Hyperactive’82

Posted by
Ziwei

Posted On
Nov 15 2009 1:24 am

Here, i will show you how to create a retro coloured strips background in photoshop that’s useful for quick banner, web site header designs. I’m using Photoshop CS3 in this tutorial.

STEP 1

First, we will need the all almighty clouds. Those of you who read alot of photoshop tutorial/guide will realise that alot of them start from the humble render clouds. Go to Filter > Render > Clouds.

STEP 2

Next go to Filter > Pixelate > Mezzotint. Both step 1 and 2 generate random patterns, so you may want to repeat these 2 steps to get different result.

STEP 3

Go to Filter > Blur > Motion Blur. Set the angle to 46 and viola, your background is almost ready sans the colours.

STEP 4

For colours, create a new layer and set its blending mode to overlay, then apply a rainbow gradient across making sure that the gradient angle align to your strips.

STEP 5

Adjust the colour brightness of the gradient layer using the curve tool (Ctrl + M). Of course you can skip this step if you are happy with the colours you got in step 4.

STEP 6

The background is already done at this stage, but i would like some vignetting effect around the edge.
Create another layer and fill it with black. Select a portion of the layer using the Elliptical Marquee Tool with Feather set to 50 as shown below.

STEP 7

Delete the selected portion away and we are done.