Fotolia has announced the launch of a new plug-in for applications in Adobe’s Creative Suite 5 or higher that makes searching through the stock provider’s 16-million plus images a breeze.

Developed in conjunction with former Adobe engineers at Silicon Publishing, the plug-in is compatible with Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign CS5 or higher and allows you to quickly and easily access and use stock from Fotolia’s image bank. It’s ideal for designers, with functionality like on-the-fly replacement of a low-res comp with the high-res file when you purchase a stock image.

Making use of Adobe’s new CS Extension technology has “enabled us to use Adobe Flex to create a single CS Extension that connects Photoshop, InDesign, and Illustrator to Fotolia assets,” said Olav Martin Kvern of Silicon Publishing.

“Fotolia is proud to be the first major stock photo agency to leverage Adobe’s new CS Extension technology with Silicon Publishing. Their expertise and knowledge of the creative process is amazing, and we think all designers will benefit from this technology”, said Oleg Tscheltzoff, CEO of Fotolia LLC.

To get easy access to Fotolia imagery straight from your favourite CS5 application, download the plug-in now.

Would you like to win a copy of Serif DrawPlus X5 worth over £80? Of course you would! The lovely people at Serif have given us six to give away over the next six months, and all you have to do to be in with a chance of winning one is to share your digital art tips with our community. We’ll pick the best tip every month and award the winner a boxed CD copy of the software. We’ll be starting in issue 30, but we thought it’d only be fair to give you a head-start! So here’s our first question:

What are your top tips for painting light?

You can post your tips on the Comments here or on Facebook (where other readers will be able to Like them!)

Terms and Conditions: Only one copy of the software can be won per month. Serif Drawplus X5 is only for PCs running Windows – sorry Mac users! Multiple entries and international entries are accepted. The editor’s decision is final and no correspondence will be entered into. We will notify you via email or Facebook if you are a winner, but if we don’t hear back from you within two weeks we’ll award the prize to someone else! The winning tips may be included on the website or in the magazine. Prizes will be sent by standard post.

Did you miss out on some early issues of Digital Artist? Are you trying to track down that one sold-out issue you need? Would you like to complete your collection and make sure you have every single one of our creative tutorials, features and in-depth interviews? Then you need our eMag disc!

This DVD edition of the first 20 issues of the magazine contains each issue as high-res PDFs (you can even print them so you’ve got them on your desk while you follow a tutorial). It has an advanced search system so that you can look for the exact article you want and find it easily. You can zoom in on the magazine’s lavish artwork and access the tutorial files that came with each issue. And that’s not all – the eMag also comes with bonus resources that you won’t find with any other issue of Digital Artist, including 20 Photoshop brush sets, 10 packs of textures, 117 stock photos and much more.

Best of all, because all of the first 20 issues are presented on one DVD disc (compatible with PC and Mac) that costs just £19.99, you pay less than £1 per issue – that’s a saving of £100 from the original cover price of these 20 issues.

You can only get this exclusive DVD from our online store. Many of the issues featured on the disc are sold out, so this is your last chance to complete your collection!

Screen printing has long been a method for creating hundreds of copies of an image, with its earliest examples coming from China around 1,000 years ago. The very fact that it’s cheap and mass-produced led to its popularisation by Andy Warhol. More recently, the imperfect production process has been to its credit, as it means each copy is, in its own way, an original.

To make a screen print you need to block out areas of a mesh to create a negative version of your original design; this determines where the ink will be pushed through. You then use a squeegee to transfer ink through a woven mesh onto whatever surface you like. For each new colour, a new template is needed and by combining several layers of ink, different effects can be achieved. We’re going to show you how to create this effect in Photoshop.

Step 1: Make shapes

Scan your drawings and separate the colours to create individual layers for each.

Step 2: Add the paper

Put a paper texture in the background and don’t forget to make sure all layers are set to Multiply.

Step 3: Roughen the edge

Use a scanned square of paper to make a frame. Do this before misaligning the layers.

Step 4: Texture the print

Add the texture to the layers. As they’re all flat colour you can also play around with the hue to suit.

Step 5: Misalign the layers

Move, warp and transform the layers to create the misaligned look or overlap to make new colours.

Check out more of Sam Brewster’s work at his website.

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iCloud for Beginners is Imagine Publishing’s latest eBook release, and this one’s a bit special. It’s our first Multi-Touch eBook, and it was specially designed for Apple’s iBooks 2 using iBooks Author.

“At Imagine, we’re always excited by cool new ways to deliver our world-leading content,” says Editor In Chief of the project, Aaron Asadi. “iBooks Author is another great opportunity for us to create more products we love for a whole new type of audience. It’s this sort of game-changing innovation that makes us do what we do. ”

iCloud For Beginners teaches you everything you need to know about iCloud, the free new back-up and sync service. From how to set-up your free iCloud account to sharing your information across your Apple devices, the eBook uses cutting-edge technology to deliver enhanced, easy-to-use tutorials. Featuring slideshows, interactive images and more, it is one of the first eBooks of its type in the world.

“With the speed that the publishing industry is changing, there’s nothing more exhilarating than grabbing hold of new technologies and seeing how we can get the most out of them to serve up the content we’re so passionate about,” says Ross Andrews, Head of Design. “What could be better than going from saying ‘we should try that’ to a fully published product in just a few days? It’s hard to think of a more exciting time for the industry.”

iCloud For Beginners is available now on iTunes and iBookstore worldwide. It costs just 99p in the UK and $1.99 in America, Canada and Australia. Grab a copy, get to grips with how you can use iCloud (it’s perfect for bouncing artwork between iPad and desktop without the palaver of emailing it to yourself!) and experience the latest in quality content from Imagine Publishing.

Thanks for all your entries to our Year of the Dragon competition! Isn’t our awesome new tagging system easy to use? And clever too – I could pick all of the entries out by searching for the tags. Why not give it a try with the kind of images you’d like to see? You’ll be amazed at what turns up!

Our lucky winner is Gia Nguyen Hoang. This image isn’t the most saturated of the bunch by any means, but sometimes it’s not all about the bright colours. Gia’s Year of the Dragon piece is full of brooding presence despite its almost greyscale colour scheme. Viewing at high-res is really rewarding as there are some highly evocative details, like the flock of startled birds stirred up from the eaves of the quiet village. The use of lighting is dramatic and shows a great technique for painting moonlight. Gia wins a well-deserved copy of Dragon’s Domain by Bob Eggleton – congratulations!

Digital Artist is on sale now in UK newsagents. If you can’t wait for it to reach your local store, it’s also available in our online shop. This issue is packed with creative inspiration. We interview Pop Surrealist artist Camilla d’Errico, chat to Woop Studios about their range of posters, and present the best iPad apps and accessories that will help you to create great digital art anywhere.

Elsewhere in the magazine you’ll learn to design a music poster with Craig Henry, explore Divisionist colour theory with John Malcolm, paint a spring scene with Amber Hill, get to grips with Art Deco using Illustrator with Nigel Hopkins, learn how to use vanishing points with Abigail Daker, get Carlyn Beccia’s essential tips on using Painter’s Pattern pens and discover the tricks and tools you need to paint fantasy art on the iPad with Kari Christensen. We’ve also got a character design video tutorial from the awesome Andrew Jones! You won’t want to miss this issue.

Remember, if you’re a subscriber then you’ll receive the magazine earlier than your local store, and at the moment we’re offering some fantastic deals for new subscribers – three issues for £1 if you’re in the UK and six issues for free for US readers! Pick up Digital Artist 29 today to find out more.

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Would you like to see your work appear on a designer tea towel by a brand that numbers Gemma Correl, Julia Potts and Rob Ryan among its design stable? And would you like a cut of the sales if your design makes it into print? Do illustrators like tea? Of course you would.

To Dry For is running its second annual competition. The company creates and sells designer tea towels from a wide range of well known and emerging artists, illustrators and designers, and they’re offering one lucky artist the chance to get on their books and get their design into cool kitchens around the world.

“The winning design will become part of our ToDryFor range and will be launched at Pulse 2012. Located at London’s Earls Court exhibition centre, the show attracts around 6,000 high-end, design-conscious buyers from top department stores to beautiful independent boutiques – the perfect showcase for fresh new talent,” the To Dry For team explain. They’ll also give the winner 15% of retail sales of the design from their website and 10% from external store sales. To Dry For tea towels are stocked in the gift shops of several national galleries.

Deadline for the competition is 29 February 2012.

Please note: This is an external call for entries – do not send your submissions or questions to Digital Artist! Full design specs and Ts and Cs for the competition can be found here.

In the Chinese zodiac, 2012 is the Year of the Dragon. To celebrate, I’m giving away one copy of Dragon’s Domain: The Ultimate Dragon Painting Workshop by Bob Eggleton. All you need to do to be in with a chance of winning is submit a piece of artwork to the Gallery here at DigitalArtistDaily that features a dragon. It doesn’t have to be Chinese – it could be Saxon, Babylonian, Welsh, pure fantasy, or anything and everything in between (up to and including Bruce Lee). New to our Gallery? Register here!

You’ll need to enter before 11:59 UK time on 30th January 2012. Please use our fancy new tagging system to tag your artwork ‘Year of the Dragon’ so that I can find it easily, and make sure that your profile uses a working email address so I can let you know if you’re the winner!

I have just one copy of the book available so: editor’s decision is final, no correspondence will be entered into, prize will be shipped by standard post, international entries welcome, multiple entries welcome, entries must be tagged ‘Year of the Dragon’ and feature an actual dragon of some sort or another, deadline is 30th January 2012. The winner will be notified by email and asked to provide a postal address for the book to be sent to. Good luck!

Xīn Nián Kuài Lè! (Happy New Year!) Today is the Chinese lunar new year and the beginning of the Year of the Dragon, so what better way to celebrate than by following the old Chinese proverb “chú jiù bù xīn” (out with the old, in with the new) and swapping out some of the artwork on your walls for one of these gorgeous limited edition prints from new brand SOYU?

The Creative Zodiac features all 12 animals from the Chinese zodiac, created by a range of artists and illustrators including Digital Artist favourites Natsuki Otani, Jared Nickerson, Zutto and more. Whether you’re a Sheep or a Snake, a Rat or a Rooster, there’s a print for you – and of course there’s the all-important 2012 Dragon, seen above by Robin Boyden.

SOYU is a print brand with a mission. They describe that mission as a “response to the mass-produced ‘upload and order’ printed products that are appearing online”. The Creative Zodiac, therefore, is available in limited editions of just 10 A2 prints per zodiac animal, printed on 315gsm uncoated cotton rag. And throughout the week of Chinese New Year (today until 29 January 2012) they’re just £15 apiece!

Visit the SOYU website to get yours now. Lóng nián xíng dà yùn! (Good luck for the dragon year!)