I have had an idea in my mind for awhile about using polka dots as a background. I found a good YouTube for creating your own polka dot patterns. It is quite involved so I will give you the link if you want to try it rather than repeating all the steps.
For greeting cards, they are fantastic but with images a little trickier to get a good match. Having Fun!
Original Word
Outline a Font
Sometimes you want just the outline of your letters, especially on greeting cards. One word says it all!
In Photoshop type your word or words with a bold font like Cooper Std Blk.
Select your letters with the Magic Wand tool and Contiguous unchecked on the top toolbar so one click selects all the letters.
Outlined Letters
Click twice on your Text layer and the Layer Style dialog box will come up. Highlight the Stroke option, adjust the size of the stroke and click on the Color square to choose an outline color. Click the OKs.
With the Text still selected, slide the Fill to 0% on the Layers palette.
Deselect and you have just the outline.
I visited a waterlily garden this weekend and found many beautiful lilies. I felt this would make a nice greeting card with the Serenity Prayer. The basic post-processing is listed below. I have 2 ebooks on greeting card design and an online class for learning creative ways to enhance your photos on cards including camera technique and post-processing. http://www.esunrisedesigns.com
Basic Steps for this card
1.Open new file of 5×7 @ 300dpi for your blank card.
2. Pick a nice texture image for the back ground and drag into file.
3. Choose your image and crop to 2×3 inches.
4. Select the image, Layer > Layer Style > Drop Shadow Light Angle 129 (Distance 15 Spread 14 Size 44 for this one) Multiply is the default blending mode.
5. Using the T type tool, type your verse or phrase. I used California FB Italic at 12pts and 24pts leading (between lines of text)
Birthday
Greeting cards have been my passion for many years and are so much fun for photographers and Photoshop users. My two ebooks on greeting cards have been popular and give a variety of techniques. So I developed this online class to cover all aspects of greeting card design and offer critiques on your assignments.
The Photoshop instruction shows screen captures from Elements 12, but any version above Elements 9 or Photoshop CS and CC versions will work fine. You can use any camera!
Specifics
1 – Basics
2 – Shooting Techniques for cards
3 – Text Effects
4 – Photoshop Enhancements
See complete details at http://www.esunrisedesigns.com
My newest product at http://www.esunrisedesigns.com is a collection of 20 templates for greeting cards. They are for many occasions and easy to use. In any version of Photoshop you will drag one of your photos over the design template – click Layer – Create Clipping Mask and your photo will pop into the gray area. There are a variety of shapes the photo will pop into – circle, oval, rectangle, heart, star, etc……… even one designed for putting your dog’s photo with paw prints around the border.
This sells for $10 and you can use each one over and over with the same photo or different photos. The downloadable file comes with complete instructions. More details at www.esunrisedesigns.com with a full listing of the cards.
Here is an example of a template (and with photo) – you can change all the colors.. and the text to anything you want on all the designs!
When you are shooting, think of leaving empty space (called negative space) for text on your cards. Adding a little something extra to the sentiment like Happy Birthday makes it even more special. This used one of the self-made backgrounds described a few days ago.
People love to be recognized for what they do and enjoy. Sports pictures with a cute message always bring a smile. Try photographing a tennis racquet and ball… simple but gets the point. Or perhaps a nice still life of running shoes… basketball or the full court… ice skates… so much you can do to customize your photos!
You can have great fun with themed borders and different cutout shapes. The “dog paws” (found in Photoshop under Shapes)are easy to place, size, and duplicate. The oval opening gives a nice frame for the photo.
This card took a little longer than most. Complete directions will be in a future eBook.
These are the basic techiques used:
1. Photographed against white foamcore with side light.
2. Added texture overlay… tweaked with Hue/Saturation and Opacity.. then Soft Light blending mode.
3. Added scroll corners, duplicated and moved to give double scroll effect.
4. Added new layer at bottom of the layer stack and filled with the background color.
5. Created for and printed on Red River Paper’s 60lb Polar Matte 5.25 x 10.5 square format paper.
For this card I used the Red River Paper 7×10 glossy card stock. It’s fun to let your image wrap around to the back of the card.
