Learn how to add style and boxes to an artboard in Photoshop, with a step-by-step guide on creating and modifying shapes for a banner design project. Discover how to manipulate layers, use the rectangle tool, adjust shapes using control keys, and modify colors to make your design pop.
Key Insights
- The article provides a detailed walkthrough on creating and modifying shapes in Photoshop, starting with organizing layers for better management. It guides you on how to delete an original layer, move text above frames, and create a separation box using the rectangle tool.
- The author describes how to adjust shapes using control keys. By hitting ctrl T, you can modify the rectangle to align with the ends of the artboard. It also demonstrates how to change the color of the rectangle to differentiate it from other elements and make it stand out.
- The tutorial also offers instructions on adding additional boxes to highlight some of the design elements. The process involves creating a new layer, selecting the rectangle tool, and changing the fill color to achieve a contrasting effect.
Note: These materials offer prospective students a preview of how our classes are structured. Students enrolled in this course will receive access to the full set of materials, including video lectures, project-based assignments, and instructor feedback.
In this video we'll begin adding style and boxes to our artboard. Let's first start with ptc banner 1 Photoshop file open.
We're going to organize our artboard 1 a little bit more in our layers. The first thing we can do is select layer 1 which was our original layer and we can simply delete it by hitting the delete icon and we'll click yes. Next, because our center text is going to be on top of the frames we can move center text to the top and now we have our frames on the bottom and our text above the frames that will eventually hold images.
Now we're ready to begin adding boxes to our artboard. The first box we'll want is one right behind building cities on the shoreline as a box to separate the two frames. We'll create a new layer by hitting the new layer icon on the bottom right hand of the screen and within this layer we'll select the rectangle tool to create a box.
We'll drag from one end of the artboard to the other end and we'll see that we now have a shape as a rectangle. To modify this shape if it's not exactly flush with the ends of the artboard we'll hit CTRL T and we can simply drag it to the ends until we see the pink line making sure that it's flush with the artboard. In addition, we can move it until it's centered right on that third mark.
Both lines will be pink as we move it and we'll hit ENTER to save these changes or we can hit commit transform icon in the options bar and we'll leave it there. Even if we move our title building cities on the shoreline above rectangle one we won't see it because both are black. So let's change the color of our rectangle.
We can select rectangle one and let's first change the title name by double clicking the title and we'll type bottom rectangle and hit ENTER and now let's change the color. With bottom rectangle highlighted we can go into our properties or into our options bar where it is fill and we'll click fill and let's make it a green color. You can choose whatever green you'd prefer.
I'll choose this light green here and that looks good. We'll click back on the fill to close this box and here we see we have a bar separating the top image from the bottom and helping building cities on the shoreline to stand out. Next let's add one more box behind our text box here so that this text will stand out from the image behind it.
This time rather than starting with a new layer we'll simply click outside the layers and using the same rectangle tool let's first change our fill this time. We'll select fill in the options bar and let's choose a gray. Choose this gray here you can choose whatever gray you'd prefer and I'm going to do the same thing even though we only want a square in the middle here.
I'm going to start by aligning it from the left to the right and while holding shift I'll drag until I get to the other end. I'll release hit CTRL T to transform it and make sure that I hold shift to maintain the square shape and I'll drag it so that the right side is pink and still holding shift I'll drag so the left is pink. We now have a perfect square that's lined up within our artboard.
I'll drag it up and next let's move this square behind our center text. We can do this by dragging rectangle one and moving it behind center text. Next let's change the size of it.
It doesn't need to be quite as big so we'll hit CTRL T and holding shift we'll drag up to maintain the square space. In addition if we hold ALT it will move to the inside staying aligned in the middle. We'll put it to about this size and I'm going to use shift and use the up arrow on my keyboard to move it up.
In addition we can move it faster by still holding shift and moving it up. We'll leave it right about there for now and this is starting to show us what our artboard is going to look like. Let's rename rectangle one to center square and hit ENTER.
Next let's save our work using CTRL S on the keyboard. While this clearly doesn't look like it's ready to be created into a banner we're starting to get a vision for what this banner might look like and how we're strategically creating it within this space. The next thing I want to do is I want to start adding elements to the top so that we can add our logo up here.
To do this I actually want to add a triangle. I could go into the shapes tool and holding down on the rectangle tool I'll see that more shapes come up and I could create a triangle by clicking changing the sides to three and hitting okay and we'll see we have a triangle there. Let's delete that for now and click yes.
However instead what I'm going to do is I'm going to create a rectangle and angle the rectangle so that it fits these proportions. Let's scroll up on our artboard and let's click outside of center square. To create this rectangle it's not actually important that it's lined up perfectly with the artboard so we can simply click and it looks like I still have the polygon tool selected so I'll release delete the polygon and click yes.
Sometimes we make mistakes it's important to know how to recover from them so we'll go back to the polygon tool click and hold and using the rectangle tool we'll click and draw a long skinny rectangle and release. Next we're going to move this rectangle down so that it covers the artboard as a corner. To do this we'll use the move tool and we'll move it towards the top of the artboard so it's flush and next we're going to angle this rectangle even though we can't see the rest of it covers out to the ends and so we'll select rectangle 1 and we'll hit CTRL T on our keyboard so that we can transform it.
With transform we can obviously adjust the length or the width however what I want to adjust this time is I want to adjust the angle so we'll go to the right hand side until we see the arrows and we'll drag it to an angle. If we hold shift and drag to the sides we'll see that the angle changes at increments. For this to be a triangle I want the angle to be at 15 degrees so I'll release and we're going to just move it up until it's about flush with the top right hand corner there we see it's flush there however it still looks like a rectangle going across so we're simply going to drag the top of the rectangle up longer so it fills the space I'll even drag it a little bit longer and then hit ENTER to commit these changes.
As we can see even though it's a rectangle it gives the impression of looking like a triangle on the top left hand side. Let's save our work thus far hitting CTRL S on the keyboard and we'll begin stylizing all of these things in the next video. See you there!