It's really easy to make a banner in Photoshop. Just enter the online standard for a banner of 728 X 90 at 72 dpi. There are other banner sizes but this is the one I'm going to use now. Skyscraper web banners are generally 120 X 600. You can create banner ads to promote your own products and services or design them for a client. You can then network or exchange your banners with other websites, pay for advertising or join a banner ad network.

Here you'll just see the process of creating a fictional banner so you get a good idea of how it's done and how you can make your own.

Once again, I'm creating this tutorial with only an idea of where I want to take it. My mind is kind of cramped after doing 30 of these full grown tutorials in 8 days so bear with me.

Drag in a person/model who can be your spokesperson or the image that can help represent your product. Ctrl T to free transform and hold shift to scale down. You will notice that I'm in full screen mode (FF and Tab toggles the toolbars on and off).

Use the magic wand tool (in this case) to select the blue areas and Ctrl X to cut to leave the model.

Here I'm pressing FF (exit full screen) and File: Browse to find a Photos.com stock image and dragging it in with the moVe tool. Pressing FF again to enter full screen (perrty) mode, I'm scaling it down once again and moving it to a location that looks ok.

Now enter some text that will be the name of your product. I'm using Minion pro with these settings. I almost always have the character palette available (from the View menu) to allow for typography production.

Now find another image that could work well with your banner ad production. It's up to you (and your client) to think of what kind of theme and look you want it to have. You'll also have to take into consideration what tools you have available (everything as long as you have the knowledge) and your library of source material to work with (often clients will supply).

Here I'm just using the magic wand tool on a tolerance of 20 to close in around the selection. Note that I have it on subtract from selection. This will cause it to keep closing in around the birthday nose. For more doofiness check out my design training program here.

If you go to far you can keep making other selection adjustments such as Add to selection with the lasso tool. Simply circle around the area that you want to be part of the selection. There are two examples right here.