Web Site Creation Tutorial with Photoshop Web Template
Don't let what you might not be overly familiar with such as slices and Javascript rollovers keep you away from creating a web site that will not only support all of your needs, but that you will be proud of at the same time. The following is a Photoshop web tutorial that will help you on your way to this goal by starting out with a simple 2 graphic web page design. Let's Begin
First, lets make a banner and place it in a table containing 5 rows and 1 column. We will place the banner in the top row. The text for your site and any photos you might like to include will be in the next row. Row 3 will contain a separator, row 4 will be set for your text links and a copyright notice, and row 5 will hold a second separator.
For this tutorial, let's call our site just that "Our Site." Now to find a graphic for the banner we're creating. There are plenty of good images to be found at several of the free stock photo sites and for only a small fee, you can find top quality, professional images on some of the online galleries. Try the iStockPhoto gallery for beautiful illustrations or photos that at only a few dollars can add quite an upgrade to the presentation of your site design.
The colors of the banner and the website will be taken from the various pinks used in the image. There are 3 pinks I want to use - a dark pink, a middle pink, and a lighter pink that I made myself from a shade of the darker pink.
I find that by using the opacity slider on a sampled color you can create a nice variation. Open a new document and copy and paste the main graphic you've chosen into it. Now from the toolbox select the eyedropper tool and sample a color by clicking on it in your graphic. This will change the foreground color square in your toolbox.
Now open another new document and in the Background Contents select White. Click OK. With this document open, create a new layer by going Layer> New> Layer. Then go Edit> Fill and select Contents, Use: Foreground Color. This will fill your document with the color you just sampled. The trick here is to lower the opacity using the slider and to keep playing around with it until you find a nice shade. When you settle on one, flatten the image by going Layer> Flatten Image. Use the eyedropper tool again, this time to change the foreground color square in your toolbox so it is the same as your newly created color. Now click on the color square and the color picker will come up, and you can write down the numbers of your new color.
I went through my fonts and settled on Onyx regular. When you find a font that works for you, try playing with the tracking, the leading, and the scale - or a combination. It makes it more personal and unique when you include some tweaks.
Go Window> Character in Photoshop to choose a font. You will see a list of your installed fonts in the palette. To fine tune the settings, pull up the Paragraph palette by going Window> Paragraph.
If it's new fonts you're looking for, I've included a list of just a few free font resources you can use at the end of this tutorial.
For our example, create a new document that is 600 x 300 pixels. You can adjust this size according to your own design when you choose your own stock photo and plan the layout.
Next create a new layer, Layer> New Layer. We'll call ours "Web Artist" here. I will place the illustration on this layer and shrink it to fit. Shrink your graphic by choosing Edit> Transform> Scale. The bounding box will have handles. Use the Shift Key to constrain proportions, and shrink your image by selecting the top left handle and pulling towards the bottom right. To move the graphic, drag inside the bounding box. Once you have it to your liking, click Enter.
Let's go with a tinted background. Here we will go with a light green.
Choosing the background layer, Layer 1, fill it with the light green by steps Select> All, then Edit> Fill. In the dialog box in Contents, select Use: Color and in the Color Picker enter the numbers you noted earlier.
The result is a 600 x 300 banner with a soft background shade and with the graphic placed on the left. It's starting to look like a web page.
Let's say we want to add a thick stroke to the background layer to liven up the design for more interest. Make sure the background layer, Layer 1, is active, and create a copy by going Layer> New> Layer Via Copy. Next double-click next to the layer name; this will bring up the Blending Options in the Layers Style dialog box.
Select and then click on the word Stroke in the Styles options on the left side. I changed the settings to Size: 7px, Position: Inside, Blend Mode: Normal, Opacity: 100%, Fill Type: Color, and I clicked the color swatch and entered D04E8C in the color picker. Click OK.
The border is just to balance out the design. Feel free to make changes and get creative with your own ideas.
We're going to put the names of the major sections right on the banner. These will be the links. Since it will be just one single graphic we will be using image maps.
Create a new layer for your words. Use the type tool to create the section names and then use the move tool to position them exactly to where you want on the banner. Major Note: pick a color for your text that is darker than your background color!!! Otherwise it will either blend in or you won't be able to see it at all. Do this by going Window> Character. In the Character palette you'll find a color square that you can click on to change colors.
You'll need an HTML editor like GoLive or Dreamweaver to automate this process. It's really very simple. You make little "maps" over each word and then enter the link destination. If you don't have an HTML editor you'll need to do a Google search on image maps to find a tutorial, or buy a book like Elizabeth Castro's HTML Quickstart Guide to help you out.
Create a new document. The width should be 600 pixels, and the height should be about 12 pixels. Fill this with your background color. Then, using the text tool and a dark color, type some periods, like this:........... and place them in the file, centering them. Change the size and the spacing until it looks perfect. Now save this as a GIF file.
In your HTML editor of choice build a simple table that contains 5 rows and 1 column. If you're going to use text link navigation below the banner instead of image maps on the banner, create an extra row so you end up with 6 rows in your table. Now place your elements into the individual rows of the table and you're done.
If you are on deadline and can't cope with learning any more Photoshop techniques or HTML, here's another solution. You can buy a ready-made template from Template Monster that you can use as a base to create web pages in Photoshop.
On Template Monster you will find a pulldown menu on the front page where you can pick options or features and then carry out a search for a template. The templates are reasonably priced and fairly simple to handle in GoLive or Dreamweaver. There have been times that I have acquired a template just for the images and color scheme. This has proven to be less costly than using stock photos with a fee. Take a look at Template Monster to explore the huge variety of web templates they have available.
I hope this tutorial will help you create something nice, and I wish your new website a thousand years of good luck!
First, lets make a banner and place it in a table containing 5 rows and 1 column. We will place the banner in the top row. The text for your site and any photos you might like to include will be in the next row. Row 3 will contain a separator, row 4 will be set for your text links and a copyright notice, and row 5 will hold a second separator.
For this tutorial, let's call our site just that "Our Site." Now to find a graphic for the banner we're creating. There are plenty of good images to be found at several of the free stock photo sites and for only a small fee, you can find top quality, professional images on some of the online galleries. Try the iStockPhoto gallery for beautiful illustrations or photos that at only a few dollars can add quite an upgrade to the presentation of your site design.
The colors of the banner and the website will be taken from the various pinks used in the image. There are 3 pinks I want to use - a dark pink, a middle pink, and a lighter pink that I made myself from a shade of the darker pink.
I find that by using the opacity slider on a sampled color you can create a nice variation. Open a new document and copy and paste the main graphic you've chosen into it. Now from the toolbox select the eyedropper tool and sample a color by clicking on it in your graphic. This will change the foreground color square in your toolbox.
Now open another new document and in the Background Contents select White. Click OK. With this document open, create a new layer by going Layer> New> Layer. Then go Edit> Fill and select Contents, Use: Foreground Color. This will fill your document with the color you just sampled. The trick here is to lower the opacity using the slider and to keep playing around with it until you find a nice shade. When you settle on one, flatten the image by going Layer> Flatten Image. Use the eyedropper tool again, this time to change the foreground color square in your toolbox so it is the same as your newly created color. Now click on the color square and the color picker will come up, and you can write down the numbers of your new color.
I went through my fonts and settled on Onyx regular. When you find a font that works for you, try playing with the tracking, the leading, and the scale - or a combination. It makes it more personal and unique when you include some tweaks.
Go Window> Character in Photoshop to choose a font. You will see a list of your installed fonts in the palette. To fine tune the settings, pull up the Paragraph palette by going Window> Paragraph.
If it's new fonts you're looking for, I've included a list of just a few free font resources you can use at the end of this tutorial.
For our example, create a new document that is 600 x 300 pixels. You can adjust this size according to your own design when you choose your own stock photo and plan the layout.
Next create a new layer, Layer> New Layer. We'll call ours "Web Artist" here. I will place the illustration on this layer and shrink it to fit. Shrink your graphic by choosing Edit> Transform> Scale. The bounding box will have handles. Use the Shift Key to constrain proportions, and shrink your image by selecting the top left handle and pulling towards the bottom right. To move the graphic, drag inside the bounding box. Once you have it to your liking, click Enter.
Let's go with a tinted background. Here we will go with a light green.
Choosing the background layer, Layer 1, fill it with the light green by steps Select> All, then Edit> Fill. In the dialog box in Contents, select Use: Color and in the Color Picker enter the numbers you noted earlier.
The result is a 600 x 300 banner with a soft background shade and with the graphic placed on the left. It's starting to look like a web page.
Let's say we want to add a thick stroke to the background layer to liven up the design for more interest. Make sure the background layer, Layer 1, is active, and create a copy by going Layer> New> Layer Via Copy. Next double-click next to the layer name; this will bring up the Blending Options in the Layers Style dialog box.
Select and then click on the word Stroke in the Styles options on the left side. I changed the settings to Size: 7px, Position: Inside, Blend Mode: Normal, Opacity: 100%, Fill Type: Color, and I clicked the color swatch and entered D04E8C in the color picker. Click OK.
The border is just to balance out the design. Feel free to make changes and get creative with your own ideas.
We're going to put the names of the major sections right on the banner. These will be the links. Since it will be just one single graphic we will be using image maps.
Create a new layer for your words. Use the type tool to create the section names and then use the move tool to position them exactly to where you want on the banner. Major Note: pick a color for your text that is darker than your background color!!! Otherwise it will either blend in or you won't be able to see it at all. Do this by going Window> Character. In the Character palette you'll find a color square that you can click on to change colors.
You'll need an HTML editor like GoLive or Dreamweaver to automate this process. It's really very simple. You make little "maps" over each word and then enter the link destination. If you don't have an HTML editor you'll need to do a Google search on image maps to find a tutorial, or buy a book like Elizabeth Castro's HTML Quickstart Guide to help you out.
Create a new document. The width should be 600 pixels, and the height should be about 12 pixels. Fill this with your background color. Then, using the text tool and a dark color, type some periods, like this:........... and place them in the file, centering them. Change the size and the spacing until it looks perfect. Now save this as a GIF file.
In your HTML editor of choice build a simple table that contains 5 rows and 1 column. If you're going to use text link navigation below the banner instead of image maps on the banner, create an extra row so you end up with 6 rows in your table. Now place your elements into the individual rows of the table and you're done.
If you are on deadline and can't cope with learning any more Photoshop techniques or HTML, here's another solution. You can buy a ready-made template from Template Monster that you can use as a base to create web pages in Photoshop.
On Template Monster you will find a pulldown menu on the front page where you can pick options or features and then carry out a search for a template. The templates are reasonably priced and fairly simple to handle in GoLive or Dreamweaver. There have been times that I have acquired a template just for the images and color scheme. This has proven to be less costly than using stock photos with a fee. Take a look at Template Monster to explore the huge variety of web templates they have available.
I hope this tutorial will help you create something nice, and I wish your new website a thousand years of good luck!
About the Author:
Did you like this article? Interested in learning photoshop fast? Well now you can by reading this free Guide...what are you waiting for?
posted by Marcondes Allen at 12:53 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home