MacBook Air - part 1

Make a new document (Ctrl-N (win)/Cmnd-N (mac)) of 1000 by 730px with a white background and call it “MacBook Air”.

Of course you can pick whatever size you like but keep in mind it will be easier to follow if you use the same sizes.

Before we start we are going to set up our document with guides. Make sure the rulers are visible (Ctrl-R/Cmnd-R) and set the measurements to pixels.

You can set up guides manually using the info pallette (F8) or simply by typing in the numbers in the New Guide window (View > New Guide).

Vertical guides: 40 – 100 – 220 – 430 – 570 - 780 – 900 – 960px
Horizontal guides: 40 – 185 – 280 –- 690px

Tip: Being consecuent in setting up your documents and naming your layers will make your workflow much easier.

Now we’ve set up our document we are going to draw the black rectangle.

Pick the Rounded Rectangle Tool (U), set the radius on 10 and drag a nice rectangle in between the guides we’ve just set up. Call this layer “Rectangle”.

In this step we’ll draw the basic shape.

Make a new layer (Ctrl-Shift-N/Cmnd-Shift-N), select the Rectangular Marque Tool (M) and drag a selection around the yellow square as shown below.

Next, go to Selection > Transform Selection & Transform > Perspective and drag the top inwards to the guides we’ve previously set up.

Now we still need to smoothen the corners of our selection; Select > Modify > Smooth and choose a radius between 10 - 15.

The last step is to Fill our selection with white (shift-F5) and dragging the edges back to the guides so it lines up nicely. Call this layer “Top”.

Now that we have our basic shape we can hide our Guides and start with the actual design; this is where the fun begins.

First we are going to apply an Inner Glow. See the images below for the settings.

Tip: When you’re working on a project it can be usefull to save your Layer Styles into a new set!