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Making A Message Strip in Phot

This tutorial shows how to create a message strip in Photoshop using layers, effects, and blending modes. Key steps include making a radial gradient background, adding text and a heart graphic, rotating and merging layers, and using burn and dodge tools to add shadows and highlights to the strip.

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0% found this document useful (0 votes)

78 views38 pages

Making A Message Strip in Phot

Uploaded by

Virgil

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INTERFACE

Making a Message Strip

in Photoshop
by Collis Ta'eed

14 Sep 2007

19 Comments

In this tutorial, we're going to make a little message strip in Photoshop that you can
place in the top-right corner of a design. These little strips look very trendy and
Web2.0-y, particularly in Web designs! It's quite an easy effect to do, and in this
tutorial we'll add some shadow and light to make it pop!

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Step 1:
To begin this tutorial as always, we will start with a nice radial gradient. I am
addicted to radial gradients, so you should be too! I'm using a combination of nice
blues. Here are the exact color codes:
Color 1 - #0e324f
Color 2 - #062033
It works well if you put the highlight of the gradient in the top right corner where we'll
be placing our little message strip. This is to do with how we'll be adding light and
shadow later.

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Step 2:
Now this step isn't really necessary, but I'm going to add a giant letter M so that my
message strip has something to go over. When the message strip interacts with the
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background this way, it looks even cooler.

So anyhow I make a giant M in white and set it to Overlay and fade it out to 40% so
that it has a bit of the radial gradient and fits in with the light and shadow.
Light and shadow are your friend, they will make your designs look much nicer. In
the real world and in print design, you get light and shadow from the light (sun light,
electric light, whatever), but on screen everything is kind of uniform. So it's nice
when you add a bit of shadow and light to liven it all up. Note that this doesn't work
nearly as well in print.

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Step 3:
Next in a new layer, draw a long rectangle with a light grey. Make it really long
because when you rotate it later, you'll need the ends to be appropriately long. Also
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add some text. I've written "Made with Love!" in a fun-looking font - Gill Sans Ultra
Bold. I have a predisposition to fat fonts because they look friendly and loud.

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Step 4:
Now I'm going to grab a heart shape from Photoshop's set of shapes. You can get
these by clicking on your Custom Shape Tool (U) in the Tool menu. And then go up
to the top of your screen and press on the little down arrow next to Shape as
shown. If you don't have lots of shapes already, click on that arrow pointing to the
right and add them.

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Step 5:
So using that heart shape, in a new layer I've drawn a nice little red heart. That red,
white, and blue combination looks great.
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The trick with color combinations like this is two-fold. First you want to have a main
color (in this case blue) and then use the other colors to highlight off that main
color. So here we have a lot of blue, a medium amount of light grey, and a tiny bit of
red that really leaps out.
The second thing to remember is that some color combinations clash like nobody's
business. Like if you put that red on the blue it'll be eye-jarring. So here I've used
the light grey as an intermediary color.

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Step 6:
Now to make the red really pop, I've selected the heart layer, created a new layer
above it, and then using an even lighter red color, I've drawn a small gradient over
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in the top-right corner. This way our heart has a radial gradient and again we're
using light and shadow!
I've also added a faint blurred shadow to the "Made with Love" text using the Drop
Shadow blending mode. You can do this by right clicking on that layer and selecting
Blending Options. Then tick Drop Shadow. Set the Distance to 0 and change the
color to be a light grey so it's not too full-on. Don't add a regular shadow because
we want these letters to be part of the strip, not hovering over it.

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Step 7:
Now I want to add borders to the strip, so I hold Ctrl and click on the strip layer to
select it all, then create a new layer and paste in a darker grey color. Then I go to
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Select > Modify > Contract and contract the selection by 2 pixels.
Next I hit delete to delete the middle of that dark grey, leaving just the edges. (Note
that you have to hit the right arrow a couple times and then hit delete and then hit
the left arrow a couple of times and hit delete again to get the left and right edges.)

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Step 8:
Ok, So now we have our message strip, it has edges, a message, and a nice red
heart popping off.
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The next thing to do is select all the message strip layers and merge them into a
single layer. We do this because we are about to rotate.
If you rotate without merging the text and the edges, you can get some odd effects
happening. Photoshop tends to blur and jag stuff when you rotate, so it's best to
minimize the effects by merging it all together here. Of course, this means you have
to make sure your message strip is totally finished before you merge!
Merging also has the added benefit that we can use Dodge and Burn later to
shadow-and-light it up. You'll see what I mean shortly...

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Step 9:
So now, hit Ctrl+T to transform, hold down Shift and turn the message strip to a 45'
angle.
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Step 10:
Now move the message strip up to the top right. It's already looking great, but now
we need to add a bit of shadows and stuff.
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So create a new layer on top and select a lightish grey color. Hold down Ctrl and
click on the message strip layer to select all its pixels. Then draw a gradient going
from light grey to transparency and draw it from the top coming down. Then draw a
second one from the bottom going up.
You should get something that looks like the image above--a bit of grey coming from
the top and a bit more coming from the bottom.

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Step 11:
Now change the blending mode for this new layer to Multiply. Because we used a
nice faint grey it'll give a good amount of shadow. If you used a darker grey, you
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might need to fade the opacity back.

Step 12:
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Now go back to the message strip layer itself. Change to the Burn Tool (O) and
choose a big soft brush to work with.
Slowly add a bit of burn to the bottom and top of the strip. Up in the settings for the
Burn Tool you might want to make sure Exposure is set reasonably low (I used
20%). This lets you do a subtler effect without it becoming overexposed.
When you've finished adding the burn to the top and bottom, you can, if you like,
hold down Alt and gently brush the middle a little. Holding Alt when the Burn Tool is
selected switches it to a dodge.
Burn and Dodge are like opposites of each other. Burning darkens and Dodge
lightens. They are pretty useful tools, though you want to use them subtly or else
you can make a bit of a mess.

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Step 13:
So now that our message strip is looking good, let's add a shadow behind it.

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Create a layer below the message strip.

Now hold down Ctrl and click on the message strip layer to select its pixels and in
the layer below, fill it with a medium grey.
Then deselect and hit the down arrow a couple of times and the left arrow a couple
of times so that your new layer is to the bottom and right of the message strip (as
shown)
This will be our shadow layer.

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Step 14:
Set your shadow layer to Multiply and then go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur and
use a setting of about 3-4px. You'll get a nice shadow happening.
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Step 15:
Now we want our message strip to look like it's bulging up in the middle. This
means that the shadow would become less at both the top and bottom because the
message strip is closer to the background. Does that make sense?
Basically if something is far away from the background, its shadow is bigger, and if
its closer its shadow is smaller...
Anyways, choose the Erase Tool (E) and with a big soft brush gently erase a bit of
the shadow at the top and bottom so that it gets faint at either end.
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Step 16:
And there you have the finished product: a nice message strip!
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About Collis Ta'eed

Hi I'm Collis and I work at Envato making

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wandering about the internets!

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19 Comments

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magdalena

2 months ago

I get lost somewhare and I try guess what I should do next.. but I'm quite happy with the result ;)

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Felipe Genuino

5 years ago

Nice tutorial.
thankx

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newsever

5 years ago

greatttt post

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karhtikeyan

5 years ago

very simple... cool

avi

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5 years ago

tnx man..great tutoreal

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canadian lipitor
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5 years ago

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It is important to remember that you must never double dose. If you miss a dose, don't go back to it, but c
following your schedule and take the next dose.

Miato

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5 years ago

Hi,
Super post, Need to mark it on Digg
Have a nice day
Miato

Julien

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5 years ago

I remembered that post !

I found it amazing.
And now i am a big fan of your interface tutorials !
You have build a solid web network, congrats from France.

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dana

6 years ago

thanks, great tutorial

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Paris Vega

6 years ago

I get a strong sense of nostalgia looking this tutorial. This was my introduction to PSDtuts. Its amazing ho
company has grown since then.

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Sumeet Chawla

6 years ago

Hey, Awesome tutorial Collis! I believe that a good blog post image plays a vital part in deciding whether th
going to click on the post and read the whole post or not. Obviously, the post header matters the most but
wanted to create some awesome looking blog post images and nets+ has been my inspiration most of th
This tutorial really helped me cause to a great extent!
Thanks a ton!
~ Sumeet

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antony

6 years ago