry Script
Ministry Script was designed to be “A time capsule that marks both the American ad art of the 1920s, and the current new-millennium acrobatics of digital type.
Over 1000 characters

Affair
Affair is an extraordinary new calligraphic typeface by Alejandro Paul with a party full of swash characters, ligatures, and ornaments.

Mussica
Mussica is a crisp font created by Corradine Fonts. It feature a few extra glyphs for your characters that add a wow effect.

Blanchard
Blanchard is a revival and elaborate extension of Muriel, a 1950 metal face made by Blanchard Trochut for the Fonderie Typographique Française, that was published simultaneously by the Spanish Gans foundry under the name Juventud. Blanchard is a script that embodies the post-war narrow decorative aesthetic that would become the instantly recognizable feature of that era’s design.

Metroscript
Metroscript is a handwritten script with styles from the 1920s and the 1950s. With a huge vintage sports theme, it has many ligatures, swashes, alternates, foreign accented characters and tails—all of which connect seamlessly.

Liza
Liza Pro, Underware’s latest creation, is a live-script typeface. Thanks to its extremely intelligent OpenType architecture, she approaches human hand lettering as close as technically possible. Liza Pro deeply analyzes the text. Out of a stock of 4000 hand crafted characters, Liza creates the most optimal combination. All of this works automatically. All you need to do is typing your lettres d’amour, and Liza makes the text always look different.

Nelly Script Flourish
Nelly Script Flourish is the jewelry to a beautifully appointed lady, the icing to the wedding cake, the VaVoom! Nelly Script Flourish comes complete with a large variety of alternate upper and lowercase forms in OpenType format.

Mon Amour Script Pro
Mainly for invitations; Mon Amour Script Pro, is an Open-Type font, which will delight you. It has the alternate, swash and ligature functions.

Quijote Sauvage Pro
Quijote Sauvage Pro is a very expressive calligraphic font. It includes all the ligatures, alternates and swashes..

Buffet Script
Buffet Script is based on fantastic calligraphy by Alf Becker, arguably the greatest American sign lettering artist of all time

Paradise Script
Paradise is a script font thought to be used in a wide range of pieces of design. From packaging to invitations, Paradise really looks elegant and sometimes playful at the same time. The possibilities of alternates, ligatures and combinations of them are huge. Calligraphy lovers know that words sometimes start or end with extra flourishes: This is the reason of Paradise Starters and Paradise Finishers, which will always give a sensual touch to the written word.

PF Champion Script Pro
PF Champion Script Pro is the most advanced and powerful script ever made. Four sets of alternate swashed capitals as well as a plethora of ornaments and frames (117) was included.

Get Inspired – #029

jeya — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 08:22:36 +0000

Removing a White Background with Photoshop Actions

jeya — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 08:57:16 +0000

There are a ton of textures available on the internet, like spray paint drips that have a white background. Usually you will want to to remove the background and then bring it to your design. I created some actions that use alpha channels to remove the white background. These actions are very handy for all types of textures. There are 3 separate actions included in this set.

Samples

Installing Actions

After you have downloaded the file, unzip it and save it to a location that you prefer.

Inside of Photoshop open your Actions Panel by going to Window > Actions

Click on the Actions panel menu and click on the Load Actions menu item. Locate and select the action set file you downloaded, and then click on Load

How to Use

After you have loaded the action set file, open up the image that has a white background you want to remove.

Make sure the layer is named "Background" and that it is selected. The color mode must be set to RGB.

Change your Foreground color to the color you want the output to be

Now choose one of the sets below and click on the play button.

White BG Removal – Alpha: Great if you want to maintain the alpha look of the original file. I usually use this action set the most because you can easily duplicate the final layer a couple of times to make it darker, then merge the layers.

White BG Removal – Maximum Opacity: This is a great way to get a darker final image with a transparent background. After running, you can duplicate the layer a few more times to make it darker.

White BG Removal – with Color: I included this in the Action Set because maintaining color is something you might want, however, use it with a warning that it is not the best way to remove a white background while maintaining color.

Tips

For better results change the levels (CTRL + L) of your file before using one of the actions. You want to make the background.as white as possible.

If you have a black background you can inverse the layer (CTRL + I) and then run the appropriate action. After it run you can inverse the image again.

This action set is a great and fast way to remove white backgrounds. If you want to get better results, check out our article An In-Depth Look Into Background Removal Techniques

Troubleshooting

Error: The object "layer "Background"" is not currently available.
Solution: This is because you did not name the layer Background. These actions rely on a layer named Background

Error: The object "red channel" is currently not available.
Solution: Make sure the color mode is set to RGB before running You can change the mode by going to Image > Mode > RGB Color

Beautiful Textures On Black Backgrounds – 22 Free High Resolution Textures

jeya — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 08:07:45 +0000

Everything looks better on black! This texture pack has 22 artistic slapdash styled images on black backgrounds. The amazing thing about this pack is that they are extremely high resolution. Most of the images are around 4000 x 5000 pixels at 300 PPI. With this high of a resolution you can get different looks depending on where you zoom into. We hope you enjoy this release!

As with all of our resources, personal and commercial use is welcomed and encouraged!

Previews:

Related Packs

Did you like this pack? We have a ton of amazing freebies you should check out. Download all of them and start your collection of awesome resources.

Mixed Media Pack

With this pack you get a spectacular combination of media styles in each texture! Images were created with spray paint, acrylics, markers, pencils, crayons, and finger-paint! With over 25 images, you will find something that will fit perfectly into your designs.

Get Inspired – #028

jeya — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 08:01:22 +0000