Create a Facebook Cover in Photoshop

1. Introduction to the course: Hello, and welcome to this section, where we're going to talk about creating Facebook covers in photo shop. We're going to talk about using the correct size and template, design concepts, placement, and have it all tied together to form the face of your business or maybe your personal profile. Now, in this project, we're going to recreate my personal Facebook cover, and we'll dissect that to see what makes it deck. We're going to analyze it in depth. Now, as we go along, we're going to talk about all sorts of photoshop techniques. So you're going to learn as we design. That's the great stuff. You're going to learn design principles that form the cornerstone of any project, the foundation. Now, the thought process applied in this section can be used in just about any other scenario that's related to any type of brand. Now, this is quite important because putting a face to name is super important. More and more people are doing it. Now, I'm sure you've heard the term influencer. Now, whether you like it or not, this is the world as we live in, and you got to be able to execute something like this. A Facebook cover, any type of cover in general, is quite important. So keep in mind that you don't have to expose all of your personal information on the web. You don't have to show everything about your life to actually have a decent social media following. All that you have to do is show whatever you want to show in a professional setting. Plus, more and more companies are checking out public profiles of their potential employees or business partners. So this means that you may benefit quite a lot, even though it seems like quite a small thing. A Facebook cover is not going to completely change your career or life, but trust me it does help. So because this is quite important and fairly easy to do, we should jump in and get started. Let's get to it. 2. Best Project Settings & Aspect Ratios: Come back. The first question is this. What type of document should we use? Well, let's create a new project by any means. You can use the button, or you can use the Hot key Control n, or you can go up top to the main menu to file and then new. Now, all of these options are going to bring you here. Now, here's the main idea. But the resolution, we want 72 pixels per inch. This is the standard, nothing else. GB colored mode, eight bed de and then a white background. These are the standard settings for any project, and they shouldn't change. Regarding art boards, no, we're not going to use them. They're not useful for these small projects. These are best used for web app design projects. So leave that unchecked. Okay, now about the size. This brings up an interesting point. The short answer is this. Facebook recommends 820 by 462. In case this changes, I'm going to let you know. From time to time, Facebook does update D settings. Now, this is going to give us a Facebook cover that's going to look great both on mobile devices as well as desktop computers. But I'd like to design that a bigger size either 12 80 by 720 or all the way up to Full HD, 1920 by 1080, because this gives us a lot of flexibility and it improves quality. Now, these are tremendous advantages, but this brings up a concept you have to understand right from the get go. Aspect ratio. So here's the deal. I have another photo shop project. Where I have a few art boards. If you're not familiar with them, don't worry, that's not a focus. They're just here to prove a point. Now, say that I create a design, right? In this case, I'm going to use a random photo. But imagine we spent a lot of time on it, right? Now, I used Facebook's recommended size 820 by 462. Now, these numbers are quite interesting because they give us an aspect ratio of 16 to nine, 16 by nine. Simply put, we are dealing with a wide canvas that's fairly short. Now, let's consider the Facebook cover is now completed, and then we want to handle other social media platforms, different ones. But most of them are asking for 1920 by 1080. Now, could we upload our design at such a small size? No, no, really. And enlarging a project is never a good idea because the result is going to be blurry. It's going to be pexeltd, suboptimal. So let me just show you a super exaggerated version. So this in short is why we never enlarge a work. Instead, we use the principle of aspect ratio. So we design at a larger size. Instead of 820 by 462, we're going to use 12 80 by 720 or even better 1920 by 1080. That's because when we scale it down, the quality is still going to be perfect. Here's how I got these values. Here's how I know it's a good idea to use them. Fire up a calculator and divide these numbers, A 20 by 462. That's 1.774. But then if we go up a level, 12 80 by 720, that's nearly the exact same thing. 1.777 What about Full HD, a big size, which can be used just about everywhere, 1920 by 1080. Again, that's 1.777. It's 16 by nine. It's the exact same thing. So let me show you what I mean. First, I'm going to use the correct aspect ratio by using this photo. If we enlarge the project while maintaining the Aspect ratio, the result is going to be perfect. Great stuff. So this is the great thing about understanding how aspect ratio works. You can use bigger numbers because the fit is going to be just right. Now, to make it even clearer, I'll input my measurements manually. So let me undo. Okay, I'll do that with the help of control T. I'm going to right click here in the Options bar, and I'm going to change the unit of measurement to pixels. This has to be done for both fields. Okay. Now, right now, I'm going to type in 12 80 by 720. Check the chain icon if it's pressed or not. Then I'm going to make sure the image is nice and centered, and it occupies the space beautifully. Now, let's do the same for the other size, which is called Full HD. We're going to increase its size yet again. You don't have to work along, by the way. The important thing is you understand the principle behind aspect ratio. As you can see, the image doesn't get cut off, we aren't losing anything. Now, this is ideal. But look what happens when you don't follow this rule. So let's say that you know that design is supposed to be wide and fairly short. So you create a canvas size of whatever, 1,500. You work your hands off for hours on end, and then you want to upload your design to various platforms. So let's try this image here. Create a copy and left a line, top align it as well, and you're going to see there's a ton of white space that's not being used correctly. So if you upload it to various platforms, you're either A, you're going to cut off a big part of it, either the top bottom of. Well, somewhere in between, so that's not ideal because you're going to lose precious space, or B, the image is going to be distorted, which is a huge problem. You should never ever distort an image. Something like this. This is a no go. Now, all of this, just because we use a different aspect ratio, two to 11000 by 500. So to recap, aspect ratio is important because it allows us to design at a bigger size without fearing that design won't fit at a smaller scale. Now, you may ask. But why should we design at a bigger canvas size if Facebook is happy with only a fraction of that. Like I said before, quality and flexibility. We'll start with the latter. 1920 by 1080 is a very popular format. So this means you're going to design once, but then you can use it for all sorts of platforms. So that's a fantastic thing. But the bigger factor is quality because you want sharp, nice graphics, dal crisp. You should never allow these platforms to play with your dimensions and change them and whatnot. Design at the highest possible size, and then export it as a PNG to get the maximum quality. Okay, I know that aspect ratio isn't all that sexy, but I hope it's going to help you in lots and lots of projects. Let's continue. 3. This is how you create great text for your projects: Come back. It's time to get to work, and we're going to need some assets. Let's start with the text, the copy. Now, in this situation, I'm the client, so there's no one else to ask. Now with that in mind, I'm going to take you through my entire thought process so you can do the same thing in this position. Now, the objective is to create a Facebook cover image for my personal brand. Now, the first questions are quite simple. Who am I? And how do I want to portray myself. My full name is Christian Dodo Bain. I'm an entrepreneur. I'm a teacher. I'm a photoshop user, and I'm a certify adobe instructor. I teach photoshop, DB XD, Pigma, the works, mid Journey, Facebook ads, Po cads, and so on. I'm on YouTube, as well as other platforms. I have various social media profiles, I have a blog. I'm a content creator. So there's lots and lots of things. So right now, what I'm doing is I'm listing everything I can, and it's a good idea to take a few notes. You can use a pen and paper, you can use a note pad, whatever works. Now, these are raw ingredients. You simply list them out. Now, don't mistake all of this information as the final bit of text that needs to be included in the cover. No. These need to be refined. Otherwise, we're going to have lots of paragraphs, and we don't want that. Not only are they not approved by Facebook, they also look terrib. Now, as a pointer, Facebook typically recommends 20% of your design should be text, no more than 20% Dough. Now, we won't waste time doing any math. Instead, we're going to focus on aesthetics and solid design principles. So back to the text element. Now, I have to decide what's the critical point that has to be there no matter what. Clearly my name fits into that category. And that's because I can't expect people to recognize my face and that's that, right? Now, regarding my name, despite what's popular in my country, I'm going to think about my target audience, which is international. And typically, the first name is you guessed the first one. So in my country, that's different. But again, it really doesn't matter. And I'm not going to use my second name because that's not all that common. So that's the first thing. I'm going to change my name just a little bit. Christian is very much well known, and it's very familiar to most people. Now, Chris is even better. It's short. It's easy to write. It has a nice ring to it. Super simple. So I'm considering this point because again, I have to think about my audience. I have students from the USA, from the UK, Canada, but I also have people from Pakistan, India, Singapore, and so on. So overall, after it's all said and done, Chris Barn, it is nothing more. We don't want to confuse anyone. Now, by the way, in case my name was John Smith, so super super common. Maybe I would add my second name, but again, that's not the case. Now, the second most important point, what do I want to highlight? Is it my ten plus years of experience? Is it my certifications, my diplomas, my 300,000 students from all over the world? I think that's a bit egocentric, right? I think that's not ideal. I really don't want to be perceived as being arrogant, right? I don't want to show off. I need to be reliable and trustworthy as a teacher, but not ego driven. So I don't want to push people away. Now, the next thing, I don't want to crowd the design with lots and lots of information, like all of my stifications and whatnot, or my reviews. I have 40,000 reviews or whatever. Again, I don't think that's essential. So I'm focusing on the most important bit. And I think photoshop training is one of the best things that I can say about it, right? Because again, the initial impression is what matters most. Now, because I say photoshop training, it's no longer about me. It changes the power dynamic tows the visitor. He gets something by visiting this page. What does he get? Well, it says right here, Photoshop training by Chris Barn. If I were to say that I'm a photoshop expert, some people may scoff at it. They may perceive that as a negative. Now, let's continue. What else should I include? Well, this is a personal brand, so I definitely need to show myself right. So a picture is 100% needed. Now, I could keep the avatar for that. But my face is a key piece and establishing trust. People want to see you, even if you don't like being in the spotlight. Believe me, I totally know the feeling. We'll talk about imagery in a different lecture, though. Now, the last thing we could include is some type of call to action. Now, a website is the ideal situation. I would never put a phone number or an e mail address because I don't think that's very professional. Now, in my case, I don't have one specific website I operate on. Even if I did teach on one single platform, I would probably not include the huge link here. That's not professional, again. It has to be short and sweet. Keep in mind, this is a photo. People are not going to be able to click it. So that's not an actual link. If you think that people are going to actually start typing in little by little, a very long URL that you add in a photo, you're wrong, you're mistaken, people are not going to do that. Now, for the other situations where you have a physical store, for example, or you want to show off an address, of course, with that in, right? Now, for my brand, we have enough to go on So let's focus on the image assets in the next lecture, and we can start building it. Thank you so much. 4. How I select images that fit my project: Welcome back. In the previous lecture, we took care of the text component. Now it's time to switch over to the other one images. The star of the show has to be me, or better put a photo of myself. Now, I gather the few viable options and we're going to analyze them one by one. So I need something fairly serious and professional. I have fun ones, but you should never use pictures from your vacations or parties or anything in an informal setting. Now, going through them, you're going to notice that some are in portrait mode, while others are in landscape mode. Now, both are valid options, but we're going to have to experiment and see what looks best. So in photoshop, let's see what's what. I'm going to use a 1920 by 1080 project with the artboards feature not checked unchecked. Okay. Next, I'm going to drag all of them inside the Canvas, like so. Now, in the ayos panel, disable them one by one, so we can see what's what. Now, this first one occupies quite a lot of space vertically, but the image is bright. My skin looks okay. It's well saturated. I think overall, this is a pretty good option. Click on this i icon to hide that for the moment. Now, this image is a bit more serious. It's a side photo. It's a bit grainier. It's not as vibrant. So overall, it's not my favorite. So let's hide it. Now, number three. Well, the quality is spot on, and I like the suit, but the hands are a bit problematic. Right here, you can see the light is hitting my fingers and that a bit too bright. Leaving that aside, if I don't include the entire thing, I think it's going to look off. It's going to look weird. There's no decent cutoff point. Now, for those reasons, let's move on. Okay. This is pretty friendly, and it fits the project. But I'm a bit too tanned, right? This is actually from an event in San Francisco, and the sun was merciless. It was super hot. Now, we could try to correct my skin, but I don't think it's worth the time. Now, in the first picture, I'm smiling, but my posture isn't ideal. You can see that this shoulder is higher up, and the left part The left part of my face is pretty dark. Not to mention my nose. It's giving Rudolph vibes, right? I think we can delete photos one and two, hold the control key to select them in the layouts panel. And when clicking on them, make sure you don't hit this area. Make sure you hit this area here and not this part on the thumb nail. In case you're going to click on the thumb nail, you're going to make a selection like so. Notice a line has shown up on the Canvas. These are called the marching ants. This means you have a selection. Disable it with Control D, D as in D select. Now, with these two selected, let's use the delete key. Now, do the same with number three. Now it's a battle 3-5. You'll notice they have specific backgrounds, but they don't cover the entire width of the project. Now, again, we could use some photoshop trickery to extend them, but I don't think that's needed. Even if we do it quite fast with generative fill, I'm not sure these backgrounds would be ideal for the Facebook cover. This means we have to remove the background so we can work with an isolated photo. Cutting out someone from the background could be a tricky task. The Internet is filled with all sorts of materials, but let me tell you, if you have a small photo, it's going to be hard work. If you have a large photo and you're using the latest photoshop version, things are going to be, much easier. Now, in this case, number three is quite big, 18 65 by 2027 26. The other one is much bigger, and that's a better one. Now, there's another thing to consider. My blue jacket makes for a strong contrast between myself and the wall. So this means photoshop is going to do a much better job because of it. Now, for the other one, it's actually the complete opposite. The colors are somewhat the same, so it's going to be a bit trick here. So considering these points, the size and the contrast, we're going to drop this one, and we're going to focus on the blue jacket photo. I'm going to attach it just so you can work along. Now, we won't get into removing the background into detail because again, you can do it fairly fast if you have the latest photoshop version. Just click and it's going to do a fantastic job. Now, just in case you can't manage, I'm going to attach the PNG all by itself, already isolated. The focus here, remember is the Facebook cover. Now, back to the assets. So I want to gather a few more things. So I think the photoshop logo may come in handy because it's something that people can immediately recognize, so we're going to find one. Now I'm going to spare you the trouble. You can just google it. You can just find it on various platforms, p. I'm going to attach it so you can have an easier time with it. Please be aware that photoshop has been around for a long time, so you're going to see lots of variations. When in doubt, just look at the current icon from your task bar. Okay, awesome stuff. By the way, using an older icon would be a big mistake. I'm a photoshop expert, but I have an icon from ten years ago. That would definitely be a mistake. Now, finally, I'd like something for the background. Now, to cut it short, I already tried various things on my blog, so I have a pretty clear idea about what I want. I need a photo with some type of office setting, something with desks, with slick displays, with a few monitors, a few displays, maybe a person or two. Now, for this case, I'm going to use free pick or unsplash.com, though I do prefer the first one. This is a great platform to get all sorts of images, but it's paid. Unfortunately, there's no other way around it. If you can't manage, use Splash, they have a premium plan as well, but a good part of their images are completely free. So again, if you want premium, go for a free pack. If you want free, use Splash, but make sure you choose the free ones, not the premium ones. Here I'm going to search for something like designers, and it's going to be lots and lots of results. I'm going to cut it short and I'm going to show you exactly what I chose, and it's this one here. Now, of course, you should always look for different ones because obviously a lot of people could use the same thing, and it would not be ideal to use something that's very common. Now, obviously, you're not going to find something unique here. But again, it's best that you choose a few other ones just so you can see what's the best fit? By the way, this is a great chance to use these filters. Now, obviously, if you don't have adobe illustrator, you should probably not use vectors. In this case, probably photos works best. Now, there's two ways you can go about it. You can just simply select five, ten, 15 photos and then try them out one by one. Now, this doesn't require any analysis, any thought process, bang them out, just go through them one by one, process of elimination, nothing else. O the second thing option B, we can think about the composition as a whole and how the image would relate to my own photo. So I'm going to use this one. But just so we don't neglect the other option, I'm going to download a few other ones that might make sense. Overall, we have several images. We have one great photo of myself, the photoshop logo, and a set of images for the background. We're going to try them, and we're going to see what's what? You have them all attached. I'm going to see you in a second. 5. Arranging the Assets on the Canvas: Come back. In this lecture, we're going to use all of our assets to create our Facebook cover for my personal brand. You have all of these resources attached, so please work along on your second viewing. Okay, let's get to it. First of all, grab this P&G of myself and drag it inside the project, 1920 by 1080. Right now, I'm taking up the entire height of the Canvas, that's fine. Next, add that photoshop icon. This one is again far too big, but we can make it a lot smaller. Now, you do that by going to one of its corners, clicking and dragging. Now, if something isn't right, just hold down the shift key, or check the chain icon from the top from the options bar. The chain icon helps protect the aspect ratio. If you don't use that feature, you may distort the icon. Again, when you're resizing something and you see it's not going right, hold shift if needed. Okay. Now, place it anywhere, say in the bottom right side. Now, to wrap up the images, grab any of these photos and place them inside photo shop. But now I'm going to go the first choice. Now, notice how it tries to fill my canvas. This is a nice feature. Photo shop wants to help us out. But this only happens when the image is bigger than the actual canvas. Now, it doesn't work the other way around. It doesn't blow up small photos, just to be clear. Even so, we can see we have quite a lot of empty space on the edges. And that's because the aspect ratio of the photo doesn't match the aspect ratio of the Canvas, which is again set by Facebook, with the following da guidelines. Now, we know our options. We can distort it, which we shouldn't do, of course, or we can cut off a part of it. So that's the only viable choice. So let's make it happen. Hold the ult key and grab any coordinate handle. Now, drag outwards up until the edge of the photo matches the edge of the canvas. So resize it and make it fit. Now, I usually go a little bit further just so I don't risk having a vertical white line or even a horizontal white line. That would be again, a big mistake. Okay, when you're done resizing, just hit there, and we're going to be great. Now, of course, there's a chance that with covering all the elements, but not a problem, use the layer spanel and reorganize things just in case that's needed. Now, in photoshop, all layers are arranged from top to bottom. So the layer that's on top of the layer spanel is always on front of the other ones on the canvas. So this means that if I move the photoshop logo above my photo on the canvas, of course, it will be in front of me because of the or the here in the layu spanel. But if I raise myself like so, then of course, the order changes. That's simple enough. But here is where it gets interesting. Sometimes the order in the layer spanel actually doesn't matter. So if I separate these two elements on the canvas and they don't overlap, they don't intersect on the canvas. The stacking in the layers panel doesn't matter. It's irrelevant. So again, the layers panel really matters if they overlap. If they don't overlap, no worries. Now, let's add some texts. Make sure you have the character panel opened. This is from the top menu window and then character. Okay. Now, I want us to follow the same steps. So click right here in the top right corner. Now, a list is going to show up, and we're looking for reset character. This is so we can work along. Now, everything is at the default values. So this means you should have Myriad pro regular here. Now, activate the type tool by hitting T, T for the type tool. When in doubt, go to the tool bar and check that you're using the right one. There's actually a few options here. But of course, this is the one that we need. Click anywhere on the Canvas and type in res Baron. Now, when you're done, hit the numerical enter, the one from the right side of your keyboard. Not the regular one because that's going to move you to the next line. So we don't want that. If you can't manage, just use the check mark from above. Oh, by the way, in case you click, and you got some text that said Laura MPsm, no worries that can easily be changed by using preferences. Control K is going to give you this panel that's command K on the Mc, and, of course, you can disable that setting. It's really up to you. This is going to stop photoshop adding that dummy text when you create a new text layer by default. Okay, let's move along. Let's click again and this time I'm going to write photoshop training. Good stuff. On the Canvas, this should be placed above my name because I feel it's more important. Okay, so these are all components laid out in a very decent fashion, nothing too fancy. In the next video, we're going to start designing things to color, typography, and proper placement. Let's take a quick break. 6. Designing the Cover: Come back. Here, we have all our elements laid out, but it's a bit of a mess. So the question at hand is, how do we arrange them? Well, though I'm the star of the show, you never want to be the hero element placed in the middle of the composition. No. I know that sounds counterintuitive, but here's the deal. There's a fairly well known principle called the rule of thirds that says that you should divide the image in nine equal parts by using two vertical and two horizontal lines. Going to use rectangles with a stroke and set the fill to 0%. This technique really doesn't mat at all that much, so don't worry about replicating my steps. You can just use the PSD if needed. Instead, let's focus on the actual principle. So the rule of thirds says that you should place important design elements at the intersection of these lines. So this means my face should be placed somewhere around here or here. I have a tendency to go towards the left side. Now, there are several examples of the rule of thirds in action. But even if you're not a fan of it, it's still very much practical. If I were to place myself in the middle of the screen, all the delements would fade in comparison. They would have to be shrunk down and scattered to my sides. So that's not a great l. So with that being said, I'm going to keep my photo on the left side. Now, regarding the size, use control T, that's command T on the MC and focus on the options bar up top. Now, by default, you're going to see percentages, but you can always right click, and that's going to give you a list. We're interested in pixels. Okay, now, make sure the chain icon is pressed, so the image is going to resize proportionally. So this means I'm going to type in any number in one of these boxes, and the other one is going to automatically change. Great stuff. So the value I ended up using is 875. That's for the WIF, 875. Now, this in turn makes the height quite reasonable. 1,000 pixels also give a p. Now, why this specific size? Well, again, I am the star of the show, but I don't want to overpower all the other elements. I don't want to span the entire height of the design, nor do I want to cut my hair. Now, this is a moderate size, and it's going to give us a good balance. Next, let's talk about text. Now, to quickly select the layer directly from the Canvas, you got to make sure you're on the moved wool. This is unchecked. It's disabled. And then you hold control, that's the command key on the mac and you click it. So control click, and you're golden. Now, as you click on various layouts, you can see this highlight. Plus, you can always check the layouts panel. As you go over various layouts, you can see there's a highlight. Plus there's also a highlight in the layouts panel when you actually select something. Okay, Grace Now, resize both items to about 80 pixels so. Here's an important thing. In case you use my rectangle technique for the rule of thirds, you got to make sure that you group all of them, and then you hide them. That's quite important because obviously these are transparent, but photoshop recognizes them. So when you control, click a layer, maybe a text layer, you're actually going to get one of those rectangles. So again, you should hide them. Okay, so we have all text layers, but they're not formatted in any way. Now, the problem with them is that even though we have a decent amount of contrast from the light background, I'm not really happy to use black text. It doesn't fit my personality or the feeling that I'm trying to convey. So no matter the color, it's not going to great in this situation. The background is too detailed. Thus, here's what I propose. We can apply a colored overlay. This is actually the exact same name you're going to find here by clicking on this F X icon at the bottom of the layouts panel. Color overlay. Make sure you select the background the Bij Do. Okay. Now, the default settings, I'm going to cut it. The easy way to go about it is this. We can use pure black, and then we can lower the opacity bit by bit to maybe 50% or so. By the way, you can type it in or you can use your mouse scroll and hold shift. With shift, you're going to change the value in 10% increments. Now, black can work. It's universal. But again, I want something that's a bit friendlier. In the end, I went with blue. The color code is the following. Click here and put in 00 for A D zero. This is going to improve the project's look, even though the change is actually quite subtle. Now, instead of playing with the opacity, I decided to go back up to 100% and experiment with various blending modes. Now, these are a bit unpredictable. So I suggest you simply try them one at a time by using your nouse wheel. So again, this is a method of playing with it. Just click once and then use the scroll. Of course, you can adjust the opacity or even the color. But again, you should nail it down to about two or three choices from this list. Now, to keep it short, I was strn between hard light and then the second one linear light. Now, this second one is a bit too saturated. So in the end, I went with hard light. Now this is better. Now, there's a slight danger that we might be using too much blue, but we're going to count of balance that through the use of all text layers. Thing is, I'm not very happy about this guy that's behind me. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to apply yet another popular technique, a Gaugan blur. Again, make sure the background layer is selected, and ideally, it has this icon here. This tells us that we are dealing with a smart object. In case you don't have that, you can right click and look for, convert a smart object. But again, it should be a smart object if you're following along. Okay. Now, go to the top menu to filter. From here, go to Blur, and then finally, choose Gagan blur. A new window is going to show up, and immediately, you're going to see some results. Now, we want a small amount. We could crank it up quite a lot, get a diffused l, but I want something fairly subtle. So five pixels, give or take, should do the trick. Get okay and look at the yos panel. The reason why I mentioned this symbol is important is because we can always come back and change the blur. We can double click it, and we can change the settings as we want. So this gives us flexibility, and we can change our mind as many times as we want. The thing is, you can still see quite a lot of his face. So let's change that. I'm going to hit z to activate the Zoom tool. Then I'm going to hold and I'm going to get this minus symbol on my cursor. So this means I'm going to zoom out. If you're not a fan of hockeys, simply activate the Zoom tool, then click and move towards the left or towards the right, and that's how you zoom in or how you zoom out. So again, zoom tool, no hockeys, click, move towards the left, or towards the right. Okay, great stuff. Now, let's use control T, and we're going to increase the size of this layer. Now, photoshop is going to tell us that the blur is going to be disabled. But that's fine, it's just temporary. When you're using a blur, we can make the image bigger because any potential issue is going to be covered up, any imperfection whatsoever. Again, it's not going to show up. So my idea is to bottom line the picture, so you can see a big part of the displays above the monitors, but cut out the part of his head. Now, take your time with it. Don't rush it, but you want something that looks like this. Overall, I'm quite happy. Moving on to the photoshop logo, we got to resize it. About 300 pixels. I think that's a good fit. Now you can always play around with it. You can go 250, you can go 320. It's really up to you. But the most important part is the typography, the text. Based on that, we can make further adjustments if needed. After you resize it with Control T, you may want to reactivate those rectangles to see those intersections. Now, if you want to follow the guide, we should place it about here. Now, initially, I wanted to place it more to the side, but now it's fine. Yeah. There we go. So overall, we've made good progress. Let's take a short break, and I'm going to see you in a second. 7. Typography for the Facebook Cover: Come back. We need to take care of the text. Now, we wanted to stand out. The first question is, what typeface should we use? Well, we have two choices. We can go for Google fonts or adobe fonts. Now, Google sons are totally free, so you have unlimited access. For adobe fonts, you do have to pay for the photoshop. But if you're watching this, hopefully, you do have a valid subscription. If you're paying photoshop, for example, $11 per month, give a take, Adobe fonts is going to be included. Now, both libraries are massive. You have thousands to choose from. So how do you choose? Well, here's the thing. Now, you want to think about the overall vibe of the covered photo, right? Now, in this case, though I'm fairly friendly, I am an instructor and a teacher, and that does impose some type of authority and respect, right? Now, I'm also pretty big on working out, and I do have a strong stance and even a strong look at times. I'm not whimsical, I'm not into drawing and whatnot. So this excludes certain typefaces right from the get go. So in Google Fonts, for example, we can definitely take out handwritten, and you can actually use these filters and look for something that's powerful, that's clean, robust, and fairly thick. I'm in tech, so San SerreF is the way to go, and that's how you quickly narrow it. Then you're going to find a bunch of lovely typefaces that are a bit more appropriate for this setting. Now, again, some of these may be a bit too elegant, maybe a bit too fancy for my taste, but you just got to go through the motions and see what's what. Again, there's no right or wrong way to go about it. It just has to fit what you're trying to put out, right? Now, overall, you do have to keep in mind that some of these are quite over used, and a lot of them look way too basic. For example, Roboto, it's super super basic. Lato, again, super basic. On the other hand, everybody knows Oswald or Bebas. These type faces are again quite condensed. They look interesting, but they're so over used. So you got to make sure that's something you're aware of. Monsat, again, is very popular, but I've seen it 1 million times. So that's why I said it's really up to you what you like. It's like what you like to eat. This changes from time to time. So again, make sure you experiment. There's no right or wrong make sure that it represents you itself. Now, overall, I'm going to go with this one, and I already have it installed on my computer. But just in case you don't, you can quickly install a font from Google Fonts by simply downloading a zip archive, extracting it, and putting it into C windows fonts. It's really as easy as that. Sometimes photoshop needs a restart, but yeah, most of the time, it's as easy as that. Now, back to photoshop, make sure again, those rectangles are disabled. Select the first line of text. Now, let's focus on the character panel. That's what we'll use. Click here, and let's put in Monsat. You only need the first few letters, that's MO N T. Okay, so Monsat, let's go with Monsat black from the get go. Now, regarding the size about 82 pixels, maybe 80 give or take. The next thing, I want to enable the all caps transformation because I really want this part to stand out. We'll see if this is the right way to go, but yeah, I think it's a good look. Now, as for this position, now, let's enable the rectangles and try to place it somewhere to the right of my ear. Well, it looks kind of big. It might overpower the entire thing. So let's take a step by step. For the colors, let's go with white. That's fairly safe and standard, but here's the thing, but I do love one particular color, and that's orange. I've used it so much that I know it's color code by hard, and that's FF d00. So this is bright. This is strong, it's very saturated. But here's the thing. Using it directly on this blue background, that doesn't work. This is a no go. So here's what I propose. On one hand, we can keep this white version as a backup. Okay. And for the second one, we're going to use orange, but here's the thing. We're going to place it inside the white rectangle, so it's really going to stand out. So get a rectangle tool, click anywhere on the canvas and put in these values, 1050 for the width. And then for the height, let's go for 125, 125. So this needs to be pure white, and it has to be placed underneath the text layer in the layers panel. Okay. Now, for that orange. Now, as I'm arranging everything, you might have an idea. How about we make the rectangle orange and the text white? Yes, that works as well. At the end of it, you should look at both options and choose the one you like most. But yeah, both options are quite nice, so it's really up to you. Now, remember, use those rectangles, if you're unsure about what to place your elements. If you run into trouble with them, just leave them off and then just eyeball it. Now, for the text underneath, I'm going to duplicate this y rectangle, and I'm going to shorten it a lot. Maybe 450 pixels also for the width. So about half. Make sure that's placed correctly in the layout spanel. Now, here's my idea. I want this shape to be orange to create some variation in the design. So double click it thumbnail and use that orange. You can sample it from the canvas, or you can manually type it in, or you can grab it from the tool bar in case you have it there. Okay, right. Now, we could use Monsat yet again, but I want to mix things up. This time, I want the text to look like it's hand written. I want to balance that strong text that's above it. So the way I look at it is like a cake. I like chocolate. I like caramel. I'm open to moose, to ganas, but here's the thing. Too much sweet is not enjoyable. You get to a point where you get saturated and it becomes unpleasant. You need balance. You want something to cut through that sweetness, so you can enjoy the whole thing. And it's the same thing here. Too many powerful elements, are going to take the project over the top. It's gonna be shouty. We don't want that. We want diversity to balance it out. So I went ahead and I looked quite a lot for the type face, and here's the one I chose. This has great legibility. So I wanted a type face. I could easily read. Handwritten, yes, but easy to read. This took actually quite a while, so that's why I didn't include it. But yeah, I went with a type face called Zada. I'm not sure that's how you pronounce it, but you have it written here. Make it pure white, and for the size, probably 65 pixels give or take. Now, I think it's also a good idea to add another word here. By. I think it not only sounds better, it also looks great due to the Y glyph. This character actually has a lot of character. Now, take a moment and center it, but you're going to notice it may be vertically offset due to this y. Now, here's how you get around it. You actually select it, you remove it, and then you commit. Then you realign things using the tools from top, the alignment tools, and that's how you center it vertically. Then you get the type tool and you put back that letter. And that's it. It's a quick work around for the nasty problem. Okay, let's take a moment and we're going to continue in a second. 8. Fine Tuning the Cover: Fine tune R design to make sure that it's well sorted. To begin with, I think the text element is a bit too much. The font size should be dropped to about 70 pixels. Then the second one to about 55, again, give or take. You're going to have to reposition them inside their rectangles. But I think even them, they may be a bit too much on the heavy side. To quickly resize them, you could potentially use the property spanel instead of free transform, also known as control T. But again, you got to check the chain icon, because again, when you change something, if the chain icon is pressed, the other value is going to get updated as well. Now, again, take your time with it and make sure that this looks right and it's well sorted. In case you don't have the properties panel, go to the top menu to window, and from that, you're going to find properties. Okay. By the way, the list is alphabetical just in case you're wind ring. Okay. So we're looking to resize it to about 900 by 110, something like that. So 900 by 110. Take your time with it. You got to experiment. There's nothing that's written in stone. But once you've done, select both layouts, either from the Canvas or from the layouts panel, and then use the alignment tools from up top. We always want two things, align horizontal centers, and align vertical centers. Okay. This is looking pretty good. Of course, there are a ton of variations that you can apply for the first line, but let's keep it simple. Moving down, the second text is 55 pixels, but the rectangle should be resized. The value I finally ended up using is 350 by 110. Having the same height is quite important. Give me a moment while I handle everything. Now, as a rule of thumb, you should never place two rectangles that have the same color immediately next to each other. Instead, you should leave a gap of at least two pixels. Because we have different colors, that's not needed. Now, these two layers obviously need to be aligned as well. No question about it. Actually, in general, you got to align everything in every single design project. That's one of the main things. Now, regarding the specific rectangle size, I chose it based on one thing. I wanted my two text layers to be left aligned. When I see any design, I always try and picture imaginary lines going through it, both vertical and horizontal. If you have layers of aligned, the whole thing is much more pleasing to look at. Now, here's that simple trick that will allow us to vertically align text layers that have low hanging letters. In this case, why? Now, here's what you do. You get the type tool, you remove that letter, then you arrange everything correctly with the alignment tools. Of course, take your time. Watch this cools twice, make sure you're able to work along, pause as often as you need to. Then once everything is centered, get the type tool and add that letter back in. Okay. Fantastic. Now, this isn't the most elegant technique, but it gets the job done. Right? Let's have another look and see if we can improve anything. Always take a few moments and zoom out to control Zero to have the project fit your screen. Okay. Now, what I'd like you to try is maybe a different position for the photoshop logo. I want to right align it with this white rectangle. So select both layers and use the appropriate command. Now, this creates yet another imaginary vertical line, but I want to elevate that even further. First of all, hold down the control key whilst you have the photoshop logo selected. Hove it over the background, and you should see some pink lines show up. You're also going to get some measurements. This is what we're looking for. Now, I want to match this value here underneath the layer. Now, to do that, simply use the added keys from your keyboard and add shift into the mix, and that's going to help you move things in ten pixel increments. Now, as you make progress, constantly tap the control key to check the measurements. So this is going to show you how far away this layer is. Now, in case you're not happy with this technique, you can do the following. Look at the property spanel, specifically in this field. This controls the vertical position of this layer, starting from the top. Now, what's important is you have the same amount of empty space on both sides. That's going to make it lovely. Okay. When you're done, I want you to do one final thing. I want you to slightly change my skin tone because I'm a bit too pale, at least in that photo. Now, we won't get into any advanced stuff. Instead, I'm going to show you a technique that I've always used. So the first step is to select the correct layer. In this case, it's this one. Next, go to this Ying Yang looking symbol and click on it. From this long list, choose vibrance. A new panel is going to show up, but the things are quite straightforward. What we want to do is we want to crank up this lider to 70 plus 70, and notice how my skin immediately looks better. This is what vibrance does. It gets those colors that are a bit washed out. In case you want to see a before shot, just click on this icon to hide it. Now, here's something you have to be aware of. I'm going to draw back this lider back to zero, and then I'm going to change the saturation to plus 70 just so I can show you the difference. So as you can see, this affects all of the colors, not just the washed out ones, and this isn't all that great. In this specific case, it's way too much. So that's why we want to use vibrance because that gives us exactly what we want. Only those colors that are a bit washed out. Keep that in mind. Okay, let's get back to it. So again, for the vibrant, we want plus 70. The saturation should remain as it is. Now, I'm going to see you in the next video to wrap things up. 9. Conclusions: Make sure everything is nicely organized and buttoned up. So I recommend you keep the four layers that make up these two elements grouped because that's going to allow us to quickly try some variations. Now, before we get into that, let's export this project as a PNG, so it's going to be nice and crisp. You can go to file export, or of course, you could potentially use the big Hot key ult control shift W. Again, it's quite long. But if you can't manage, again, file export, export as. Now, you have a few options in this new panel, but we're only looking for the format. PNG and that's it. Save it, and this is virgin number one. Now, in case you want to try it out, file it on Facebook, and you can upload it. You can see it in place, and it's quite nice. Now, my Facebook group is already set up, but yeah, this looks good. Now, overall, here's the thing. The idea is, does it check all the boxes, and I think it does. It's professional, it's powerful, it's bold, it's bright. So overall, I'm really happy with it. You might also notice one thing. The photoshop logo doesn't feature that margin that we set up, but this is the regular version. When you click on the cover image, you're actually going to get the bigger one, and in that case, it's okay. Now, here's the thing in case something feels off, go back to photoshop and make any adjustments. For example, let's try something else. So identify the group that has the text component, and let's make a copy. You can do that with Control J. Okay. Now you can double click its name and change it to something like alternative or iteration, variation, whatever you want. Now, here, I'm going to quickly change the top rectangles color to orange. Double click the thumb nail and sample a color straight from the Canvas. You don't have to memorize any color code, by the way. Now, I'll quickly handle the second line. But in the meantime, I do hope you've enjoyed this course up until this point. Photoshop is infinite. We can do all sorts of projects, but yeah, here's the thing. Some parts have to be slowed down. You got to use the space ball key quite a lot. While other times it's simply fine to plow ahead and go through it quite fast. Now, here's the thing. If you have any questions whatsoever, that's totally fine, please ask away. Okay. Now this is done. What's your take on this variation? Honestly, I'm not feeling it. The first line is a bit too in your face. It's a bit harsh. It's too bold. But the bigger issue is with this second line. That elegant text becomes a bit fuzzy and unpleasant. Now, in essence, the quality hasn't changed, but the perception is what matters. So for that reason, I'm going to stick with the initial version. Select this folder and trash it. You can use the delete key, with simply hide it. Yeah, overall, with pretty good to go. This is our Facebook cover image. Now, what I want you to do is create your own version. Make your own. It doesn't matter if you don't have a need for it. Just try it out. In case you don't have a nice photo like mine, you can go to unsplash.com and select a random one. If not, use a celebrity or whatever other photo you want. I'm going to include a few photos just so you really have something to work with. But again, ideally, use some of your own. Now, no matter the case, work on your own version and post it as a PNG in the comment section. Load it to the platform. First of all, create a perfect replica of what you just saw, exactly what you see in my photo shop, and then make your own version. Now, don't upload the copy because obviously it's going to be exactly the same. Only upload your own version. Choose a different color, a different typeface, maybe a different layout. Have fun with it. That's the most important part. And again, I hope to see you in a different project of mine. Have fun with it.