PLASTIQUE
Banner Ad Templates

Readme & Quick Start Guide

Written by: Cris Rene Denopol

Website: www.draftbeerinitiative.com

E-mail: draftbeer80@gmail.com

Graphic River Portfolio: http://graphicriver.net/user/draftbeer80

 

Introduction

Thank you for purchasing the Plastique banner ad templates! Premium banner ad templates that is highly customizable, well designed, and best of all, as a bonus, it includes a set of ANIMATED banner templates! This usage guide with help you get started and ensure that everything runs smoothly and as expected. That way you can focus more on your design and less on the technical stuff. For more tutorials, video demos and screencasts relating to this product, please visit the Draftbeer Initiative.

 

Note that this usage guide will not contain steps on Photoshop usage. Procedures such as how to modify /add layer styles, animation sequences in photoshop, etc. are BEYOND THE SCOPE of this guide. For photoshop tutorials, you can go to PSDTuts.com. Also make sure you read the quick start guide first!  It should only take a few minutes.

 

Like this product? I probably got more stuff that you might be interested in! Please do visit my Graphic River page. And if you would like to refer a friend to create an account at Envato, please click here. Once again, thank you for purchasing this product!

 

Contents

  • System requirements
  • What's included in this package
  • Quick start guide
  • Layers/groups color coding and structure explained
  • Exporting to and optimizing Jpegs or animated GIFs
  • Troubleshooting

 

System requirements

  • Windows XP/Vista/Windows 7 /Mac OS X
  • Adobe Photoshop CS3, CS4 or CS5
  • Fonts:  Helvetica Light Standard (Helvetica LT Std) – comes pre-installed with OSX

 

What's included in this package

  • PSD Files for static and animated banner ad templates (5 color schemes, 6 standard sizes)

·      240x400

·      125x125

·      120x600

·      260x125

·      336x280

·      728x90

  • Quick Start Guide

 

 

Quick start guide

This quick start guide will guide you on how to quickly customize the banners in photoshop and export it to an animated GIF.  Note that for static (non-animated) banner ads, these procedures still apply, and the structure of the layer groups and layers, including the filename conventions of all PSDs are in-fact identical. 

 

For this guide, we’ll be using the dark red 336x280 size banner.  We shall come up with something like the one shown on fig. 1.0.    We’ll be modifying the website logo, the website url, an image in the image carousel and the first line on our list.

 

darkRed_336x280.gif

Fig 1.0

  • Extract package, if you haven't already done so.
  • Go to the PSD directory/folder of either the static or animated templates and open the file “darkRed_336x280.PSD”.
  • First, let’s modify the website logo.  On the layers palette, expand the banner group as shown on fig. 1.1.  And the first layer in the group should be the “website logo” layer (notice the colored layers/groups.  Color coding with be explained in the next section).  It’s a smart object, so you can easily modify it without affecting the animation or the other objects.  To modify it and put in your own logo, just double click the smart object.  And on the window that appears, simply copy-paste your logo.  But for the purpose of this quick start guide, let’s just edit the text to something like “TestWebsite”.  Once, your done, just save the smart object and that should bring you back to the original document.
  • Now, let’s change the website url.  Expand the “website URL” layer group (see fig. 1.2).  The website URL is just a text object, so just go ahead and double click it to change it.  Change it to something like www.mywebsiteurl.com. 

 

 

layersL1.jpg

Fig 1.1

 

 

layersL2.psd

Fig 1.2

 

  • To edit the first item (or the rest of the items on the list), expand the “list” layer group.  Under this group we have all the items in the list.  For the animated PSD templates, each item has an overstate (the one with the green graphic) and a normal state, with just the text.  Both states have text but, we only need to modify one text, which is the one under the normal state layer group, and that should automatically change the one In the over state as well.  For the static banner ad templates, the item layer group only contains the text object corresponding to the list item.  To edit it is to simply double click the text object and type in the desired text.  For the animated PSDs, you’d have to double click the text layer under “normal state” in “item 1” and change the text to something like “Just a test item”.  Save the smart object when you’re done.  Note that the same procedure applies with the other items, as they all have the same structure.
  • Finally, we’ll change one of the images in our image carousel.  This particular banner has 6 images in the carousel, and each image corresponds/changes according to their respective list item.  Expand the layer group “image slider” (right after the “list” layer group).  The expand the “images” group.  As you can see in fig. 1.3, we also have 6 images.  Again, these are smart objects.  Just go ahead and double click any of these images and put in any image you want.  Then simply save the smart object once you’re done.

 

layersL3.psd

Fig 1.3

 

  • That’s it!  Now, we’re ready to export the banner to an animated gif!  You can preview the animation using the animation palette.  Now, Go to “File” on the main menu and click “Save for Web & Devices”.   Then you’ll see something like the one seen on fig. 1.4.  You can change the preset to either GIF (for animated banners) or JPEG (for stills).  Change the quality settings according to your preference.  You can also preview the animation on this screen before you export the file.  Once you’re happy with the settings, just click on save.

 

saveforweb.jpg

Fig 1.4

 

Layers/Groups Color Coding & Structure Explained

 

In fig 1.4, the structure of the file is shown.  The same structure and color coding is maintained in all PSDs included in this package for consistency and for your own convenience.  So that you’d know where to find where the elements are on all files.  All background graphical elements are in the “background” group and I’ve also locked this so that you won’t accidentally  select background elements.  Should you want to customize the background, you can just unlock this group.

 

layersL4.jpg

Fig 2.1

 

Layers/Groups Color Coding:

 

GREEN – Objects with green color coding are editable.  Folders with green color coding mean that it contains elements that are editable.  Note however that not all elements within a green color coded folder is editable.

 

NO COLOR / GRAY -  Folders and objects with gray or no color coding are elements that DOES NOT NEED to be modified.  That does not mean however that you can’t.  If you do additional modifications to the banners, make sure you backup your PSDs first.

 

 

Exporting and Optimizing JPEG and Animated GIF files

 

I won’t go into the details of how to optimize jpegs or animated gifs, as it is a matter of preference and it’s always up to you on how you would like to balance quality and file size.  But in this section, I would be mentioning some of the things that you could tweak to come up with the least file size and acceptable quality output.  Note:  All figures in this section are based on the screenshots of the “Save for Web & Devices” screen.

 

If you want to quickly export to a file with a specified file size, you can go to the pull down menu shown in fig. 3.1, and select “Optimize to File Size”.  This will pop up a window which allows you to enter the size in KB, and the settings will be automatically tweaked to fit the size you’ve specified.  It may not come up with the result you intended but it would be a good place to start if you want to come up with a file with the least file size.

 

optimize.jpg

Fig 3.1

 

Another way to quickly pick optimal settings is to select the pre-existing presets.  Fig. 3.2 shows some of the presets that you can choose from.  You can also save your custom presets here if you want.  Note that animation is only available for GIFs.

 

presets.jpg

Fig 3.2

 

As I have mentioned earlier, these presets may or may not work for you, but it’s always a good starting point.

If in case, none of the above settings work for you, you can tweak the settings to fit your preference.  And some of the options you can tweak are color (number of colors in the GIF or JPG), amount of dithering, dithering type, and also web snap.

 

Fig. 3.3 shows the types of dithering you can choose from.  In this case, diffusion is selected.  Changing the setting would update the preview instantly.  So, from there, you can decide which dithering type is right for you.  “No dither” comes with the least file size.

 

diffusion.jpg

Fig 3.3

 

Fig. 3.4 shows the color settings.  Note that if you select GIF as an output file format, there 256 colors is the maximum file size.  Lowering it down to 128 or lower can significantly decrease the output file size.

 

colors.jpg

Fig 3.4

 

Fig. 3.5 shows the dither slider.  This is only enabled if you’re selected either of the three dither types.  If you’ve set it to “No Dither” then this option won’t be available.  Lowering the value will yield a lower file size but it will also lower the quality of the output.

 

dither.jpg

Fig 3.5

 

Troubleshooting