Making a stylish portfolio header!

It can be hard to create a website sometimes and in this tutorial we are going to start off with one of the hardest parts. Making a nice header for a website. We’ll later on be using this header as a part of an entire portfolio website design!

Step 1
Create a new document at the size of 800×150 at 72ppi. Fill the document with black.

Step 2
Holding down the Option key (PC: Alt key), double click on the background layer to make it into a regular layer.
Step 3
Go into the blending options for the layer and under Gradient Overlay, insert the following settings as shown in the image below.

Step 4
Grab your text tool and with the font Delicious (http://www.josbuivenga.demon.nl/delicious.html) type your sites name. Then make the anti-aliasing set to Crisp, and the text style to Heavy. Also make the font color white (#ffffff).

Step 5
Apply the following Blending Options to the text.

Stroke

Drop Shadow

Bevel and Emboss
Add a Bevel and Emboss with the default settings, only make the Soften set to the maximum value of 16.

Your header should now be looking like this:

Step 6
Create a new layer. Go to File > Place and insert a photo that you would like to have in the header. (We are going to have three)
Scale the photo down to fit into the header with margins on all sides, like shown in the picture below.

Then, go into Free Transform by hitting Cmd + T (PC: Ctrl + T) and rotate the image a bit to the right.

After you’ve rotated the image apply a 10px white stroke and a Drop Shadow with 0px Distance, 9% Spread and a 10px Size.

Step 7
Repeat step 6 two more times with two other images and place them so they look nice next to the text, only when you repeat, change the rotation from right to left in every other image to make some variation.
TIP: You can copy and paste the layer styles from the previous layers to the new to save some time! Just Ctrl click (PC: Right Click) on the first layer with the layer style on and go down to “Copy Layer Style”. Then on the new layer you want the layer style on, do the same only come down to “Paste Layer Style”!

And that is the finished result of the simple header that we will use to build a full portfolio website in later tutorials! Good luck and Happy Photoshopping!

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Erik is a web designer, photographer and software trainer who runs web design company XLD Studios as well as software training company Bernskiold Media. Both web design and teching to others is one of his great passions. Another passion is photography and at his portfolio you can find many great collections of nature photographs.