Searching for tutorials

Hi all,

I'm hoping someone can help point me towards some existing tutorials or provide me with some instructions... I have a jpeg image that I am trying to replicate but in a larger, better quality form... I'm using the existing one on my website and it looks great... However I need a larger version so I print a 180cm x 42cm banner to promote my website at an upcoming convention...

I have traced it out as an EPS so I can generate any size image I like... That is fine for solid colours but I want to duplicate the textures as well...

I know enough to get around in Photoshop CS2 but I am artistically challenged so I suck when it comes to creating textures, styles etc... I usually create an image in solid colours and rely on the thousands of wonderful tutorials on the web to create the effects I'm after...

I think I have found some brushed metal effects that will work for the wreath... However I have had great difficulty finding a gold effect suitable for the rings... Everything I can find is probably too realistic... The stars are probably fine as the solid white they already are... The blue background is giving me a headache as well though...

Any help will be greatly appreciated...

First, you've got the right idea going to Illustrator. We regularly produce graphics for huge applications like billboards and tractor-trailer trucks.

For the Gold ring, you'll need a little patience, because you'll have to create that.

However, let me first ask: how important is the project?

If it's important, you can obtain the Alien Skin plug-in called BLOW-UP -- which does the best job of increasing JPG files with little or no degradation whatsoever. Blow up the image, and you're off and running.

You can get that at :
http://www.alienskin.com/blowup/index.html

Here's my article (published in DTG Magazine) which gives a real-world example of BLOW-UP in action.
http://www.graphic-design.com/Photoshop/image_enlarge/index.html

;)

Well I'm glad I made the right choice with creating the vector diagram

I wish I'd known about BLOW-UP a year ago... I was trying to create a series of posters for an event but struggled to find suitable photos, largely because they were all 72dpi :( BLOW-UP would have been a huge help...

Anyway I'm downloading the demoand fingers crossed it will do the trick... It's a bit on the pricey side and my site is non-profit so all costs come out of my own pocket... Having said that if it works as well as they say it does then I'll being scraping the money together...

Thanks for both those links... Very helpful...

On the issue of actually creating the textures myself... Does anyone know of any training, books, online or in Australia, that might help me?

Thanks again

EDIT: I just tried the BLOW-UP plug-in and it's damn close to all it promises to be... The only problem I found was that certain JPEG artifacts came out as ripple effects... So if I can find a way to reduce the JPEG artifacts prior to running it through BLOW-UP then I believe it will be more than suitable... To give you an idea of how effective it was I blew up the original image from 640 x 480 to 8504 x 6378 :O So I'm off to find a way to reduce JPEG artifacts :D Thanks again...