Urban Dirty Blog: Archive

Photo download basket feature added

A new feature that has been added to the gallery photo pages. Now you can add photos to a ‘basket’ and download them all in one go as a zip file. Just like you were shopping for photos, but these are all free. This makes bagging up a bunch of texture photos for your project even quicker and easier. For example, take a look at the bottom of this photo page. How to use the download...

Oct 13th

Urban spaces and dirty places

I live in a city called Brighton on the south coast of the UK. It is where most of the photos in the gallery come from and a great place to be if you’re hunting for textures to photograph. Here is a small gallery, designed to show you a few spots where some of Urban Dirty’s photos come from, plus you give a small insight into a great environment for texture lovers.

Sep 20th

1 tag

New colour swatch generator

For a while now, The photos in the gallery have been accompanied by colour scheme suggestions, supplied by Adobe Kuler.This worked well but meant I had to manually tag the photos using machine tags in Flickr with whtaver colour first came into my head when looking at the image. Which, when uploading a large batch, became quite tedious and frustrating. EDIT: The colour schemes are now powered by...

Aug 4th

Selection of photos on Advanced Photoshop CD

Issue 56 of Advanced Photoshop magazine packed 25 textures from Urban Dirty on the free CD, which got mentioned on the cover, bigged up on the CD itself and mentioned in a tutorial in the magazine.

Jun 12th

Photos on Web Designer Magazine CD June 09

Readers of Web Designer magazine were once again treated to 25 photos from the gallery in Issue 157, on the free cd which got a mention on the cover and the ‘On the cd’ page.

Jun 12th

25 texture photos in Dutch Web Designer magazine

Issue 16 of Web Designer magazine in Holland featured a selection of 25 photos from the gallery on their free CD for use in site designs and artwork.

Jun 12th

'Crust n' Rust' G-Drive mini Skin

Following on from the series of Urban Dirty phone and iPod skins by Infectious, G-Technology now have a limited edition skin out for their portable storage drive - G-Drive mini. The design is based on the Crust n’ Rust skin and stands alongside 2 other designs by Dalek and Shadow Chen and G-Technology are running a competition on Facebook to win a skinned G-DRIVE mini (for US residents)....

Apr 23rd

Urban Dirty laptop, iPhone and iPod skins

Those wonderful people at Infectious have launched a range of skins for your laptop, iPod or iPhone based on photos from the gallery. There are 4 designs to choose from, Crusts n’ rust, Grimey grill, Got it on lock & Greenery plus an interview with yours truly about how it all began, influences and vices. I am so happy that these texture photos are getting used this way and...

Mar 19th

1 tag

Urban Dirty photos on Photoshop Creative CD

The Dutch issue of Photoshop Creative magazine for March 2009 (Issue 12) has 50 textures from the gallery on the free cd. That’s a lot of grimyness to muck about with! The magazine has a good texture based tutorial inside, so I hope Holland has some fun with them.

Mar 13th

Betty Boop and burnt buildings

Whilst striding through Brighton the other day, I spotted this building down a side street. Initially it was the Betty Boop in the window that caught my eye, but then I saw that the doorway of the place seemed to have suffered quite a bit of damage from a fire. Not good news for anyone, however what had come out of that was an abundance of amazing textures created from bubbling paint, charred...

Mar 6th

1 tag

Desktops, brush and photo pack downloads

There has been a downloads section added to the site. It’s an area I have been meaning to add for a while but only recently got round to finishing. You’ll find 3 desktop wallpapers for your computer and also sizes for your phone, so you can stay grimey wherever you go: In additon, you’ll find a pack of 25 of the best, handpicked photos from the gallery and a set of 8 hi-res...

Feb 23rd

1 tag

Advanced Photoshop Magazine - France

Issue 9 (February 2009) of Advanced Photoshop Magazine in France is packing 50 Urban Dirty textures on their free CD, alongside 25 free stock photos from Photogen. This fact even gets bigged up in a blue bubble on the cover.

Jan 22nd

Gallery photo previews

The gallery now has a preview pop up when you rollover a thumbnail. This feature has been added so that you don’t have to click through to the photo page every time you want to see the full texture, thus speeding up your image browsing. In addition, click a thumbnail now takes you to the small photo size page. » Try it out now in the gallery

Jan 15th

Advanced Photoshop Magazine CDs

Over the past couple of months, photos from Urban Dirty have been popping up in magazines in France and Holland. Following on from that, 25 texture photos from Urban Dirty were included on the CD in issue 13 of Advanced Photoshop Magazine in Holland. International grimy love. Prior to this, 50 photos were included on the CDs in the Dutch and French versions of Advanced Photoshop Magazine in...

Jan 6th

The Texture Tanker

This strange old tanker trailer thing had been parked up by this car and tyre garage in Brighton for about a year, but it wasn’t until last week that I got round to getting some photos from it. It has some gorgeous textures incorporating rust, blistered & peeling paint and the remains of what must have once been a fairly smart design incorporating a touch of typography. Such is the...

Dec 27th

Ofiicial Urban Dirty Wordpress theme - Dirtpress

I often use Wordpress as a framework to build websites on. Due to its versatility, it allows you to create custom designs or themes. I have created a Wordpress theme based on Urban Dirty, aptly titled ’Dirtpress’. Here is a screenshot of the homepage: Whilst it may look quite heavy on the graphics, the theme itself uses only 4 images and is really quite simple under the hood. It has a few nifty...

Dec 8th

Urban Dirty on Web Designer Magazine CD

Urban Dirty made another appearance on Web Designer Magazine’s free CD. Last month, 25 photos came free with the magazine to help photoshoppers and website be-boppers get some gritty grime in their style.

Oct 29th

Urban Dirty textures in 'Advanced Web' magazine

The first issue of Advanced Web magazine came out in France last month, covering many aspects of working on the web from Photoshop art through to Ajax coding. To make it even more of a treat there were 80 photos from Urban Dirty included on the magazine’s CD.

Oct 1st

Advanced Photoshop Magazine - Urban Dirty textures...

Issue 48 of Advanced Photoshop Magazine has 50 photos from Urban Dirty on the included CD to complement the urban/worn effect design tutorial inside.

Sep 1st

Web Designer Magazine - Dutch edition, Urban Dirty...

Issue 8 of the Dutch version of Web Designer Magazine has included 80 texture images from my Urban Dirty website on their free CD. The images are also used in a photo manipulation tutorial within the magazine.

Aug 4th

Web Designer Magazine, Urban Dirty textures on CD...

In issue 144 (May 2008) of Web Designer Magazine, 20 texture photos from my website Urban Dirty are included on the free CD and included in the issue’s Photoshop tutorial.

Apr 30th

Urban Dirty wins at the Web Awards

My free texture stock photo site Urban Dirty won the award for ‘The Site We Wish We’d Built’ at the Brighton Web Awards 2007, part of the Brighton Digital Festival. Acceptance speeches were scarce so I’d like to thank my wife for hanging around whilst I take photos of mouldy moss in smelly street corners and to Brighton’s seagulls for pooing on the pavement so artistically. Big thanks to the...

Nov 10th