For this project, we wanted to make a winter-themed holiday card using this shot from a recent family portrait shoot, using only Adobe Photoshop. [figure 1]

You can view the details of this shoot by clicking on this lesson: Taking a Family Portrait Indoors

Creating a Card Layout
Before you start working on the design elements of the card, it’s a good idea to first determine how big your card is going to be and how your image will be displayed on the card. (As you’ll see later on in this lesson, we actually modified our layout somewhat from what we originally had in mind, which was to make a 5x7” card with a white border surrounding the photo.)

There are several ways you can start with a card layout. You can work off of the original photo you want to make the card out of, or another photo that you want to be in the card, or you can simply open up a new document and drag your elements into it. Here, we chose this last option.

Once Photoshop was launched, we created a new document by pressing Command-N (Control-N for PC). The named the file and then entered the image dimensions: 5x7” with a resolution of 300 ppi (pixels per inch). [figure 2]

Next, we wanted to create guides within the document so that we could place our main image in the center of the document. In order to position and reposition guides, it’s best to have the Move tool selected. [figure 3]

If your document does not have ruler marks on the top and left sides of the window, you’ll need to display them. To do this, simply press Command-R (Control-R for PC). [figure 4]

Once your rulers are visible, click anywhere within either of the rulers and drag onto the canvas. When you do, you’ll see a light blue guide appear when you release your click. Use the guides to line up with measurements on the rulers. The rulers can be displayed as pixels, inches, centimeters, millimeters, points, picas, and percent. To choose one of these options, Control-click on either of the rulers.

Here, we chose inches, and set the guides to ¾ of an inch on the top and sides and a full inch on the bottom. Adding a little extra space on the bottom is common and can help to balance out the weight of the frame visually. The rectangle we created with the guides indicated where the main image would sit. [figure 5]

Maintaining Aspect Ratios While Scaling
With the guides now set, we opened up the main image, and with the Move tool still selected (keyboard command: V), we dragged this image onto our new document. As you can see from this screen shot, our image was bigger than the layout dimensions and needed to be scaled down. [figure 6]

Keep in mind that this is actually the ideal scenario. It’s better to have an image that’s too big for your layout than too small, as you’ll run into image quality issues if you have to scale an image up from its original size.

To scale an image in either direction, first choose Edit > Transform > Scale. This will render a line around the image layer that holds small boxes located at the corners and middles of each side. To scale the image layer, simply click-drag any of the small boxes. To preserve the original aspect ratio, hold down the Shift key while dragging. [figure 7]

Keeping the Canvas Size Balanced
After we scaled the image to align with the guides, we saw that the aspect ratio of the image was different from that of our layout. This then presented us with three options:

1. We could crop the image layer to fit the aspect ratio of the layout.
2. We could center the image layer in the layout and not worry that the top and sides were not the same sides.
3. Crop the layout to tailor to the aspect ratio of the image.

Since we didn’t have a lot of cropping options with this image and we wanted to maintain the distance between the sides and top, we decided to apply the third option.

This meant that we needed to set a guide exactly ¾ of an inch away from the left edge of the image. But when we looked at the top ruler, we saw that the left edge didn’t line up precisely with any major measuring mark (see figure 7). It’s not that you can’t make a measurement from an odd measuring point like this, it’s simply that it’s tedious to do so.

Fortunately, Photoshop allows you to easily reposition the ruler for such measurements. To do so, click on the corner point where the two rulers meet and drag to any area in the image window. The rulers will reset so that the 0 marks for both rulers start at the point where you release the click. Here, we click-dragged from the ruler corner to the top left corner of the image. As you can see, the 0 marks on both rulers became aligned with this point. [figure 8]

With the left edge aligned with the top ruler, it was easy to measure the ¾ inch mark away from the edge. To make the crop easier, we dragged out a new guide and set it exactly ¾ of an inch away from the left edge. [figure 9]

With the guides in place, it’s easy to crop your image precisely as you want it. Select the Crop tool (keyboard command: C) and click-drag from any corner of the guides to its corner opposite. Note that with the guides in place, the crop will snap to the guides, ensuring that your crop is exactly in line with the guides. [figure 10]

Precision Background Removal
Now, in reviewing this family portrait shot, you may have thought to yourself, “This doesn’t really look like the best candidate for a winter-themed holiday card. After all, the scenery outside is anything but wintery.” And you’d have a good point with such a thought. You may be surprised to learn that we harbored similar thoughts with this image. But rather than look for a different image, we decided to digitally “winterize” this one, by removing the existing outdoor background and replacing it with a snow scene.

While there are many ways to remove backgrounds and other elements of a shot, one of the more exacting methods is by using the Pen tool. The Pen tool allows you to create an articulated path around your background, make a selection from that path, and delete or hide the contents within that selection. To learn more on using the Pen tool, check out the following lessons:

Using Photoshop Tools
Introduction to Photoshop's Pen Tool

Here, we selected the Pen tool (keyboard command: P), zoomed in on the image around 200%, and started a clipping path that would run around the entire area of the outdoor scene. [figure 11 & 12]

When drawing the path, it’s a good idea to stay within the edge of the area you want to keep. For example, here, we wanted to stay just inside the shirtsleeves and hair. Otherwise, you run the risk of having the result look obviously “cut out.” [figure 13]

Once you’ve completed your path, you need to activate it, or turn it into a selection, before you can properly delete the background. To do this, Command-click (Control-click for PC) on the path in the Paths palette. You’ll be able to tell when the selection is activated, as the path will appear to move with “marching ants.” [figure 14]

With your selection active, you can now press the Delete key. The area where you background was will now reveal the layer that is underneath it. In this case, the background revealed the white background below. [figure 15]

Inserting a New Background
Now comes the fun part. Once you have your substitute background image opened up, it’s easy to position it in your main image. Remember that any image that you drag over will be placed on top of whatever layer happens to be selected. So in this case, you’d want to select the white background layer so that the new background rests on top of it and underneath the layer of the family and window frame.

Using the Move tool (keyboard command: V), simply drag the new background image onto the working image. [figures 16 & 17]

Similar to the main image, the background image was a little too big and needed to be scaled down and repositioned to look plausible. [figure 18]

Once the new background was in place, we saw that we needed to trim the top section off so that it didn’t interrupt the top section of the frame. So with the new background layer still selected, we used the Rectangular Marquee tool to draw a selection that would not include the top section, inverted the selection by pressing Command-Shift-I (Control-Shift-I for PC), and pressed delete. [figure 19]

•••••

Want to learn more? Become a Member of Web Photo School to see the rest of this step-by-step lesson. Already a member or planning on joining? Click here to view the entire lesson, which includes the following steps:

• Making a Custom Black and White Conversion
• Blurring the Background for a Natural Effect
• Outlining Your Images with a Stroke
• Dedicating a Tonal Adjustment Layer to a Single Image Layer
• Adjusting Color Balance to Create a Sepia Tone
• Creating and Balancing Out Design Elements
• Adding Crop Marks for Print

Afterward, you'll see exactly how we arrived at this final result. [figure 20]