- Creating playing cards in Photoshop is a simple process -- whether the cards are drawn in Photoshop as replicas of real playing cards or photos are used to symbolize different cards.
- Using the rulers and guides in Photoshop, measure out how big you want your playing cards and use the guides to mark out boundaries. Draw a box inside the first boundary. Go to Image>Canvas Size and make the canvas bigger. To do this, anchor the canvas in the first column, center row and add enough width to make 13 cards. Copy/paste 12 more boxes along the row and you have the templates for one suit of cards. To add the other three suits, simply make the canvas tall enough to fit four rows of 13 cards and copy/paste the remaining three rows into the file. Next, number out the cards: Ace through 10, Jack, Queen, King in the upper-left hand corner.
- All of the symbols representing the four suits in playing cards are available as custom shapes in recent versions of Photoshop. This makes creating cards extra easy. Select which suit you want to start with and place a symbol directly beneath the number or J, Q, K designator on the card.
- The numbered cards are the easiest cards in the deck -- and this process -- to create. The numbers are already on the card, the suit symbol is already on to designate which suit the card belongs to. Now all that is needed is "X" amount of suit symbols to correspond with the number of the card. Since Photoshop has all the symbols you need, copy/paste the correct amount of suit symbols on the corresponding card (example: 10 diamonds on the 10 of Diamonds). Use a regular deck of cards as a guide for where to place each symbol.
- Using personal photos makes creating the face cards a simple process. Simply copy/paste a photo onto each Jack, Queen and King card and leave an equal margin around all sides of the card. To create a more realistic card, draw the Kings, Queens and Jacks -- while using a regular card as a guide -- is also an option, although it is a challenging option.
