Enlarge the canvas, add a color bar

10. Now, let's bring down the size of our tower. Pull the Image menu to "Image Size…" Set the depth of the tower image to 180 pixels. Click ok. The entire document is scaled down.

11. But, we want our banner to be wider than it is deep, so let's add some canvas to the document. Pull the Image menu to "Canvas Size…" Change the "Width" value to 340 pixels. "Anchor" controls where the canvas is added. Leave it in the middle, and new canvas is distributed evenly around the existing image. Click on one of the other buttons, and it is added in the direction indicated by the arrows. Let's click on any of the left side buttons, to add canvas on the right. Save your file early and often.

12. OK, let's start building on our document. Create a new layer by pulling either the Layer menu or the Layers palette submenu to "New Layer." This ensures that whatever we do next will not affect our tower image.

13. Now, get the Marquee tool and select a strip of pixels along the bottom. Let's select a depth of about 3 vertical background squares worth of pixels, all the way across. If the selection is not exactly at the bottom, we can use the down arrow key to move the selection down until it's at the bottom.

14. We're going to fill in this strip with color. Set your Foreground color chip to a nice, dark red by clicking on it and selecting a dark red (see the first handout if you don't know how to do this.) Get the Paint bucket tool from the Tool bar. Note that it has Options similar to the Magic Wand, particularly "Tolerance." Click with it inside your selection to fill it with red.

15. That doesn't look great to me. Let's try a different color. This time, change your Background color to Black by clicking on the lower right chip and changing to Black. Now pull the Edit menu to "Fill." Where it says "Use" in the dialog box, change Foreground to Background, so we get the Black color instead of the red. Click "OK" to fill it in with Black.

16. I'm still not satisfied. Let's try a gradient fill. Select the Linear Gradient tool from the Tool bar. Click and drag from the left side of the selection to the right side. This fills our selection with a gradient from the foreground color to the background color. Note that clicking and dragging from and to different locations will provide different results. A little experimentation should give you a feel for how this works. OK, at last I'm satisfied with how this looks.

17. Let's put a line around our selection. First, let's get a new foreground color. Select the Eyedropper tool from the Tool bar. Click around in the trees under our tower, until you get a nice Green. Now, pull the Edit menu to "Stroke…" Under "Stroke" type "2" into the "Width" field. Under "Location," click on the button next to "Inside." This puts the stroke inside our selection. Note that you also have the option to put the stroke over the middle of the selection line, or outside of it.

Save your file.

Previous | Home | Next