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Many people new to web design are confused by slices and Javascript rollovers and end up abandoning their projects out of frustration. The point of this Photoshop web tutorial is to keep things simple by creating a web page that uses only 2 graphics.

Start off by creating a banner and place it in the top row of a table that will contain 5rows and 1 column. The next row of the table will hold the text for your site along with photos you would like to incorporate into your site. Row 3 will hold a separator, row 4 will contain text links plus a copyright notice, ending with row 5 being a second separator.

For this example we’ll name this site My Site. Now we need to find a graphic for the banner. You can find professional level images at sites such as the iStockPhoto galleries and at only $3 or so for most images they are affordable. Free stock photo sites are also available for perfectly good quality images.

Try to incorporate the colors from the graphic into the colors of the banner. You can choose multiple colors but make sure they work well together or create a variation of the same shade from just one color. Here I will create 3 different shades of blue.

By using the opacity slider on a sampled hue you can create a nice variation. Open a new document and copy and paste the main graphic you’ve selected into it. From the toolbox select the eyedropper tool and sample a color by clicking on it in your graphic. Doing this will change the foreground color square in your toolbox.

With this done, open another new document and in the Background Contents select White and Click OK. With this document open, create a new layer by going Layer> New> Layer. Then go Edit> Fill and select Contents, Use: Foreground Color. This will fill your document with the color you just sampled. A valuable tip is to reduce the opacity with the slider and to basically adjust it until reaching the desired color hue. Once you find one you like, flatten the image by going Layer> Flatten Image. Again use the eyedropper tool, to change the foreground color square in your toolbox only now it will be the same as your newly created color. Click on the color square and the color picker will come up, and you can make note of the numbers of the color you had just created.

I went through my fonts and settled on Onyx regular. When you find a font that works for you, try playing with the tracking, the leading, and the scale - or a combination. It makes it more personal and unique when you include some tweaks.

To select a font in Photoshop go Window> Character. In the palette you will see a list of the installed fonts. Go to Window> Paragraph to pull up the Paragraph palette you will use to create the adjustments to your fonts

Looking for new fonts? At the end of this tutorial you’ll find a list to some free font resources.

Now we’ll create a new document that is 600 x 300 pixels. You of course can change this size to fit your own design when you choose your own stock photo and plan your layout.

Now lets make a new layer by Layer> New Layer and call it Designer Pro. I’ll position the image on this layer and shrink it to fit. You shrink your graphic with Edit> Transform> Scale. The bounding box will have handles. Use the Shift Key to constrain proportions, and shrink your image by selecting the top left handle and pulling towards the bottom right. Drag inside the bounding box to move the graphic. Once it is to your liking, click OK.

Next we want a tinted background. I’m going to go with the light pink.

I select the background layer, Layer 1, and I fill it with the light pink by going Select> All, then Edit> Fill, and in the dialog box in Contents, I select Use: Color and in the Color Picker I enter FBE0EC.

The result is a 600 x 300 banner with a gentle background color and with the art placed on the left. It’s finally starting to look like a real web page now.

I decided to apply a thick stroke to the background layer to make the design more interesting. First make sure the background layer, Layer 1, is active, and create a copy by going Layer> New> Layer Via Copy. Next double-click next to the layer name. This will bring up the Blending Options in the Layers Style dialog box.

Select and then click on the word Stroke in the Styles options on the left side. I changed the settings to Size: 7px, Position: Inside, Blend Mode: Normal, Opacity: 100%, Fill Type: Color, and I clicked the color swatch and entered D04E8C in the color picker. Click OK.

The border is just to balance out the design. Feel free to make changes and get creative with your own ideas.

We’re going to put the names of the major sections right on the banner. These will be the links. Since it will be just one single graphic we will be using image maps.

Create a new layer for your words. Use the type tool to create the section names and then use the move tool to position them exactly to where you want on the banner. Major Note: pick a color for your text that is darker than your background color!!! Otherwise it will either blend in or you won’t be able to see it at all. Do this by going Window> Character. In the Character palette you’ll find a color square that you can click on to change colors.

You’ll need an HTML editor like GoLive or Dreamweaver to automate this process. It’s really very simple. You make little “maps” over each word and then enter the link destination. If you don’t have an HTML editor you’ll need to do a Google search on image maps to find a tutorial, or buy a book like Elizabeth Castro’s HTML Quickstart Guide to help you out.

Create a new document. The width should be 600 pixels, and the height should be about 12 pixels. Fill this with your background color. Then, using the text tool and a dark color, type some periods, like this:……….. and place them in the file, centering them. Change the size and the spacing until it looks perfect. Now save this as a GIF file.

In your HTML editor of choice build a simple table that contains 5 rows and 1 column. If you’re going to use text link navigation below the banner instead of image maps on the banner, create an extra row so you end up with 6 rows in your table. Now place your elements into the individual rows of the table and you’re done.

If you are on deadline and can’t cope with learning any more Photoshop techniques or HTML, here’s another solution. You can buy a ready-made template from Template Monster that you can use as a base to create web pages in Photoshop.

On the front page of Template Monster you’ll find a pulldown menu where you can select options and then carry out a search for a template. The templates are reasonably priced and pretty easy to manage in GoLive or Dreamweaver. In the past I’ve purchased a template solely for the color scheme and the images. On certain projects I found this was less expensive than buying stock photos. Visit Template Monster to see the wide variety of website templates that they offer.

I hope this tutorial will help you create something nice, and I wish your new website a thousand years of good luck!