Photoshop CS6 Basics Using Layers to Create a Magazine Cover If you re using Photoshop Elements to do this project, the steps I cover in this tutorial will hopefully be useful to you as a guide Photoshop Elements commands may be slightly different. Tutorial Image Sources The images I will be using for this tutorial were obtained from the CD-ROM box-set from Art Explosion 800,000 images collection by Nova Development UK Ltd and is currently retailing on Play.com for 39.99. The collection has a number of royalty free clip-art images which are good for graphic design and word processing but there are also several fonts and high quality photographs. Getting Started I strongly recommend you use a visual file browser such as Adobe Bridge to help you locate the image(s) you want to work with in your project. If you have taken several photographs, especially in RAW format, then the speed with which you can work using Adobe Bridge is excellent. The normal windows file browser will struggle to show a preview of your RAW files. I am going to use the image Africa 008.jpg as my main image on the front cover of my magazine design. Double-click on your image so that it opens in Photoshop. Now create a new image by clicking on the File menu then choose New (CTRL + N). The New dialogue box will will be displayed on the screen. If the Preset isn t set to International Paper, use the drop-down arrow and choose International Paper from the list. In the Size box, select A4. Check that the Resolution is set to 300 Pixels/Inch. The Colour Mode should be set to RGB Colour and the Background Contents should be set to White. Click the OK button.
Now click on the tab at the top of the screen with your open image filename on it. Press CTRL + A to select all then press CTRL + C to copy. This will copy your image into the computer s clipboard in readiness for pasting into your new blank image. Click on the tab at the top of the screen with Untitled 1 on it. This will let you swap over to your new blank image. Press CTRL + V to paste in the image you have just copied into the computer s clipboard. You will see that it is quite a lot smaller than your A4 page. In the layers pallet, double-click on the label (Layer 1) you can then rename the layer. In my case I m going to call the layer Tribal Leader. Right-click on the Tribal Leader layer in the layers pallet and choose Convert To Smart Object from the pop-out menu. The reason for converting the layer to a Smart Object is to allow you to increase it s size without degrading its quality. After converting your layer to a Smart Object, press CTRL + T to activate the Free Transform tool. Use the corner handles in conjunction with the Shift key to expand the image proportionately to fill the entire A4 page. Press CTRL + R to make the rulers visible if they are not already showing. Press CTRL + SHIFT + N to create a new layer. Name this new layer as Border in the new layers dialogue box. Choose the Rectangular Marquee Tool from the toolbar. When you have selected the rectangular marquee tool, draw a box which leaves a 1cm border the whole way around the outside of the image. Now press CTRL + SHIFT + I to select the Inverse. This has now selected the border as opposed to the central portion of the image.
We now want to fill this border with a gradient colour fill. First of all I want you to set the foreground colour to Red and the background colour to Yellow. If you click on the colour swatch at the bottom of the toolbar, it will call up the colours dialogue box. To have a red foreground colour, use the following settings: Red 255, Green 0, Blue 0. To have a yellow background colour, use the following settings: Red 255, Green 255, Blue 0 The next step is to choose the Gradient Tool. Ensure the border layer is still the active layer then click and hold on the top left corner and drag your mouse pointer down to the bottom-right corner. The result can be seen in the next screen-shot. You should have a 1cm border all around the outside of the image. The border will be filled with a graduated colour scheme ranging from red in the top left through to yellow in the bottom right. You may think that this is starting to look like a rather popular monthly magazine you would see on the news rack in your local supermarket and that has been just a simple border. We ll be adding other design elements to our magazine cover to really make it quite authentic looking.
To get the best results with text, I would recommend that you use Guides that s what I m going to cover next. For this project, I m only going to use a 50% vertical guide. Go to the View menu and click on New Guide and in the dialogue box that is displayed on screen, type 50% and ensure the spot is against Vertical then click OK. Next, choose the Type Tool. You will see in the tool options box across the top of your window that I have chosen Engravers MT as my font face. The font size is 100 pt and the colour set to red. The alignment is set to Centre. Click on the vertical guide line just where it meets the tribal leader s head band. Type the word WORLD with your caps lock key on. Press CTRL + Shift + N to create a new layer Use the Type Tool again but change the font size down to 46 pt and change the alignment to Left Click on the vertical guide just about half-way down the tribal leader s forehead and type the word Travel. Create another new layer (CTRL + SHIFT + N) Change the font face to Arial Rounded MT Bold, size 24 pt. Change the colour to white and the alignment to Right Alignment then click just under the letter L in the word Travel. Type the word Monthly. Click on the Move Tool in the top left of the screen then click on the Travel layer and nudge it up a little closer to the word World. Do the same for the word Monthly nudging it a little closer to the word Travel. I now want to add bevel effect to all the text in red. Just select the WORLD layer and press the fx button at the bottom from the pop up menu, choose Bevel & Emboss. Accept the default settings. Do the same for the Travel layer.
Press CTRL + H to toggle between the vertical guide line being visible or not. Turn it off to check that your efforts so far result in an image that looks like quite an authentic magazine. You can add in other graphic elements if you wish but you should follow the same principles that I have laid down here. I.e. put each new item on the image into a new layer then if you make a mistake it s only that one layer that has to be corrected or deleted. You will see in this final screen shot that I have added a white box in the bottom right of the magazine cover. To that I have added a simple barcode as another layer this is font face FREE 3 OF 9. I have added another layer with the publication date and price of 4.99.