Web 2.0 design is the newest trend that goes into web site design. The world wide web is going to change their websites to become more attractive, simple, user friendly, scalable, bright and shiny by designing it with web 2.0 standards. web 2.0 design concept does not only change the web design trend, it is also changing the web marketing concepts, programming concepts, and usability concepts.

So how do you identify a web 2.0 design? There are few design considerations that are the most common
that we see on a web 2.0 design:

1)Simplicity

Web 2.0 design should be simple ,noise free, uncluttered, with little contents, more graphics and large fonts. Look at the screenshot below it will help you to imagine what is simplicity in design:

2)Centralized Contents

The contents of the page should be in the center of the page like the following samples, as you can see the contents are in the center of the page and the left and right space are filled with gradient background.

3)Backgrounds

The backgrounds in web 2.0 have several forms, either to be gradient colors or diagonal line pattern.

4)Reflections

One of the web 2.0 standards is to make some reflection on your images.

5)Round Corners

The new style in corners is to make the corners rounded, in contents boxes or in buttons.

6)Large Fonts

Use large and clear fonts in your web 2.0 design.

7)Bright Colors

Web 2.0 design usually have bright, strong, eye catching, and most of the time unnatural colors. Just like the example color gradients below.

Well recently we have been receiving constant email request from our regular readers for a photoshop tutorial that shows how do photoshop masters do the shining effect on their texts.

And we think it’s about time to make that request, actually its the first time since we started this blog, that we used the suggestion of a reader. So for this tutorial we will be doing a shining text effect. In this tutorial we will be learning how photoshop brush can be used in variety of ways.

So lets gets this photoshop tutorial on the roll. We will be making this simple shining text effect:

Step 1: So starting off with the tutorial we will first setup our canvass, any size will do but i did mine 640X480 pixels. Now lets give it a background color#FFD456.

Step 2: Now we have our canvass set, we now make the text were gonna place the effect, so with our text Type Tool(T) we write anything on the canvass. So go on ahead and type anything you want on the canvass. I typed “SPARKLE & SHINE” on mine.

Note: In choosing the font for your effect, try to use a much wider or bold type font to fit this effect, but in any case you have chosen a slim typed of font it will do just fine.

We now apply this settings for our text to be more prettier. Just copy the settings below or adjust it to your liking:

Step 3: Now we move to the step where we setup our brush tip for the shining effect. But before that we must create a new transparent layer on our PSD file. So we go to File>Layer>New Layer (Ctrl+Shft+N) and we name this layer “Shine”.

Onto our brush tip setting, click on our Brush Tip template we choose “Crosshatch” 1 or 4.

Note:By the way “Crosshatch” brush tip is one of the default brush tip for photoshop. If ever you don’t see the brush tip crosshatch, just click on the Load Brush button and select Assorted Brush and the click OK.

Step 4:Now we apply the Crosshatch brush to complete our Shining Effect on our text. Before we apply it though, we must make sure that we are using the White color for your brush. Moving on, select the “Shine” layer we just previously created and then apply the brush effect on selected parts of the text to make it look like its shining. Just like so:

Note: You can adjust the brush tip size to make variation with the shine size to make it more realistic. You can adjust the size by pressing the ([) to make it smaller and (]) to make it bigger. Or you can simply click on the brush tip and drag the Master Diameter to adjust the brush tip size.

Here’s the final artwork we have made:

There’s really many things you can do with photoshop brush from making the actual artwork, or even using it to enhance your design or logo. To learn more on how to use photoshop brush you can visit our photoshop tutorial page and watch our online videos. Also you can try and download our huge collection of artistic photoshop brushes, for more effects to choose from. Get it right our photoshop brush page and start making awesome effects.

In this tutorial we will be doing a cool comic book effect that will give an interesting and dramatic effect to our ordinary photo.

So we now open now our image in photo shop, I choose this image.

Step 1: Convert the image to Black and White

We’ll start off by saturating our image if its colored. We go to Image>Adjustments>Desaturate (Ctrl+Shift+U).

Then to achieve our target effect we will add levels effect to our image to make it look
like it is inked.. to do that.. go to Image>Adjustments>Levels

For my image I used these values to achieve the desired effect

Step 2: Create the comic effect

Now we have our inked effect image, we will now add the comic effect on the image. First we will create a new layer go to Layer>New>Layer or (Ctrl+Shift+N). Then well going to fill it with a color 50% gray go to Image>Fill>Use 50% Gray

At the moment our layers would look like this..

Now we select our gray layer and then add a noise go to Filter>Noise>Add Noise Amount 400%, Distribution: Gaussian, and check the Monochromatic. then click OK..

Next on the same layer, go to Filter>Blur>Motion Blur use the setting Angle:90 Distance:999 then click OK.. Your canvass should look like this..


Note: for large canvass, you will find it different, so you will have to repeat the motion blur filter repeatedly until you get the straight lines. Or simply by pressing the shortcut key ctrl+F5.

Now before we go any further, we will duplicate first our stripe Layer, select the layer right click and select duplicate layer or go to Layer>Duplicate Layer

After that we will now skew a litlle bit the stipes layer go to Edit>Transform>Skew

I made mine like this.

Then we change the blending option of the skewed image to Vivid Light and then add Levels to the layer to achieve our desired effect, I used this level values (Show Level images)

And then on the duplicated stripe layer, repeat the instruction on the original stripe layer
but on this time skew the stripe layer just a little less than before.

Here’s the result of the settings… Cool huh?

Now to make things interesting.. we will add a dialogue balloon, just like the ones we usually see on the comics.. Just use the ellipse shape tool to create a big circle on the shape layer, add a triangle shape to the balloons… using the pen tool..

And then we add effect to the balloon by adding a layer a black stroke, select the shape layer and then right click select blending options select the stroke option. I used these values for my image.

(see layer settings below)

And to add some text, we use the text tool

Here’s the result of our tutorial..

To learn more cool photo shop tutorials? Please visit more our website photoshopbag.com to learn other amazing photo shop tutorial effects and techniques, or just watch our free online video photo shop tutorials on the website.