karenmcdade.com | Personal blog of a freelance designer

Posted by Karen on Jun 22, 2011

Just doodling…

When I have free time I attempt to something with the Advanced Photoshop free monthly competition images… Here’s my ode to Photoshop’s little used split blending sliders. (I’m a nerd, can you...

Posted by Karen on Jun 1, 2011

Retouching skin to retain texture

In the world of beauty retouching, there are many methods retouchers use to get flawless skin. The aim of great retouching is to make the subject of the image look like he or she hasn’t been retouched at all. Most importantly, this refers to keeping the skin texture intact. Because images can vary vastly it’s helpful to have a number of techniques under your belt so you can pick and choose...

Posted by Karen on Apr 28, 2011

Advanced Photoshop magazine: I’ve been published, yay :)

Here’s a quick pic of the two Advanced Photoshop magazines I’ve been published in (issues 47 and 61). I’ll be uploading more soon…

Posted by Karen on Apr 24, 2011

Photoshop: How to create a seamless texture

Seamless textures can be very useful for use in website backgrounds or to create a texture for photo-manipulations or digital paintings. Here is a quick photoshop tutorial to step you through the process of creating a seamless texture from just about any photograph. This is the texture I want to use in my design: However, when I tile it I get visible seams forming between the individual texture...

Posted by Karen on Apr 21, 2011

Concept art

Here’s the latest card available for an upcoming strategy card game. More to come soon…

Posted by Karen on Apr 18, 2011

Concept art for strategy card game

I’m currently working on a very exciting project for an upcoming strategy card game. A website is in the process of being set up for it, so I’ll direct you to that when it’s done – it will explain everything. In the mean time, here’s a quick teaser of the artwork to...

Posted by Karen on Nov 15, 2010

Mastermind Code Breaker HD App for iPad Released

Woohoo – after being tied up in Apple’s review process for a few weeks, our first iPad app has been released. We (and when I say we, I mean myself and my partner Peter Mares) finished a Mastermind-type game for the iPhone and iPod Touch last month. I resized the graphics and Peter worked his magic on the code and in one weekend we knocked out the iPad version. There is a free version which just...

Posted by Karen on Oct 30, 2010

American Chopper Artwork

A while ago I was commissioned to create some artwork for the Discovery Channel show “American Chopper”. This was one of the nicest projects I’ve had to work on recently so I thought I’d share the final result with you. The final project consisted of: 2 “digipacks” each consisting of 4 DVDs, with corresponding cover designs for each DVD onbody and outer-slipcases a...