After you open the template, it will look something like this:

What really interests me is human rights, specifically for women and mothers – so when I put this template together I made sure that it reflected a feminine, yet firm layout and visuals. Of course, this may not reflect everyone’s interests, and this is why I listed the instruction below on how you can manipulate it to fit any theme – I am going to use ‘Save The Planet’ as my test subject:

• Open the PSD template. You will find that all of the layers with text are marked with a ‘T’ and labeled in a pretty intuitive way. Double-click on the top layer (right on the ‘T’) – this will highlight the Organization Name in the file and allow me to change it to anything I want. Let’s type in “Save the Planet Newsletter.” Double-click on the second layer from the top, Newsletter Date, and change the date to when your issue will be made available to the public. If you have a logo that you would like to use, you can always skip this part by pasting your logo directly into the template (you can delete the topmost layer altogether in this case).
• I’m not going to fill in different dummy content, because that’s standard as far as templates go, but I think that the color scheme and images are not appropriate for the test subject, which lends itself to green and brown colors. First, let’s change out the header image – scroll down in your Layers palette and find the Header Image located third from the bottom. I thought an image of the rain forest would look great (TIP: you can change the color of the letters from black to any color you wish, just in case your background image is way to dark). Make sure that the image is really good because you are going to use a bigger version of it for the background.
• Use the larger version of your image on the background by toggling the Opacity and Layer Settings in the scroll-down menu as you see in Layer 1 (second from the bottom). I do recommend that you Desaturate it (SHFT + CTR + U) so that there are no color conflicts why you apply Layer Styles.
• Finally, you don’t have to do any more additions to the template – so how do you make the orange parts green or any color you want? – It’s simple. Just click on the layer you want to adjust, like Background or Header/Footer, and go to Image > Adjustments > Hue/Saturation (or CTR + U). This will allow you to toggle the existing color settings to any hue. If you don’t like the ‘Flair’, you can delete it (or adjust hue as you see fit)

If you would like to see the final Save the Planet Newsletter Template – CLICK HERE. This is what it looks like:

Here is the end result we are looking to achieve with this tutorial:







Let’s get started!

1. Open a new file in Photoshop by selecting File (upper left) > New… Your dimensions can be of any size, but for the purpose of the tutorial I am going to use 500px by 500px. Color the background any color you wish.






2. Set up a grid and rulers so that you can easily create a good looking circle (this is really up to you; you can skip this step if you want) – go to View > Show > Grid. You may also set your rulers to help you with your circle – go to View > Rulers. You will see the Rulers pop out of the Top and Left margins of your interface; to use them, simply click on the white ‘ruler’ area and drag down (from the top margin), or to the right (from the left margin). Rulers will show up in light blue by default. I set up my Rulers 1 inch from the edge of each margin in my 500X500 space. This will allow you to draw a pretty good looking circle. Ctr + H to get rid of guidelines. Your circle can be of any color as the Style settings will override it – make sure that you work with a color background though, because that’s the color that will ultimately show through.





You’re done with the hardest part! From this point on, it’s just a matter of making several Layer Style adjustments and customizing your message. Follow this tutorial for the last steps.




3. Drop Shadow:
   
   
   
   Inner Shadow:
   
   
   
   Inner Glow:
   
   
   
   Gradient Overlay:




4. Make an elliptical selection and drag a white/clear gradient from top to bottom (adjust Opacity to about 40%). Use the Transform function (Ctrl + T) to rotate about 45 degrees and move towards the upper right corner. Using the pen tool draw and trace the two highlights as shown below:




5. Add a text layer with your message and you’re done!

If you missed the button template at the beginning of the tutorial, you can Download the PSD Button Template HERE.



Sign up for the RSS feed to receive frequent tutorial updates. The next tutorial will encompass the image and HTML aspects of making your button interactive, and I hope to publish it in the first week of June.



Thanks for visiting the Pledge For Moms project – and happy posting!