Table Top – A website that looks like your desk – Page 1 of 2

The first page of this tutorial deals with making the wood surface, and the paper with writing on it.

 

 

1 – A Stained Wood Surface

Create a new image in Photoshop. I recommend making it 500 pixels wide, by 400 tall. Much bigger than that, and it will take too long to load.

Create a new layer.

Fill the area with a dark orange colour.

Click Filter > Noise >  Add Noise. Choose Gaussian, and set the Amount to about 6.

Click Filter > Blur > Motion Blur. Set the Angle to 0°, and the Distance to 10.

If the colour isn't quite right, press Ctrl+U to bring up the Hue/Saturation Properties.

Right-click this layer in the Layers window, and choose Blending Options. Click on Gradient Overlay. Change the Blend Mode to Overlay, and set the Opacity to around 65%. Choose the black-white gradient from the drop-down box, if it isn't already selected.

Create a new layer.

Change this layer's Mode from Normal to Overlay.

Make sure your foreground and background colours are black and white. Click Filter > Render > Clouds.

Click Image > Adjustments > Brightness/Contrast. Set the Contrast to maximum.

 

 

2 – A piece of note paper

Create a new layer.

Select a rectangular area.

Fill the area with a very slightly off-white colour.

Click Filter > Noise > Add Noise. Set the Amount to about 3.

Press Ctrl+D to deselect.

Select a light blue colour. Use the Text Tool to put in a row of equal signs (=), followed by rows of dashes. On the Character Palette, reduce your Tracking to a negative number if there are spaces between your dashes. (Click Window > Character if you can't see the Character Palette.)

Right-click your layer in the Layers Palette, and choose Blending Options. Click on Drop Shadow, and change its Distance to 3 pixels.

 

 

3 – Adding text and more paper

Download a handwriting font from somewhere, or use the one that I've used. (Copy it to your WINDOWS\Fonts folder. Go to that folder with Windows Explorer, and click File > Install New Font.)

At the bottom of the Layers Window, click the Create a New Set icon. Drag your white paper layer, your blue lines layer, and your text layer into the Set folder you've just created. Right-click this layer set, and Duplicate it a few times.

Click on each layer set, and rotate it a bit, by pressing Ctrl+T.

Change the text of the lower pieces of paper, to make them look realistic.

 

 

4 – Making a Pencil

Create a new layer.

Select a long, rectangular area.

Fill the area with a colour. I've used blue here.

Right-click your layer in the Layers Palette, and choose Blending Options. Change the Blend Mode to Overlay, and set the Opacity to 35%. Change the Style to Reflected (this makes your gradient a mirror image). Tick Reverse, and click on the gradient to edit it. Drag the tabs around until they look like the diagram above. This will cause the dark-light-dark bands that give it the appearance of a normal hexagonal pencil.

 

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