A little world I made in Photoshop

Graphic design is one of my most loved “hobbies”. I find it very rewarding. There is nothing like creating something from nothing. I understand what an artist must feel when looking at a blank canvas or piece of stone.

I believe that anyone can create rewarding designs. There are so many tools and tutorials available, that if you can follow directions, you can successfully create almost anything you can imagine! You just need a little inspiration!

Graphic design starts with inspiration, and then an idea of what you want to create. Get a plan together before you start. Do a little bit of research to be sure that you understand the design elements you want to use. Once you have a plan, start playing with your favorite design program. I prefer Photoshop. It is fairly easy to use, and there is not much that you can’t do with it! If you need help, there are more tutorials than you can read! You can find some very specific help topics to create what you need.

One of the most important things to remember if you are creating designs for a web page is to make your pages as “thin” as possible. If you use images that are very large, the page will take longer to load and you are likely to lose visitors. Most of us are impatient, and want to see it now. You can accomplish this by saving images to a web format such .png or .gif. You need a format that gives you a quality image at a small size.

Flash is another design element that I love. However, I have noticed that I lose visitors before the animations load. To assist in keeping visitors, I recommend using a pre-loader for your major flash animations. A preloader lets your visitors know that something is on the way and that it is loading. Without it, it may appear that something is missing, or that it just isn’t loading.

If you need assistance, use a good search engine to search for what you are trying to accomplish. Be specific in your search and don’t be afraid to use an image search. You can also post comments or questions here and I will more than happy to offer my best reply or point you in the right direction.

Have a wonderful day!

How to make a simple custom button

To start our project, we will first create a blank canvas using these settings. We will go ahead and call this first layer “button”

Next, we will use the rounded rectangle tool to create the foundation of our button. You will want to make a rectangle that is 169px wide and 44px high. You can fill it with any color you want your button to be, I chose orange for this one. This is what we have so far:

Next we will apply layer effects. Use these settings to start with, and I encourage you to be creative and try tweaking some of these settings to see what else is possible. You might like what you find!

Next I like to use some grunge brushes or crack brushes on separate layers, one layer set to normal at 50% opacity and the other set to linear burn at 55% opacity. Select each layer and press cntrl g to create a clipping mask to the base layer. It will look like this.

Finally, we will create a ring to anchor our button. Start by creating a new layer above all the others. With that layer selected, press cntrl and click on the base layer. This will select a region that matches our button. Then go to select, modify, and expand. Set it to 3px, then fill the layer with a solid color like this.

Next, go to select, modify, contract, and set it to 3px click okay and then press delete on the keyboard. After that, apply these layer styles.

Your final product should look like this

Of course you will then need to merge visible or flatten image, save as a jpeg and apply your text. Feel free to ask questions, I’ll do my best!