Acrobat is packed with a lot of useful features for electronic use. Little functions that many of us take for granted – bookmarks, for instance, that jump us right to a page in the document we’re reading without having to scroll for years – have really made the PDF format so popular.

One of the greatest and least understood functions we can add to our PDF documents are forms. With an interactive form, the PDF user can fill out a survey, questionnaire, registration, or forms like the ones the IRS allows tax payers to download and use. Once filled out, it’s very nice and neat (no handwriting to decipher), the user can print it out or submit it online if you give them that option.

Adding an interactive form to your PDF document is extremely easy once you learn the process, and adds a whole new dimension of user friendliness to your files. The number of uses are endless, and having this skill in your arsenal can be invaluable.

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The PDF file is an amazing, versatile, wonderful thing. It allows us to distribute massive amounts of information in a neat, tidy, ready-to-print format that has the added benefit of helping protect the work we’ve put in through security controls.

We use the PDF to share books, catalogs, artwork, instructions, patterns, and even to preserve archival-quality materials against time.

And yet, all this isn’t enough. If your end-user can’t quickly access all of the information you’ve crammed into that nifty little file, it is essentially worthless to them.

Bookmarks make your PDF file easier to navigate – boosting the interactive and usefulness factors. They can be set to jump the reader to a specific section of text, a page number, a graphic on a page, or an Internet link or email address. In short, the bookmark instantly adds value for your reader, and you’ll be happy to know they’re very easy to set up.

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Final Image Preview

New Canvas

Open a new canvas in Photoshop (File, New) that is sized about 400×400 pixels with a white background in RGB mode.

Set Colors

Set your foreground color to #fd403a and your background color to #6d0200.

Draw a Circle

Select your ellipse (circle) SHAPE tool and draw it out on your canvas. DO NOT use the marquee tool. The shape tool will create a new layer for you. Hold the shift key down on your keyboard while you draw to make a perfect circle.

After you draw the circle, right-click its layer and choose “Rasterize Layer”. This is how you get those super-smooth, crisp lines.

Gradient Overlay

Go to your layer styles (Layer – Layer Styles OR the small “f” icon in the lower left-hand corner of your layers palette). Choose “Gradient Overlay and apply the bright-to-dark red gradient. Leave all other settings at their default.

Click OK.

Shine Part One

We’re ready to start our shine. Set your foreground color to white, and grab your ellipse tool again. Holding the shift key down, go ahead and draw a perfect circle on the upper two-thirds of the red circle. Right-click and rasterize the layer.

Shine Part Two

This is cool, but it doesn’t really “shine”. To make it do that, we’re going to add a layer mask.

Click “Layer”, choose “Layer Mask”, and click “Reveal All”. This will change your foreground and background colors to black & white.

The trick here is that black will “hide” parts of your white circle, and white will keep it visible.

Use your gradient tool to make the white circle fade smoothly away.

Face It

Every spider needs a face. Click once on your red circle layer to select it. Then, set your foreground color to black.

Grab your ellipse tool and draw an oval on the lower third of your spider’s body. DO NOT rasterize yet!

Before you rasterize, use your magic wand to select the space outside the red circle. Then, click back on your black face layer. Hit the backspace key on your keyboard to delete everything outside the body’s border.

Now, rasterize.

Show Some Leg

What would a spider be without eight legs? We’re going to make them easy.

Using black and your ellipse tool, draw an oval beneath all the other layers. It will become two legs, so size it appropriately near the head.

When your oval is drawn, right-click and rasterize it. Then, click “Select” and choose “Load Selection”. Click “Select” again, and choose “Modify”, “Contract”. Enter 6 in the amount.

Hit the backspace key on your keyboard to erase the inside of the oval, leaving you with two curving legs.

Repeat this process to create 8 legs total.

A Little Web

We’re at our very last step! Just need a bit of web to really finish off the spider look.

Use black and your rectangle (square) shape tool to draw a thin line behind all your other layers. Rasterize when you’re finished.

Then, add a layer mask (the same way we did in step 6). This time, make the gradient work so that the web starts to disappear near the top of your canvas.

Beautiful!

To create other colors of spider, just change the colors of your gradient overlay.