NC State Photoshop Background Tutorial

Are you an NC State student, fan, or employee looking for a new background? Look no further than this instructable.

Creating a new, personalized background is a quick and easy thing to do while using Adobe Photoshop. Completing this tutorial will give you your own personalized background that you can use for your computer, web browser, and with some tweaking even your phone lock screen.

With this tutorial, participants will have the option to follow the tutorial for a guaranteed result, but variation is encouraged, and trying new things is always fun.

Learning Objectives:

• Standards

- Design in Technology and Engineering Education:

Learning to create is the first step to inspire others to create. Without understanding the creative process behind creating your own product, it is much more difficult to guide students towards creating their own products. Design is in every aspect of our life and controls every aesthetic product we use. Therefore, in this instructable, you will learn to create and use your own design processes to create a product you can use every day.

• Practices

- Creativity:

If you complete this tutorial and use the simple information given to you and learn from it, you will realize it is quite easy to use amazing tools such as Photoshop to create your own products. While completing this tutorial, feel inspired to mess around and try things to create something new.

• Contexts

- Information and Communication:

The most important thing in Education between a student and a teacher is communication. In this instructable, communication is required for the user to create the same product as the tutorial. Therefore, while completing this instructable, keep in mind how the transfer of information is essential to the completion of the tutorial.

Overall, these three objectives are important to the development of any product ever made. Keep these objectives in mind while completing the tutorial.

• Adobe Photoshop ($20/month)
• Web Browser (Google Chrome/Safari/etc.)
• Mouse (Optional)

Start by clicking "Create New" on the Photoshop homepage

You will be prompted with the screen above. Fill out the preset details with the correct details shown above. This will create an image that will fit the size of the computer background.

Once completed, click "Create"

To get started, all you need to do is find a picture that will serve as the background for your creation.

Personally, I recommend finding a red "smokey" photo, although you can choose whatever you want.

Once you have found a picture you like, go to the toolbar, click File, then "Place Embedded" and choose your photo, then click OK.

Next, go back to your browser to search and choose a Wolfpack Logo with a transparent background. Choosing a photo with a transparent background makes the process much easier, rather than having to cut out the background behind it, you can just insert the photo directly to Photoshop.

After inserting your image, your product should look like the 2nd image.

To make the logo look more appealing, double-click the layer that has the logo attached to it. It should bring up the layer-style dialogue box (3rd photo). Click "Gradient Overlay" and make sure it is checked. Choose the Basic Black and White (4th photo) and click OK gradient to make your logo look like the 5th photo.

• Next, to add text, click the "T" on the toolbar and create two textboxes
• Delete the default Photoshop text inside of the textbox
• Type "NC STATE" in the first textbox
• Type "WOLFPACK" in the second textbox
• Select each of the texts and using the top toolbar, change the font to "DIN Condensed" and the font size to 16 and click OK

Next, double-click the "NC State" text layer on the right of your screen to prompt the layer-style dialogue box. Check "Bevel & Emboss" and fill out the options as shown in the 2nd photo.

Repeat this step for the "Wolfpack" text layer

Click File, Export, Export As, make sure the options are the same as in the photo and save your PNG to your computer.

Go to your files, right-click the photo, and Set Desktop Photo

And you're done! Now you can easily create your own background with any images you want! Feel free to toy around and try out