I am using Adobe Photoshop CS version 8.0, and I'm trying to create my very first first business card. I am trying to use the photo of a flower that I took as the background, and me being a newbie I am wanting to make sure I have good instructions for doing it right the first time. I read something about making sure it (the photo) is transposed, and I have no clue what that means. Does anyone know of any good tutorials that specifically help you with creating a business card USING your own photo? Thanks in advance for your help.
#1
Spend a few minutes with Google and search "business card tutorial".
I believe, the "transposed" should really be "transparent". You want the flower photo to fade into the background. And you do that by placing the photo into a separate layer and lowering the opacity of the layer. Text and other shapes or photos should be placed on their own layers to allow for changes to the card and other creative effects.
You really want to create a business card template so you can easily add different pictures and text.
#2
Yes, there are plenty of templates in Illustrator (I'm just starting to use them myself.) For print with text you'll want a vector program ideally.
#3
you'll want a vector program ideally.
Ideally you want a page layout app like Indesign.
#4
But it is possible to do what I am trying to do using Photoshop CS right? I only ask because I have heard that Photoshop CS is pretty advanced and if you know how to manipulate it correctly, you can make pretty much anything.
#5
Yes, if that's all you have.
#6
save as PDF to keep type vector
#7
The technique of taking a photo, and wanting to "fade" it into the background, and so that you can have text above it to show clearly...is that called "using a mask", or "creating a vignette"?
#8
Demille, if you create a new document the same size as your photo and then drag your photo into that new document, you will have created a new layer, which you can then adjust the opacity on to make it fade out as you wish. look in the layers palette for the opacity slider. then your text will show up better depending how much fade you apply.
You could also do layer-new-layer from background to get the opacity slider,but it looks different at 50 percent opacity on my screen doing it both ways and i cant figure out at the moment why its different. hope that helps
Edit, make sure your new document is white to start.
#9
I really appreciate all of the help/advice! :-)
#10
Got another qustion. The photo that I am wanting to use as my business card, appears to be much bigger than the new document or sample template for creating business cards in Photoshop CS. Do it have to get the size of my photo to match the sample business card template? If so, how would I go about doing that? I would provide a screenshot to show you what I am looking at, but can't paste it in here.
#11
I guess what I am asking is do I have to shrink down the picture size so that the photo that I want to use, and the business card blank template are the same size, including Pixel Dimension and Document Size? This has to match evenly, correct?
#12
If you are commercially printing the card, then actually the image should be a few millimeters larger than the template, to provide what is called "bleed". If printing from Photoshop, you will want a resolution of 300 ppi on the image ... if it is 72 ppi, change it now and you may see the image is much smaller than you thought.
If the image is still too big, you can reduce it with the Transform menu item. If it is too small, find another image ... enlarging more than a slight amount will result in a fuzzy image (unless that is the look you are going for.)
#13
On Tue, 15 May 2007 18:38:50 -0700, wrote:
Got another qustion. The photo that I am wanting to use as my business card, appears to be much bigger than the new document or sample template for creating business cards in Photoshop CS. Do it have to get the size of my photo to match the sample business card template? If so, how would I go about doing that? I would provide a screenshot to show you what I am looking at, but can't paste it in here.
Hi Demille. Try this....you say that the photo is larger than the sample template that you want to use. First, open the sample template, then click on "Image".....scroll down and click on "Image Size". This will tell you the exact size of the template. Write down the width, height, and resolution.
Now open the photo you want to use. Go to the tool bar and select the Crop Tool, or hit the letter "C" on the keyboard. You will see boxes at the top of the window where you need to fill in the Width, Height, and Resolution.(make sure you also select pixels/inch) Fill in those boxes with the information you wrote down from the sample template.
Now, hold the cursor at one corner of the photo and drag it diagonally to the other corner of the photo. This will show you exactly what will need to be cropped off in order to make the photo fit the sample template. You can move your selection by using the arrow keys. Once you have made your selection, just click on the check mark at the top right of the screen. If you don't want to make that selection, just click on the circle with a line through it. Now all you have to do is to copy the cropped photo onto your sample template.
I hope this helps.
Talker
#14