Jeff St John 
ePhotoPros Staff
The OC
Forum Fanatic
Posts:535
 | | 09/02/2008 9:58 PM |
| This week I wanted to show that it's very easy to make a simple template using smart objects. My canvas was set to 5 x7 at 150 dpi.
- The first thing I did was drop the image I wanted to use as the main thank you card image onto my canvas and convert it to a smart object before doing any resizing. I did this by right clicking on the layer and choosing "convert to smart object".
- I then selected both the image and background layers and used the align options (only available with the move tool selected) to align the image to the center of the canvas.
- Next, I dropped in my background detail, a palm frond (since there's a palm tree in the photo), and converted it to a smart object as well. I then moved the layer below the couple image and positioned the Frond over the top half of the canvas.
- I then dropped in another decorative element, converted it to a smart object, moved it to the bottom of the stack and hid for the time being.
- Back on the palm frond layer, I hit CTRL G (Mac: Cmd G) to put it in it's own group. The reason I did this was so that I could add a layer mask to the group and have both the image and mask move together should I need to move them.
- On the layer mask I chose a radial gradient from white to black and obscured the edges of the palm frond.
- Back on the layer with the image of the couple, I repositioned it slightly and added a dark gray, 3 pixel stroke to the inside, as well as a slight drop shadow in which I dropped the distance to 0, the amount to about 20 and the opacity to around 50.
- Next I resized and repositioned the second background element. I then added a layer underneath it. Using the rectangular marquee tool I created a selection from the left edge to the right, and filled it with white. I then clipped the background element to the white box by holding ALT (Mac: Option) and clicking the line between the white box and background element layers. I also grouped these layers together so I could add a layer mask to the smart object and have it move with the object.
- On this new group's layer mask, I used a linear gradient going from black to white to black again to obscure the edges. I then lowered the opacity to around 50 %.
- Next, I added some white text - Thank You - and gave it a drop shadow layer style.
- Below the "Thank You" text I added some more text inside the bottom background element. I added a slight outer glow to this text using white as the glow color.
- I then selected both lines of text and converted them to a smart object.
- With the main template done, I right clicked on the layer with the happy couple and chose "Replace Contents". I chose a another image to replace the first one. *It's important to note that replace contents works best if both images are the same size, and they need to be smart objects of course.
- I did the same thing to the two background element smart objects.
- On the text smart object, I double clicked the thumbnail on the layer to edit the smart object. After closing and SAVING the smart object, my text was updated in the main graphic. I grouped the two lines of text together as a smart object primarily to keep them in the same place and cut down on clutter.
Of course, this is a very simple example, but in just five short minutes I was able to create a template, and replace all the contents with new content. I think you can see that after setting up your template, no matter how complex it is, as long as you used smart objects you can easily switch out the content and be ready to send it off to the printer.
Until next week, happy template building,
jefe
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