Features

Make your own christmas cards

Practical Photography

03 November 2009 09:54

In the December issue of Practical Photography we showed you how easy it is to shoot festive objects against a naturally lit white background in order to make your own Christmas cards. Here we show you everything you need to know to create the cards in Photoshop. Make sure you download our card template here before you begin.

STEP 1
Download the card template from one of the links on this page and open the file in Photoshop. If the guides aren’t visible, go to View>Show>Guides. These will indicate where to drop the image and text, with a 1cm border around the space on the right-hand side where images can be dropped in place. For a full-page card ignore this border, using the edges to line up your image.

STEP 2
Process your Christmas images using your preferred techniques and open in Photoshop. Drag the Background layer to the card template by clicking on the layer and physically dragging to the template. If the image is too big press Ctrl+T to use Transform to reduce its size, but make sure you hold down shift while you resize to constrain proportions. Hit Enter then press V to access the Move tool and position your image in the desired spot. To finish off the card, add text using the Text Tool.

‘Merry Christmas’ text layers are also available as downloads if you’re not sure how to add text and layer styles. Simply open the files and drag and drop the layer onto the card template.

Your finishing touch could be adding your signature to the card. To do this sign a white piece of paper with black pen and photograph it. Open up the image in Photoshop and increase contrast to brighten it up. Drag, drop and position on the template using the same method as in Step 2.

STEP 3
All we have to do is set up a couple of things in Photoshop’s Print dialogue and we’re all done. Access the print dialogue box by pressing Ctrl+P and add all your own settings, but don’t tick the Scale to Fit Media box as we want the card to remain at its original dimensions. Go to the pull-down menu at the top-right of the dialogue and change to Output mode. Check the Corner Crop Marks and Center Crop Marks boxes. This will give your prints cropping guides that make life a lot easier. Click OK to print. Finally you have to crop your cards and will need some C6 envelopes for your A6 size cards.