Graphic Artistry: Creating Thread Graphics

[InsanitySorrow]

Part One: What are they for?

You may have noticed a few Modder's using nice fancy graphics for their release threads or the download pages. These aren't something every modder makes nor are they a required addition, but they do make things look nicer than just plain text or some basic colours.

If you look at the Graphic Artistry Classes here and even the Workshops you'll notice I have made some myself, you will also see them used in the other Enclave Classes too.

What we're going to do is take a look at how we can make a basic set, nothing really complex but something that'll make our threads just that bit better to look at.

Part Two: What are we going to make?

We are going to create this:

To do so you'll need the following resources

Graphic:

Grid Pattern:

30 Repeating Grid Patterns

Part Three: Let's get to work

Open Photoshop and create a new image, set it's dimensions to 700 pixels wide and 256 pixels high. The reason for 700px is that the board accepts that as the largest image before it starts to resize our image, so if we make our image width that size we avoid any resizing.

For mine I filled the background layer with the colour - #dddddd, you'll be looking at this now:

Now the next thing to do is open up the graphic you saved earlier, copy it and paste it into your image, place it close to the left hand side of the canvas leaving a few pixels of space between it and the edge. Paste another copy it, flip it horizontal and position it on the right side of the canvas.

Next step is to create our text, so take your text tool, set the colour to black , font size to 46 and the font to Cambria. You can write anything you want here, I used Graphic Artistry as an example.

Once done position it between the two graphics, if it's too big then you can reduce the font size to make it fit.

With those done we can add our layer style now , Right-Click the graphics layer, select the blending options and set it up as follows:

Drop Shadow:

Inner Glow:

Gradient Overlay:

Light Colour: #aa9760

Dark Colour: #7d6f47

Stroke:

Colour: #393320

Click OK to apply those settings, now right click that layer and copy the layer style, right click the text and paste the layer style. That'll make the graphics and text have the same effect with half the work. You'll have something like this now:

On a new layer take your rectangle selection tool and make a selection that covers half of the graphics and text, fill this with white and then use the eraser to remove the white fill outside of the graphics and text edges so only those are covered. Set the opacity to 15% and name the layer Gloss.

You'll notice this'll lighten the top half of the text and graphics, it's not a dramatic addition but a nice detailed touch that you'll definately notice.

Last thing to do is add a new layer then fill it with one of the grid patterns you downloaded earlier, which one you use is up to you. Again clear out all the fill outside of the text and graphics edges so only they're covered. Set the layer type to Soft Light and the opacity to 40%.

Now the last thing to do with this is to add a layer mask, then with the layer mask selected make sure your Foreground/Background colours are set the default set (Black top, white bottom) and then take your gradient tool. Click the bottom of the text and drag up to the middle of the text, this will add a gradient that fades the bottom half of the grid fill.

And that's it, we're done . When using these in your topics or on the file's download page, make sure you remove the background and save it as a PNG. It'll sit nicely over the background on the forum then.