Lessons

Lesson Info

Creating Grad Announcement Template

What I'm going to do at this point is I'm going to quickly just make this into a template so I have designed this card we like it, we're happy we want to make sure that we save this so that other clients down the road who wear green or are outside we can use this is our design siri's so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna make this into a template super quickly what I'm going to dio is I am going to go onto the collage these four images and I am actually going to separate them out again on different layers on the reason I'm going to need to do that is because when I'm making it into a template, I'm going to show you how to do this, but I'm going to drop images into the squares of this collage and if they're all on one layer when you drop it in using a clipping mask it's going to go to all of the layers so I want to make sure that I separate thes so that each boxes then now it's on layer um so very easily what I'm gonna do is hold control and click inside the thumbnail and as you can see it ...

has selected everything that has pixels on that layer and I'm simply just going to fill those with black great easy done control d is going to de select um so I don't have all those little marching ants and with my marquee tool I'm just going to make a selection here of this box and I'm gonna do this for all the boxes but I'm just gonna go control j control j is going to take your selection and copy it to its own layer so you can see over here that that selection is now copy to its own layer I'm going to do that for all four boxes here someone grab this one control j put it on zone layer go back to the original later and select this box great control j put on zone layer, go back to the original layer and then selected this box oops room they were gone really happens. I know. Oh, my gosh wrong. There we go. Okay, so now I have taken all four of those little boxes you can see they're on their own layers. There's one there's two there's three there's for perfect. I am also going to select my little green girl down here again hold control click inside it has selected her and be on the right layer there we go good and this is where I'm going to save this as a template basically I've just taken the images out I have black boxes, I've saved the type I can go through and just change the type according to whoever is that comes in next. I'm going to save it like this on dh. Then when I have a new client who comes in, I can just go ahead and go. Um, grab those images again. Not that I don't want. I did use that one and open those images. Okay, so this needs to go away. We can take my green image here, and I'm gonna drag it on top and then to put it into that black box, what I do is control all g. It has now put it into the box that I had created. See that. And then I can free transform it within that box to fit it's gonna be a little bit more evident when I do it on these other little boxes and that's how simple it is to use a template. So if you buy a temple online, it will show up with black boxes. Most of the time, they're all formatted in this kind of format on dh. You just dragged the image on top. Now, this went below all of this. So I need to make sure over here, in my layers, that I'm dragging it over. Teo, be on top of the one box that I want to put it in because when you do a clipping mask when you do that control all g it's going to drop it into whatever is below it so you want to make sure that it's placed on top of that little black box so I'm going to go control all g and drop it in and obviously it's way too big but you can see it's gone in this little black box and I'm gonna go ahead and free, transform it and bring it on down and we'll just drop these other ones real quickly so that I'm repeating that step so you don't do that again and easy way to make sure that you're always going on above the black box that you want to place it in is if you're on your mane design click on the box that you want to place it in and now anything that you dragged we'll just put it on top of the layer that you were on, so if you just click on that box and then drag it over it should go above the layer that you just clicked on control g throw it in that box free transform it, make sure you click so that nothing gets distorted quick, easy and painless okay again I'm gonna click on the box I don't put it in front of I totally put these in the wrong place is gonna drive me crazy because I switched the two girls but that's okay um free transform so quiet I feel like I should be playing jeopardy music while I do this I was saying that I wanted like the theme to twenty four so it added more drama to this like like it's just getting intense we're going down this is really intense right now you try to be soft and floating it's the difference between you and I things would be intense I want things to be non confrontational way how we roll all right, last one we're going to throw this in here give me one second I'd hoped multitask well, we talked about that my my total squirrel moments squirrel okay, it happens a lot. All right, so that's how simple and easy using a template is just dropping them into the square and that's included with the course the example that you're showing us here this template is included. Yes it's back to show you the templates that we have included with the course I have them right here. It's these three cards yeah. I'm gonna jump up and then and show you I was telling you guys how much we love arctic a tour and we focus on providing our clients with those gallery blocks. This is yes it's another template that were provided with coarse and so the big thing that I wanted to bring jen out to show you guys how to do is you can make your own templates and you can make your own and express yourself creatively and make your own and it's great it's awesome if you're good at that you have the time to do it in the desire to do it go make him she just gave you a detailed way to do it and and it's and it's awesome but if you just want to grab something and make a custom piece that's gonna have your your graduate the senior's name on it their information make it personal for them something that they can't get anywhere else it doesn't need to take you all day and if you want to make the jump from being a three hundred dollars photographer who's selling eight by tens and wall it's the only way to really do that is by offering more products it's not just your pricing you have to sell stuff but they can't get other way other places okay, so this was the first one I even put in like little details of when her party actually is we're all going to show up at her house knows s oh there's this one and then this one this is actually a really good example a lot of times if I put an image you know I was talking about the the story that is telling, ah lot of time, if I put an image in a background with type over top of it, I want to make sure that the background image is more of a mood image, especially if I'm going to be messing and bringing down the opacity of that background image again. It drives me crazy when I see designs where the there's an image in the background that's faded, but its eye contact with the camera, because to me, that's, a mixed message drives me nuts, because if you're going to fade it, it means that it should just be an emotion. It should just be an element in the background it shouldn't fight for attention. So this was a good example of that, where it's an image in the background looking down and then she is off to the side. How was, I think a lot of tips that you're giving like that and then making sure that they're turned in to the image these air, like small things like this isn't monumentally hard things to know or do our work in your designs it's just those little things that that make you a professional that let you take your images and your designs and your work to that next level, go from being a good photographer to a great photographer go from being a good designer. To a great design well and I think it's a lot about what you've been talking about of being conscious of getting it right and camera being conscious of making decisions on the front end so that you don't have things that bother you on the back end on dh it's those tiny little tweaks it's the tweaks that we do in the posing and it's the tweaks that we do in uh light room and things like that just put you above above and beyond so knowing those things like in composition and design your outcome is going to be more professional and you're not going to be sitting there saying there's something that drives me crazy about this because a lot of times your client won't even like recognize that there's something that's off they're just going to know whether they like it or not and when there's something psychological in the composition and the design it's going to throw them off but it's they're not really going to know why so it's it's knowing those things and tweaking those things that you have the best polished look that you can and then this was the last one his name isn't really ben willis but now it's alex apparently according to the other design that we have here but I did not know that when I got the files so this is another good example very rarely will I use a scripted font for a male design so this is very edgy this is very clean this is very modern it's much more masculine than what I'm going to do for a girl card, so I'm going to choose more masculine colors grays, blues, black screens, earth tones for guy cards I'm going to use warmer, softer fonts, softer colors again, it's all about that story and telling that story in your design great, I have a question from t girl who'd like to know when you're designing all these cards? Do you design the back of the card as well or to prepare them for me? Or do you prepare them for mailing? What did depends on what on what designed what you're printing so there are all sorts of different designs that you khun do most of the time most of my clients are doing a boutique card that's actually going to be a press printed card that's either two sided or folded or something along those lines what I've provided for you on the cards that we have is just a one sided card you could simply dio you could change up the fonts and just do a full bleed image on the back or you could adm or images or do whatever you want it on the back if you were going to be doing a press printed product but a lot of times our grad cards are the one sided you you do a lot of those correct. I think most of what you do is the photographic still kind of the slim line feel, which is why I provided that for you today, my business, most of what I dio, is the boutique business. And so that's, mostly press printed card. So I do often do folded or double sided guards for my business.