Trendy Website Design in Photoshop Part 1: Design in Photoshop

How to Start Your Website Design in Photoshop

Everyone wants their web design to stand out. They want it to be an expression of their creative abilities, a place where they can show off ... even just a little bit. Certain elements continue to crop up in some of the more stunning, trendy website designs and these are the elements you'll want to take a stab at incorporating in your layouts.

Glossy buttons, well-placed gradients, and vivid images that tie into an overall color scheme are what you're looking for. Here's one method to help you create a great design specific to your site's subject using Photoshop.

You'll want to look here for the tutorials on slicing your image in ImageReady and defining the actual site using Dreamweaver. This guide focuses solely on the creation of the art that will define your design.

This is not a beginner's tutorial. I can't go into minute detail, so you'll want to have a working knowledge of Photoshop before you begin.

How to Design a Website in Photoshop

Every website design I tackle starts as one basic idea: it is art. If you approach your design from the start as being something more than a place to shove a bunch of words and images, you'll end up with a website you can truly be proud of.

1. Open a New Canvas: Every artist begins with a canvas. In our case, we're digital artists working with the canvas within Photoshop.

Sizing your canvas can be an issue all on its own. In particular, defining the width of your website works into a nifty little problem with a whole arena of debate surrounding it. You can read more about your options for defining the width of your website here, but in general we'll say that the average website should be no more than 980 pixels wide.

So. In Photoshop, create a new canvas (File, New) that is in RGB mode with a white background, sized 900 pixels wide x 700 pixels high.

2. Find Your Focus: Whether your focus is a photograph, a logo, or an illustration, every website design needs something to hang everything else on. The focus can be large or small, but it's there ... somewhere.