Make a 125×125 Advert in 4 Simple Steps
Written on 15 February, 2008 by David Churchill
Here is a quick step by step tutorial showing you how to make a very simple 125×125 style Advert or Entrecard using Photoshop.
It is not complicated, in fact it is only four simple steps, so you don’t need to be a Photoshop guru - you only need to know a few basics.
1) Nice and simple, open Photoshop and create a new document that is 125×125 pixels and 150 pixels/inch. Make sure the Colour Mode is RGB and the Background Contents is Transparent.
2) From the Tools Pallet, use the Round Rectangle Tool 
with a corner Radius of 8 to draw a box that fills the whole background. If you wish, you can change the box colour by double clicking on Layer Thumbnail.
From the Menu Bar open Layer Styles by going Layer > Layer Style, alternatively you can double clicking on the box layer to open the Layer Style pallet.
Select the Bevel and Emboss style and change the setting as follows. Style: Inner Bevel, Technique: Smooth, Depth: 100, Direction: Up, Size: 1, Soften: 0, Angle: 90, Altitude: 67, Anti-aliased: on and both opacities set to 75 - click OK.
3) Using the Text Tool 
add your text. In the example I have just used the name and the basic description for the 125Cards website. But you can add what ever you like. Remember - keep it short and sweet, and use colours that make it easy to read.
I have added a little bit of Bevel and Emboss to the 125Cards text just to lift it out of the background. The setting for this are similar to that used for the box layer.
4) Ok, that’s it - check everything, and then using Save for Web, save the advert either as JPEG, GIF or PNG file. For the example I have used JPEG High.
Obviously you can add pictures, logos and different font styles. Photoshop also has a huge collection of effects that you can apply to layers and it is worth spending some time playing with them to see what they can do.
Download the 4 Simple Step sample file (60kb Layered Photoshop file). The fonts used in the sample can be downloaded from the 125Cards downloads page.
If you have any question or suggestions, please let me know via the comments below.