Making my own baby announcements in photoshop...help please!

Question

I want to make my own template, I already played around with it and I know what I want, the only thing is...I don't know how to make it a template...Im using a baby photo but when i tried to relocate this baby image on the card that's when I didn;t know what to do...let's say I made a circle which is where the baby image is going to be...well, I cant hide the corners of my pic....please help! and how do I make everything permanent on the card.

Answer 1

at the bottom of your computer there are buttons to lighten/darken photo...play around with that and it should just give you the image...

Answer 2

Okay.  Open the template and the photo you want to put on the template.  There are a few way of doing this...

One:

The image you want to put on the card.  Now get the Marquee tool from the toolbar (first one at the top left).  The default tool is square but you can click and hold over that tool and select a circle.  On the image, make a circular marquee selection.  If you hold shift while dragging the marquee outward it will keep the circle round and not give an oval shape. Now get the move tool (first one at the top right or the "v" key for the shortcut) click inside the circular selection and drag it to the invite.  It will put your circle image on its own layer and you can resize it or add a stroke (border) around it and so on.  

OR

On the invitation, make a new, blank layer.  Draw a circle and fill it.   Open your image and select it all (Ctrl + A) and copy (Ctrl+C).  Now on the invitation, make sure you are on the circle layer and hold Ctrl and click on that layer on the pallette selecting the circle (you should see the marching ants).  Now press Ctrl+Shift+V - it will paste the image into the circle, cutting off the corners of the square image.  If you need to resize it, click Ctrl + T to do a free transform to fit the image into the square.

That's just the basics.  I would suggest the first technique (it's easier) unless you plan on using the same template over and over.  

To make everything permanent on the card, you need to flatten the file.  On the layers pallette click the triangle under the "x" on the upper right side and choose flatten layers - or the shortcut keys Ctrl+Shift+E.  Now you may want to keep the file in layers and save it so you can go back and make changes because once you flatten, save and close, you can't undo it.  SO maybe make a copy of the invite and save one in layers and one flat.

whew... hope that helps! good luck!