Full gaming template Tutorial

Intro:

In this free photoshop tutorial you'll learn on how to design a full gaming template, this design can be used for other niches too if you'd like.

You need 2 Counterstrike:Source screenshots to make this tutorial, the first one is for the main header, the second you it's optional to cut the Counter-terrorist out and place it infront of the main header.

Counterstrike:source screenshot 1
Counterstrike:source screenshot 2

Step 1:

Make a new document with 1000px width, 800px height and #4d4d4d as the background color. Get the rectangular marquee tool



and set the style in the top bar to "Fixed size", width: 960px and height: 800px. Now click somewhere in the document, and move the selection to the left side so there are no pixels left between the document edge and the selection. Then HOLD shift and press the right-arrow 2 times to move the selection to the exact middle. Make a new layer (Shortcut: Ctrl+Shift+N called "Main site". Change foreground color to #dfdfdf and fill the Main site layer with this color, with the paintbucket or Ctrl+Backspace.

You should now have something like this:



Group these layers together in a group called "Main site + BG".

Step 2:

Open this Counterstrike:Source screenshot, or use your own screenshot, but if you do values we enter later can be a little different. And move the screenshot into our document by dragging it with the move tool. Double-click the screenshot layer in the layers palette to rename it, rename it to "Header".

Now take out the rectangular marquee tool again, and leave it on fixed size, but edit the value to width: 954px, height: 177px. Make the selection in the document and take out a nice piece of the screenshot, just press Ctrl+C top copy and Ctrl+V to paste it. Then hide the original screenshot layer by clicking the eye icon in front of the layer in the layers palette, you can use it if you like to edit something later.

Move the layer somewhere at my point:



To give an exact result of this tutorial I'll give you my precise pixels between the header layer and the top of document, pixels between are: 12px.

Step 3:
Now let's tweak the header! Copy the Header layer in the layers palette. Go to > Filter > Other > Highpass and set it on 10px, click OK. Set the blend-mode of this layer to Hard light and the opacity to 66%. As you can see below this gives the screenshot a little more detail.



Duplicate the original Header layer again. Go to filter > Blur > Gaussian blur and set it on a 4px radius, press OK. Set the blend-mode to color dodge and the opacity to 29%. This will give it a little more lightning.



As an addition to this header you can add a cut out Counter-terrorist, which you can cut out with the pen-tool, I've written a pen-tool tutorial on how to do so. My header with the cut out CT.

Step 4:

Make a new layer called "Scanlines", and make sure it's above all the header layers. Then Ctrl+Click the original header layer, and make sure you still got the "Scanlines" selected. Hit D on your keyboard to reset the foreground and background colors, then X to switch them making white the foreground. Now press alt+Backspace to fill our scanlines layer with the foreground color white.



This layer needs a pattern that we have to make first, we use a simple scanlines pattern with 1 black and white dot.

Make a new document (Ctrl+N) width: 1px, height: 2px, press OK, take out the pencil-tool



Set the pencil-tool on 1px brush size. Hit D on your keyboard to reset the colors, making black as foreground. then make a black dot on the top of document. Then go to > Edit > Define pattern, fill in scanlines as the name and hit OK. Minimize or close the document.

Go to your template document, right-click the scanlines layer in the layers palette en choose blending options. Select "Pattern overlay", only change the pattern to the scanlines pattern we just made, hit OK. Change the opacity of this layer to 16%. delete the right side of the pattern layer by making a selection to half of the layer and over the whole right side, then hit delete on your keyboard.

Add a layermask to this layer.



Take out the gradient-tool, choose the black to white gradient in the drop-down menu and make a gradient from the middle of the header to like 3/4 of the pattern layer maybe a little less if you like. Then duplicate the scanlines layer. Go to Edit > Transform > Flip horizontal. And move the layer to the right side of the header.



This will leave you with 2 scanline layers with a smooth transition to the middle, as shown above.