Photoshop Tutorial — Performancing Banners
After winning the recent Performancing for Firefox Banner competition, several of my fellow contestants asked me to put together a Photoshop tutorial. I happily agreed — so here goes my first attempt at demonstrating some of the techniques I utilised to create my banner.
Being both a blogging and tutorial amateur, I’ve decided to take the same approach as documenting science experiments which I learned in high school: Aim, method, result, and conclusion.
Aim
My main goal when starting any design project is to keep it clean. I try to keep it clean by doing the following:
- Give all elements as much breathing space as you can afford.
- Weight (give visual preference to) the elements depending on their importance.
- Use a grid when laying the elements out.
- Make sure typography is readable.
- Create and stick to a simple colour scheme.
With those things in mind I then ask myself some questions.
- What is the desired result of this design?
- Does the client have any existing branding (logos, fonts etc.) that should be adhered to, and if so, is there any scope for creative interpretation of their brand?
To me, this task was primarily a branding exercise for Performancing. They’re about to release a new plug-in for Firefox and want to spread the word. Everyone knows the Firefox brand, so it was an early decision for me not to include the Firefox logo in my design. Firefox needed mentioning of course, but could do without the emphasis that the Performancing brand required.
So one big Performancing logo, a mention of Firefox and the Performancing plug-in, then a call to action (or “click here”). Simple
Method
This tutorial will be based on my 160×160 banner only, as the the other two buttons pretty much follow the same theme. Also I work on a Windows PC, so Mac users should substitute CTRL and ALT key commands with their Mac equivalents.
Setup
For banners I ususally start by setting up some guides. I do this by first creating a new document at the intended size (160 x 160), making sure snapping is on (View>Snap), and that rulers are visible (View>Rulers).
Now if you drag a guide from the left ruler it should snap to the vertical center of your canvas. Nice huh? Do the the same from the top ruler for your horizontal guide. Drag guides to all four of the document sides, double your canvas size (Image>Canvas Size) anchoring from the centre, and you should end up with this:

Isn’t that lovely? All this does really is set up a solid base for your design — a good foundation if you will. Now for some pretty pictures.
Background elements
I decided on rounded corners. They’re nice. They’re friendly. The easiest way to do this is with the rounded rectangle tool in the tools palette.
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I usually avoid using shape paths and just stick with good old pixels. So choose “Fill pixels” from the options tool bar, and give our shape a radius of 10.
![]()
Choose white from the colours palette, create a new layer and name it “bg”, then go ahead and draw in the background for our banner using our previously created guides.
TIP: Only draw shapes with the shape tool when your window zoom is at 100%. Drawing them when you’re zoomed in will result in fuzzy edges.
I then added a single pixel outside stroke in blue using a layer style (Layer>Layer Style>Stroke).

Since we added a 1 pixel outside stroke, our shape is now 162 x 162. I then select the rectangular marquee tool and move each side of the shape in by a pixel so we’re back to 160×160. Finally, something to look at

After that we then duplicate that layer, remove the new layer’s stroke and using the rectangular marquee tool again, move each side of our new layer in by 2 pixels.
Name the new layer “bg gradient” and toggle the “Lock transparent pixels” button in the layers palette.
![]()
TIP: “Lock transparent pixels” does just that - it stops any transparent areas of a layer from being editable. This is handy for when you want to edit exclusive areas of a layer without applying a layer mask.
Now we want to apply a linear gradient from blue to white on our new layer. So using the colour picker, choose blue for the foreground colour and white for the background colour. Then select the gradient tool, and click and drag from the top to the bottom of the layer, using our guides as, well, a guide
.
OK - looking good. Let’s get a logo in there.
Performancing logo
In the new version of Photoshop (CS2), there’s a lovely new feature called “Smart Objects”. Essentially a smart object is a non-destructive vector image. This means you have a vector image inside your Photoshop file which you can resize to your heart’s content and it won’t lose any quality. Fireworks users have been using this feature since version one
So go ahead and open the Performancing logo in a vector program like Illustrator.
Copy the “P” part of the logo, paste it into our Photoshop file and choose paste as “Smart Object” from the dialogue box.

We then want to centre the logo horizontally (if it isn’t already), scale it up a bit and move it to vertical centre of the top half of our banner. Hit the enter key to apply the transformation.

Repeat the same process for the “Performancing” text part of the logo. Copy the text from Illustrator, paste into Photoshop as a Smart Object, scale it to size, and align the top edge to the guide in the vertical centre.

Although our canvas isn’t so empty any more, it’s still looking pretty flat and uninteresting. We gotta make that logo pop! What better way to make a logo stand out than with a bevel and a drop-shadow? There isn’t one - you know it’s true
Bevels and drop-shadows can quickly go pear-shaped if you’re not careful, but I’ve found that the key for both is subtlety. I basically just play around with the bevel layer style settings until things look just right. I applied the following settings to get the final logo looking the way it does:

The drop-shadow settings are pretty straight forward, however since the “P” in the Performancing logo is dark blue, I thought I’d add a white, single pixel outside stroke to it in order to make the edges of the logo more defined. I set the colour of the drop-shadow to be dark blue rather than black, as it looks more realistic in this instance.

So what we end up with after applying our layer styles is looking pretty good.

Although our logo now looks much nicer and more tactile, it’s still not really popping. We can add more pop by putting a radial gradient behind it. So go ahead and duplicate the “bg gradient” layer and call the new layer “glow”. Select white for both the foreground and background colours with the colour picker, then select the gradient tool and a radial gradient.

We then want to open the Gradient Editor by clicking the white drop-down menu on the left. Then select “Foreground to Transparent” from the Presets.

Creating a glow behind the logo is then simply a matter, of clicking and dragging with the gradient tool from the centre of the logo to the bottom of the banner. What you should end up with it this:

Much more poppy! Now it’s time for some text.
Text
As I mentioned at the beginning of this tutorial, I wanted to keep the message of the banner pretty simple. Something along the lines of “Hello! We’re Performancing. We like bloggers and we’ve got this great plug-in for Firefox”. I thought the Performancing tagline “Helping Bloggers Succeed” summed up part of the message, so all that was left was to mention the Firefox plug-in. I added the tagline and the remaining text using my current favourite font, Myriad Pro.

Tip: When setting anti-aliased text, make sure “Fractional Widths” is selected in the Character palette sub-menu. This kerns (spaces out) the text evenly and will make a huge difference to the end result.
Page curl
I imagine this section of this (now quite lengthy) tutorial, will attract the most attention
There were no magic tricks used when creating the page curl — it’s really just a couple of shapes and a gradient or two.
Select the pen tool, pick a nice, rich orange with the colour picker, then choose “Shape layers” from the options tool bar.
Go ahead and draw in the page curl as below, then right-click the new shape layer in the layers palette and select “Rasterize Layer”.

To create the shading on the page curl I used the “Burn” tool.

Select “Highlights” from the “Range” menu in the Options tool bar, and draw a straight line along the bottom edge of the curl. To do this, click just outside the top tight of the curl, hold down the shift key, then click just outside the bottom left of the curl. Repeat this step a couple of times, and experiment a little, until the shading of your curl looks believable.

To add more realism to our page curl, we need some shadows. We’ll add two — one under the left of the curl, and one directly below it.
For the shadow on the left I chose black with the colour picker and then I drew in a shape.

Then I dropped the opacity of the shadow down to 15% using the layers palette “Opacity” menu, and repositioned it under the curl.

TIP: You can quickly change the opacity of a layer by selecting it and pressing a number on your keyboard. Pressing “5” once for example, will reduce the opacity to 50%. Pressing “5” twice changes it to 55% etc.
I then created a new layer and drew a circular selection using the circular marquee tool.
For the bottom shadow I chose black for the foreground and background colours with the colour picker, selected the radial gradient tool, and again chose “Foreground to Transparent” from the Preset menu.
Then I filled my selection with a radial gradient.

Then we need to distort our radial gradient by selecting Transform>Distort from the Edit menu.

All that remains for our shadow is to delete the extraneous bits using the Polygonal Lasso Tool and they’re done.
TIP: You can get point-to-point (straight) selections using the standard Lasso Tool by holding down the Alt key as you draw.
Nearly done! Now we need to mask out the bottom right corner of our rounded rectangle background layer using a layer mask.
Select the “bg” layer, then draw a selection using the polygonal lasso tool again, similar to the way I’ve done below:

Now to mask out the “bg” layer, invert the selection (Select>Inverse), then click the “Add layer mask” button at the bottom of the layers palette.

What you should end up with is a pretty convincing page curl, that begs the user to click it. But that’s not all! To encourage clicking even further I added a cute little arrow from a font (of which the name escapes me) to the top of our curl. Tactile and inviting — two great things a banner should be

And to finish off I added a call to action. Put simply, some “click here”, “download me now” text, under the bottom shadow.

Result
It speaks for itself really
Seriously though, I’m quite pleased with the final banner, particularly since it won me $1000! Woo-hoo!

Conclusion
I hope you’ve learned some neat little tips and new approaches from this tutorial, and if anyone likes it I’ll probably throw a few more tutorials together.
Please leave a comment if you’ve learned something new, or particularly if you’ve got a better way of doing something I’ve outlined!

February 3rd, 2006 at 8:34 am
just perfect !
February 6th, 2006 at 6:51 pm
Very cool, one of the best tutorials l’ve seen posted on gt.com in a long time. Great work!!!
February 6th, 2006 at 8:01 pm
Very nice indeed. An excellent tutorial. Thank you.
February 7th, 2006 at 3:42 am
Performancing Banners…
This banner was chosen as the winner of the recent Performancing Banner Competition. Here it is re-created step-by-step, with a few tips thrown in for good measure….
February 7th, 2006 at 6:23 am
Very sweet! Ill try some of this too
And congratulations on the prize, I once won a contest too
February 7th, 2006 at 7:31 am
Nice tutorial! No wonder you won, congratulations by the way! Very nice.
February 7th, 2006 at 8:45 am
very nice tutorial..still having trouble with page curl though..cant make the right shape…Hopefuly with practice i’ll get there…thanx again
February 7th, 2006 at 9:32 am
It’s obvious you know your way around Photoshop. But, this is a really bad written tutorial. You are skipping steps, setups and parameters because they are so normal for you. But the audience of your tutorial is in most cases less experienced. Therefor going through the turorial is a hell.
Be more detailed in the future, and keep your audience in mind.
February 7th, 2006 at 8:44 pm
Sjakie,
Thanks for your comments.
Yes there are a couple of assumptions made here, but do I have to explain every single tool selection or every single parameter etc? If I did that the tutorial would be gargantuan - both in terms of effort to build and time required to read it.
I’m of the opinion that not every single mouse click is necessary to explain.
Perhaps I should point out that the tutorial requires at least a basic knowledge of particular tools and concepts before attempting it? What does everyone think?
Is there something in particular you’d like explained in more detail? I’m up for suggestions
Cheers - and thanks to everybody for their positive feedback.
February 8th, 2006 at 6:00 am
In response to the question about the appropriate level of detail in the tutorial, I’m on Wayde’s side. I agree that if he were to document every single click, it would be a waste of time for both him as the writer and us as the readers.
This is a Photoshop tutorial, not a Photoshop manual. If you’re having trouble with the basic (implied) steps, take a look at the online help, read the manual that came with the program, or buy and read a book dedicated to teaching Photoshop basics. Then come back to the tutorial and it should magically make sense now!
February 9th, 2006 at 10:25 am
that was really interesting and good tips. page curl looks nice and professional.
February 11th, 2006 at 2:22 am
Wow! I’ve been at this for a long time and thought I knew ALL the tricks and treats of Photoshop. I really needed the page curl tutorial - I’ve always had to take my graphics FROM Pshop to another program to pull it off. This will be a lot easier and, quite frankly it looks a heckuva lot better.
You really put a great deal of time and effort into this tutorial and I really appreciate it. I’m adding your blog to those I check regularly so I’ll be in class if you have any other wisdom to share!
Thanks,
Joi
P.S. I love that your graphics are so clean - it makes them scream, “Professional at work!”
February 11th, 2006 at 9:14 am
Everything before the page curl looks great!
(sincerely… I dont like page curls… and this one is even worse..)
soo… everything but the page curl is great!.
Overall a good tutorial.
February 11th, 2006 at 4:14 pm
Joi: Glad you liked it - thanks for your lovely comments. FYI, I’ll be adding a few tutorials on a fair regular basis, so stay tuned.
Rafaelinux: I agree that page curls are getting a little tired - I’ve done a few myself. Still there’s a few good little techniques involved in making one. Don’t hate me ‘cos I love a page curl!
February 21st, 2006 at 8:17 am
Nice
. Thanks a lot.
. I had my own things to do something similar but you most defenetlly give me other good ideas
.
February 22nd, 2006 at 8:35 am
Just awesome man!
Keep up the good work!
Peace.
February 22nd, 2006 at 12:33 pm
@cL and @HUNT3R - thanks for your comments.
I’ve got a lovely little tutorial on sIfr in production - stay tuned!
March 5th, 2006 at 2:57 am
Cool Thx
March 14th, 2006 at 10:52 pm
I liked the simplicity of your design… gr8 going Wayde.
March 21st, 2006 at 4:22 pm
“less is more”
very nice wip dude!
saiko
March 26th, 2006 at 8:39 pm
Very nice man. I like it. Nice and simple. Keep up the good work.
April 14th, 2006 at 1:57 am
Very good one.
I do like people like you guys, cheers for all the information
April 23rd, 2006 at 9:40 am
That’s so sexy.
June 24th, 2006 at 8:52 pm
I like the tutorial very much.
July 6th, 2006 at 9:32 pm
[…] Here’s a link to the tutorial: http://www.waydechristie.com/2006/02/03/photoshop-tutorial-performancing-banners/ […]
August 12th, 2006 at 10:04 am
Its brilliant, I will do it for my site.
October 27th, 2006 at 11:27 am
How do you make the “call to” action? I’ve been looking all over.. but i haven’t found any info anywhere about it. Help! =(
October 27th, 2006 at 6:50 pm
@JL
A “call to action” is an advertising term which means to “encourage someone to act”. My ad calls people to action by encouraging them to “Try it now”.
It isn’t a Photoshop command or action - sorry for the confusion
December 29th, 2006 at 11:40 am
Nice tutorial! I’ve just a question; when i use the rules at first on the 160×160 format and then double the canvas (320×320), the rulers don’t change relatively to new canvas. i.e. The center ruler stays at 80px. Am i doing something wrong?
December 29th, 2006 at 3:34 pm
@Jeroen
I’d say what’s going wrong is your “anchor” setting. Underneath where you set your new canvas size in the canvas size dialog are nine boxes with arrows in them. These boxes tell the document where to resize from. It sounds like you’re anchoring to the top left.
If you click the box in the very middle it will resize from the centre of the document and you should be good to go
I’ve updated the tutorial to make this a little clearer.
December 30th, 2006 at 12:53 am
Thanks for the swift reply Wayde! I’ve double checked my settings and seems that all is ok. However i still get the same result. I’ve made some screenshots: http://misc.intellit.nl/dump/tutorial/. Any idea’s?
December 30th, 2006 at 12:46 pm
@Jeroen
The only thing I can see is that your guides in step1.png are slightly off.
You should have guides in the vertical and horizontal centre, and a guide on each side of the canvas.
Here’s what it should look like before doubling the canvas size.
Copy that and you should be right.
Regardless, it’s a fairly unimportant step, so don’t let it hold you back from continuing with the tutorial…
December 31st, 2006 at 5:16 am
@ Wayde:
Thanks again; I misunderstood the first step, and i replicated the guides you have on your picture and afer that, doubled. It didn’t hold me back really, but i really liked the ruler trick and wanted to know what i did wrong
Thanks a lot again, and have a happy new year!!
February 1st, 2007 at 9:12 am
Buddy,
Sena Classic…………..!
NXN….Port Moresby
Newbee
March 31st, 2007 at 5:09 pm
[…] Le secret des bannières Performancing dévoilé (Photoshop) ! […]
April 25th, 2007 at 5:04 am
hey, can i have a link for a free myriad font?
June 2nd, 2007 at 12:54 am
[…] Photoshop: Adobe Design Center Video Workshop Designing a simple website banner with a logo using Photoshop Turn a photo into a sketch in Photoshop Photoshop Tutorial — Performancing Banners […]