photoshoptown.com

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed.

In today’s tutorial, we will learn how to place your own advertisement on a taxi cab. To start, you’ll need a good taxi image. Here’s the one I am using.

Click for full size image

The first step, although unnecessary, certainly spices up the image a bit and gives it a nice glow.

Duplicate your taxi layer by right-clicking and selecting Duplicate Layer. Double click the layer to bring up the Layer Style panel. Under Blending Options, please change the Blend Mode from Normal to Overlay and click okay.

Now your image has a nice glow to it doesn’t it?

Now to add your photo or advertisement to the taxi. In this scenario, I’ll be using a stylized version of a personal photograph.

Place the image roughly over the taxi ad revolver. Grab your Polygonal Lasso Tool “L” and carefully select a rectangle the same size as the taxi revolver.

Press “Ctrl-shift-I” to select the inverse selection and press delete. Now your image fits snuggly into the ad revolver.

Just about finished with this tutorial, hang in there! Double click the picture/ad layer to bring up the Layer Style panel and using the same method as before change the Blend Mode from Normal to Hard Light.

And there you have it, a personalized advertisement on a big city taxi cab!

In this tutorial we will apply some nifty web 2.0 styling to create an effective business card. If you haven’t done so yet, consider brushing up on what exactly web 2.0 is by visiting out Web 2.0 Checklist.

This tutorial uses a technique described elsewhere at Photoshop Town, but you should be able to figure it out without going through that tutorial.

Let’s start by opening a new document. Standard business card size calls for dimensions of 3.5in x 2in and a Resolution of 300 pixels/inch.

Step One is the create the background for your web 2.0 business card. Set your foreground color to #e2e2e3. Now select your background layer and hit “M” to bring up your marquee tool. Make a selection approximately 4/5ths the height of your document and 100% of the width.

Select the gradient tool with “shift-g” and change your gradient to go from #e2e2e3 to white.

Now give your marquee box the gradient to create a horizon of sorts.

Now for the easy part, it’ll make you feel like you’ve really accomplished something! Go ahead a write your address and give it an alignment right as opposed to the standard left with the color #3c3c3c. Font selection here is only slightly important, while readability is key. I would use something along the lines of Lucida Sans Unicode. Place your address near the bottom right, but leave some room around the edges. When designing for print, and specifically offset printing you need to accommodate for the edges.

If you want, throw your tag line down at the bottom. In keeping with the web 2.0 theme, use VAGRounded BT as your font. Others will work well including Arial Rounded.

Hang in there, we are over halfway done! Time to throw together a logo and then its off to the printers.

Type your company name with the web 2.0 font of your choice, again im using VAGRounded BT

Duplicate the layer by right-clicking and selcting Duplicate Layer. Rasterize the layer by right-clicking and selecting Rasterize Type. Using your oval marquee tool select roughly the bottom half and press delete. Still following? Now double click the layer to bring up the Layer Style panel and select Gradient Overlay. Create a new gradient to match your text color, I am using #88b9eb.

Just about done, lets put a trendy mirrored image in there. Go back to your logo name layer and again right click and select duplicate layer. Press “ctrl-t” to Transform your layer. Right-click the layer and select Flip Vertical. Now move the layer below your logo name.

Double-click the layer to bring up the Layer Style panel and apply another gradient overlay using the same settings as before, #88b9eb to #FFFFFF but this time reverse the gradient.

Drop the layer opacity down to about 25%.

[opacity]

Go back to your original logo name layer and double click to bring up the Layer Style panel. Click on drop shadow and apply the following effect.

And there you have it, an effective web 2.0 styled business card!

Welcome to the first tutorial at Photoshoptown.com! Stay tuned for new tutorials added daily!

Well, let’s go ahead and get started with this simple tutorial. First we will create a new document. I prefer to still accommodate those users at 800×600, so lets set this new document at 790×21

Create a new layer and fill with white. Remember you can hit “D” to revert to the default white/black and then “X” to bring white to the brush color.

Double-click the layer to bring up the Layer Style menu and apply the following effects.

And remember, feel free to make the gradient any color you desire.

Now it’s time to separate the bar into individual fields with insets. Zoom in on your document to about 1200% by pressing the on your keyboard.

Create a new layer and using your marquee tool, make a selection one pixel wide and the height of your document. Fill this with black. Create another selection the same size and right next to your black line. Fill your selection with white.

Now you will want to change the blend mode for the layer. Double-click the layer to bring up the Layer Style menu. Under general blending, change the Blend Mode from Normal to Soft Light

Duplicate the layer as many times as needed by right-clicking the layer and selecting duplicate layer. Slide them over to create different sections for your nav bar.

You are almost done, just a couple more steps!

Use the text tool to create your links using any font that you choose. I like Myriad Pro. Space them out to fill up the nav bar, and resituate those insets to separate the different sections.

And there you have it, a completed navigation bar! All that is needed is to break the image down for use in your webpage and add rollover effects if you desire, but that’s another tutorial!