Photoshop Web Template, a Web Site Design Guide
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by: DavidPeters
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Many people new to web design are confused by slices and Javascript rollovers and end up abandoning their projects out of frustration. The point of this Photoshop web tutorial is to keep things simple by creating a web page that uses only 2 graphics.
We'll create a banner and place it in a table that will contain 5 rows and 1 column. The banner will be placed in the top row. The next row will contain the text for your site and any photos you may wish to include. Row 3 will hold a separator, row 4 will be 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.
Try to incorporate the colors from the graphic into the colors of the banner. You can choose multiple colors but make sure they work well together or create a variation of the same shade from just one color. Here I will create 3 different shades of blue.
By using the opacity slider on a sampled hue you can create a nice variation. Open a new document and copy and paste the main graphic you've selected into it. From the toolbox select the eyedropper tool and sample a color by clicking on it in your graphic. Doing this will change the foreground color square in your toolbox.
Now open another new document and in the Background Contents choose White and click OK. Create a new layer by going Layer> New> Layer with this document open. Next go to Edit> Fill and select Contents, Use: Foreground Color. This process will fill your document with the color you just sampled. The trick here is to reduce the opacity using the slider and adjust it until you find an appealing shade. After selecting your shade, flatten the image by going Layer> Flatten Image. Use the eyedropper tool again, only now to change the foreground color square in your toolbox to match your newly created color. Click on the color square and the color picker will appear, and you can make note of 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.
To select a font in Photoshop go Window> Character. In the palette you will see a list of the installed fonts. Go to Window> Paragraph to pull up the Paragraph palette you will use to create the adjustments to your fonts
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.
Now lets make a new layer by Layer> New Layer and call it Designer Pro. I'll position the image on this layer and shrink it to fit. You shrink your graphic with 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. Drag inside the bounding box to move the graphic. Once it is to your liking, click OK.
Next we want a tinted background. I'm going to go with the light pink.
Select the background layer, Layer 1, and fill it with the light blue by going Select> All, then Edit> Fill, and in the dialog box in Contents, select Use: Color and in the Color Picker I enter the number you made note of earlier.
The result is a 600 x 300 banner with a gentle background color and with the art placed on the left. We're getting there.
I decided to apply a thick stroke to the background layer to make the design more interesting. First 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.
In the Styles options on the left side, select and click on the word Stroke. I changed the settings to Size: 7px, Position: Inside, Blend Mode: Normal, Opacity: 100%, Fill Type: Color for my site and then clicked the color swatch and entered the number of the darker green shade 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 main sections directly 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 the text. Use the type tool to make the section names and use the move tool to place them right where you want them on the banner. Choose a color for your text that is darker than your background color. Do this by going Window> Character. In the Character palette you'll find a color square. Click on it to change colors.
To automate this process you will need an HTML editor like GoLive or Dreamweaver. This is a simple thing to do. You create little "maps" over each word and then enter the link destination. You can do am image map search on Google to find a tutorial if you don't have an HTML editor, or check out your local bookstore for help like Castro's HTML Quickstart Guide.
Now create a new document with a width of 600 pixels, and a height of 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. 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 pressed for time, have no fear. For those with a deadline or those who just can't deal with any more Photoshop techniques, there are solutions available. You can purchase ready-made templates from sources like Template Monster that you be used as the foundation to creating Photoshop web pages.
The first page of Template Monster will have a pulldown menu where you can select features and then perform a search for a template. The templates are not only affordable, but pretty simple to manage in GoLive or Dreamweaver. In the past I've bought a template just for the color scheme and the images. With certain projects this has proven to be less expensive than buying stock photos. Check out Template Monster to see the large variety of website templates that they have.
I hope this tutorial will help you create something nice, and I wish your new website a thousand years of good luck!
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