Project 4
Create a header graphic.
First, let me say that Photoshop is a great "mistake masker". Being new to the program still at this point, I am bound to make mistakes along the way. So, one thing I did not do was set the brightness of the tagline layer I added to what I thought was acceptable. Remember that, when making adjustments, it will adjust everything. Well, that was fine because my original settings on many of the images really seemed too dark. Unfortunately, increasing brightness to those made "alanwilcox.net" brighter than I wanted. How did I solve this? Well, I went back to the "alanwilcox.net" layer and added an adjustment layer, where I turned down the brightness by 40. Then, I went back to my top layer and increased the brightness by 40. This brings "alanwilcox.net" back to the original brightness while increasing the brightness of everything else. There is probably several ways I could have changed this, but this shows that with a little thinking there are ways around nearly everything.
I wanted to stick with the basic logo I already have for my existing Web site. These pages, ultimately, will get added to my site as another page link and secondary links, so I wanted to maintain some consistency. At the same time, I wanted to differentiate this section from the rest of the site. So, in keeping with the Google tradition of modifying their logo for various events, I have done something a little on the same line and altered my original logo (You can view that at http://www.alanwilcox.net/ ... it will open new window because I do not currently have links to get you back to this page).
To create this header, I took my original logo image (just the glowing alanwilcox.net text) and added it on top of a black background layer. I then added four image layers with transparent backgrounds, then used the brush to clear away areas of the images I did not want to show. The result is, for example, parts of a circuit board that appear to be exposed after parts of my text were torn away. The blue Ethernet cable traversing across my name was made slightly transparent by setting the opaque to 50% and a fairly large brush, then painting over it to allow the text to show through a bit. Tha tag line was simply the default text, which was close to Ariel and my existing logo font type, and modified using some of the mask effects. I found I could play with the dimensions of the effects to make it a little more readable.
I may still modify this further after next week when I create buttons I will use for navigation on these pages. For example, the blue Ethernet cable currently ends abrubtly. Once the navigation buttons are in place, it might not look so strange. But, I may decide to blend the end of it into the black background if that is not working for me.