Photoshop 101: The Essentials -- 1 week left!!

Wow, time has really flown by. There's only one week left before this class begins. If you intend to register, do so immediately.

This is a 6-week design intensive course that focuses on the ins and out of Photoshop. This class is taught at the beginner level so anyone with no or little Photoshop knowledge is welcome. Students will learn how to navigate their way around Photoshop and familiarize themselves with all the different tools present. This class will cover the essentials of Photoshop – what it is, working with palettes and different workspaces, photo manipulation, and the different tools of Photoshop. Students will be taught the importance of type usage and different color schemes. At the end of the class, students will be assigned a design project. Evaluations and input will be given to completed projects by the instructor.

Classes will consist of ten lessons and an end of course project of the student’s choice. Lessons will be posted on Monday and Wednesday morning of each week. Lessons will be held via a YahooGroups email loop and will also be posted in the files section.

For a more detailed description including course agenda, please click here.

Please Note: This is a design intensive class. Class participants do not need any design or Photoshop background. Students must provide their own Photoshop application. The class will be conducted using CS2, but Photoshop 6, 8, Elements, and CS3 can be used.

Photoshop Tutorial - Plastic Tabs

In this tutorial, you'll learn to create the smooth clear plastic tab buttons first seen often on various web pages.



Step 1:

Open a new image with a white background. Create a new layer and using the Rectangular Marquee Tool, draw a rectangle roughly the size of the example below.



Step 2:

Click the Channels tab to enter the Channels Palette, and create a New Channel. Fill the selection in with white, then deselect (CTRL+D). Now go to Filter » Blur »Gaussian Blur and use a setting of about 3.5, then click OK. Next go to Image » Adjust » Levels and drag the two bottom triangles towards the center until the button looks nice and smooth (see image). Click OK when done. Hold CTRL and click on the channel "Alpha 1" to select it, then click the Layers Tab. Do not lose the selection.



Step 3:

Set your foreground color to: R:212 G:214 B:212 and the background to white. Now, using the Linnear Gadient Tool, (foreground to background), drag from the top of the selection to the bottom, so that it looks similar to the example below. Now create a New Layer and set your foreground color to R:192 G:192 B:192. Go to Edit » Stoke - for width choose 1 pixel and for location choose Center. Do not deselect yet.



Step 4:

Now with the Rectangular Marquee Tool selected, move the selection up to the top of the button so that it overlaps slightly (see picture). Now create a new layer and fill that selection in with white. Click on the Channels palette, hold CTRL and click on "Alpha 1" to load the selection. Click the Layers tab and now go to Select » Inverse. Hit delete. press CTRL+D to deselect. Now go to Filter » Blur » Guassian Blur and use a setting of 0.3. Click OK and set the Opacity of that layer down to 74.



Step 5:

It should be looking pretty good at this point, but to add to the effect add a drop shadow to the layer with the original button shape on it (Layer 1). Also go to Layer » Effects » Inner Shadow and use the settings shown in the image below. You should now have a nice plastic tab ready to add some text to.



Step 6:

Select the Type Tool and add some text to your button. To give the text some extra depth, you can also add a very faint drop shadow to the text itself for a nice effect. To change the color go to Image » Adjust » Hue/Saturation.



Step 7:

Apply the same tutorial to other shapes - you'll get some neat effects.