Making of the Background, Part II

 Allright, lets get this going!


PART   I - In the beginning.
PART  II - Masks!
PART III - Stripe on strip action.
PART IV - Putting it to work.



We now have a nice stripy colorful background. We want to make it fade into black, and make it a little less jarring to the eyes, as to improve readability and usability, for as far that is applicable in such a random design ;)

In short, what we are going to do is fill a new layer, add a mask with a gradient and then spice it up with some  web 2.0-style diagonal lines.

Lets get crackin!!

First, make a new layer. You can do this by going Layer -> New -> Layer, using the hotkey (Shift+Ctrl+n) or by using the icon on the lower right of your screen.

Now, if you have modified your Foreground and Background colors, reset them to black and white by by using the Default Foreground/Background Colors shortcut (D). After you do that use the Fill Foreground Color shortcut (Alt+Backspace) to fill the entire layer with the foreground color.

Your entire canvas is now black!!! No worries, that what we want. Now lets do something with it!

Under your Layers panel, there is a little icon, looks like this:

 This is the New Layer Mask button. Click it now, with the black filled layer still selected.

Nothing apparent will have changed, except there is a weird rectangle next to the layer thumbnail in the Layers panel.

That is your mask. As the name implies this will mask parts of your layer. Where that picture will be black, it will make the layer 100% transparent, where it is white the layer will be opaque.

Now Foreground Fill the mask layer (Ctrl+Backspace) and there are your stripes again! Select the Gradient Tool (G) and drag it from the bottom of the image to the top. 

Make sure you have set it from the Foreground Color to Transparent, instead of Foreground to Background. You can change that in the top left, as seen in the screenshot.

Blammo!! We have a gradient!! If you are not happy with it, feel free to add to it. You can drag the gradient bigger that the picture, smaller, make it transparent, etc. If you hit Switch Foreground/Background Colors (X) and you drag from top to bottom, you can remove some black where wanted.



That was is for now, please join me later for the last 2 parts!!!