Photoshop/graphics gurus: need some help.

Factual Questions
1

I’ve had Photoshop for a few years now, but for the most part i’ve used to for little more than processing digital photographs. The creative, graphical side of the program is something i’ve never really dealt with. I’m hoping someone here can help me out.

I’m trying to create a sort of banner. It’s going to be 3000 pixels wide and only 200 pixels high. For the right-hand side of the banner, i’m using a photograph i took. The image only takes up about 600 horizontal pixels, leaving me with about 2400 pixels of white space to the left of the image.

What i want to do is take the color values from the very left edge of the image, and replicate or “stretch” them leftwards across all the blank space. This will, if successful, leave me with a sort of abstract banner with an image at the right.

I know that a tool as powerful as Photoshop can do this. The problem is, i don’t know how to do it myself, and some attempts at using the Help files and Googling haven’t given me what i need. If anyone can help me, i’d be most appreciative.

Photoshop CS4

2

Use the rectangular marquee tool to select the leftmost column of pixels. Then, do Edit > Free Transform, grab the handle on the left side of your selection, and stretch it out. Hit Enter to finish the Free Transform, and you should be good to go.

3

Just use the eydropper tool to pick up the color you want, create a selection from the edge or your image to the edge of the banner, and fill.

4

Awesome. Worked a treat, although i might have to change my selection a bit to get the look i want.

Thanks, but it wasn’t a single-color fill that i was after. The image is 200 pixels high, and i essentially wanted to replicate each of the left 200 pixels horizontally across the image.