Animated Banner Tutorial

Using Photoshop and Imageready, you can easily design animated banners for advertising campaigns.

Here is what the final result will look like:

Our client wanted a banner to match the overall colour scheme of his site, www.Learn-Poetry.com:

Here we’re going to create a standard 468×60 banner.

Selecting the Gradient Fill tool, I used the Eyedropper to pick up two shades of brown from his site. I then selected Radial and filled the canvas, creating a nice backdrop for the banner.

Now we need to find an image suitable for the banner. Since he runs a Poetry site, I thought of a quill pen. I found this image on iStockPhoto, and it fit perfectly with the atmosphere I was trying to create.
Depending on your image, you may have to extract it from the background to make it blend with your banner. Here I only needed to set the mode to Overlay to acheive the desired effect.

If you check the site, you will see that there are many swirls and twirls to accent the design. We will use a similar element in the banner for unity. Grab the pen tool and create a few swirly shapes. I adjusted the opacity of the layer so it would not be so dark.

Now to create a place for the text. Grab the Rounded Rectangle Tool and draw a rectangle.

Go into Blending Options for this new layer. Select Gradient Overlay. Using the eyedropper, I once again pulled colours fromn the original site.

Select Stroke. Change Fill Type to Gradient. Use the same gradient as the previous step, but check off the Reverse option.

This is what we have so far:

Now we’re going to add text to the banner. Make a new folder specifically for text:

Using the typography already present on the site, insert the text. Make a new layer for each piece of text you want animated seperately.

When you’re ready to move on to the next frame, hide the previous text layers so you can see what you’re doing.

Head over to the next page to learn how to animate the banner.

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This entry was written by Minty Ferret on Saturday, September 15th, 2007 at 12:55 am and is filed under Photoshop Tutorials. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

19 Responses to “Animated Banner Tutorial”

Aoi on September 24th, 2007 at 1:15 am

Amazing tutorial.
Million thanks for this.
very nice
Thank you
Drazzy on September 25th, 2007 at 7:17 am

How to make that brown gradient ?? (sry im a noob in photoshop)
Minty Ferret on September 27th, 2007 at 4:49 am

Hey there! Sorry for the delayed response:

For the gradient: I’m assuming you mean how to get the colours? Once you’ve selected the Gradient Tool, look around your toolbars for a block of color. (ie. the gradient). Click it. It should open the Gradient Editor window. To change the colours, double click the little box and arrows at either end (the bottom ones) and just select what you want. Let me know if that helps!
Stefanie on October 18th, 2007 at 12:08 pm

okay i saved it as gif. but when i open it again it doesn’t play the animation :S
what could i have done wrong..
Minty Ferret on October 18th, 2007 at 12:36 pm

What program are you using to view it? Try uploading the file to a website (try imageshack.us) and view it there, it should be animated!
Stefanie on October 18th, 2007 at 12:39 pm

i’ve found the problem i didn’t saved it optimised
but when i try that it can’t be saved as .gif :S ..
only .jpg or .html
Minty Ferret on October 18th, 2007 at 12:44 pm

Ah I think I know what happened - In your ‘Optimize’ palate (make sure you have that open) make sure .gif is selected - then you should be able to save it as such.
Stefanie on October 18th, 2007 at 12:52 pm

Oow haha yes that was it thanks a lot!
Laura on October 28th, 2007 at 5:02 pm

Thank you very much for posting it!! I always wanted so know how to do it.
Gemma on January 8th, 2008 at 5:01 pm

Wooo thanks.
Took me sometime to get my head around
certain saving techniques and stuff
but yeah, I got it.
Nubloo on January 28th, 2008 at 12:59 pm

Nice tutorial!
But this must be only for Versions CS2 or down. In CS3, ImageReady is obsolete, and the animation functionality is included in Photoshop.
Which version did you use?
Minty Ferret on January 28th, 2008 at 8:35 pm

Hi Nubloo - yup I used CS2 for this version! I just upgraded to CS3 recently and yes, animation is now part of Photoshop. But the principles are the same either way, I may create another tutorial later on specifically for CS3 users just in case people need some help figuring out where things are there.
Masud Vorajee on May 9th, 2008 at 10:03 am

Thanks for the tutorial. Its great for learning one like me

I have ImageReady as well but when I try to JUMP to ImageReady, Jump to option is blurred out. How to enable it?
Minty Ferret on May 9th, 2008 at 7:59 pm

Hey Masud! That sounds a little weird, and I’m not actually sure how to fix it. Have you tried saving your psd file in Photoshop, opening ImageReady, then opening the psd from there?
jorg on May 23rd, 2008 at 12:10 am

thanks alot my dear
ced on May 31st, 2008 at 8:49 am

i think i have same problem as masud. the jump to ImageReady option is blurred, but i found a way how to go to ImageReady anyway. Either you save it then open the file with ImageReady or look at the link in the bottom of your tool palete. Anyway, the version that I’m using is CS2 and i found out that the animation palete is also built in here.

Thanks Minty, this is really a nice tutorial!
Abi on June 20th, 2008 at 3:12 pm

Thank you very much for this! I always see banners on forums and people say they make them in Photoshop and I’ve wondered for ages how to make them - now I know!
Thanks =]
yongkitz on July 11th, 2008 at 6:22 am

nice tutorial
yongkitz on July 11th, 2008 at 6:22 am

nice one