psFreak - Stylish Clean Avatar

Step 1

First of all we have to make a new file, so go File > New and set the height to 100 pixels and the width to 100 pixels with a transparent background (or white, it doesn’t really matter because we’ll be adding another background shortly).

Step 2

Now we are going to be adding a gradient for the background. Select the gradient tool from the tools window and set the foreground colour to #007dee and the background colour to #023f78. Select the radial gradient type of gradient and left click in the middle of the document, and drag to a corner and release. This has made a radial gradient in our document.

Step 3

Next up we are going to be adding a little strip along the bottom. We are going to do this by selecting the Rectangular Marquee Tool and setting the style to “Fixed Size”, the width to 100 px and the height to 5 px. Now click at the bottom of the document and this will create a box with “marching ants” around it.

Step 4

We are now going to be filling this selection with a dark grey. There are a number of ways we can do this, but the simplest is to go Edit > Fill, select colour and use the colour #252525.

Step 5

Now we are going to use the text tool to add some text in the middle of the document. Select the text tool and use the settings I have below (or a similiar font) and type in your initial.

Your avatar should now be looking something like:

Step 6

Last of all we are going to be exploring the layer styles, so go Layer> Layer Styles > Outer Glow.

Now your avatar is finished and should look like:

Comments

Minty Ferret

January 27th, 2008

Neat! Looks kinda like the Photoshop logo.

James

January 27th, 2008

Thanks Minty, I suppose it does yes

Igor Quint

January 28th, 2008

Thank you James!
This is an awesome tutorial!

Mohit Aneja

January 31st, 2008

Good Tutorial, Would appreciate if you post some more advanced Photoshop tricks.

Thanks,
Mohit

paul

February 3rd, 2008

what is the prefered format to save it as?

James

February 3rd, 2008

I like to save all of my work in a .psd format (Photoshop Document). This saves all of the layers and keeps the image at a very high quality. Although the downside is that it is a large size.

Any files that I want to share with others or upload to the internet I save as an optimized (80%) .jpg (File > Save Optimized As) or a .png file for images with transparency (IE 6 and before screws up the .png transperency though).

Minty

February 5th, 2008

Great job, thank you! I too would like to see more basics and advanced stuff. Im just starting to use photoshop, as a tool to create flash movies. Any help there would be appreciated!

Akshay

February 5th, 2008

Minty, I’m working on a tutorial on the pen tool, I use it in a lot of my Photoshop work, it might be a good place to start. There’s a lot of scope for awesome designs with that tool

Neelesh

February 6th, 2008

I got my avatar ready. Thanks. It is simple and detailed.

Dan

February 9th, 2008

OKay, umm after you select the gradient tool how do you put in those numbers.

James

February 9th, 2008

Set your foreground colour to one, and the background colour to the other. The foreground and background colours are under the tools in the tools window - just click it to bring up a window to change the colour number.

Dan

February 10th, 2008

Thanks I made it!

fuddy

February 24th, 2008

thanks, i like how u teach, very comprehensive

~PS beginner

Enar

February 25th, 2008

Awesome! ;D
Very Good for Beginners .

Rob

February 25th, 2008

thanks alot im a phtoshop newb and you just opened the door for me

Rat_Boy

March 2nd, 2008

Thanx Dude., much appreciated.
Simplicity.
Sharing of ones knowledge to help others. Why cant we all just work Open_Source!

Reno

March 10th, 2008

Thanks man. Im in a photoshop class and Im just starting out so I appreciate your tutorial.

~daigaN

May 5th, 2008

Thanks for the wonderfull tut
Here’s my outcome:
http://www.ipix.lt/images/56618746.jpg

ragai

May 8th, 2008

Does any one knows, if the fonts in photoshop can be viewed in their characters instead of just the name? Like paint shop pro for example?

June 4th, 2008

the only problem is that you saved it as an 80% jpg. youre losing image quality every time you save it that way, and then it loooks crappy

Sperie

June 25th, 2008

where can i download the same font?

James

June 25th, 2008

A quick search on google finds it at typedifferent.com

mohamed

July 20th, 2008

that’s awesome
it is a very clever tutorial at least for me as a begginer

Jimi

August 6th, 2008

This is a good tutorial.
Finally I found something I can use as a beginner too, so this is nice. And with other fonts, it looks awesome too.

There is only one thing that bothers me:
1. It isn’t something special.
When you should publish this kind of avatar, no one would take it [be serious]. But beside that, this is a great tutorial.

Thank you for reading this, and sorry about my English. I’m from the Netherlands and can speak better German. So, Tut mir Leid.

Greats, from Holland!

Rory

August 6th, 2008

wow

Good tutor, my friend
i’m a big noob and this just helped me get the basis of the program. nice work !

thank you

~rory*

Jimi

August 6th, 2008

This is a good tutorial for beginners!

Finally I found an easy tutorial for me. The result looks great, but there are two things…