Designing Blog Banners.....

Designing blog banners is something I enjoy doing (obviously you have noticed this!!)  Its fun and helps to keep me interested in my own blog and hopefully keeps you interested too ;)  I don't know anyone besides Nicole who changes theirs up as much as I do!
Here is the latest creation.  I am really into these bright colors right now!

I have had several people comment on my banners and ask how I create them, so I thought I'd do a run down of the steps:

Step 1.  Think of a theme I would like to use.  Looking at my past blog banners, you can see that I tend to stick toward scenic, floral, cultural, seasonal, etc

Step 2.  Find the perfect photo (s).  I use my own photos but also search  Google and Flickr  to look for the right photo if I don't already have one.   Most of them are free for you to use, but some are copyrighted.  I have contacted photographers in the past and asked permission to use their photo to make a banner for my personal blog and its never been a problem.  These photos almost always become the primary focus of each banner.

Step 3.  Search Google for Photoshop brushes that relate to the theme I am using.  (In today's case, tropical fish). For the many of you who might not know what a "brush" is, it is like a digital stamp in which you can manipulate the size, color and opacity. Brushes are available for either Photoshop or Paintshop Pro and they are totally slick! There are so many great sites with brushes, but it really depends on what you're looking for. I tend to be specific with my searches and have downloaded free brushes from at least 50 different sites (or so it seems!).  Most of them give you permission to use whatever brushes you want.

Step 4.  I use either ArcSoft Collage Creator or Photoshop to place my photo onto a solid background.  I find it so much easier to use Arcsoft to manipulate size and place photos than Photoshop, so thats what I personally tend to use.  I save the collage as a jpg file and then open it in Photoshop.

Step 5.  Using Photoshop, I pick out the colors from the photo that I want to emphasize in the banner and put a border around the banner.  **When using the color picker tool in PS, it tells you a 6letter/digit color code for each custom color.  I write these down and label the colors.  Its important to have the codes so that the colors match up when I change the blog template later in the process.

Step 6.  Create a new layer for the title of the banner.  This takes longer than you might think because I search through all my fonts and play around before I choose the right one.  I think I need to start downloading more fonts soon....mine are all played out!  *Please share new favorite fonts if you have any!*

Step 7.  Go to Preset manager in Photoshop and load new brushes.

Step 8.  Create a new layer in PS for the brushes.  Choose colors, look through brushes and start playing until I am totally satisfied with how the banner looks. SAVE!

Step 9.  Resize the banner to 870 pixels wide.

Step 10. Upload new banner and change the color scheme, using the color codes that I wrote down in step 5.

And there ya have it!

Comments

[amy]

thanks so much for sharing this info. i want to try it myself, maybe this weekend. hope you have a great weekend.

[adrienne]

Love the new banner! Great tips!

[Michele]

Thanks! I have been wanting to try doing my own, but was afraid to. How do you make sure the top isn't really wide?

[kristi sauer]

Michele,
It depends on the size of your columns, etc. By the looks of your blog (and you already have a cute banner!), I would try to resize the banner to 670 pixels and then see if that fits or not. Just keep resizing it until it fits, but make sure you keep at least one copy of the banner at its original size, just in case!

[greta adams]

yeah that is why i will just pay you to do it for me....lol...my brain cannot handle anymore photoshop right now...bwhahahaha

[Julie]

I love the current banner Kristi. Very pretty! You are so creative. :)

[Mary]

Thanks for posting this Kristi!
I changed mine today. Not sure I'm loving it but I at least know how to do it now! Thanks......Have a great weekend!

[Sassy Sasha]

Ahem... what up girl .. the FABULOUS Greta Adams told you did blog banners, and I was like WHATTT...and she was like YEAHHH and so I was like LET ME GO SEE..and dang girl your designs are HOT..now do you do them if I send you a pic or what not, now my background of my whole blog, as you will see when you go and snoop LOL is black..so umm what you think and how muchie?

Holla back
Sasha