BMW Logo
Hey all,
Its time. Yes. It is. Its time for the tutorial to one of my best imitations upto the time of writing this tutorial. Here comes, the one, the only, BMW LOGO!!!!
First of all, here are some pictures of the original.
A photo of the real metal thing:
The official digital version that BMW uses on the net.
A small history lesson. You will be amazed at the amount of controversy regarding the origin of the logo. Read more at Logoblog.
You have to admire the beauty of the logo. Its so simple, yet so powerful. I just love the cars and the logo. Here is the image that I just made in Photoshop. Yes, I made it in Photoshop only. And by observation only. What follows is a very detailed tutorial.
BlogCamp Delhi 2
Hi all,
Delhi is finally hosting its second Blog Camp!! What is it? Let me quote from the site.
BlogCamp Delhi 2 is proposed to be a camp where we get together and discuss/rant/brain-storm/share opinions about about blogging technologies & trends, micro blogging, photo-blogging, video blogging, social media, … everything about the world of blogs & new media that interests us. This is the second edition of BlogCamp in Delhi.
When: Saturday, March 7, 2009
Where: Indian Institute of Mass Communication, JNU new campus, Aruna Asif Ali Marg, New Delhi – 110067
The last blogger-meet I attended was a huge success (for me, personally, atleast). There was so much that I learnt and so many people that I met. I have been in contact with many of those people. I did freelance design jobs for a few too. 
Well, now I come to the point. I have designed the banner,poster and badges for this event. The organizers were quite specific with what they like and what they don’t, so some of my designs were scrapped. But finally got one that everyone liked!! Download the images and show off to the world that you support bloggers!!
Here are some of the earlier attempts [PLEASE DO NOT USE THESE IMAGES ANYWHERE. USE THE 2 ABOVE.]
Easy Racing
Hey all,
I was recently asked to make a new banner for a blog called “Easy Racing”. Surprisingly, the blog doesn’t seem to have anything to with racing. But it is a great blog where Partha writes about current events and online competitions.
Partha had asked for some specific effects like an aeroplane, waterfalls etc. This makes my work easy, as I don’t have to try out different concepts which some people like and some don’t. It also helps in putting in more effort to make one good banner, instead of 5 simple banners with no good effects. Anyways, here is the banner that I came up with, and which was also put up on the site Easy Racing.
So, what do you think? Do tell me your ideas through the comments or the contact form.
Newbies Blogger Banner
Hey all,
I was recently asked to design a banner/header my some “Mr. Man” for his website “The Newbies Blogger”. He puts up blog related articles on how to popularize your blog and how to earn from it etc. His English on the blog may not be that good, but he puts it forward in a nice and easy to understand manner.
As usual, I had made quite a few samples for him to choose from. He liked some of them, but he says that my watermark may confuse people. I don’t think so. I mean, seriously… It says “Designed By – http://thephotoshopper.blogspot.com”. How can that confuse his readers?? But on his request, I have lowered the opacity of the watermark. Now what more can you expect from me for no cost at all. If I charge for the service, there won’t be any watermark in the first place… Anyways, here are the samples. Do tell me how do they look…
I really like the third one…
None of them have been put up as of yet due to the watermark issue. Once (and if) it is put up, I will update this post with the link to the page.
Vista/7 Orb/Start button Tutorial
Hey all,
I have decided that I will do a whole series of Vista elements tutorials. Note that I am not an out-and-out Vista fan, I actually like XP and OSX a lot better than Vista. But you have to agree, the Vista interface does look nice, if you have a lot of processor power lying around unused…
Having already posted the Vista Taskbar Tutorial, the series will include tutorials on how to make:
1. The Vista Taskbar
2. The Vista Orb
3. The Vista Explorer/Interface
4. Maybe The Vista Sidebar
5. Some Vista wallpapers
Now let us begin with the Vista Orb Tutorial. First of all, here is a screen-shot of the real Vista Taskbar:
[image deleted]
Update: The Windows 7 start button/orb also looks exactly the same.
And here is what we will make in this tutorial:
Let us begin!
Step 1: The Basic Shape
1. Start with a square, 300x300px canvas. Pick up the “Elliptical Marquee Tool“, and draw a nice big circle in the center, while holding down the Shift key.
2. Next, make a gradient that goes from a dark shade of any color to a light shade of the same color, as shown. The actual Vista Orb seems to use #013660 and #00a8e9. I have used the same.
Make sure that you save the selection. To do so, go to “Select>Save Selection“. Give it some obvious name such as “outer”. To learn about saving/loading selections in detail, refer to my Mac OSX Tiger Wallpaper Tutorial.
Step 2: The Basic elements of Design
1. Go to Select>Modify>Contract. Enter 5 or 6px as the size. Do save the selection as “inner”.
2. Create a new layer, and pick up the Gradient tool. With the gradient set to “White to transparent”, select “Radial Gradient” from the options bar on top. Make a radial gradient on the new layer starting from point 1 to point 2 as marked in the pic below. Set the layer blend mode to “Overlay“. You can deselect (Ctrl/Cmd + D) any selections that are there. I hope that you saved your selections.
3. Now to put in the Windows logo. You could either wait for me to put up a tutorial for the win logo or download the following logo that you can easily extract (Tutorial on extraction coming soon) from any official windows wallpaper.
[image deleted]
Copy this logo onto a new layer in your image. Resize it to fit nicely, leaving some space on the sides.
Its already looking quite good huh?
Step 4: The 3D Gloss effect
1. We use the same old technique of giving a glossy look to any object. We make a partial gradient in a part of the image. For more details, refer to tutorials Vista Taskbar, RSS Feed Icon and 3D button/badge.
2. To select an area for the gradient, pick up the Pen Tool. Make a path as shown in the pic below. I have left the path incomplete on purpose to show you the anchor points.
3. Once the path is complete, right click anywhere on the canvas and select “Convert to Selection“. This will convert your path to a selection (duh!).
4. Now comes the use of the saved selections. Refer to the tutorial I linked to above, to learn more about loading selections. Basically, you can combine different selections in different manners by using the “Load Selection” feature. Go to “Select>Load Selection“. In the window that pops up, make the settings a shown:
5. As you can see in the image below, a very nice selection has been made. It is just the area that we need.
6. Again, on a new layer, with the Radial gradient set to “White to transparent”, make a large gradient from the top to the middle. Adjust transparency of the layer to suit your needs. I lowered it to about 80%.
7. Though it has started to look a bit glossy, it still looks a bit weird. Select the layer with the logo on it, and go to “Layer>Layer Styles>Drop Shadow“. Use the following settings.
8. This is what your image should look like. Please ignore the strange black patch under the green part of the logo. I made a mistake while taking a screen-shot. :p Also , don’t deselect it. Infact, you should save it. Let the name be “xyz”.
9. Now you need to load another selection. Load the inner selection again, but this time subtract “xyz” from it.
10. Next, with a soft (0% hardness) and large (radius 100px) brush, and foreground color set to Black, and the opacity of the brush set to 40%, color a bit in the areas marked with the red spots in the image above. And this finishes your Vista Orb!!
The final image:
Please do comment!!
Fitnesolution
Hey all…
I was recently asked to make a logo for another blog. It goes by the name “Fitnesolution”.
No, its not a typo, it has a single ‘S’
Here are a few images that I made. The last one has been put up. Check it out.
Check it out at http://dreamfit.blogspot.com
