Anime With Photoshop

Making a Cool Anime Header in Photoshop

Final Outcome

Step 1:
Open a 980x150 pixel canvas and fill it with a color matching the render. Since I have chosen a red render, I will use an orange tone. The color I have used is #ffa258.

Step 2:
Insert your render. It is recommended to use a render that matches your background.

Step 3:
Try to blend your render with your background. This is not necessary for all renders. I have used it here because mine seems better with a shadow on my render =). So we’ll apply a layer effect, which is a shadow on our render layer.

After putting shadow

Step 4:
Duplicate your render layer (ctrl + j) and enlarge it, using the free tranform tool (ctrl + t). Enlarge it proportionally by holding shift while you enlarge.

Step 5:
As you have duplicated your layer, it is above your original render layer; but we need it behind the original layer to work with as an illusion of our original render. So place your enlarged render layer below your original layer. An illustration of how it should be done is shown below.

Layer 1: original layer
Layer 2: duplicated/enlarged layer

Before:

After:

Step 6:
Reduce the opacity of the duplicated layer. I reduced the opacity of mine to 17%, but you can do it as it suites your taste.

Step 7:
Highlighting your header.
Now, this step is the most crucial and is a bit more advanced compared to the previous steps. I have used levels to highlight the header. How it should be done is illustrated below for your convenience.

After using levels :

Step 8:
Puting the Text. I would recommend you to use a funky font, which would go with an anime theme, or you can just use the font I have provided.

When it comes to text, it must be placed in a position where the reader’s eyes will fall at the first glance. I have placed it on the right side. The text layer should be just above the background layer, that is below our levels, and render layers. Make your first text with white color which is #ffffff.

Step 9:
Text styles.
You can use any style to suite your taste, or you can just use the style I have chosen.

Set your layer style to overlay. It should look somewhat like:

Now duplicate your text layer and change the color of the text to #ff9036.
It should look like:

We will place another text layer, which is “header”. We will place it below our previous text and, like before, we will start with white which is #ffffff. We will copy the layer style of our previous text layer and paste it in our new text layer. How it should be done is shown below.

It should look something like the image below:

We will duplicate our text layer, and again we have to change the color of the text, this time we will change the text color to #fff191.

Now it should look like this.

We are almost done, all we need to do is add some reflection to it to make it look glossy.

Step 10 :

Create a new hollow layer and place it above all the layers. Now make a selection with your Rectangular Marque tool and color it white, just the way I have shown below.

Reduce the opacity to about 42%. It should look like:

Now we will erase the middle parts of the reflection layer with a soft eraser. We will reduce the opacity of the eraser to about 46%.

After erasing, it should look something like:

Step 11:
This is one more step which I follow to make my reflection look more realistic, that is adding an inner shadow effect to my background layer. It might sound weird, but try it, it works well.

Here is the end result.