Look out - he has a pick!

[morsla]

I want to pick your brains. You'll hardly feel a thing...

- How many of you lovely people have used Photoshop?
- Do any of you have experience with applying textures to create sidebars, backgrounds etc?

I'm working on Insurgent #1 over the next few days, and I want to add some fairly simple vertical and horizontal rules, sidebars, and other ease-of-reading guides for the internal pages. I have a fantastic masthead logo donated by a real designer, and I'd like to keep a visual link running through the pages with the rusted metal/rivets/bulletholes effects on the masthead. However, I currently have absolutely no idea how to go about doing so...

Proofreading and correcting text is fine; layout and typesetting are also cool. Image formats I know a little about, and don't have a huge amount of control over as I'm using many reader-submitted images that aren't great quality files. My main stumbling block is the big gap between the pictures in my head, and what the pictures look like on the screen.

Can anyone offer some advice for working with textures in Photoshop? I have Photoshop CS, and dearly want to learn more about what it's capable of...

Comments

[kunoichi-chan.livejournal.com]

I could probably look at it, figure it out, and show you, but I'd have to be there.

I don't know CS, just the regular version of Photoshop... so... and it also really depends what version you have, because different versions do slightly different things...

A major piece of advice, though - I'd suggest working in layers. ^_^

[morsla.livejournal.com]

I'm (slowly) learning to keep all the layers preserved until I really need to flatten them... I just have to fight the instincts that are telling me to make the files all nice and small :)

follow these tutorials, and you will be all done in about 15 minutes

[thekit.livejournal.com]

tutorial page
http://www.pslover.com/tutorials/all/158/

rust tutorial
http://www.pslover.com/click/486

making steel plates
http://www.pslover.com/click/485

google for "photoshop rivet tutorial" if you want to know how to make rivets.

Re: follow these tutorials, and you will be all done in about 15 minutes

[morsla.livejournal.com]

Thanks :)

I started looking through Google just after I posted that entry, and I've found a few useful tutorials. Now I just need to practice - and perhaps stop getting so distracted by tutorials that I click on for interest's sake... I think about 90% of last night's mucking around wasn't even vaguely connected to the current project ;)

[lynsis.livejournal.com]

While you can do really funky stuff with Photoshop (thekit gave you a few starting places), with website layout and prettiness it's often better (more useable, more accessible, and faster load times) to use specifically web-ish things like CSS instead of too many pictures. You can still make menus pretty and such things (like here for example).

</rant> Anyway, sounds like you're more needing modifications to an existing site rather than having too much choice about it overall, so you can probably ignore all of that ;)

[morsla.livejournal.com]

I'm not doing web design - that's an arcane art that I'd like to know more about, but it's unfortunately in the "not just yet" basket...

I'm putting together a 'zine of sorts, which will be kept on WargamerAU.com as a .pdf download. It'll mainly be viewed on the screen, but some people will probably want to print out a copy.

I'll (hopefully) be able to use enough basic InDesign to lay it all out, although the later issues will look much prettier. It's partly an excuse to finally learn more about InDesign, Acrobat, Photoshop and Illustrator.

[lynsis.livejournal.com]

Ahhh *all becomes clear*.

And the taking on projects to learn things properly - yup, doing that too :) With a couple of database driven websites.

Your pics in your newer post look cool, nice one.