To start off create a New Document, and give it the official adbanner size (468 x 60). Choose a transparent background. Now fill the background with Grey (#818181) and a darker grey (#3C3C3C), as shown below:

It doesn’t matter if the cutoff line is straight or now, we’re going to be creating a smooth shape to cover it up in a little bit, but first apply the following effect to the background layer:

Gradient:

NOTE: Your background should not be blue, but draw the shape as seen above in a very light Grey color (#EBEBEB). Now apply the following effect to the shape:

Bevel and Emboss:

You should now have something like this:

Now let’s move on to filling up the left side of the banner. On this side we will only add text. The text will mainly describe the website/promotion. As you can see below, I’ve added the promotion, description, and website address in the font ‘Rasputine DemiBold‘.

NOTE: The banner above was not made for a specific website, I used domainsite.com just as a space filler.

Let’s move on to filling up the right side now. I figured since all the way up to now we’ve been using neutral colors, that we add some color to the right side. I wanted to add a button/shape with the color red (#E20000). Grab your Custom Shape Tool and from the drop down menu on top grab one that looks like a star (). Rasterize your star layer so you can apply some cool effects to it. Now apply the following effects to it:

Bevel and Emboss:

Gradient Overlay:

You should have something like this:

Now duplicate the star shape layer and fill it with white (but make sure only the star is filled with white). Now grab your Elliptical Marquee Tool and select the bottom half of the white star and cut it. Set the white star layer’s Opacity to somewhere from 10-25%. You should have something like this:

Now add some text to the shape and you are done!

First start off by creating a new document by the size of 500 x 450 px. Fill the background with a nice blue color (#00407B) that will blend with clouds later on.

Now let’s get straight to the adding images part. I found some pretty good images on the internet of celebrity sports stars, since this is a sports blog, it would be smart to have sports people in the header/splash design. To start off, I found a picture of Derek Jeter, all-star shortstop of the New York Yankees. THIS is the picture I found. Cut out the render, and add it to the main image we’re working on. You might need to resize it a bit, but not much since it’s not a huge image. Place it at about the middle of the image, as shown below:

After this I thought it would be cool to add a smooth double person faded effect. Duplicate the render cutout layer. Go to Filter > Render > Gaussian Blur, and set the Radius to 3-3.5. Move the duplicated layer a bit away from the original wise. Set its Opacity to anywhere between 50-65%. You should have something like this:

I then decided to do the same thing we did with Derek Jeter, but with two other famous athletes. Dwyane Wade, all-star guard of the Miami Heat, and Tiger Woods, #1 ranked golfer in the world. Remember to apply the same faded effect you did to Derek Jeter’s picture. I used THIS picture of Dwyane Wade, and THIS picture of Tiger Woods. This is what you should have after finishing adding Dwyane Wade:

Now this is what you should have after you have added Tiger Woods to the image:

It is now time to add a nice font/text to the top of the image where it’s a bit empty. I picked out the font called ‘Rasputine DemiBold‘ and added the text “Insider’s Sports Blog“. After you’ve done that, apply the following effects:

Drop Shadow:

Stroke:

… and you should have something like this:

After that I added a subtitle, or otherwise known as slogan, to the bottom of the bigger text. “get the latest news of all major sports inside”. Your final image should look similar to this:

1. New Document, Background Design

Alright, let’s get started here by creating a new document in Photoshop. For this tutorial, I’m going to use a relatively small document size of 400 x 400 pixels, but you can use whatever you want really. After creating my new document, I filled the background with a nice pattern/texture. You can download it from here.

After filling my document canvas with this texture, I then applied Filter > Render > Lighting Effects with the Omni light type. I finished off the background by adding in a little bit of grunge. You can find a few good places to download free brushes at PhotoshopStar - Free Brush Resources.

2. Creating your Button Shape

Alright, time to start your button. There’s two ways you can make a round cornered rectangle, you can either use the Rounded Rectangle Tool (the easiest by far) or if you’re more intermediate with Photoshop, you can use the channels to create a perfectly round-edged rectangle! I used channels to make my button in this case, but there’s definitely nothing wrong with the rounded rectangle tool.

You want to be sure you’re using similar settings as mine shown bellow, especially when it comes to those 3 icons up the top left.

Alright, you’re done for the shape, good job. If you didn’t manage to make the rounded button, just use the rectangular marquee tool to make a selection on your canvas then fill it with a plain color.

3. Giving your Button Effect (Layer Styles)

Alright, now it’s time to give your button some character - let’s apply some layer styles. So, right-click your button layer in the layer’s palette and go to the Blending Options, apply the following settings:

1. Bevel and Emboss
2. Bevel and Emboss — Contour
3. Bevel and Emboss — Texture (note that the pattern used isn’t very important, just use anything)
4. Gradient Overlay
5. Pattern Overlay (download pattern file used here)

And now your button should look pretty much like this one:

With the layer styles, you can of course feel free to experiment with different settings, see if you can come up with anything nicer than what I’ve made!

4. Detailing your Button

Time to give your button a few extra details. I think, for detailing I’m going to add in a little bit of brushing above the button. Start by creating a new layer, then selecting your button layer’s pixels (hold ctrl and click the layer thumbnail)

After you’ve made your new layer, brush once or twice inside of your button selection, using any color. Lower the opacity if you think it’s too dark.

I then gave it a little bit more texture by blending in a random pattern into the tab. Blending as in, erasing with a grunge brush, changing layer mode to Soft Light then lowering the opacity if necessary. This is what I’ve come up with:

Alright, not bad! Anything else you want to add? How about some text!

Finish off by Adding Text

Start by getting out the Horizontal Type Tool (just the text tool) and writing down your button text.

In the above image I’ve used the font called Myriad Pro, SemiBold Italic, 18 pt, but if you don’t have the font, you can either use a default font that comes with your Operating System, or download a free font from one of the following:

1. UrbanFonts
2. DaFont
3. 1001 Free Fonts

I believe it’s best if you use a Sans Serif font in this case though. After writing out your text, you might want to apply this Drop Shadow to the text layer, to make it stand out a little better.

Hmm, I think we’re pretty much done for this tutorial! Well, thanks very much for reading everyone, I hope you enjoyed it! If you need anything from this tutorial, you can download the PSD for free from here: Stylish Wooden Tabs PSD (900kb)

1. Brusheezy
   
   This is a somewhat new website (according to my knowledge, anyway) but it has a great amount of brushes, and pretty much all of them are user submitted! You may even come across some of my brushes on this website. Great way for users to get free traffic by submitting their brushes.
2. deviantART
   
   Most probably the biggest resource for free Photoshop brushes on the ‘net. deviantART has been around for like 6 years, and this category has probably been there for most of the time. There’s thousands of brushes here, every kind.
3. MisprintedType
   
   This site looks pretty old, but there’s plenty of amazing grunge brushes here, I use them all the time.
4. TutorialBlog
   
   This is an extensive article on free Photoshop brushes, like a larger version of this article right here.

Hope you enjoyed!

To start off, look around Google or another image search website so that you can find Tiger Woods just after his backswing, so you can add the ball as it’s coming off of his driver. I found THIS photo by Zeke Quezada of him swinging at the Buick Open. Open that image up in Adobe Photoshop and let’s get to work!

Now duplicate the photo layer. Go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur, and set the radius at about 2.0 - 2.5. Now set the new layer’s mode to ‘Opacity‘. This effect will give the fiery golf ball effect more contrast later on when it is added.

Now let’s get to actually adding the exploding golf ball. I looked up an image of a golf ball in Google and came up with THIS. You don’t have to use this one, but it seems as if this one already has the right lightning and such. Add the golf ball to the document, cut out the black parts, resize it, and you should have something like this after you apply a soft Motion Blur (Filter > Blur > Motion Blur) to it:

Now duplicate the golf ball layer, and apply a motion blur with the following settings: Angle - 0 , Distance - 8. You should have something like this now: By applying the blur, we made the effect look more realistic as a golf ball coming out of a full swing would look blurred out.

Let’s now add the actual fire to start having the exploding effect. Duplicate the original golf ball layer yet again. This time go to Image > Adjustments > Hue/Saturation and apply the following settings:

Hue: 35
Saturation: 81
Lightness : 0
Colorize : Checked

Now grab your Smudge Tool (’R‘) and start spreading the ball out as if it was a trailing fire, you should have something similar to the image below:

Now duplicate the trailing fire ball that you smudged out and set its mode to ‘Overlay‘.

With the brush tool, you can set your foreground color to a nice orange/yellow (#F9A30E) and make small highlights to the fire behind the golf ball. You are now done creating an exploding golf ball, you should have ended up with something similar to the image below:

Another Tip: You can blur out the environment and people around Tiger Woods to give the golf ball and Tiger himself more focus.

First start off by creating a new Photoshop document by the size of 500 x 500. Fill that background with White (#FFFFFF). This will be the base for the clouds we’re going to create as the real background. I downloaded some cloud brushes by deviantART artist JavierZhX, which can be found HERE. After you install those, grab a nice brush that you like from the set, set your foreground color to a nice blue (#006E85) and create a stroke that covers most of the canvas, as shown below:

Now duplicate the clouds brush layer, go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur and apply a blur of about 2.0 - 2.5. Set this layer’s mode to ‘Overlay‘. Your image should now look like this:

Then I went on to Google Images to try to find an image of some flying birds that I could add so they can fit nicely with my clouds background. I found THIS image, which shows three birds flying. I cut the birds out, and resized them a bit. I added the birds to my clouds background and you should have something similar to this:

Note that you can mess around with the bird’s opacity and other things to make them look more into the distance and other effects.

Now let’s add some smooth blue text to finish off our piece. Your text should always fit nicely with the theme you have going on. Since we had a flying birds illustration, we should probably add a smooth rounded text. I picked the text ‘MyriadPro’ a slightly italic text that will go nicely with the theme. I added this font in a nice blue color (#006E85). You should have something like this:

Now since the text kind of interferes with the background that is also blue, I always like to add a text background layer. In which I add a white rounded rectangle that just overlaps the text, but this layer goes behind the text. You should achieve something like this:

And you are done! The Flying Birds Illustration is finally done!

Start off by creating 500 x 400 px document. Fill it in with light blue (#8FBCFF). You should have a document as seen below:

Then I went on to DeviantArt to find some nice Retro Brushes that I liked, and found some really cool ones by Eli Burford, that can be found at http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/59553360/. Download those and install them, then make one stroke, it should cover the whole document, and you should now have something like below:

Apply the following Layer Style effect to the retro brush layer:

Now we have to create a faded white rectangle box to go behind our website’s name text. Grab your Rounded Rectangle Tool and make a square in the middle of the document about 180 x 54 px. Set its opacity to 70-85%. Your image should look similar to this:

Next I picked out a nice font that I’ve always liked called VAGRounded BT and typed the website’s name. Which happened to be “Retro” for this example. I used the font at size 60, and placed it on top of the rectangle we just made. Now apply the following text styles to the font:

Inner Shadow:

Gradient Overlay:

Stroke:

you should have something like this:

The next thing I did was type in small letters “Beta” with the same font used above, but placed it in the upper right hand corner of the “Retro” website name. Apply a Stroke as seen below…

…and you will get something like this:

It is now time to add the options which people will be able to click on to go on to the website. I decided I wanted “Website” and “Forums“, I’m just going to type this out with a nice font. I used a font named Huxtable at size 48. Type it out and apply the following effects:

Color Overlay:

Stroke:

Your final result should look something like this:

Remember you can experiment with different settings to achieve cooler looking results.

Before we start with this tutorial, go ahead and grab the spatter brushes that we will use later in this tutorial. Install the spatter brushes before you start Photoshop, or else you will need to restart Photoshop in order to be able to use them.Spatter Brush #1
Spatter Brush #2

Step 1:
Create a new document 780×125 and fill with grey (626262). Next go to Add Layer Style > Gradient Overlay, and use these settings:

This will be our simple, subtle gradient background.

Step 2:
Next comes the text. Try to pick a font that isn’t flashy, decorative, elaborate, or anything eye catching. We want to use a simple font to keep with the flow of this banner. The font I used is called trebuchet MS. Place each link you need now. Keep each ‘link’ in their own layers.

Now that the navigational links are in place, next is the name of the site. One of the most simple, yet effective things you can do to text is to split it into two colors.

As you can see, using a dual colored text looks very professional. Generally I use a color that is dominant in the rest of my piece, and then either black or white depending on if the color is dark or light, or if the surrounding area is dark or light.
The ‘.com’ isn’t needed, and is probably better if it wasn’t in there, but I wanted to show another technique to use on text; less important text is smaller than the rest.
Now go to Layer Styles > Drop Shadow and use these settings:

Apply this drop shadow to all your text. To do this quickly, manually do it to one layer of text, then Right Click on the layer and select Copy Layer Style. Now Right Click on each text layer and do Paste Layer Style.Step 3:
Now is the time to whip out the spatter brushes that you should have got earlier. I would try to keep the color consistent between the text and the ‘paint’ that we will be splashing on soon. While you are brushing, don’t use the same brush twice, keep a variety. Also don’t go overboard with the brushes. Especially for this tutorial, you don’t want too much ‘paint’. The last thing to remember is to start heavy on the left side (or where its all empty) and work your way over to the other side decreasing the amount of paint.

It’s not very noticeable in my example, but its definitely not just all the same density of paint throughout. You want to retain a balance by having text on one side, and something else on the other, in this case, paint. The last thing to do to finish this off is to add a simple border. Create a new layer, press CTRL+A to select all. Then to go Edit > Stroke and use these settings:

Final Result:

1 :
Start out by opening the picture you want to add the effect to it

2 :
Now duplicate the Background Layer

3:
Use the Rectangular Marquee Tool and select the upper part

4:
Hit Delete to remove the upper part

5 :
Now go to Select > Deselect
6:
Now go to Filter > Distort > Twirl, use these settings:

7:
Final Result: