Creating a Textured Banner

Let’s begin by making a 740 × 250 white document. We aren’t keeping it white for too long, though. Take your gradient tool, select a light grey to dark grey transition (anything basic greys will do, really), set it to radial and go over the white background.

Now you should have a nice radial background.

From here on we’ll begin to assemble the rest of the layout. So take this picture and paste it onto your document. Using a 30% hardness, 200 meter diameter circle eraser, erase some of the edges of the picture. Your erasing shouldn’t be perfect here, so don’t worry if it looks a little funny.

Now we’re going to begin adding the textures! Remember that when applying textures you should always use big, zero hardness brushes because those tend to blend everything in smoothly. Take this texture and paste it onto your document. Do not move the texture. Keep it the way that it becomes pasted onto your document. Set the texture to Linear Light. Now using a 400 meter diameter, 0 hardness circle brush, erase some of the texture away in the areas highlighted below:

Now take this texture and paste it onto your document. Set it to Multiply at 100%.

Again, take this texture and erase away parts the texture as highlighted below. I used a 200 meter diameter circle eraser brush with 0% roundness. After you’re done, set the texture to Color Burn.

Take this texture and set it to Color Dodge. Go back and erase the scratches that go over Christina’s face.

Take this texture and pull it up towards the end. Now erase away selected areas highlighted below and set the texture to Lighten.

Now this texture (it’s the last one – I swear, haha) and set it to Soft Light at 59%.

Now that we’re finally done with all the textures, we’re off to add some extra color into our graphic. Go to Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Color Balance and match your settings to mine. After you’re done, set the layer to Luminosity.

Duplicate the Color Balance layer and set it to Soft Light at 50%. Your image should now look like this:

Now we’re going to add in some nice circles. Using the marquee tool, create circles using the colors black and white, then set the circles to overlay with different opacities.

Go to Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Levels and match your settings to mine. Set the opacity to 46%.

Your image should now look like this:

For the final coloring, go to Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Selective Color and match your settings to mine:

Set the opacity to 80%.

Now we’ll add the text! You can select any basic font you want, but I’m using Helvetica. Write whatever you’d like and then double click for the FX and select Drop Shadow. Match your settings to mine.

To finish off the text effect we’re going for, we need to add a gaussian blur to our text. To do so, we need to convert it for smart filters. So go to Filter > Convert for Smart Filters.

Now go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur. Set it to 1.3 pixels and press okay. Now drag your text layer all the way under all the textures, right above the Christina Image.

And you’re all done! Check out the final product.

Posted 12/22/2008 - Photoshop Tutorials | 17 comments