In my last post we looked at how using colour blocks alongside an image can be incredibly inspiring and bring your blog to life. Now I want to show you how to do it. The tutorial below uses Photoshop but I’m pretty sure that the steps will be very similar if you have Photoshop Elements.

I’d love to know how you get on and please do comment with links back to your own blog so that we can see your lovely work!

Here’s what we’re making.

Step One: Create some space

Open your image in Photoshop and make your canvas a couple of cm/ 150 pixels or so bigger than the image at the bottom. You do this by going to Image> Canvas Size. To avoid space all around the image change the blocks at the bottom as I have and then the extra space will sit on the bottom only.

Step Two: Create your blocks

Remember drawing a rectangular block from our last tutorial? Well we’re going to do the same again. Depending on your preference you can make these blocks any shape or size. I’m going to go for landscape blocks.

I’ve also switched on the grid (by going to View> Show> Guides). When I’m designing normally I find these guides annoying, but for something like the blocks it really helps me be precise.

Create a new layer and draw yourself a rectangular marquee. Fill the block with your foreground colour. It doesn’t really matter at this stage what the colour is as we’ll do the precise colour picking later.

Step Three: Duplicate your colour blocks

So that we don’t need to mess about getting the blocks precisely the same size we’re going to duplicate them a few times. Ready? Here goes.

Create a duplicate layer by dragging your layer with the block on it (I’ve named mine block 1) over the Create a New Layer tool. This will duplicate your layer so that you have two blocks on top of eachother. Take the new block and move it to the right, a neat distance (I choose one square away) from the first block.

Select both layers and Merge together (I use “Apple E” command). The next job is to duplicate that layer twice so that you end up with six blocks.

It’s not looking inspiring yet but it is looking neat!

Step Four: Add some colour

The next bit involves a bit of creative license. My image is an Autumnal Colour Psychology mood board that we’ve created to illustrate our new website. I want the colours to represent the warmth and vibrancy of the Autumn colour personality so I need to be sure that the colours I end up with are warm, intense and muted. When you colour pick from a photograph, you often end up with quite distorted colours because the shadows add a lot of grey into the colour tones, so you may need a few stabs to get exactly what you’re looking for.

Use the Eyedropper tool to pick colours from your image. On my tools palette – left hand side of my screen it’s 6th down and looks like a pipette (remember those from science?!).

Once you have a colour you’re happy with use the paint bucket tool to drop your colour onto one of your blocks. For this to work remember you’ll need to select the right layer. If you flood the entire screen with colour you’re on the wrong layer! Now that I’ve done my pixel work you’ll notice I’ve turned off my grid so I can see what I’m doing.

How’s that? Delicious I think!

Step Five: Finishing off

It’s looking gorgeous, but I just need to do a couple more things before I use my image on the blog.

That chunk of white at the bottom is annoying me so I need to use the crop tool to cut it down to size. On second glance that teal on the left hand side is feeling slightly disharmonious for the Autumn palette. It’s a bit cool, so I’m going to adjust the colour and warm it up a bit. I wouldn’t expect you to do this, but for a colour psychology freak like me it’s a bit of a must…

Finally I need to save my image for web and try and keep the file size down to about 70-80kb so that it doesn’t take an age to load. This doesn’t always work, but on a file of these dimensions it should be fine.

Over to you

I’d love to know how you get on with these tutorials. If you find them useful, then I’ll keep going Do let me know, and please do post links to your handiwork!

Tagged as , Photoshop tutorial in Blogging, Graphic Design, Tutorials

Most blogging packages have a “caption” tool, but if you want to add a beautiful caption then you need to get creative and use an image editing programme.

Now for my creative work I tend to use Adobe Photoshop (for web and creatively editing images) or Adobe InDesign for the print work. I’m going to show you how to add a gorgeous caption using Photoshop. If you have Photoshop Elements (which is a great non-pro tool at just £50ish) then the workflow is likely to be very similar.

Here’s what we’re creating.

Step One: Pick your font

I like to pick a font that works with the image and with my brand. If you have a strong brand identity you’ll probably have a range of fonts that you know work for your business. It’s a good idea not to go ballistic, especially with the really fancy fonts. Hundreds of fonts peppering your blog posts can get a bit overwhelming if you’re not careful, so go steady, but don’t be afraid to mix it up.

These deer are very elegant creatures and I shot the image in Royal Richmond Park so I’m going to go with something that feels a bit elegant without being prissy.

2. Add the opaque band to help the text stand out

Create a new layer in Photoshop and draw a rectangular marquee about the shape you want (don’t worry about perfection, we can fiddle about with it later). Add some colour using the paint bucket tool and deselect your marquee.

Excuse the vile shading – I wanted to highlight the important area to you (the un-shaded bit). Let me know if it’s helpful or not as I’ll take a view in the next tutorial.

3. Move the shape beneath your text

Move the rectangular shape layer beneath the text layer (see image below) so that you can see your text again. To do this simply click on the relevant layer and drag down below your text layer. At this point your shape will still be a solid colour. You can choose any colour you like – I’ve gone for white.

Then knock back the shape to an opacity you’re happy with. To do this simply move the slider in the appropriate layer until you have a look that you like. It’s a bit of a personal thing and often depends on the colours used and the image that sits behind it.

The finished article. Over to you now.

And that really is it! Easy when you know how. Let me know how you get on, and please do post links to your own experiments on your blog. I’d love to take a look!

Tagged as , Photoshop tutorial in Blogging, Graphic Design, Tutorials