Learning how to Create Your First Web Template
Hello everyone, today we're going to be learning how to make a simple and basic web template. The outcome of the template is below:
1. We are first going to start off by making a new document. Size is really up to you, but I’ll be using 750x850.
2. Let’s put in a background color. We’ll be using a light grey. I’ll use #e3e3e3, but it’s up to you.
3. We’ll now make the header. First, create a new layer. Then with the rectangle marquee tool, drag from the top down about ~135 pixels. Fill your selection with a dark blue color, I’m using #315567. If you're not sure how to acurately measure the amount of pixels, I'd suggest turning on rules and guides. Just press CTRL + R. You can drag on your ruler to create a guide, which you can then match up with the amount of pixels. Your template should look something like this:
please note that this screenshot has been resized.
4. Though we have a basic header shape, it looks pretty boring. Let’s spice it up some with the pen tool. (See the pen tool tutorial if you’re un-sure on how to use it.) Keep in mind that we're eventually going to be going for something like this with our pen tool lines:
One step at a time however, here's step four's image:
5. After you’ve made the basic curved shape, right click in the middle of your outline and select feather. Feather the radius a 0.3 pixels. Once you’ve done that, create a new layer then take your paint bucket tool and fill the selection with white. Deselect your selection and set the blend mode to Soft Light with an Opacity of 15%.
6. Now this helps, but let’s do this one or two more times. Use the same technique you did in step five, with the same blend mode and opacity.
7. It’s starting to look better, but we can make it look a bit better by taking a large round soft brush, and “dotting” some black and white spots just underneath the banner. Make sure you do this one a new layer.
This is how it looks. You may want to consider where you’re going to put your logo or text, and put light brushes in that area. (See the text tutorial for more info.)
8. To get rid of the extra brushing that is not in the banner, we’re going to right click on our banner layer, then go to “Select Layer Transparency”. Once we do that, take our lasso tool or rectangle marquee tool, and in the middle of the selection right click and choose “Select Inverse”. Once you do that, select your brushing layer and press delete.
9. Now put your logo or text in. (Again, see the text tutorial if you don’t have a logo.)
10. Now that we’ve got the banner out of the way, let’s make our navigation bar. To start this, directly under the banner on a new layer, take the “Rectangle Marquee” tool and drag it about 30 pixels down and all the way across the template. On a new layer, fill the selection with a light blue color, I’ll use #486b7d.
11. Now we’re going to put a gradient overlay on our navigation bar. To do this, we are first going to press ‘D’ to reset our colors, and then we are going to set our foreground and background colors with #254a5d and #486b7d.
12. Check “Gradient Overlay” and fill it with these settings:
You may notice that the "Stroke" box is checked, I simply have a one pixel stroke of black (#000000)
13. Now we’re going to make the navigation a little more glossy. To do this we’re going to create a new layer. After we create our new layer, we’re going to take our rectangle marquee tool and drag from the top of the navigation bar to the middle of the bar, and all the way across. Fill the selection with white and set the blend mode to “Soft Light” and set the Opacity to 15%. You should end up with something like this:
14. Now this step is optional, so I’ll show you the result first:
You can add scanlines to add additional effects. To do this we are going to create a new document with a size of 2x2. Zoom all the way to 1600% and with the pencil tool (under the brush tool) create two diagonal dots. Next, go to Edit - Define Pattern. Save it as whatever title you wish. After you’ve done that, take your rectangle marquee tool and drag it from the top of the navigation bar to about half way on your glossy layer (step 13.) Create a new layer, then right click in your selection and click “Fill”. Select your scan lines. Set the blend mode to “Soft Light” and set the Opacity to 30%.