Jeff St John 
ePhotoPros Staff
The OC
Forum Fanatic
Posts:535
 | | 09/08/2008 10:05 PM |
| This week I thought I'd stick with the smart object template theme and create a nice, simple, grid-like ad template. My canvas was set to 8x10 at 150 dpi and it's important to note that I had Snap To Grid turned on under View > Snap To.
- The first step was to draw out some guides. My image squares were about an inch and a half by an inch and a half, with a half inch space in between.
- I then dropped in 9 5x5 images, each at 150 dpi.
- Before doing any resizing I converted each image to a smart object.
- After converting everything to a smart object, I selected one image by CTRL clicking the image right on the canvas, and proceeded to free transform it to fit inside one of my squares. With Snap To Grid turned on it was easy to line up the image with the square.
- Since that was the only free transform I applied, I then selected all the remaining images (again, by CTRL clicking each image right on the canvas) and pressed Shift CTRL T (Mac: Shift Command T) to apply the same transformation as the first image I shrank to fit inside one of the square areas I set up.
- I then positioned each image where I thought they should fit inside the grid that I created with my guides.
- Next, I applied a gray, 2 pixel stroke layer style to one of the images. To save time I copied the layer style to each layer by pressing ALT (Mac: Option) and dragging the effect to each layer.
- I then created a blank layer on top of all my layers and filled it with white. With this new white layer still selected, I CTRL Clicked on the first image thumbnail underneath it to load it as a selection. I then Shift CTRL clicked on the remaining image thumbnails to add them to my selection. I then chose Select > Modify > Expand and expand the selection by 25 pixels.
- Next, I pressed Backspace to punch out each square hole. Still on the top white layer, I added a very slight drop shadow layer style to give the images the illusion of being matted.
- To finish up I added some filler text complete with a fake logo comprised of two uppercase letters.
Pretty simple huh? And the cool part is, you can easily and quickly replace any of the images when the time comes to update your ad since they are all smart objects. Just right click the smart object's layer and choose Replace Contents.
Until next week...jefe signing off
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