How to Make Your Own Wedding Announcements Using Photoshop CS4

Announce your wedding with cards made in Photoshop CS4.

Share the excitement of your recent wedding day and let friends and family know of the event, a new name change or just share a memento of the occasion by sending wedding announcements. Your wedding is a special event and your wedding announcements should be just as distinctive. Instead of using generic announcement cards, make your own by taking advantage of Photoshop CS4. Photoshop is a graphics software program, part of the Adobe Creative Suite.

Things You'll Need

• Digital photo

Instructions

1. Open Photoshop CS4. Click the "File" menu at the top of the screen. Select "New." Type "WeddingAnnouncement" into the "Name" box. Type "5" into the "Width" box and "7" into the "Height" box. Pull down the dimensions box for each and select "Inches." Pull down the "Background Contents" menu and select "White." Click the "OK" button. The Photoshop workspace opens.

2. Click the "File" menu again and select "Open." Browse to a wedding photograph and double-click the file name. The picture opens in a new Photoshop window.

3. Select the "Crop" tool, which looks like two crossed elbow joints, on the "Tools" pane on the left side of the screen. With your mouse or trackpad, draw a square or rectangle around the part of the photo you want to use in the announcement. When the rest of the photo goes dark, press the "Enter" key to crop the photo.

4. Press and hold down the "Ctrl" key on the keyboard. Drag and drop the photo onto the "WeddingAnnouncement" window. Resize it if necessary by clicking the "Edit" menu at the top of the screen, selecting "Transform," clicking "Scale" and shrinking the photo to size.

5. Click the "T" icon on the "Tools" palette to open the "Type" toolbar at the top of the screen. Choose a font, text color and text size. Click the top of the "WeddingAnnouncement" box and type your names or a greeting such as "Just Married!"

6. Click lower on the announcement, change text colors and sizes if desired and type additional details that you want to share about your wedding.

7. Double-click the top-left square of the "Color Picker," the two overlapping colored boxes at the bottom of the "Tools" pane. Pick a paint color that contrasts with the text colors. Click "OK."

8. Select the "Paint Bucket" tool, which looks like a tipping paint can, on the "Tools" pane. If you don't see it, right-click the icon of a shaded rectangle. These two tools share the same space on the pane. Choose "Paint Bucket Tool" from the fly-out menu. Click anywhere in the white space of the "WeddingAnnouncement" box to fill the announcement's background with the new color.

9. Click the "File" menu, select "Save As" and save the announcement to the computer.

Tips & Warnings

• Resizing a photo in Photoshop is possible, but a good guideline is to go smaller, not larger. Enlarging a photo can lead to a problem called pixelation. The photo begins to break up and look fuzzy. It's always possible to get smaller, so open a larger image than you need for the announcement, crop it and then use the "Scale" tool to scale it down, not up.

References

• University of Washington: Photoshop Type Tool