Digital Fading Bar
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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. |
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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. |  |
| 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: |  |
| 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. |  |
| 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. |  |
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. |  |
| 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: |   |
Digital Fading Bar
+1-888-298-6995
Blue.Design.Studios
7300738
