Digital Fading Bar
Skill level: Beginner
Programs used: Photoshop 6
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These bars can make great borders or backgrounds; with a few
extra touches, they'll spice up any page.
1. Create a new canvas, 400 x 100 pixels, with a transparent background.
Choose any color as your foreground color (I used a nice dirty blue, hex
value of #6699CC), then select the paint bucket tool 
and fill the canvas with your color. |
2. Choose pure white as your foreground color. Create a new layer by pressing
the "Create new layer" button  .
Select the rectangular marquee tool 
and select a portion of the canvas, 300 x 30 pixels. Now select the linear
gradient tool 
and choose a foreground to transparent gradient. Drag a straight-line gradient
from the left to right of the selection by holding down "SHIFT"
as you drag.
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3. Make a new canvas, 4 x 4 pixels with a transparent background, and
zoom into 100% so you can see what you're doing. Now select the pencil tool
and select the smallest brush-size possible (1 x 1 pixels). Click on the
four inner-most pixels to create a 2 x 2 black square. |
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| 4. Now press "CTRL+A" to select the whole canvas, the select
the "Edit>Define Pattern...", and name the pattern what you
will. You can close this new canvas with the pattern on it now. |
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| 5. Go back to your original canvas, and create a new layer above the white
transparent gradient. Press "SHIFT+BACKSPACE" to open the fill
window, and choose to fill the layer with your new pattern, and the values
shown below: |
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| 6. Now make a perfect selection of your pattern-fill by holding "CTRL"
and clickig on the layer in the layers palette. Now press "SHIFT+CTRL+I"
to inverse the selection. |
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| 7. Now activate the gradient layer, by clicking on it in the layers palette,
and hit delete to clear the unwanted portions of the gradient. Deselect
by pressing "CTRL+D" and delete the pattern-fill by right-clicking
on the layer in the layers palette and selecting the delete option. You
should be left with what's left of the gradient. |
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8. This looks good, but by using some artistic touches, we can easily
turn good in great! Select the eraser tool 
at 100% opacity and a small brush size, and take out some of the squares
on the faded side. Zoom in if you have to.
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9. Almost there, just add some interest to the left side by choosing a
much larger feathered-brush for the eraser (I used the feathered 65 pixel
sized brush  ,
I suggest you use this too) and take an oblique slice out of the left side
like so: |
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| 10. Lastly, this is a little dull, use the "Filter>Sharpen>Sharpen
Edges" menu command to brighten things up. |
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| Looks great, doesn't it? Try using different color gradient and patterns
to create different effects such as a decaying look or an interesting 3D
look: |
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