How To Make A Postcard From Your Images In Photoshop

Just because you're using a digital camera and have a smart phone in your pocket doesn't mean you can't still use postcards. Here's a quick tutorial on how you can create your own digital postcards that you can print off and send to friends, stick to your fridge or even send via email.

Open your image

First open your image up and rename it (it's good to get in the habit of doing this) to something such as 'postcard image'. Once that's done double-click on the layer to open up the Layer Style window.

Create a frame

As some postcards have frames around the image(s) they are displaying we are going to add a white one to this shot. The easiest way to create a frame is by clicking on Stroke in the Layer Style window, change the Fill Colour to white, Position to Inside and adjust the size, we set ours to 18px, until you're happy with the way it looks then click OK to apply the changes.

Add text

Adding a short message to the front of our postcard is easy, all you have to do is decide where you want it to go and use the Text tool to write your message out. So select the Horizontal Type tool from the tools palette, click on your image and type your message.

You can adjust the size of the text and the font in the top tool bar and if you want to move its position, select the Move tool and drag it to where you want it to sit. We didn't want our text to sit on a straight line so we used the Free Transform option to put it on a slant. You do this by going to Edit>Free Transform which puts a box with anchor points around the text. Move your mouse until your arrow turns into one that has two heads and sits on a bend, click your left mouse button and drag the shape around until the text sits on an angle you're happy with.

Add shine (optional)

To give the image a slight shiny feel you need to create a new layer (rename it 'gloss' or 'shine'), select the paint bucket tool and fill in your selection. Don't worry about the colour, we are about to get rid of it any way. Then make sure the foreground and background colours are set to white before you move on to the next step. Open up the Layer Style window again by double-clicking on the layer you've just created. Change the Fill Opacity to 0 by dragging the slider all the way to the right then click on the Gradient Overlay option.

Pick a gradient that's white at both ends and use the Angle to adjust how the gradient sits over your image, giving the impression light is reflecting off it. You'll also need to adjust the opacity of the layer in the Gradient Overlay or by coming out of the Layer Style window and changing the opacity of the layer in the Layers Palette.

Other options

Of course you don't have to add a frame and fill your window with your whole shot or you could place your text in your frame instead over over the image. Another option is to use more than on image on your postcard. Here we opened three images up in Photoshop and dragged them into one document one by one, using the Free Transform tool to adjust the size of them as we went. The images were dragged on to a white background and they were arranged so the white would create a frame around all of the shots.


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