warslain: both prim and kylo hit milestones recently, and i didn’t want to do a joint giveaw
warslain: both prim and kylo hit milestones recently, and i didn’t want to do a joint giveaway; i do giveaways pretty much every other day, and i’m so grateful to all of you guys for helping me reach this milestone that i wanted to do something else to thank you. so here it is: the five major rules i always remember when thememaking! please remember, these are only things that i’ve made up after making themes for a long time. there are, i’m sure, many other ways to achieve your desired theme, but hopefully this’ll help you out!! this tutorial is customized to cs6. IT IS VERY LINK-HEAVY. CLICK AND DRAG THE LINK TO THE TABS BAR TO OPEN IT IN A NEW LINK. first of all, here is a resource tutorial filled with my favorite patterns, textures, etc. if you have issues with it, let me know. it’s a little under 200mb, but i can take a couple textures and things out for you if you can’t download it. RULE 1: RESOLUTION. i’m probably going to say that there are a million important things in these next few paragraphs, but i really mean it when i say that resolution is THE most important. if you don’t pay attention and don’t make it a habit to set your resolution ALL THE TIME, you’ll just end up with frustration. you may have made a theme before, had it sharp while you were working in photoshop, only for you to save it, publish it to the web for use, and then find that it’s blurry. the reason for this is a low resolution. [ x ] LOW-RESOLUTION. you must make it a habit whenever you open a new document to set the resolution to something higher. i sometimes set my resolution to 400, usually 500. here is an image set to default resolution.this header image is the same image set to 500. RULE 2: COMPOSITION. composition is honestly one of the most important parts of making themes for me. what it is is the way everything flows together; the way you force the viewer’s eye to move. you don’t want everything to be floating in empty space. rather, you want everything, from your textures to your images, to seem in perfect harmony. this can be done by choosing an image and deciding what the best way to flow the eye is. here are some examples (of course, these are only the ones i tend to use religiously): [ x ] [ x ] [ x ] [ x ] [ x ] RULE 3: ADJUSTMENT LAYERS. okay, adjustment layers are so, so important. what they do is they let you adjust the general color balance, curves, brightness, contrast, hue, saturation. i usually have at least. 4-5 adjustment layers in my themes here is a tutorial on using adjustment layers. personally, i use curves, hue/saturation, vibrance, and threshold (a really underrated one imo) the most. i always begin with a curves layer. you can mess around with curves a bit to get the effect you want!! they’re great for creating contrast, shadows, highlights, etc. you can also erase certain parts of adjustment layers; pull up the eraser tool, select the white box on the adjustment layer (this is the LAYER MASK), and erase as needed. drag adjustment layers above and below layers. as you photoshop more and more often, you become more familiar with adjustment layers and the way you like working with them. here is what the general adjustment layer looks like.here is how to open it. RULE 4: BLEND MODES. as you have likely guessed from the title, blend modes blend. not blend as in smudge (that would be the smudge tool), but blend as in help everything come together. usually almost every layer i have, besides adjustment layers, have blend modes. through blend modes, you can turn the same image into two nearly different images. the ones i use the most often are color dodge and soft light. it is also how i add texture to post boxes (i usually set the rectangle to soft light). here are two of my favorite examples of how blend mode can change an image. here is how to change blend modes. RULE 5: TEXTURES. you always want to use textures. you can put textures above, behind, next to, etc. images. the trick to using textures is to using a mix of subtle and strong, and experimenting with BLEND MODES to make them look the way you want. if EDGES of your texture still show, use a big, fluffy eraser to erase the edges. remember: even if a texture seems useless, experiment with it. it might end up making your theme. here is what i mean by subtle and strong. okay, well that’s all i have for all of you! again, this is just my method of making themes. i really hope that this helped a little, and if you have any questions, i’m always open to answering them. as usual, please like/reblog if this helped you at all, and if you made a theme with any of this chickenscratch, link me to it! i’d love to see what you guys do. have a great day, everyone~ =) -- source link
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