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In this tutorial I will show you really easy techniques to create aurora borealis (cool lighting effects) in a night sky or for a space project you may want to do. I will also show you an easy way to add stars to an image.
For this newest update I am going to show you a cool and simple way to create some neat web 2.0 style icons that I am going to use as a menu for a site, but you could use this technique for anything. This is a very easy way to use blending options to achieve a nice effect!
First I started off with a 400X150px canvas and made a new layer. In your new layer use your elliptical marquee tool to draw as perfect of a circle as you can like this:
Next right click or double click on your new layer and use these blending options:
Stroke
Gradient Overlay
I also moved around the colors in my gradient overlay like this:
Inner Glow
Outer Glow
You should end up with something like this:
See I told you this was easy and achieves a cool effect, at least I do anyway. Let me know what you think. Now for a few more touches to make these even better, first I am going to add the web 2.0 feel to it. Start a new layer and get your ellipse tool and change your fill color to white. Make a circle similar to this on the button:
Next you need to grab a soft eraser brush about 45px:
Now position your eraser in the middle over the bottom half of the circle:
While holding down shift click and move the mouse down and up over and over until you get something like this:
Just try it a few times until you get something you like. I think this is looking pretty cool so far what about you? Now I want to add a small shadow underneath to make this really stand out. Yet again we are going to use the ellipse tool, but we want the color to be black. Make a new layer again and make a circle underneath the button like this:
Ok, now that you have that lets add some gaussian blur to it. So go to Filter>>Blur>>Gaussian Blur:
Add a 7.5px radius in the Gaussian blur settings:
Hit Ok and you should see something like this:
I think that would really stand out on a website. Last but not least we are going to add some text to it and see what it would look like as a menu. Use white arial text (or whatever font you want) around 20px and just put text on your button, I am going to put the word “Home”.
Now for the text reflection. Duplicate the text, rotate it 180 degrees and flip it horizontally. In my version of photoshop I just go to Edit>>Transform and both of those settings are in the same window. Position your text below the main text like this:
Its time to use the eraser brush again and just keep the same size you had before because it will work nicely. Pick your eraser, click on the text and a little window will popup saying you must rasterize the layer before you can do this, so of course say OK. There are other ways to make a reflection but I think this is the easiest, atleast to me. So position your eraser toward the bottom of the rasterized text, while holding down shift move your mouse from left to right erasing a little of it.
My result:
That is pretty much it, now you can duplicate that layer and make other buttons as part of the menu. Also it is very easy to change the color of these by changing the gradient overlay like this:
I hope this tutorial helped you learn some new techniques and you enjoyed. Please let me know if there is anything I can clarify or help you with. Thanks for reading!
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.
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
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
And there you have it, a personalized advertisement on a big city taxi cab!
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
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!
