Simple Banner Tutorial for Photoshop (I am using CS version on a PC.)
You can use this tutorial pretty much for anything like banners, business cards, whatever. It all depends on the size of the image you want to create. Keep in mind that some places require images to be of a certain size (pixels and/or filesize) and some places also require it to be a certain filetype (.jpg, .gif, .tif and so on). If you are using photoshop, I highly recommend you SAVE a copy of the file with all of the layers. That way if you have to change the filetype or adjust the size, it can be easily done and you’ll have the best resolution for your final image.
Also keep in mind where you plan to use your banner/image. Do you plan to change the background on your website a lot? Do you want a solid image, or a transparent image? I like transparent images for website use (headers and such), but if I’m placing a banner somewhere that I do not have control over the layout or color – I tend to stick with solid color and not have it be a transparency.
(Transparency meaning that your image will lay on top of whatever background you have and the background will show through – except where you have words or items in your banner that block out the background. I hope that makes sense.)
There are soooo many things you can do to change how an image looks and feels. Sometimes it is just experimentation and playing around until you get it the way you like it. Don’t be afraid to experiment. You can always “undo” or use History to go back a few steps.
I’m creating an image step-by-step for Beadygirl Beads (Tera) – since that’s how this tutorial got started in the first place. I grabbed my sample images from her website. When you do it, you’ll want to use the best resolution images you can—so the final product will look nice. Okay enough babbling – here is how *I* do it:
Step 1 – Pull together a few images that you want to either use a portion, or all of, in your banner. You can also grab some images that inspire you for color. These are helpful if you know you want a certain color in your banner. If you want to experiment with different fonts, go ahead and download a bunch of fonts that you like. I like to use
www.1001freefonts.com – they have a lot to choose from and well, they are free!
Step 2 – Determine the size of your banner. I believe the image size for Etsy shop banner is 760 pixels wide by 100 pixels high. So, I’m going to create my base file that size. I also make it 300 DPI, and use CMYK. You can adjust this later if necessary, but it’s always better to start out with higher resolution and more color options.
Step 3 – Open up some of your sample images, and cut and paste pieces of them into your banner. Photoshop should automatically create a new layer for every image you paste in. If it doesn’t then you’ll want to create a new layer for each one. This is very easy to do. Just go to Window-->Layers and the Layers toolbar will pop open. At the bottom, you’ll see a small icon that looks like a sheet of paper with the bottom left corner turned up. Just click on that and it will create a new layer.
(To cut and paste, be sure you have clicked on the “Rectangle Marquee Tool” and then drag your mouse to outline what you want to cut out. Then go to Edit--> Copy, click on blue portion of your banner window and Edit--> Paste. You can also use short-cut keys to do this. To Copy, just Control-C and to Paste just Control-V. Be sure you have clicked somewhere on the gray or blue area of the one you want to copy from and then the one you want to paste into. (This is especially true if you have multiple images open, since you don’t want to cut or paste to/from the wrong image.)
If you need to resize the image that you pasted, then click on the arrow right next to the Marquee tool. Then click on the image you want to resize and you should see what is called a bounding box. It’s just an outline around the image, and it has little squares at the corners and in the middle of each side. You’ll want to click on one of the corner squares and drag it to the size you want it to be.
If you want the image to resize proportionally, you’ll need to hold down the Shift key while you do this. If you want to make it go funky and crazy, then experiment away!
Kind of fuzzy, but you can see the toolbar on the left with the square marquee tool at the top, and the arrow next to it. On the right side is the layers window. You can also see the beads on the right have a bounding box around them.
Step 4 – Next, decide what color you want the background to be—keeping in mind colors for the font. You want them to be distinct so your letters don’t fade away. You also don’t want too busy of a background, because it will make the text hard to read. So, I tend to go with a plain background and spice up the letters. Some people like patterned backgrounds – it’s all up to you.
I picked black as the main background color. Tera’s beads are very colorful and she obviously likes rainbows. So, my thought is to make her Text more rainbow effect – and therefore I need a very simple background for it to standout on and look nice.
Step 4 – Make the background the color you want. I clicked on Layer 1 (or you can create a new layer, and drag it down to the bottom to make it the background layer) and used the Square marquee tool and outlined the whole area. Then I right-clicked inside the box, and clicked on “Fill” – from there you have a dropdown menu under “Contents” that says “Use” – You can use your foreground color (which in this case would be the aqua box in the left-hand toolbar) or your background color (which looks pinky-brown), black, white, and so on. If you click on “Color” it will open up a color picking window – and you can either choose a color from there OR if you drag your mouse off that window the mouse icon will turn into a little eyedropper. You can put this eyedropper on any of your sample images to grab the color you want. (You can set your foreground and background colors the same way, using the eyedropper in the lefthand toolbar too.)
Step 5 – Make sure your rulers are on. If not, just go to View-->Rulers and they will pop on. This will allow you to pull a guideline from the ruler area and be able to mark out where center is, or anywhere else you want to align to. I pulled out a guideline (while on the black background layer with the arrow in the left toolbar click so I could see the bounding box) and snapped it to the middle little box on the bounding box. This is exactly center of your image.
Step 6 – Click on, or create, a new and empty layer. (For every different area you will be putting text – this way you can move it all around without having to redo everything.)
Step 7 – Click on the “T” in the left toolbar. This is your Text Tool – and once you have clicked you can type in your text. Once you have typed it in, you can change the font, the font size, the font effect (strong, smooth, etc) and the font color. For me, there is a toolbar at the top with dropdown menus for Font, Size, and Type. You can also edit alignment there. Lastly, there is a small box of color (usually the foreground color or whatever color you set the font to last) and if you click in there you can select the color you want the font to be. Like last time, if you meander out of the box it will change to an eyedropper and you can grab a color from any other image you have open.
I put in all my text in first, and then play with it to make it how I want it to look afterwards.
Step 8 – You can change how the text looks by going to Layer--> Layer Style-->Blending Options. Here you can add a drop shadow, make it look embossed (several different types of embossing), add a glow, do all sorts of things. I recommend you play around in there and see what the different things do – just to get a feel for it. It lets you preview (if you click the box) how the effect would look, so you can play around without changing it for real. If you do change it, you can still undo it after!
To get the rainbow effect, I made the text white and then went to the Blending Options-->Gradient Overlay--> and picked the one that looked like a rainbow. Then I fiddled with the settings to make it the way I wanted it. In this case, the angle was 0 degrees, and the style was Radial. Mode was Normal, and I made the scale 150 (the max).
Step 9 – Now that I have the pretty rainbow effect, I want the text to pop out from the background a little. So, I will go and play with the “Bevel and Emboss” area under “Blending Options.” I used Pillow Emboss and changed the depth to 9. Everything else I left as default.
Step 10 – Go in and make all the different text fields the way you want them to be.
Step 11 – Consider if you need any dividing lines or outline. For this image, I think I would like a nice color line between the images and the black background. Just for a little more color.
I did this by going to the line tool (looks like a diagonal line) in the lefthand tool bar. I dragged it (while holding Shift to make sure it was straight) in the area I wanted a line. You can adjust the thickness of the line pretty easily. I just put in a number(between 3 and 5) of pixels and adjust from there. I picked the periwinkle color, since both images have it and it’ll tie in nicely with the rainbow too.
Step 12 – When you are done, SAVE it as a .psd before you do anything to merge the layers. This way you can come back and change text or change out the picture easily. (Or if you want to change colors, etc.)
Step 13 – Now, save the image for the web by going to File-->Save for Web – this will open up a new window and you can save it as a GIF or a JPEG for web use. I typically use the “Original” version since it will give you options of different automatic versions you can use.
I hope this helps. I am sure I am leaving out some stuff, but hopefully you can figure it out. If not, post and I’ll try to answer the question as best I can. I can do this pretty quickly and easily, but telling someone else how to do it is another story!
Here’s the final version:
Photoshop Web Banner Tutorial
Ah well, I guess I am just a little bit silly. Thank you SO much! Now let's see if I can do it. (cross your fingers)
Aja
So here is my new banner for etsy:
I'm sure I'll be looking back at this thread for help with anything else to do with banners, avatars, etc. 
