There are a lot of cool and effective ways to call attention to portions of a design. When writing 6 Ways To Take Your Webdesign From Good To Great I used a simple blur technique that proved to be quite popular. I’ve seen the effect a lot of places before, so in no way can I take credit for it.
In this post I would simply like to show you a quick and easy way to accomplish a similar effect. I’ll use this photo I found on Flickr to illustrate the effect, but you are welcome to use whichever photo you’d like.
Step 1 – Open & Duplicate
Open up your photo in photoshop and duplicate the background layer by selecting it in the layers palette and pressing ‘cmd + j’.
Step 2 – Gaussian Blur
Add a gaussian blur to your photo with a radius of about 5 to 10 pixels. To do so, click Filter->Blur->Gaussian Blur.
Step 3 – Layer Mask
Add a layer mask to the blurred layer (Layer->Layer Mask->Reveal All). Then grab the Elliptical Marquee Tool and draw out a circle of the area that you’d like to highlight. For a perfect circle, hold down shift as you drag out your selection. Double check that you have the layer mask selected and fill your selection with black by selecting Edit->Fill then choosing black.
Step 4 – White Stroke
Don’t deselect the circle selection just yet, you will need it for the stroke and shadow. If you have deselected your circle, the best way to redo the selection is to ‘cmd + click’ on the mask, then select the inverse (’shift + cmd + I’). Add a new layer to the top of the layers palette (Layer->New->Layer). Now click, Edit->Stroke. Choose a width of 4px, and a color of white, then click ok.
Step 5 – Shadow
Add another layer, and place it just below the white stroke layer you created. Add another stroke, this time make it 6px, and black.
Step 6 – Blur The Shadow
Add a gaussian blur to the black stroke to soften the shadow. You can go through and add the gaussian blur through the filters, or just hit ‘cmd + f’ to repeat the last filter (which in our case was the gaussian blur). I hit ‘cmd + f’ twice to make the shadow quite subtle.
Step 7 – Finishing Touches
In this last step, I added a sketchy arrow and some text. I also added a very subtle drop shadow to both. Here is the final result.
Parting Thoughts
As you can see, this is a very simple way that you can add some interest to blog images, and focus the readers attention. Don’t hesitate to drop me a comment and let me know what you think of the effect, or make mention some other techniques that you use, or that you have seen in action.
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November 19, 2009
Awesome tutorial! Simple trick that comes in handy often.
November 19, 2009
Nice little tip…Thanks
November 20, 2009
Nice tutorial. Thanks. :-)
November 20, 2009
A really simple tip, but that sometime we forget about. Thanks
November 20, 2009
great
thank you
November 20, 2009
I love it! Thanks for a great tutorial!
I think the article banner topic isn’t cover enough. It’s one of those graphic requirements for any website, and its hard to find any tutorials out there on the topic.
November 20, 2009
You don’t need to create a 3rd layer for the drop shadow – just use layer styles.
November 20, 2009
Nice tut…thanks…
I always know that simple is better!
November 20, 2009
Awesome! This is very simple and yet, effective. Thanks for posting.
November 23, 2009
nice and cool!
November 23, 2009
Great tuto., but i had make different…
ctrl+c the circle, the rest blurring and on circle(highlighted area) adding stroke+shadow…
November 23, 2009
Tutorial added to thewebtuts.com
November 28, 2009
I like it :] thx
December 1, 2009
awesome. which I knew this a month ago!
December 14, 2009
Fantastic! thank you
December 21, 2009
Pretty nice :)
December 21, 2009
I like it, it’s simple but attractive, I will try it, thanks for the tutorial :)
December 23, 2009
Nice tutorial. Thank you, too easy. :)
December 23, 2009
I am completely new to Photoshop and this is the first tutorial that I have read and followed. Thanks!
February 8, 2010
Excellent idea and a good lesson. Thank you!