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Jane’s Recipes for Adobe Photoshop Elements 2Recipe 1: Frame AccentsSidebarCreating interesting graphic elements to include in multimedia projects is quite simple once you starting playing. To speed up the process, I am going to supply some simple "recipes" that will help guide you. Make mine and then adapt yours!I am using a 640 x 480 frame size to do a couple of things: a. it gives you some idea how the shape you are creating fits on a standard 640 x 480 frame b. it gives you plenty of room to experiment. I just use the crop tool later to remove what I don't want. Of course, once you get going, you can just specify a particular size of blank frame and skip the cropping part. Start Adobe Photoshop Elements 2. Next . . . . 1. File > New 2. New Dialog Box: Name - Sidebar Present Sizes - 640x480 Width: 640 pixels Height: 480 pixels Mode: RGB Color Contents: Transparent 3. Click in Toolbox and select Rectangular Tool. 4. Move into frame and click, hold, and drag a rectangle that goes from the top to the bottom of the frame. Make it any width you like. Let go of the mouse when you have finished drawing. 5. Click on Layer Styles. Choose Bevels > Scalloped Edge (3rd row, at the end). 6. Click on Layer Styles. Choose Glass Buttons. Choose a color. 7. Click on Layer Styles. Choose Image Effects > Fog. 8. Click on Layer Styles. Choose Patterns. Brushed Metal. 9. Select Crop Tool. Cut around your graphic to get rid of the excess space around it. 10. Click on File > Save As > Browse to where you are saving your files. 11. Give your graphic a name and change Format to PNG or else save it as a Compuserve GIF. Both formats will preserve transparency. For the highest quality result, use the PNG format. If the smallest size possible is important, use GIF. This is what you end up with. On the left is the PNG image. It is 94 KB. On the right is the web-optimized GIF image and it is 35 KB. If you look carefully, you can see some of the flattening of the image, even on a monitor.   |
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