Professional Banner
As a designer, many people may request an awesome, yet professional looking banner for their website. Here is a walkthrough of how I do mine.
1. Start a new document (696x150 for me), make a new layer and fill it with a random color.
2. Double click on this layer, go to Gradient Overlay, and create a gradient (Hint: do not use vibrant colors or else the banner will be too bright and discolored when you add more color).
3. I Imported a great looking stock photo of clouds on top of everything. (Hint: get a large image and then shrink it so that the quality increases).
4.I messed around with my blending settings so that it looks good on the gradient. For this I used a "Hard Light" for my cloud image. This gives it more vibrant color and also makes it look surreal.
5.I Imported a great stock photo of a butterfly. I have cut out the butterfly and placed it on the canvas. Please note that butterflies simply look good in design...I'm not sure why. You can use whatever photo you'd like.
6. I duplicated the butterfly, Filter > Blur > "Gaussian Blur"ed it at 6.9, and set it to overlay. This makes it darker as well as surreal.
7. I double clicked on the original butterfly image and added an Inner Glow and Outer Glow so that the edges were mostly clouded.
8. For this part, I followed my Abstract Swirl tutorial, made 4 swirls and placed them coming from an obvious light source.
Click Image to Download .PSD
Anyway, this tutorial was meant to show a few techniques of creating great looking banners and I hope you've learned something. Here are a few more banners I've made.
Good Luck
Selasa, 16 Desember 2008
Professional Banner
Metallic Tubes and Wires
Metallic Tubes and Wires1
Start with a new image, 250x250 pixels. Select a dark gray as the foreground color. Create a new layer, and with the Pen or Paintbrush tool, draw a wire shaped line on it, 15 pixels thick.
Gradual curves look nice. This may take a few tries to get right.
Name the layer Wire.2
Make a copy of Wire, by dragging it onto the New Layer button. Double click on the new layer, and rename it Cut Wire.
Hide the original layer Wire, by clicking on it's eye icon in the Layers window. We'll use that layer later on.
Now, grab the Eraser tool, set the brush size to about 5 pixels, and cut the line up.3
Hold down Ctrl, and click on the hidden Wire layer in the Layers window.
This will create a selection out of the layer Wire's transparency
Next, go to the /b>Channels window, and click the Save selection as channel button.
Select the new Channel in the Channels window, then double click on it and rename it Wire Bevel.4
Gaussian Blur the selection by 9 pixels, then by 6 pixels, then by 3 pixels, and finally 1 pixel.
AutoLevels Ctrl+Shift+L, the selection.
Then, go back to the Layers window, hold down Ctrl and click on the Cut Wire layer to select it's transparency. Return to the Channels window, click on Wire Bevel, press D to reset colors, invert selection Ctrl+Shift+I, and finally clear the selection. Del
Deselect. Ctrl+D5
Go back to the Layers window, and select the Cut Wire layer.
Filter > Render > Lighting Effects...
Create a white Directional light, and aim it down, from the top. Then, create a blue directional light, shining up, from the bottom.
Set the Properties to:
Gloss: 100 (Shiny)
Material: -100 (Plastic)
Exposure: 39
Ambience: -21
Set the Texture Channel onto Wire Bevel, and the height to 15.
Now, tweak the positioning and direction of the lights to achieve the desired effect.6
Now, click on the hidden Wire layer to expose it. Click on it again holding down Ctrl, to create the selection.
To make the line 1 pixel thinner, invert the selection Ctrl+Shift+I, go Select > Modify > Expand... 1 pixel, and clear the selection Del, and Deselect Ctrl+D.
Filter > Render > Lighting Effects...
And set the Texture Channel to Wire Transparency.
Hit OK, add a dropshadow, and you're finished!
Good Lack
Coloring Your Art
Coloring Your Art
1. Open up your sketch or a downloaded sketch (whatever you want)
2. Create a new layer beneath your sketch layer and name it face(or skin) color
3. Roughly color the skin parts (I used #eed4bd)
4. Create a new layer beneath your sketch layer(and above your skin layer) and name it hair color
5. Roughly color the hair parts (I used #917352) (Repeat this for eyes, clothing, whatever you want/need)
6. Now create a new layer above the face/skin color layer and do the same for the hair
7. Now color in the shade parts of the skin (I used #b99e82), the hair (I used #53402b), and repeat this for eyes or whatever you want/need
8. Repeat steps 6 and 7, only use a lighter shade color then the first time
9. I forgot to do the lips and eyes, so repeat steps 6 and 7
10. Select the first shade layer (I am showing the skin in this tutorial) and apply a 3.0 Gaussian Blur to it
11. Do the same for the second shade layer
This should give you the following effect:
12. Repeat steps 10 and 11 for the hair, eyes, lips, etc
13. My hair shade wasn't dark enough so I duplicated the shade layer a few times to get a darker shade
14. Adding highlights/some more light. Create a new layer above the sin layers you have so far, name it face/skin highlights or something like that
15. Roughly color in the highlights with white.
16. Blur this highlights layer to something that looks natural and drop the opacity (I dropped mine by about 60 percent)
17. Repeat steps 14, 15 and 16 for the lips , hair , etc (whatever you want)
18. Create a layer called final edits, or something like that
19. In this layer make some final edits, I added some more darkness to the eyes, brushed up the hair on a few parts and added a reflection in the eyes
20. Duplicate the sketch layer, blur the copy by 0.5 pixels and drop the opacity a bit (mine dropped roughly 50 percent)
This should leave you with the following result:
My final product (a lot more steps are involved in this image):
Good Luck
