Creating a reusable message style in Photoshop
As a designer, I have a massive collection of layer styles and gradient styles that I refer to in order to speed up my design process. I started with some free styles I got from Designer Folio and have added a ton of my own styles to the list based on projects I have worked on.
One style that has always been missing was something that looked like an error message that you might find in many css frameworks. Typically these look like solid blocks of color with borders on the top and bottom. Granted this is not a difficult thing to design but it is time consuming and when your quickly changing up a design it can really bog you down. At least it does for me. You can always short cut the design by adding a stroke border all the way around but that's not always what I want to show a client.
Figuring out how to create the 1 pixel rule at the top and bottom of the solid block of color is the only real trick. If your interested in knowing how it was done check out the mini tutorial below. If not, you can download the sample layer styles now. Figuring out how to make the 1 pixel rule at the top and bottom of any block was a real productivity booster and it allowed me to explore and test comon design elements very quickly while not feeling bogged down in the process.
Example of included styles
Creating the effect is actually very simple. First start with a base of any color on a separate layer. I like to use a bold color that is similar to the color I intend to use. I only do this to make it easier to spot the correct layer in the layers palette later on should I need to make a change.
Figure 1
Next, you can apply one of the starter styles and modify it to your liking. All the effects are editable and non destructive.
Figure 2
As I said earlier, the effect is very easy to create from scratch. The only trick is figuring out how to make the border appear on the top and bottom of an element without using a stroke. To do this, I added a drop shadow and an inner shadow only I changed the blend mode to normal, set the opacity to 100%, angle to 90 degrees, distance to 1 pixel, and reduced the size to 0.
Figure 3
This effectively gives you a one pixel stroke at the top and bottom of your design elements. Now add some gradients and other types of fill, and now you have the ability to rapidly create many types of design elements like menus, footers, sidebar details, table rows and cells, and etc. The style is actually very versatile and can spawn all sorts of new creative ways of increasing your design productivity.
Download The Photoshop Layer Styles
I packaged up a small handful of these basic layer styles that you can use as a starting point in your own work. Note, these were based on 72 dpi resolution document. If you design at higher resolutions, then you will need to adjust the distance of the drop shadow and inner shadow to suit your needs.
Download the Photoshop layer styles for free
Tags: Design · Inspiration · Photoshop
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