If you're a fan of digital art, you've probably noticed some techniques that are used more than other. Just like in web design, over the past few years there has developed few trends in digital art too. In this article you're going to find some of them together with bright examples. And that's not all. For each trend there is a couple of Photoshop brushes listed that will help you achieve the same effect without putting in a lot of work.

Abstract Elements

I bet almost every one of you has seen one of those marvelous people photo manipulations with abstract elements in them. Usually artists use some C4D renders into their artworks. Those renders makes art look more surreal and sci-fi. Don't worry if you aren't owner of C4D or similar software. You can achieve similar effects with simple Photoshop brushes as well.

Examples

1. Abstract Africa by Kevin Roodhorst

2. 7 Records by Patrick Monkel

3. Get Over by Mark Jay Caccam

4. Pink Rewind by DDavey

5. Fashion by Michael Ostermann

Brushes

1. FD Abstract Toolkit by Paul Willocks

2. Paint Lines by env1ro

3. Fortune Brushes by ShiftyJ

4. Silicon Brushes by Xavier Durand-Hollis

5. Abstract Aura VI by differentxdreamz

Watercolors

Watercolors started becoming a trend couple years ago. They bring that traditional, though fresh feeling to artworks. They can be used to enhance some parts of artworks or you can use them to create whole artwork as well. Creating your own watercolor brush is difficult, yet interesting process. But, if you don't have the time or necessary, don't worry – there are plenty of free great looking watercolors brushes available on web.

Examples

1. Portraits by Nielly Francoise

2. Monsters by N1ko

3. Take Me Up by Brice Chaplet

4. Arique Colorful by Ariil Davidoff

5. 60549 by Jarek Kubicki

Brushes

1. 15 Vector Ink Strokes by Wegraphics

2. Hi-Res Splatter Brush Set by Franz Jeitz

3. Mateu7’s Watercolor Brushes by Mateus Mim Mesmo

4. Watercolor Splatters by Denny Tang

5. Dirty Sprays by Tutorial9

Abstract Lines & Lighting Effects

Shiny abstract lines together with some lighting effects have always looked fine in digital artworks. These effects can be blended in any type of artwork. You can highlight some specific areas with them. Photoshop brushes are perfect for creating abstract and lighting effects. There are dozens of premade brushes available on the web.

Examples

1. Impetus by Ernest Lim

2. Imagination by Kevin Roodhorst

3. Chaos by evade

4. Incredible v2 by Antoine Pirard

5. Living Into My Own World by PAROiQ1

Brushes

1. Petals Adrift by differentxdreamz

2. Sparkles Brush by WingsOfAHero

3. Smudge Brushes by Rockanium

4. Light Effects by Wegraphics

5. Light Brushes by RedSigns

Geometric Elements & Vectors

Adding geometric elements and vectors to digital artworks became quite popular few years ago. We can see experienced and talented designers using this technique a lot. Similarly to watercolors, this technique also mixes the traditional with modern. If you don't want to draw the shapes and vectors yourself, there are few Photoshop brushes available for this trend as well.

Examples

1. Street Lights by Joao Oliveira

2. I Love Colors by feartox

3. A New Start by poisonvectors

4. Blackout by Steve Goodin

5. Salvation by Rupinder

Brushes

1. Distorted Lines by FlowGraphic

2. Gradient Shape Brushes by Fresh eMedia

3. Baroque Ornaments by Wegraphics

4. Hand Drawn Florals by Nathan Brown

5. Linear Vector Brushes by Vina Nguyen

Today I am going to show you how to get a new database setup with PHP/MySQL using PHPMyAdmin. For those of you who don’t know PHPMyAdmin is a great free tool to help you manage your databases. If you use cpanel or anything you have probably already seen/used it.

First Creating a Database With PHPMyAdmin

If you are using cpanel there is a link in there or for any other hosting they should provide you with a link to your PHPMyAdmin. I personally have an old machine that I turned into a LAMP (Linux,Apache,MySQL,PHP) box and installed PHPMyAdmin. I also set it up as a vhost and changed my windows etc/hosts to point phpmya.com to my Linux box. So for me I go to http://phpmya.com but your link will be different most likely.

So I open Firefox and go to http://phpmya.com and it prompts for a login. After entering my credentials this is the screen I see:

From here you:

1. Click “Privileges”
2. Click “Add a new User”
3. Enter a “User name:” (keep it simple use whatever you want to name your database)
4. Select “Local” for “Host:”
5. You can enter a password but I suggest clicking “Generate” (either way make sure you have the password safe somewhere)
6. Under “Database for user” select “Create database with same name and grant all privileges”
7. Click “Go”

You should now have a new database with the name that you have selected in the menu on the left. If you click on that database it will be empty and the page will look like this.

There you have it! You have successfully created a new database and database user with privileges to that database. From here you can create different tables that will suit your needs for you website.

Structuring Tables For Your New DB in PHPMyAdmin With RISE Editor

I am going to start with a “users” table which will be used for a site where multiple people will be able to login to change the content or post blogs. There are obviously a million different reasons why you might have a users section so this is a table that can vary a lot and can be used in many different ways, but this will be a pretty basic example.

First off, you need to think of the structure of your table. What will we want to store about each user? While no software is needed I like to use RISE Editor which is free software to help with database modeling. You can (and I have) use a pencil and paper for this. I will show you with RISE Editor.

1. Open RISE Editor
2. Click “New” icon in top left
3. Select “Blank”
4. Give it a name like the name of the site
5. From the left toolbar click and drag “Entity” to the “Drawing” area
6. Click where it says “Entity” on the element you just dragged over
7. Change it to read “users” or whatever table you are creating
8. At the bottom under “Attributes” add “id” and set it to “int”
9. Repeat this for other attributes like (username,password,date_added,last_login,access_level,email) you may have more or less depending

You should end up with something that looks like this. This is not a completely necessary task but it is a good habit and makes it much easier to visualize what you have and/or might be missing. Also if you do it in RISE for each table you will have a good visual of your entire DB structure at the end of it.

Creating Your New Table Structures

Looking back at the browser where we have PHPMyAdmin and have selected our new database from the left hand side you will see two input fields for “Name” and “Number of fields:”

1. In the “Name” field put “users” and for “number of fields” put “6″, (there can be more or less just follow the structuring in RISE.)
2. Click “Go”
3. Enter the info as needed
   • id -> int,Index select “PRIMARY”,check “A_I”
   • username -> varchar,length (you choose how long you want I put 55)
   • password -> varchar,length (32 or greater: 32 is what md5 outputs)
   • date_added -> timestamp,default “CURRENT_TIMESTAMP”
   • last_login -> timestamp
   • access_level -> int
4. Click “Save”

Viala! We have a new database with a users table. We could now create a secure login and dole out some username/passwords for people to login and mange our site for us.

Connecting to Our New Database

Now that we have a fancy new MySQL database in place, in order to use it for anything we will always need to connect to it. In today’s world of object oriented programming you see that whenever there is something that we will need to do more than once it is great to take advantage of classes and reusable code. So now I will go into a simple database class and “db.php” file that can be used and reused for you database connections.

db.class.php

 <?php  class database {  	var $SQL; 	var $lastquery; 	var $count=0;  	function database($database, $server='localhost', $username='root', $password=''){ 		$this->SQL = mysql_connect($server, $username, $password) or die('Error: '.mysql_error()); 		mysql_select_db($database, $this->SQL); 	}  	function query($query, $return='true'){ 		$this->lastquery = $query; 		$this->count++; 		$result = mysql_query($query, $this->SQL) or die('Error with Query('.$query.'): '.mysql_error()); 		if ($return) 			return $result; 	}  	function num_rows(&$result){ 		return @mysql_num_rows($result); 	}  	function fetch_array(&$result){ 		return @mysql_fetch_array($result); 	}  	function fetch_assoc(&$result){ 		return @mysql_fetch_assoc($result); 	}  	function insert_id(){ 		return @mysql_insert_id(); 	}  	function disconnect(){ 		mysql_close($this->SQL); 	}  	function escape(&$string){ 		return mysql_real_escape_string($string); 	}  	function result($query, $column, $id=0){ 		return mysql_result($query, $id, $column); 	} } ?> 

The above class adds error handling to all of our main PHP functions that are used for interacting with the database. There is argue as to whether you should show database errors or not but the reason that I show them is for development and living by the principle that good coding will never produce a MySQL error. Basically just make sure that you code can never produce a MySQL error and don’t worry about it or if you are really concerned then don’t show the errors. It is your call. This class will be used in your db.php below like such.

 <?php ob_start(); 	session_start();  	include $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'].'/classes/db.class.php'; 	$db = new database('database', 'localhost', 'user', 'password'); // new instance of database class ?> 

This db.php first does ob_start() which is output buffering to make sure that we do not get errors related to the session_start(). Then of course the $db.class.php is inlcuded and we start a new instance of the database class called $db. You see that we are starting the class with parameters being pasted and that is because we created a function with the same name as the class.
NOTE: The ob_start() and session_start() might not be needed for something simple that you might use but sessions are often used and extremely helpful so I added it in here.

So to use this setup we would have something like this. In this example we have the basic template and we are going to display a list of users.

header.php

 <?php include'db.php';?> <html>      <head>      </head>      <body>           <div id="content"> 

footer.php

            </div>      </body> </html> 

index.php

 <?php include'header.php';       echo '<ul id="user_list">';      $user_query = $db->query("SELECT name,last_login FROM users");      while($user = $db->fetch_assoc($user_query))      {           echo '<li>                         <h3>'.stripslashes($user['name']).'</h3>                         <p>'.date('Y-m-d H:i", $user['last_login']).'</p> // date is a built in php function to format dates                   </li>';      }  include'footer.php'; ?> 

You can see the use of a database class can be helpful for many reasons. This example class can cut back on a lot of code. With this you won’t have to do an or die and error message for each query and it also makes some functions just less typing like (mysql_real_escape_string() vs $db->escape())