360Photography

The post How to Make Great Photo Invitations in Photoshop appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Ana Mireles.

Do you have an event coming up? Let’s make it a success!

It doesn’t matter if you’re throwing a birthday party for your kid or organizing a fancy dinner for your clients and coworkers, every event needs an invitation. You want people to know about it, but you also want to get them excited so they want to come. Here are a couple of ideas to do photo invitations to start you off on the right foot.

In this day and age, we are used to expressing ourselves with photos and a party is no exception to that. If you make a Facebook event it asks you to add a cover photo; if you want to do printed invitations, a photo works well too. The idea behind a photo invitation is to communicate more than just when and where. It also sets the tone for the party, so choose your image wisely and incorporate the text creatively.

Text box photo invitations

One idea for your photo invitations is to create a text box within your photo, like the example above. I suggest this idea if you’re going with postcard format, or folding card, where you can put all the practical information on the back or inside. This is because too much text on top of the photo can look messy. However, it can work if you’re using a minimalistic photo.

In any case, you can achieve this effect in just a few steps:

Step 1:

Once you’ve chosen your photo, open it in Photoshop. Then duplicate the layer by going to Menu -> Layer -> Duplicate Layer. You can also do this with the New Layer button at the bottom of the Layers panel if you prefer.

Step 2:

You want the two layers to have different brightness, so depending on the exposure of your image you can either darken the original layer or lighten the new top one. You can do this by adjusting the levels. Go to Menu -> Image -> Adjustments -> Levels, making sure the right layer is selected.

Step 3:

Now go to the top layer. Using the Rectangular Marquee Tool, select the area of the Text Box to the size you require. Once you have it, create a layer mask by clicking on the button at the bottom of the Layers panel. You can also delete the excess image by inverting the selection with Menu -> Select -> Invert and click the backspace key, however with this choice, you can’t adjust it later so I don’t recommend it.

Step 4:

Give the text box a special effect so that it’s clearly separated from the background image. Click on the fx button at the bottom of the Layers panel and choose the one you like, usually an Outer Glow or Drop Shadow should work well.

Step 5:

Finally, click on the Text tool and add your text. Remember that you can personalize the font, size, color, and much more on the top Options Bar. One trick I like to use is to type it twice in different colors, then move one of them a click or two to give it some depth.

There you go. Using the same technique, you can do the invitations to any event from a casual rooftop party with friends to a homey, intimate holiday party and much more. What sets the tone is the photo.

Faded background photo invitations

If you need all the information to be in one place together with the image, you can use a fade effect:

Step 1:

With your image open in Photoshop, create a new layer by clicking the new layer button at the bottom of the Layers panel. Then go to Menu -> Edit -> Fill. Choose the color you want keeping in mind that this becomes the background of the text. However, it also interacts with the image you chose.

Step 2:

Click on the Gradient Tool (if you don’t see it, check under the Fill Tool) and drag across your image to fade in the color layer into the image layer. This process is trial and error, so do it as many times as you need until you’re satisfied. If you need more information on how the Gradient Tool works I recommend you check out my tutorial “How to Customize and Use the Photoshop Gradient Tool.”

Step 3:

Now you just have to include all the information using the text tool as shown in the first example and you’re good to go.

Have fun and feel free to share your invitations with us in the comments section below.

The post How to Make Great Photo Invitations in Photoshop appeared first on Digital Photography School. It was authored by Ana Mireles.

Digital Photography School