Intro to Adobe Photoshop for Nonprofits: Part 2

Welcome back! This guide will walk you through the first steps of how to create a poster and practice the basics you learned in Intro to Photoshop for Nonprofits: Part 1. We've included screenshots for each step, too.

For some steps, there are also Bonus sections. These are a little extra information in case you're really curious about Photoshop. You can definitely skip these without missing any of the process, though.

Gather What You Need to Get Started

Image

The photo background of the poster is from the photo site Pixabay. The photo is public domain, so you can use it in any way you want and without attribution. The XL size provides a high enough resolution that you could also print it if you want without losing any quality.

Photo, XL size (.jpg, 5 MB)

Bonus: Pixabay offers many public domain images that you can use without royalties or attribution. See TechSoup's Can I Use That Image for My Website or Newsletter? post for more information on where you can get free images and what you should know about how you can use them.

Logo

The poster includes a dummy nonprofit organization logo. You can download it below.

Logo File (.eps, 1 MB)

Poster File

If you want to compare your poster to the final product, or just want to skip the tutorial and replace everything with your own stuff, here's the PSD file.

As you can see, everything is in Latin and generic. Designers call this "Lorem Ipsum," but it's just a way to see how copy will look in your design when there isn't any actual copy.

Photoshop Poster File (.psd, 46 MB)

Font

Before you get started with the Photoshop (PSD) file, you'll also need Open Sans, the font used in the poster (it's free). You could use any font you already have, but this one is light and thin, pleasing to the eye, and fits the overall mood of the poster.

You can download and install Open Sans from this download page.

Create the Photoshop File

Now that you have the photo, the font, and the logo, you can put them together. Before you can just assemble it all, though, you'll need to create the Photoshop file and make some adjustments to the image. We'll start by creating a blank canvas called "Untitled-1."

1. Create a new file by choosing File > New.
2. Enter the following values. This will create a large canvas — large enough that you can use the image in print or online without sacrificing quality. (These measurements are equal to 8.5 by 11 inches.)Width: 2550 Pixels Height: 3300 Pixels Resolution: 300 Pixels/Inch
3. Click OK.

Clean the Photo

Now we have a blank canvas. Let's open the photo next to it.

Make Adjustments

1. Open the photo you downloaded by choosing File > Open and browsing to where you saved the file. (If you're following along from last week, this is the photo of the red-headed girl.) You should now have blank canvas ("Untitled-1") next to the photo ("little-girl-603139.jpg").
2. This photo looks good, but it can look better with some simple adjustments. Photoshop includes many options for tweaking the tone, which is the overall lightness or darkness and colors of the image in relation to warmth (red/orange/yellow) or coolness (blue/green). Choose Image > Auto Tone to adjust them automatically and take some of the guesswork out of it. Bonus: Choosing the Auto features in Photoshop is a great way to just make an image better without extra effort. If you want more control over how an image looks, check under the Adjustments menu. That's where you'll find controls for brightness and contrast; hue, saturation, and lightness; color balance; and so on. Here we're adjusting the overall tone with a one-size-fits-all tool, but the real fine-tuning comes with using Curves. That's next-level stuff, but if you're really curious, you can check out Photoshop Cafe's video tutorial on curves.
3. Take a look at the differences. They're subtle, but her hair is redder, and there's more contrast in her eyes, skin tone, and freckles.

Resize the Photo

The photo measures 3648 by 5472 pixels, but our canvas is 2550 by 3300 pixels, so we'll need to shrink it down.

1. Choose Image > Image Size.
2. Enter the following values. You may need to change Inches to Pixels and enter the resolution first.Width: 2200 Pixels Height: 3300 Pixels Resolution: 300 Pixels/Inch Resample: Bicubic Sharper (reduction) Bonus: Photoshop offers multiple ways to resample an image, which means the quality of how it scales up or down. Here we're reducing the size, so we've chosen Bicubic Sharper. This setting focuses more on keeping edges sharp when an image goes down in size. If you need to enlarge something, you'll always lose some quality (despite what TV tells you), but you can minimize the damage by choosing the right resampling option. See Tuts+ Design's video tutorial on resampling for ways to dazzle your friends at parties when the topic of bicubic resampling inevitably comes up.
3. The image now has the correct height, but it's too narrow. The photo is 2200 pixels wide but the canvas we'll be moving it to is 2550. Let's add some space on the left. Choose Image > Canvas Size.
4. Enter the following values. Width: 2550 Pixels Height: 3300 Pixels Anchor: center-right (Click the arrow on the right in the vertical middle so your Anchor section looks like the screenshot below.) Canvas extension color: White Bonus: The anchor position basically holds the image in place and adds space beyond that, saving you the extra step of adding space everywhere and then moving your image to the right place.

Fix the Photo

1. It's the right size now, but that white strip is far from subtle. Let's fill it in with Photoshop's magical Content-Aware Fill. First, choose the Magic Wand tool in the Tools palette. The Tools palette is typically located on the left side of the screen. (You may have to click and hold on the Quick Selection Tool icon first in order to choose the Magic Wand.)
2. Click the white strip.
3. Choose Edit > Fill.
4. Choose Content-Aware for the Contents and click OK. Bonus: Content-Aware Fill takes information from around the selected area and makes its best guess for filling it in. It works wonders on blended colors (gradients) and high resolution landscapes, but not so well on images that are more complex. (Maybe someday.) In this case, since the background is a pretty subtle gradient, Photoshop handles it with no problem.

Insert Photo into Photoshop File

This leaves the left side of the photo perfect for adding text and other elements without blocking the girl's face. Let's move the image over to our canvas.

1. Press Ctrl-D (Command-D on a Mac) to deselect the filled-in area. Choose Layer > New > Layer from Background. Click OK. This allows you to move the image.
2. Press Ctrl-A (Command-A on a Mac) to select all, Ctrl-C (Command-C on a Mac) to copy the image, click the blank canvas you created during the first section ("Create a Photoshop File"), and press Ctrl-V (Command-V on a Mac) to paste it. You should now have the image on two canvases: the original (little-girl-603139.jpg) and the new canvas (Untitled-1).
3. You can now close the original photo ("little-girl-603139.jpg") without saving. It's a good practice to keep your originals separate from your Photoshop project files in case you make a mistake and need to go back to them.
4. Choose File > Save. Save it as template.psd.

Part 3

Next week, we'll add the opaque box and logo. Have any questions so far? Let us know. We can only answer any questions related to this project, but let us know if anything is unclear. See you next week!

Part 1Part 3

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