Elements Of Design :: Basic Photoshop Tutorial

Written by Chris Kapzynski on January 25, 2010 Categories: Tutorials

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In this short tutorial I’ll show you how to combine a couple images of molecular structure with some simplistic design to create a stunning periodic table themed image.

Download PSD

Step 1

Open a new Photoshop document with a width of 1920 pixels and a height of 1200 pixels. Fill the “Background” layer with black.
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Step 2

Create a new layer above the “Background” layer and name it “element square”. With the Rectangular Marquee Tool draw a small rectangle on the left side of the canvas.

Apply a 10px stroke with the color #ff8401 by going to: Edit>Stroke
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Step 3

Press Ctrl+D to remove the selection and then Ctrl+J to copy the layer. With the new layer selected press “V” to choose the Move Tool and nudge the new image to the right.
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With the “element square copy” layer still select press Ctrl+J again to create another copy and once again nudge the image to the right.
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Step 4

Create a new text layer above the “element square copy 2” and type your first letter,with a color of #ff8401 and a serif font of your choice. I chose the “Rockwell” font set to 72pt. Position the letter in the lower right corner.
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Repeat the process two more times for the remaining rectangles.
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Step 5

Create a new layer above the individual letter layers and type any additional text for your company name or message. Position your text to the right of the element rectangles. Alternate between the colors white and #ff8401 for every other word.
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Step 6

Create a new layer above the “Background” layer and name it “aura”. With a foreground color of #840300 draw a radial gradient starting at the left of the element rectangles and moving to the right.
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With the “aura” layer selected press Ctrl+J to copy it to a new layer. Change the Blend Mode on the copy layer to Color Dodge and reduce the Opacity to 80%.
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Step 7

Open the download and open the document titled “molecular_structure.psd”. Above the “aura copy” layer drag each of the eight layers from the “molecular_structure.psd” into your composition. Position the smaller images around your text and the larger ones more towards the edge. Apply a Gaussian blur to the larger images with a Radius ranging from 3.5 to 8 pixels.
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Step 8

Finally, create two more text layers at the very top of the layer order. On the first layer type the first two numbers of the year and on the second layer the next two numbers of the year. Position the numbers in the upper left corner of the two element blocks furthest right as shown in the example below.
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