Adobe Photoshop CS3 Gaming Window Tutorial

Tutorial Written by: Jay Han (www.jay-han.com)

I’m working in a game production company, so I always wanted to design things that has the gaming feel in it. The gaming window I created here is actually inspired by one current hot racing game, so I decided to learn from it and shares it here. Well, it underwent some rounds of tweaks, and finally it became the one shown above.

Because this tutorial is involving a lot of layer styling and a texture, so I made a set of layer styles and the texture available for download. Besides, the final result PSD file also included too at the end of the post. So what are you waiting for, read on to learn the trick!

Preparing the stage

I assume you are using Adobe Photoshop CS and above. So launch the program, create a new canvas with 470px width and 200px height (the setting I used for this tutorial). Plus, you can download the working files that I zipped. There is a layer styles file, a texture and the finished PSD. Save it to the Desktop and unzip it.

Below are the basic structure of how the window is being created. Actually is not very hard, and here we go!

Tutorial start

1. First we create the frame of the window, by using Rounded Rectangular Tool with radius setting of 10px. Draw out the shape and name the layer “Frame”.

2. Now, repeat the previous step again to draw out an inner window, but now with 8px radius. Draw out the inner window with around 4px smaller than the “Frame”. You can draw the guideline for more precise result. Name the layer “Window”.

3. Duplicate the “Window” layer twice. Rename the top “Window” layer to “Title Bar”, while the second “Window” layer to “Main Body”. Hide the original “Window” layer for backup purposes.

4. Select the “Title Bar” layer’s vector mask shown below. You can see a outline stroke appears when the vector mask thumbnail is selected. Then, use the Rectangular Shape tool, draw out a rectangular below the shape, with the selected options below.

5. With the “Title Bar” vector mask selected, select Path Selection Tool from the Tools palette, and click COMBINE. The basic shape of “Title Bar” is formed.

6. By using the same steps, now we create the basic shape for “Main Body”. Final result is shown below. Note that there is a little gap between the “Title Bar” and “Main Body”, because we are going to create 2 horizontal bars in between in next step.

7. Now, by suing the Rectangular Tool, draw two thin rectangular bar like below. The top bar is slightly thicker than the bottom bar. Name the top bar “Orange Hr Bar”, and the bottom “Gray Hr Bar”.

8. Now, we have all the basic parts of the sleek gaming feel window.

9. Now, it is time to apply layer styles to each part! But first, we need to load the layer styles file that downloaded earlier. Open up the Styles palette or tab, and click on the small arrow, select Load Styles, locate and select the layer styles file. The style appeared as thumbnails. Now, apply the styles to each layers, matching the numbers shown below.

10. Now, we need to create the texture for main body. Open the texture.gif inside the unzipped folder, go Edit > Define Pattern, and click OK. Select the “Main Body” transparency, then create a new layer on top of it. Next, select the Pattern Stamp Tool, from the pattern palette, select the pattern that created just now, draw out the pattern on the selection area. Name it layer “Main Body Texture”.

11. In this step, we are going to create the texture for title bar. Create a new layer above the “Title Bar” layer. Hit “D” to make the foreground and background color to default black and white. Go to Filter > Render > Clouds. A b/w cloud is created. Then add some noise (Filter > Noise > Add Noise) to it with the options shown below. Name the layer “Title Bar Texture”.

12. Here, select the “Title Bar” transparency. With the “Title Bar Texture” layer selected, go to Layer > Layer Mask > Reveal All. Layer mask for “Title Bar Texture” is created. Now inverse the current marquee selection and hit Ctrl+X to delete the selection. The result is shown in picture below. It looks weird at this moment.

13. Change the “Title Bar Texture” layer blending to Overlay. It looks more blended but we are not done yet. Now create a Rectangular shape with 2px wider compared to the hidden “Window” shape. Apply the layer style number 5 (refer picture step 9) and name it “Frame Highlight”.

14. Now drag the layers to most bottom, just above the “Frame” layer. Congratulations, you just created a sleek gaming feel window! Feel free to add text or other stuff on it. If you created a window that does not look like this, or don’t want to read the lengthy steps, you can check the final working file that downloaded earlier on.

Conclusion

Well, basically this is it. Hope you like and learn something from this tutorial. It’s all about how the styles is being set. Maybe in next post, I will share out another layer styles file that consists of the styles that I had created for past few months!

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