Postcards and Photomontages

Content of the lesson:

Postcards and Photomontages

You can meet postcards with photos all around the world. They can be used as classical touristic postcards from any place or as a housing supplement.

Examples of Postcard Photomontages

Awakening

The following postcard contains only one photo, its name and year. It is a photo with border and description. There is a thin line between the description and the year as a graphic element. You can see a light gray border around the photo.

Creation:

• The aspect ratio of image is 2:3 so we can print it on a standard photographic paper for digital photos.
• Photo is centered according to the background and the layer style "Stroke" was applied.
• You can use a serif font for the headline with an interesting font for numbers.

Create this postcard photo inside Adobe Photoshop into a new document with resolution 2000x3000 pixels. The source photo is available in clipart (nature/slunecnice).

An analogue example can be a similar photo which was photographed horizontally.

Lazy winter

The following postcard contains two photos. The creation is not difficult - you have to change the height of photos to fit inside the document. You can see the inserted description in the right bottom corner and you can use a lighter font for the year which will not disturb the title of the photo.

Creation:

• In case you insert photos by dragging them into a document inside Adobe Photoshop CS5, they will be inserted as intelligent objects so you can resize them as you wish without losing quality. After adjusting the size you can rasterize both photos (convert them to standard layers). For rasterizing objects you have to click on the layer using the right mouse button and select the command "Rasterize Layer".

Campanulla

The following postcard contains 4 photos. One is centered and the other ones are placed near each other:

• there are identical spaces between them
• they are aligned to the left and to the right below the main photo
• the space between the main photo and the couple of three smaller photos is the same as all spaces between the three small photos

Creation:

• Insert and center the main photo (select the layer with the photo and the background (click on the layers + CTRL key) and then click on the icon to align to center in the tools panel).
• Insert the three smaller photos (create a rectangle of required size for the first photo and duplicate it twice, align the first one to the left, the last one to the right and place the second one between them. Then select all three layers and align them according to the top border and using the transform tool place them to get identical spaces between them).
• Insert the title, choose a suitable font and get the color using the Eyedropper tool from the large photo. Do not forget to center the title.

Possibilities of Creation

Manually using Crop Mask

You can create a "container" for each photo using a layer with rectangle of any color and of required size. Place the layer with photo above this layer, click using the right mouse button and select "Create Clipping Mask" from the context menu. You will see only the defined rectangle area from this layer. These rectangles can be cloned, moved and you can paste different photos to use the clipping mask. You can easily place identical spaces using the transform tool and guides.

Using the Rectangular Grid Tool in Adobe Illustrator

You can also use Adobe Illustrator to cooperate with Adobe Photoshop. You can easily create a regular grid using the Rectangular Grid tool in Adobe Illustrator (using mxn rectangles - you can set the number after clicking on the icon of this tool). Then you can copy this grid using the clipboard to Adobe Photoshop (insert it as an intelligent object), adjust its size and rasterize it if needed (to be able to apply styles for example).

Grid created in Adobe Illustrator with displayed options of the Rectangular Grid tool:

Grid inserted from Adobe Illustrator to Adobe Photoshop. You can see the rasterized grid (from an intelligent object) in the first layer and the photo with mask which contains copied rasterized grid in the second layer.

You can search for more options how to create a square grid on google - grid of images photoshop (the variant created from patterns is interesting).

Photobooks

Many photostudios offer creating so called photobook nowadays (for example Foto �koda). These books are usually created from customer's photos in specialized software and the photostudio only prints and binds it. Books have many predefined layouts of photos in pages and a customer can insert photos to these layouts. You should know that photobooks usually do not contain more than 16 pages and their quality and prices can be very different.

You can see an example of a photobook (output from a software in which it was created): fotokniha-svatba.pdf.

Homework

Realize your own postcard photomontage from photos in clipart folder or from your own photos. The postcard has to contain at least 3 photos and a description (choose a suitable font).

You can see several more examples for inspiration.

50 times me (245 second of emotions)

This photomontage shows 50 photos of a child which were taken in 5 second intervals. You can see vivacity and energy of the child (enthusiasm, contemplation, fatigue or play with a tray).

Villages Strání and Kv�tná at Sunrise

You can see that the first photo captures the moment of sunrise as well as the other photos but does not fit into the collection because of another color balance - this photo is quite disturbing. The center panoramic photo in this photomontage was created from 9 photos.

Flat Decoration

This photomontage represents a flat design which consists of photos of tulips.

Two Men and Dog

This is quite funny photo which captures two men and a dog. All photos were photographed using a wide angle objective (24mm) and from a small distance. This caused the distortion of proportions ("inflation" of heads) - physical properties of wide objective were used.

Questions

1. How would you realize a postcard photomontage of different types?
2. Which procedures can be used to align photos according to them?
3. How can you use guides when creating postcards?
4. How can you make identical vertical and horizontal spaces between photos (for example in postcard Campanulla)?
5. Show how to use the Rectangular Grid tool in Adobe Illustrator and how to insert the result to Adobe Photoshop. Can you use this grid to place one photo to each field?