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Lesson Info

Making Magazine Ads in Photoshop

Now let's build one that's a little bit more complicated. So even the one that we just looked at you could revamp that and turn it into a magazine ad. We talked a little bit about it yesterday in Boulder, Colorado. We have a lot of column. A local rags don't know what the correct term for it is. But these little small, like local magazines. That's where all the photographers advertises, where all the freelance designers advertised. You know, all the spas in the, you know, the vet veterinarians in the yoga places and all that good stuff and nutritionists because his boulder. But I often see that they have the worst designed as ever. So even though we use this design on a postcard that could easily be an ad, you just need Teoh, uh, at a few more pieces of information such as, you know, your your oil, your phone number, your address perhaps, you know, to get them to come to your studio. So this is a viable ad designed Teoh. So let's close this one. And in fact, in the exercise files that ...

you get with the course purchase I've given you to ads were only gonna create one of them in class because the other one is exactly what we just did it in a little bit of a different format. Ah, pop it open just so you can see it. It's pretty funny. Now. Something like that is going to capture somebody's attention, and that's all advertising is about. You have about 0.3 seconds to capture attention from somebody. The best way to capture attention like that is with a striking image, and this is gonna stand out because it's unexpected. It's funny, it's striking. I think her teeth are a little bit too white, but that's beside the point. But this is the exact same technique that we just did. That color bar is exactly what we just did the typographic logo. And then we've got just a little bit of information down with the bottom. If I saw that and one of those local magazines boy howdy, I'd want that photographer to take my pictures, and so you're gonna get that with the exercise file, and you can see over here exactly how we did it. Now I do have another texture going on in the background here that I dropped down. Where is that? At the blend mode changed on it. There we go. So I've got a bed of roses background going on here that I used as texture So you can take this file reverse, engineer it and create this ad for you. But that's just to illustrate that this particular technique works well on a full on magazine ad as well. And the only reason I added texture is just to give the background little visual interest. I don't have to you, but I think it looks a little bit better where that turned on a little bit more interesting. I tend to always use three elements of my designs graphic, three different kinds of graphics. So for this one, the three graphics would be the wedding shot, the bed of roses, and then I'm gonna count. This color bar is another graphic element. There's something about the power of three, if you choose. If you put three elements, graphical elements in your design is gonna look fantastic. Were to use that same principle in this ad. And if you're if you like this kind of thing that I highly recommend my graphic design for everyone classes three days of full on graphic design. So this is an S on. There is a question about creating our GP or C m y que colors. Are you gonna go into that? And this course because of the output? Not really. But it's a great question. OK, but what we can say about that is find out. Figure out who you're going to get to print this stuff, ask them what they want. Nine times out of 10 they're going to say they want an RGB file that as more digital presses are being used in print shops, the whole seem like a thing. An RGB thing is becoming less of an issue because the printers know what they're doing, and they would rather handle the conversion from one color space to another. So all we're really talking about is the difference between RGB, which you can see on your screen. OK, it's what we can reproduce digitally the colors we can reproduce digitally versus the colors that we can produce in print using ink. And that's seeing my casings for scion yellow, magenta and black. And as you might imagine, there are fewer colors that we can produce by mixing paint. Then there are that we can create digitally on screen, so it's a smaller color space in print when you're printing with real ink. But more and more printers want you to give them the RGB file, and they want to handle the conversion to see him like a in their digital presses. So you really don't have to worry about it if your piece is going to be printed in seem like a no, that everything you see on your screen is gonna print a little darker. So if you know that your piece is gonna be a pregnancy and like a, I would make everything on my screen look just a hair to light and then the print will probably be perfect. So that's the only difference. You're going from a large color space on screen to a small color space in print, because the the ink is made by mixing paint so we don't have as many colors available. There is we do on our screen. So things were going to print just a little bit darker. Just a touch. Not a whole lot, but just a touch, so you might as a rule. Make everything about 10 15% lighter on your screen. Unless you've done a test print with the printer. So that's my advice, and I'm sticking to it. Thank you for asking that Jean Marie. Okay, so this is the fun little add that we're gonna create. So we're gonna be using some of the same techniques we're gonna bring in our imagery as a smart object. We're going to resize them. We were going to do the same kind of logo. See how nice that logo treatment is. I mean, it just works there. So many variations on you can use down at the bottom. We're gonna add a color bar just like we did earlier. And you'll notice that I snatched up the color from this guy sweater for both the logo and the color bar. And from my third graphical element, I went and found online at one of those stock image companies like fa Tolia dot com or istock photo dot com. And this dude had a leopard shirt on. I thought, Well, that's a fun pattern. So I went over there to fatally attacked in Leopard and bam. I got a nice background spend a couple of bucks on it, Download it visas many times as you want, and I've got it popped into the background here at an extremely low capacity. It's only 10% but it's just enough to give visual interest in depth to that piece. So what are our three graphical elements? Will are head shots or one. Our logo. Actually, we've got four in this. We could count. The logo is a graphical element, but I kind of wouldn't because it's more text based. It's our second graphical element would be the color bar, and then the 3rd 1 is the texture in the design. Power three. It's really, really great. And also odd numbers of images next to each other in a piece like that are more visually pleasing than even numbers. So while I'm using three head shots on this piece, you could easily they use mawr. But don't use an even number cause it won't look as good. In other words, don't use four headshots. Use five so you always want to have odd numbers of the bigger graphical elements. That also works in the way I've split up the layout. Here. You'll notice that these pictures, if you take the document size, 2/3 of the height is being taken up by the head shots, and I've got about 1/3 of the height taken up by this area down here. So I'm splitting the canvas in a little bit of an odd way, which also makes it more visually pleasing. So let's build this when it's far easier than you think. And it's a good repeat of everything we did in the last one. So we'll close this up, and the first thing we need to do is decide what size we want our ad to be. Let's say this particular Addis five by four so we can go up to the file menu. Choose new. We'll call this one ad alive. Press the space bar. We can enter five. Change the unit of measurement two inches if you need to Over here by four. Since we're going to print, I'm just gonna roll with 300. But again, ask whoever is printing your piece what they want, they'll be happy to tell you, and if they don't know, run and find another printer because things are not going to go will so here's our document. Now, before we start bringing in images, I want to split up my canvas and use some guys that are just gonna help me place all the different elements. So for this one, I want to divide the width of my canvas by three. I'm gonna bring in three head shots. So let's go ahead and turn on our rulers by choosing view rulers or by using the keyboard shortcut, which is commander control, are for rulers another easy one to remember a raw. So there's our rulers. Now let's go ahead and set our guide. So I've done the math ahead of time thinking this so we can choose View new guide and we're gonna add vertical guides. So that's already set. That's great. So our first guide, we want to split this baby up into three pieces is at 1.66 and now let's go back up to the View menu at another new guide at 3. So now our campuses is nicely split up. Yes, ma'am, Can you add guides, um, in Photoshopped like you doing in design where you just click on the ruler and drag down or drag across. Absolutely great question, Kenny and guides. Despite dragging and dropping absolutely. Point your cursor somewhere inside the ruler and you can drag drag over if you're being precise with your guide placement, I find that it's easier Teoh use the new guy dialog box than than trying to make sure. But if you're not being precise, anyone eyeball it into threes. That's totally fine again, there's no ad police. They're gonna show up on your door. So now that we've got our guys, let's go ahead and start placing our imagery so we'll choose. File place. Go to the folder where everything lives, courses easier if you gather up all of your assets first. So we're working in the second folder here. The photo path, because really will meet when we build this thing, we're leading the viewer's eye with a path of horizontal images, and then because the way our eyes read, we enter a piece at top, left our eyes, then moved to the right and then down. Then the next thing we see is the logo and then the contact information underneath. So it's a great way to lead the viewer's eye down to the either call to action or your logo, so we'll look that in a second. So let's bring in the first image. Let's say it's this one right here and click place, so I need to resize this image, but I can't see my corner handles arguably hard to grab hold of him if you can't see where they are. So we're going to use that keyboard shortcut of fit to screen, which is Commander Control zero. And that makes Photoshopped resize the window just enough where you can see your image. We're gonna resize it by pressing and holding the shift key, cause we don't want it to get walkie job. And when we get this one about the size we want, let's say it's about right there. I'm just trying to eyeball it so that my like 2/3 of the high is taken up by the head shots, and I've got another 2/3 down here to play with for logo and contact info. When you get it just right, go ahead and press the return. Now I want to hide this portion of the photo, so I'm gonna do that with a layer mask. So let's grab the rectangular marquis. Click and drag from outside of the document down toe about right there. Now we can click the circle within the square icon at the bottom of our layers panel. And now we've got that panel all set. Well, what if I want to bring in the other two head shots at the exact same size with the exact same layer mascot? The exact same placement. How can I do that? Well, since we brought in this first headshot as a smart object, one of the other superpowers of smart objects is that you can swap constant in and out of that protective rapper. You have to be careful about how you do it, though, because let me make my layers pounds a little bit wider. If you right, click over here by the layer name. Not over here. Not over here. Over here, you'll get different menus according to where you clicks will be very careful. So click by the layer name, right, click or control click and you're going to see you've got some nice little options that pertain to smart objects. One of them is convert to smart object. Well, we already have a smart, obvious. We don't have to do that. The next option is new. Smart object via copy. What on earth does that cryptic command mean? That means that we can duplicate this smart object, but in a manner where it won't be linked to the original smart object, because smart objects, by their very nature, want to be linked to each other. So that means that if I go ahead and I'll just do it illustrated, I'll make a copy of this layer. So I'll press Commander Control J, which is a keyboard shortcut for duplicating the layer. Or you can click and drag the layer on top of the new layer icon at the bottom of your layers panel. Now let's grab the move tool. And while holding the shift key, let's scoot that image over now. If I control or right click near the layer name and use the replace Contents Command, which lets me swap out content, watch what happens. Come over here and navigate to the next image click place. Both of them changed. We don't want that. We want to create a smart object that is not linked to the original, but this is a great way to manage repeating content in a in a document. You know, let's say you've created a layout in your logo, lives in several places, but it different sizes. If you change the way the treatment, one of them looks in their linked, smart objects, they all change, which is really great. If you're doing stuff like making labels, I do a lot of design and boulder for my favorite restaurants. I have this master plan of that. If I do enough food photography and design that I will never have to pay for another meal in Boulder County ever again, that is my girl. I'm on my way. So in one of those situations, I designed limoncello bottles for my favorite trattoria on Pearl. And it's really helpful because I do it all in photo shop. And so I make several labels up on a sheet, so I print about 12 of them at a time. But if the owner of the chef needs to make a change to one of them, I change one of them and they all update so it's very good. So by their nature, smart objects are linked to each other. When you just do a straight duplication. So let's do please or delete the duplicate that we made and let's duplicated in a way where it's not gonna be linked. So it's controller, right click near the way your name and let's choose new smart object via copy. I wish this, said duplicates, smart object unlinked. It doesn't new smart object via copy. We get Another smart object was press V to grab our move. Tool scooted over, and I'm holding down the shift key just so I don't scoop the image up, up and down. I wanted to stay perfectly aligned with my original. Now let's go swap the content so we'll control or right click near the layer name again. She's replaced contents and navigate to another one cook place. See, the 1st 1 didn't change, so that's what we want. The first several times you build this at home, you will make linked smart objects, I promise you, but you only have to make that mistake a few times, and then you'll remember how to make an unlinked smart object. So right click or control like near the layer name. Choose replaced conquer. Choose new Smart Rajavi, a coffee Now we're gonna choose, replace contents and let's get our other little do here with the leopard collar. And there's our images. So, yes, we could have brought in all those files using the file place command, and we could have resized and mashed them individually. But that's not real efficient for our time, is it? Now let's start building the bottom portion of the card, so I'm gonna temporarily turn off my guides with the keyboard shortcut, which is command or control colon. And while I still have the move to active, I want to space out my headshots. So there's a little sliver of white space in between. Give him a little breathing room. So since we've got the guy on the right active and we have the move to active in our tools panel, let's just tap with the right arrow key so that he is flush with the edge of the document. Now let's click on Kelly's picture and let's just tap over for him, and then we might do something like that. Actually, that looks pretty good to me, So let's call the top of that card set. Now. Let's start building the bottom so Let's go ahead and start with our logo. So it's Presti. To activate the type tool, click within your document and type your text. So we're gonna name this vivid portrait, and I made all these things. So if you want to start a business call that will make a lot of money, be grateful. Sent me like a $20 check. That'd be really cool. So let's use her keyboard shortcut again to increase font size, which is shift command greater than on a Mac or shift control greater than on the PC. And for this kind of typographic treatment to work, we need to introduce contrast between the size of our two pieces of texture. So it's double click vivid, and we're going to make that small. I made it about 19 points. There we go, and I might double Quick Portrait's again and bring that on up to about 53. So now let's change the font to future because future is nice and open and airy and spacey and friendly and rounded makes you look like a very friendly, open, approachable photographer. Now I change this to the Senate alignment, and then I'm gonna achieve a little bit and just scoot vivid over using the space bar because I want a nest vivid in between the sender of the tea and the center of the eye, because it's like a nice little spot for it to be tucked into. Now let's suggest the spacing between the lines of text. Remember, we have to highlight our lines of text for our leading control. The work in the keyboard shortcut is command option up or down, arrow on a Mac or control Ault up or down arrow on a PC. And that looks pretty good to me. The last thing I want to do this while I have it highlighted. It's changed the color, so it's like the color swatch, the top of the options bar, and let's mouse over to grab that gorgeous rid. Have this guy's sweater these headshots crash me. If they didn't for everybody I stock it was a scream. Now let's scoot the type around while I have the text highlighted and I have the textile active in my tools panel. I don't have to switch to the move tool to move my text around. All I have to do is mouse far enough away from the text that my arrow, my cursor, turns into a narrow. And at that point I could move the text around, which is nice. Lots of people don't know you can do that.