Colourbar Tutorial using Photoshop by crazy_clockwork
*** IMAGES ARE BROKEN NOW! I APOLOGIZE. D: ***COLOURBAR TUTORIAL FOR PHOTOSHOP
Using Photoshop CS
Oh, don't have Photoshop? Here's a PSP tutorial, made by sillymongoose: PSP TUT!
***VERY IMAGE HEAVY! OVER 40 IMAGES INSIDE!***
So you want to make a colourbar, eh? Well, then you’ve come to the right tutorial. I’m not going to share all of my secrets, so it’ll be a basic tutorial, but once you have the basics down, you can branch out from there and create your own style.
You should have a little bit of basic knowledge with PHOTOSHOP before attempting this. I will provide pictures so it’ll make it easier on you, but messing around with the program before you really start to make graphics helps you to get adjusted to it. Believe me…when I first opened the program, I was frightened. Now, I feel like I can’t live without it. Let’s get you to that stage. Can’t live without it!
In this tutorial, you will learn how to make this colourbar:
THE TUTORIAL!
Step 1: Open Photoshop…dur.
Step 2: You have to decide what you want to make your colourbar about. For this tutorial, we are going to make it about DOUGHNUTS! Yum yum! For this colourbar, we are going to use six pictures. Bars vary from five pictures to ten pictures, but for the most part, people use from 5-7. Ready? OKAY!
Step 3: So, you can go into google, search for doughnuts (I’m going into corbis, just because it is a picture god), and once you find a picture you want, click it. You will then RIGHT CLICK > COPY. You then go into Photoshop and click FILE > NEW.
When the screen pops up, click OK. Then go to EDIT > PASTE and it will paste the image that you want into Photoshop!
Repeat this for all of the images you have until you have six images total. Come back to the tutorial when you are ready to continue on.
Or instead of searching, you can use the same images I will be using throughout this tutorial. You'll still have to paste them all into Photoshop (duh), but here they are if you are interested in comparing your results with mine.
Image 1
Image 2
Image 3
Image 4
Image 5
Image 6
...
Okay, are you ready to continue? Let's go!
Step 4 - Setting the Crop Tool: You have the six pictures of doughnuts that you want to use...all opened up separately in Photoshop like so...
It's now time to crop them all so they are the same size (standard size for colorbars per picture is 100x100), but first you have to make sure that your cropping tool is set to 100x100 each time you use it, you have to set it. To do that, click on it.
If you don't see that sidebar, go to the top, click WINDOWS > and then click TOOLS. It should show up then.
Now, to set it to 100x100...once you clicked on your cropping tool, something at the top of your page changed. It should now look like this:
See where it says WIDTH and HEIGHT? That's where you are going to set your cropping tool. In those spaces, you have to type 100. Once you do that, it should look like this:
It automatically puts IN there for inches. Don't worry about that. OKAY. Now it's time to crop your pictures!
Step 5 -- Cropping:
Choose one of your pictures. Click on your cropping tool. Click on your picture and drag. See how it makes that dotted line? It's showing you where it's going to crop it. I try to choose creative cropping instead of just centering the picture each time. Let's do one together.
1. Click your cropping tool.
2. Go to the picture you want to crop.
3. Left click and drag your tool across it until you've selected the part you want to keep. Notice that the brighter part is the portion that will stay and the darker outsides will be cut away, as shown here:
4. Let go of the left button that you were dragging the tool with and right click your mouse. Click CROP.
Your image is now cropped to your liking, but it's not 100x100 yet.
Although your cropping tool is set to 100x100, it doesn't mean that your image is immediately 100x100. We have to change that!
Step 6 -- Changing your image to 100x100 after cropping:
This part is easy. Go to IMAGE > IMAGE SIZE.
A new window should pop up that looks like this. Make sure that SCALE STYLES, CONSTRAIN PROPORTIONS and RESAMPLE IMAGE are all checked off. DO NOT UNCHECK THEM UNLESS YOU KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING!
To make your image 100x100, see where it says WIDTH and HEIGHT? Guess what! You're going to put 100 in each of those spots. :) And since your image is even on all sides, once you put it in one of the spots, it should automatically fill in in the other spot! Should look like this:
Click OK and your image should be smaller now...this size, to be exact. See the difference between this one and the one I posted above? Yep yep! Here's 100x100:
So, what you need to do is repeat those steps for each of the pictures that you have. Once you are done, come back to the tutorial! :)
...
Right, so all of your pictures are 100x100 now? Awesome! Let's keep going! ^_^
Step 7 -- Sharpening: After resizing your images, some of them might look a little blurry. Well, there's a way to fix that. SHARPEN! YAY!!! Hahah...okay. Anyways. Go to one of your images. Click FILTER > SHARPEN > SHARPEN.
It's clearer! Compare it to the first 100x100 image above. The sprinkles are sharper now than before. There are subtle differences. Believe me, it's a good step and you shouldn't skip it. UNLESS THE IMAGE IS SHARP ENOUGH ALREADY. TOO MUCH SHARPENING CAN MAKE A PHOTO LOOK GOD AWFUL.** [Thanks to tsumasaki for this edit! I appreciate it.]
That's all! Easy! Do it for all of your images, and then come back for more!
...
I can see clearly nowww the blur is gone! *cough* Right-o. Moving on!
Step 8 -- Greyscaling: This is very important! A lot of colourbars look really bad because the person didn't make the image black and white before colouring over it. So, go to one of your images. Click IMAGE > ADJUSTMENTS > DESATURATE.
That makes the image black and white. TA-DA!
Do it for all of your images, then come here again.
...
Woohoo! By now, you should've decided which pictures you want where. This is what I have decided on.
Step 9 -- Borders: If you know my bars, you know that I have made some seemingly complicated borders. That's why I'm going to teach you the easiest way right now. Once you understand how to do it, then you can try things out on your own. (*TIP* I use Microsoft Paint for a lot of creative borders.)
Choose one image. Go to SELECT > SELECT ALL. This selects your entire image.
Now to add an easy border around the image...with your entire image selected from the step above, go to EDIT > STROKE.
A new window will pop up. Make yours look like mine then click OK. (To change the color of the stroke, just click where the color is and the palette will come up. Choose black).
This option adds a black border around your picture. See?? And if you made it 1 px, the border would be thinner...10 px, it would be very thick.
Do this for each picture, then once you are done, come back to the tutorial.
...
Almost to the fun part!
Step 10 -- Putting your bar together: Open a new file. It'll prompt you asking for the size. Make it 700 (width) x 200 (height) just so you can fit all of the pictures without worrying about running out of room. When you are done, the bar should be around 610x115 or so. Make sense? 600...there are 6 pictures. 100...the pictures are 100x100. Ack, kind of hard to explain. But let's say you made a bar with seven pictures that are each 100x100. Make your new document 800x200. Have eight pictures? 900x200. Ten pictures? 1100x200. Get it? :)
Okay...so now you have to SELECT > SELECT ALL // EDIT > COPY // EDIT > PASTE onto the new document all of your pictures.
Once you have all of them in the new document together, they should be like this...or near eachother in the same order you want them in.
Now, in order for the individual borders to come together, you have to follow this part closely. You are going to put each image next to one another, but not like this:
From far away, it might look okay, but closer up, you can see that the borders aren't even all the way around.
This just means you have to put the pictures one tiny bit closer to one another, so it looks like this from far away:
And this up close:
*Side step: You have a lot of excess white around your bar. You need to crop as much of it out as you can. Click the cropping tool. Left click, drag...OH NO! It's 100x100! What does that mean!? No worries. Just go up to where you put the 100s in and delete them (delete the "in," too, or else it will ask you to put a number in). Now you can crop freely. Play with the cropping until you get rid of most of the white.
Guess what? It's time for colouring!
Since I'm tired, and the other one would take FOREVER to teach because I'm obviously obsessive-compulsive, I'll be doing a gradient for this one.
Step 11 -- Making it colourful!: So now you have your bar. Most of the white is cropped out. It's all black and white. The borders are perfect. Sound right? Okay...then you are in the right place. Let's continue on.
Go to LAYER > NEW > LAYER. Click OK.
This makes a new blank page within your image. It's invisible until you do something with it. You'll be putting the gradient on it. :)
Make sure you have the new layer highlighted. Then look down from there. Click on the half white, half black circle. It'll bring up a menu. Click GRADIENT. Here's an image to show you what I'm talking about:
You can choose now choose a gradient.
At this window, make sure to change your angle to 180 (just type it in in that text box next to the circle) and then click on the rectangle that's next to the word Gradient.
This will bring up a choice of gradients. We are going to use the normal rainbow one. When you get better at the program, you can make your own gradients. I have done that and am pleased with the results. =] I've tried to make it easy to spot, hahahaha.
Once you choose it, click OK. It'll bring you back to the other screen (the one where you changed the angle). Click OK.
You can't see your bar, right? It's entirely covered by the gradient!
Let's fix it. Go over to this window and click the arrow and choose COLOR. You can try the other ones, too. Overlay, soft light, screen, lighten, darken, multiply, etc...it all depends on the bar. Try them!!
Yay!! This is what you should see now:
But DAMN are those colors harsh! Well, let's lower the opacity.
Step 12 -- Opacity: Still selecting the layer with the gradient on it (NOT the one with your bar), change the opacity to whatever you think looks nice. I think 47% opacity looks very pretty. :D
...
So, here is your bar!! You are done!!!
Oh wait. No...it's missing something...hmmm. Oh yes. TEXT! You have to add text! I could teach you the coding for the little link, but I think attached text is far more interesting, especially when you get into downloading fonts.
Step 13 -- Making Space for the Text:
Go to LAYER > FLATTEN IMAGE.
This converges both of the layers you made into one.
Now you have to make room on the canvas for your text. Go to IMAGE > CANVAS SIZE.
This will add more white space to your image so you can make room for the text. In this new window, change only what is circled and make yours look like mine:
Make sure the height is at least 3...it gives you enough room for the text and to crop when you are done. The place where it says anchor with the arrows shows you where the white space will show up. Since I have changed mine to all pointing down, I will only have the white space coming down from the bar, no where else. Once I do that, it will look like this:
Step 14 -- Adding Text:
Now, just click the text tool:
Choose a font (let's choose Century Gothic) AND MAKE SURE ANTI-ALIAS IS ON!!!
Here's a side-by-side comparison of text WITH anti-alias and then WITHOUT.
As you can see, anti-alias adds a smoother texture. It's not harsh. So how do you get anti-alias on, you ask? Well, here you go:
So make sure you have CENTURY GOTHIC, SIZE 14, and Anti-Alias set to SHARP.
Now, just click below your colourbar and type, "Doughnuts are guilty pleasure love." or whatever you want. I'm typing that. So, when you are done typing, it should look like this:
Try to center your text with the bar. Since it has six pictures, there are really two center pictures, so center your text around it. I'll let you figure that out. I'm getting increasingly tired. Haha.
FINAL STEP!!! -- Cropping the excess white: Just get your cropping tool again, and drag it so it looks like this:
Right click > CROP.
OMFG YAYYYY! YOU ARE DONE! Congratulations! You have just made your first colourbar using this tutorial! < 33333
***How to post your bar:***
+ Get your own host (I use the greatestjournal.com image host...no bandwidth problems)
+ Here's the code:
created by:
Here's the finished result with the code in use:
created by: crazy_clockwork
To post the code under the bar so people can use it, you have to use the <*text*area*> tag like so...
<*text*area*>
THE CODE ABOVE THAT POSTS YOUR BAR
It will look like this without the stars:
http://pictures.greatestjournal.com/userimg/5040757/1188817">
created by:
...
If anything is unclear, let me know! I'll help you guys out! :)
Hope I've been helpful! This tutorial has taken me all night to write up. *sighs* My hands and eyes hurt so much. PLEASE attempt them now...everyone! Post your results in here!
Much love,
Jessica
Using Photoshop CS
Oh, don't have Photoshop? Here's a PSP tutorial, made by sillymongoose: PSP TUT!
***VERY IMAGE HEAVY! OVER 40 IMAGES INSIDE!***
So you want to make a colourbar, eh? Well, then you’ve come to the right tutorial. I’m not going to share all of my secrets, so it’ll be a basic tutorial, but once you have the basics down, you can branch out from there and create your own style.
You should have a little bit of basic knowledge with PHOTOSHOP before attempting this. I will provide pictures so it’ll make it easier on you, but messing around with the program before you really start to make graphics helps you to get adjusted to it. Believe me…when I first opened the program, I was frightened. Now, I feel like I can’t live without it. Let’s get you to that stage. Can’t live without it!
In this tutorial, you will learn how to make this colourbar:
THE TUTORIAL!
Step 1: Open Photoshop…dur.
Step 2: You have to decide what you want to make your colourbar about. For this tutorial, we are going to make it about DOUGHNUTS! Yum yum! For this colourbar, we are going to use six pictures. Bars vary from five pictures to ten pictures, but for the most part, people use from 5-7. Ready? OKAY!
Step 3: So, you can go into google, search for doughnuts (I’m going into corbis, just because it is a picture god), and once you find a picture you want, click it. You will then RIGHT CLICK > COPY. You then go into Photoshop and click FILE > NEW.
When the screen pops up, click OK. Then go to EDIT > PASTE and it will paste the image that you want into Photoshop!
Repeat this for all of the images you have until you have six images total. Come back to the tutorial when you are ready to continue on.
Or instead of searching, you can use the same images I will be using throughout this tutorial. You'll still have to paste them all into Photoshop (duh), but here they are if you are interested in comparing your results with mine.
Image 1
Image 2
Image 3
Image 4
Image 5
Image 6
...
Okay, are you ready to continue? Let's go!
Step 4 - Setting the Crop Tool: You have the six pictures of doughnuts that you want to use...all opened up separately in Photoshop like so...
It's now time to crop them all so they are the same size (standard size for colorbars per picture is 100x100), but first you have to make sure that your cropping tool is set to 100x100 each time you use it, you have to set it. To do that, click on it.
If you don't see that sidebar, go to the top, click WINDOWS > and then click TOOLS. It should show up then.
Now, to set it to 100x100...once you clicked on your cropping tool, something at the top of your page changed. It should now look like this:
See where it says WIDTH and HEIGHT? That's where you are going to set your cropping tool. In those spaces, you have to type 100. Once you do that, it should look like this:
It automatically puts IN there for inches. Don't worry about that. OKAY. Now it's time to crop your pictures!
Step 5 -- Cropping:
Choose one of your pictures. Click on your cropping tool. Click on your picture and drag. See how it makes that dotted line? It's showing you where it's going to crop it. I try to choose creative cropping instead of just centering the picture each time. Let's do one together.
1. Click your cropping tool.
2. Go to the picture you want to crop.
3. Left click and drag your tool across it until you've selected the part you want to keep. Notice that the brighter part is the portion that will stay and the darker outsides will be cut away, as shown here:
4. Let go of the left button that you were dragging the tool with and right click your mouse. Click CROP.
Your image is now cropped to your liking, but it's not 100x100 yet.
Although your cropping tool is set to 100x100, it doesn't mean that your image is immediately 100x100. We have to change that!
Step 6 -- Changing your image to 100x100 after cropping:
This part is easy. Go to IMAGE > IMAGE SIZE.
A new window should pop up that looks like this. Make sure that SCALE STYLES, CONSTRAIN PROPORTIONS and RESAMPLE IMAGE are all checked off. DO NOT UNCHECK THEM UNLESS YOU KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING!
To make your image 100x100, see where it says WIDTH and HEIGHT? Guess what! You're going to put 100 in each of those spots. :) And since your image is even on all sides, once you put it in one of the spots, it should automatically fill in in the other spot! Should look like this:
Click OK and your image should be smaller now...this size, to be exact. See the difference between this one and the one I posted above? Yep yep! Here's 100x100:
So, what you need to do is repeat those steps for each of the pictures that you have. Once you are done, come back to the tutorial! :)
...
Right, so all of your pictures are 100x100 now? Awesome! Let's keep going! ^_^
Step 7 -- Sharpening: After resizing your images, some of them might look a little blurry. Well, there's a way to fix that. SHARPEN! YAY!!! Hahah...okay. Anyways. Go to one of your images. Click FILTER > SHARPEN > SHARPEN.
It's clearer! Compare it to the first 100x100 image above. The sprinkles are sharper now than before. There are subtle differences. Believe me, it's a good step and you shouldn't skip it. UNLESS THE IMAGE IS SHARP ENOUGH ALREADY. TOO MUCH SHARPENING CAN MAKE A PHOTO LOOK GOD AWFUL.** [Thanks to tsumasaki for this edit! I appreciate it.]
That's all! Easy! Do it for all of your images, and then come back for more!
...
I can see clearly nowww the blur is gone! *cough* Right-o. Moving on!
Step 8 -- Greyscaling: This is very important! A lot of colourbars look really bad because the person didn't make the image black and white before colouring over it. So, go to one of your images. Click IMAGE > ADJUSTMENTS > DESATURATE.
That makes the image black and white. TA-DA!
Do it for all of your images, then come here again.
...
Woohoo! By now, you should've decided which pictures you want where. This is what I have decided on.
Step 9 -- Borders: If you know my bars, you know that I have made some seemingly complicated borders. That's why I'm going to teach you the easiest way right now. Once you understand how to do it, then you can try things out on your own. (*TIP* I use Microsoft Paint for a lot of creative borders.)
Choose one image. Go to SELECT > SELECT ALL. This selects your entire image.
Now to add an easy border around the image...with your entire image selected from the step above, go to EDIT > STROKE.
A new window will pop up. Make yours look like mine then click OK. (To change the color of the stroke, just click where the color is and the palette will come up. Choose black).
This option adds a black border around your picture. See?? And if you made it 1 px, the border would be thinner...10 px, it would be very thick.
Do this for each picture, then once you are done, come back to the tutorial.
...
Almost to the fun part!
Step 10 -- Putting your bar together: Open a new file. It'll prompt you asking for the size. Make it 700 (width) x 200 (height) just so you can fit all of the pictures without worrying about running out of room. When you are done, the bar should be around 610x115 or so. Make sense? 600...there are 6 pictures. 100...the pictures are 100x100. Ack, kind of hard to explain. But let's say you made a bar with seven pictures that are each 100x100. Make your new document 800x200. Have eight pictures? 900x200. Ten pictures? 1100x200. Get it? :)
Okay...so now you have to SELECT > SELECT ALL // EDIT > COPY // EDIT > PASTE onto the new document all of your pictures.
Once you have all of them in the new document together, they should be like this...or near eachother in the same order you want them in.
Now, in order for the individual borders to come together, you have to follow this part closely. You are going to put each image next to one another, but not like this:
From far away, it might look okay, but closer up, you can see that the borders aren't even all the way around.
This just means you have to put the pictures one tiny bit closer to one another, so it looks like this from far away:
And this up close:
*Side step: You have a lot of excess white around your bar. You need to crop as much of it out as you can. Click the cropping tool. Left click, drag...OH NO! It's 100x100! What does that mean!? No worries. Just go up to where you put the 100s in and delete them (delete the "in," too, or else it will ask you to put a number in). Now you can crop freely. Play with the cropping until you get rid of most of the white.
Guess what? It's time for colouring!
Since I'm tired, and the other one would take FOREVER to teach because I'm obviously obsessive-compulsive, I'll be doing a gradient for this one.
Step 11 -- Making it colourful!: So now you have your bar. Most of the white is cropped out. It's all black and white. The borders are perfect. Sound right? Okay...then you are in the right place. Let's continue on.
Go to LAYER > NEW > LAYER. Click OK.
This makes a new blank page within your image. It's invisible until you do something with it. You'll be putting the gradient on it. :)
Make sure you have the new layer highlighted. Then look down from there. Click on the half white, half black circle. It'll bring up a menu. Click GRADIENT. Here's an image to show you what I'm talking about:
You can choose now choose a gradient.
At this window, make sure to change your angle to 180 (just type it in in that text box next to the circle) and then click on the rectangle that's next to the word Gradient.
This will bring up a choice of gradients. We are going to use the normal rainbow one. When you get better at the program, you can make your own gradients. I have done that and am pleased with the results. =] I've tried to make it easy to spot, hahahaha.
Once you choose it, click OK. It'll bring you back to the other screen (the one where you changed the angle). Click OK.
You can't see your bar, right? It's entirely covered by the gradient!
Let's fix it. Go over to this window and click the arrow and choose COLOR. You can try the other ones, too. Overlay, soft light, screen, lighten, darken, multiply, etc...it all depends on the bar. Try them!!
Yay!! This is what you should see now:
But DAMN are those colors harsh! Well, let's lower the opacity.
Step 12 -- Opacity: Still selecting the layer with the gradient on it (NOT the one with your bar), change the opacity to whatever you think looks nice. I think 47% opacity looks very pretty. :D
...
So, here is your bar!! You are done!!!
Oh wait. No...it's missing something...hmmm. Oh yes. TEXT! You have to add text! I could teach you the coding for the little link, but I think attached text is far more interesting, especially when you get into downloading fonts.
Step 13 -- Making Space for the Text:
Go to LAYER > FLATTEN IMAGE.
This converges both of the layers you made into one.
Now you have to make room on the canvas for your text. Go to IMAGE > CANVAS SIZE.
This will add more white space to your image so you can make room for the text. In this new window, change only what is circled and make yours look like mine:
Make sure the height is at least 3...it gives you enough room for the text and to crop when you are done. The place where it says anchor with the arrows shows you where the white space will show up. Since I have changed mine to all pointing down, I will only have the white space coming down from the bar, no where else. Once I do that, it will look like this:
Step 14 -- Adding Text:
Now, just click the text tool:
Choose a font (let's choose Century Gothic) AND MAKE SURE ANTI-ALIAS IS ON!!!
Here's a side-by-side comparison of text WITH anti-alias and then WITHOUT.
As you can see, anti-alias adds a smoother texture. It's not harsh. So how do you get anti-alias on, you ask? Well, here you go:
So make sure you have CENTURY GOTHIC, SIZE 14, and Anti-Alias set to SHARP.
Now, just click below your colourbar and type, "Doughnuts are guilty pleasure love." or whatever you want. I'm typing that. So, when you are done typing, it should look like this:
Try to center your text with the bar. Since it has six pictures, there are really two center pictures, so center your text around it. I'll let you figure that out. I'm getting increasingly tired. Haha.
FINAL STEP!!! -- Cropping the excess white: Just get your cropping tool again, and drag it so it looks like this:
Right click > CROP.
OMFG YAYYYY! YOU ARE DONE! Congratulations! You have just made your first colourbar using this tutorial! < 33333
***How to post your bar:***
+ Get your own host (I use the greatestjournal.com image host...no bandwidth problems)
+ Here's the code:
created by:
Here's the finished result with the code in use:
created by: crazy_clockwork
To post the code under the bar so people can use it, you have to use the <*text*area*> tag like so...
<*text*area*>
THE CODE ABOVE THAT POSTS YOUR BAR
It will look like this without the stars:
created by:
...
If anything is unclear, let me know! I'll help you guys out! :)
Hope I've been helpful! This tutorial has taken me all night to write up. *sighs* My hands and eyes hurt so much. PLEASE attempt them now...everyone! Post your results in here!
Much love,
Jessica