High-Quality Backgrounds, Textures, Brushes, and Practice Packages
Review by Gilmar Smith
One of the things that digital artists struggle with most is bringing our ideas to life and finding the right resources to match our concepts. Not all of us live in a fantastic location surrounded by mountains, temples, or historical architecture. And not everybody knows how to design brushes in Photoshop, or even if they did, it’s time-consuming, and sometimes it takes away the momentum while creating a piece of art.
I know my way around Photoshop pretty well, but at the same time, I’m all about incorporating resources in my workflow that first, make me save time, and second, make me step up my game when it comes to creating new imagery.
I stumbled upon RAWexchange International online about a year ago. It’s a website designed for digital and Photoshop compositing artists where you can find a vast catalog of amazing high-quality resources to use when creating fantastic images, including Photoshop brushes, backgrounds, textures, stock images, looks, presets, and even RAW images on which to practice your Photoshop skills.
Their stock images are explicitly shot on a clean background for composites, which makes your work a lot easier. One of my favorite things from RAWexchange is their huge variety of textures, which make perfect elements to give your composite images a final touch. Fire and Sparks, Smoke, Sparklers, Bokeh, Sci-Fi Lens Flares, Gobos, and even Flying Dollars are a few of the textures they have in stock. When it comes to backgrounds, you can find a massive selection of Decay locations (e.g., Pripyat, next to Chernobyl), City Series (e.g., Venice, London), and even hand-painted backgrounds. Whether you’re new or an experienced digital artist, I’m sure there’s something for you at RAWexchange.com. ■
