Explore the steps on how to add a bar to your website background image, including creating gradients and adjusting the bar's orientation. Learn how to make your website more dynamic and visually appealing by customizing the color scheme and adding text.
Key Insights
- The addition of a gradient bar to a website background can enhance its visual appeal. This can be achieved using a rectangle tool to create the bar, adjusting its orientation, and applying a gradient color scheme.
- Text can significantly improve the viewer's experience on a website. The article details the process of adding text to an image, including creating a new layer, adjusting the size and orientation, and changing the color of the text.
- Customization plays an integral role in web design. The colors of both the gradient bar and the text can be personalized according to the overall aesthetic of the website, enabling the designer to create a more dynamic and visually appealing site.
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In this video, we'll be adding a bar to our website background image, as well as adding a gradient to the bar and text. Let's begin by first adding our bar.
We can first create a new layer for the bar, and let's title this simply “Bar.” Next, with this layer selected, let's go over to our Rectangle Tool, and we want to create a long bar starting at the middle. We could click and drag a bar and try to make it even with the middle—I'll hit CTRL+Z—or, in addition, we can start at the middle from the guide, and as we drag out, if we hit ALT, we'll see that the shape extends left and right evenly so it stays centered.
We'll drag a bar about this size. Let's now move the bar by hitting CTRL+T to transform it, and with the arrow keys, we'll simply move it down to the bottom. Let's zoom in a little bit, scroll down, and I'll move it with the arrow keys to right about there, then hit ENTER. Let's zoom back out.
The next thing we'll want to do is add a gradient to this bar to give it a little texture, similar to the colors above. With our bar selected, we'll go to the Properties panel and select the Fill color, then go to Gradient. Currently, we have a black-and-white gradient; however, if we scroll through some of these gradients, let's pick something that closely matches such as Copper.
While I like some of the browns in this gradient, I don't think the whites quite match, so we can remove them by simply clicking on the color stop and dragging it below. We'll do the same with the lighter color—click and drag it below—and we've successfully removed it. Now we only have two color stops.
Let's add one more. We can add an additional color stop by hovering below, and when we see the hand icon, we can click. We've now added a color stop.
Let's change the color of this stop by double-clicking it. We’ll see that we can choose colors from the Color Picker, or we can simply hover over part of the image and select a color using the Eyedropper Tool. We'll select a brown tone from the image. I like the look of that color, so we'll click OK. Now we can adjust our gradient by sliding both the color stops and the midpoint. Make a few adjustments here, and next, let's change our gradient style.
We'll click Linear and go through a few different styles to find whatever looks most natural. Personally, I like the look of Reflected, so let’s make a few other tweaks as well. I’m going to change the angle slightly so that it flows from the center. Now we have a bar that looks a little more dynamic. While these are my personal color choices, you can use whatever feels appropriate.
Next, let's go to Stroke. Currently, we don't have any stroke, but let's add a very light stroke around this bar. We'll go to the Color Picker and choose a gray tone from the image.
I'll click OK, and at one point we don't see much of the stroke, so let's increase it slightly—maybe up to around 2px. We'll click outside of “Bar” to see what this looks like. Let's hit CTRL+S on our keyboard to save. As a final step with our bar, let's just angle it slightly so it's not perfectly horizontal across the sky. We'll click “Bar, ” hit CTRL+T to transform, and when we hover near the edges, the cursor allows us to rotate. We'll click and drag it just slightly to the left.
We'll hit ENTER to confirm these changes. This will convert the live shape into a regular path. We'll click Yes and then click outside of “Bar” to view the result. This looks pretty good.
Let's again hit CTRL+S. Finally, let's add a little text to this image. We can do this using the Horizontal Type Tool. Let’s create a new layer for the text. We'll create a bounding box and type “website Under Construction.” The first thing we’ll want to do to center the text is resize the bounding box to be centered in the middle.
Next, let's highlight all of the text by clicking on it and hitting CTRL+A. We'll increase the font size. We still have Furo Mono set in bold, and let’s reduce the spacing slightly—from 180 down to 75. Next, let’s change the text color from black to white. We can do this by selecting Color and dragging the selector to white, then clicking OK. Finally, let’s angle the text just a little bit.
Click on the text, hit CTRL+T, and we’ll rotate it like we did before. For my image, I’m going to angle it slightly more than the bar beneath it so it looks like it was stamped across the bar. I’ll hit ENTER, and now we’re starting to see an image that meets our goals. Let’s hit CTRL+S on the keyboard to save our work.
In the next video, we’ll make final tweaks and export our image. See you there!