Adobe Photoshop Elements 11 Creating a Photo Calendar

Hi, everyone--Michael Brown back with you with another lesson in Adobe Photoshop Elements 11 from Educator.com!0000

We looked at how to make a very high-quality and impressive photo book that can be printed by an outside printer, such as Shutterfly, and give you a super-quality piece that you can use either as a gift, as a coffee-table book, or even better, as a promotional piece and your portfolio--because the quality of the book itself sets the stage for the quality of the images you have within--a beautiful way to do it.0006

Another way to represent yourself is to send out or give away calendars; so, in this lesson, I'm going to show you how to create a photo calendar--also a very nice gift.0036

We're going to go over organizing your images for the calendar, calendar layout options, the Calendar workspace where you are actually going to set this up, adjusting and modifying images, and customizing the calendar's appearance.0047

This is virtually the same procedure as doing the photo book, so if you have already gone over the photo book lessons, it is still worthwhile doing this lesson, because it's a review of some of the techniques, and it burns it into your memory and makes it much easier.0061

Besides, a calendar is very cool.0077

Let's go and take a look at how to create a photo calendar!0079

Let's go to the Organizer, and here is my folder for calendar pictures; I have 14 pictures that are in here, and if you remember, in the folders, you cannot rearrange the order of the images--you would have to have them set up already in a proper order.0083

These I would like to rearrange; so what we need to do is take these images and turn it into an album, where you can shift things around.0101

There are two ways to do this: in this case, we have all of the images we want, so we're going to select all of them.0109

You can click on the thumbnail and select the first one, Shift, click, and select all of the other ones; and now, they are all selected.0118

Now, all you have to do is click on the + icon for the album, and go to New Album, and you will see that (since they were selected prior to doing that) they are already in the album.0127

You title it, put a category, and click OK; you see, I have one all up, so we can do cancel.0139

Instead, we'll show you the other way: if you don't select them in advance, do the + sign, New Album, and now it says "Drag and Drop Items to the Bin."0145

So, you'll highlight the first one; Shift, click to highlight them all; go into a thumbnail; click and drag the group; and now, you have them in.0154

Either do it in advance or do it after.0163

Again, name them, select a category, and click OK.0165

I have, at this moment, an album with 12 images in here; I want to add one more image.0169

There is an easy way to do this: go to your folder with the calendar pictures, and this particular item here--the vertical shot of the California lighthouse--I want to add it, so (you don't have to go through the importing process--you already have it in the folder) just grab it and drag it over until the bar highlights the Calendar Photos album.0179

Release, and now we will go to that photo album, and look: it came in at the tail end.0201

All right, we need to do a little bit of adjustment here.0207

Now, the very first photo will be the title page--the opener of the calendar--so I'm going to leave that one there.0211

January is right here, and it's snowy; February, March, April, May, June, July--I would like to put this one in about May or June; the flowers are out, so we'll go with May.0217

April; January, February, March, April; May flowers; we'll drag it over, and you notice that, in the album, we can reposition all of our images.0228

Let's see if everything else looks pretty good; yes, we're fine.0237

OK, so now we have our album ready to go with the items we need for the calendar.0241

We're going to select them in advance; click the first one; Shift, click the other ones; we have them all selected.0248

Go to the Create button; we'll go down to Photo Calendar.0256

It's going to come up with the Calendar Layout page: we get to pick the starting month and year--in this case, I'm going to go ahead and put January 2014; we're ready to go.0261

You have one option, Print Locally: these can be printed on your desktop printer--how cool is that?0273

You get two-sided paper, and you can actually print your own calendar--or you could go to an outside printer, such as Shutterfly, and have them do it, as well--a little more costly; this will work quite well.0279

Here we have our themes--pretty much the same themes--almost identical to what you saw in the photo book.0293

We're going to go ahead with this Designer Modern: I'll highlight it; you get a quick preview of what it's going to look like.0300

It's a single image per page, and we like that; we can change the layout, no problem, as we go along.0307

All calendars can be printed on your printer.0314

Autofill With Selected Images--that is why I selected them in the album first; we'll click OK, and it's going to think for a minute here; it has 14 images to load up inside that particular layout.0316

There it is; it's already done.0331

Now, it's started; you will notice that this image is magnified too big, but that is not a problem; it came in with a bounding box, and I think that the frame is too close to the upper edge; so I'm going to grab a corner, reduce the size of the image and frame together (notice, they are both moving in tandem), click inside of it, and I'm just going to reposition that right to here.0333

That looks pretty good; and I will click the Accept.0359

Now, I want to make the picture reduce the size to get inside there; so I'm going to click with the Move tool outside of the bounding box (to make it go away), then double-click inside, and up comes this Zoom icon.0363

Notice, the bounding box is now outside the actual picture size; so I can take it, and I can zoom it down until it fits, and I'll click Accept with that.0379

We can also, now, reposition again; if I double-click one more time, by the way, you can reposition the image.0392

Notice, I can move it over this way; I think I'm going to move it just a little to the right, so that I pick up...not too much; I need those clouds.0399

OK, that looks...I can come down a little bit...right there.0412

Now that I have the image where I want, I'll just click outside of the bounding box...click Enter--excuse me; and there we go!0416

We now have our image in a frame on a background.0424

We're not happy with the background or the frame; no problem.0426

We're going to deal with the title: let's go to the Type tool, and I'm going to pick Helvetica type--a nice, clean typeface.0430

I'm going to do bold oblique, which is kind of interesting, and that will be fine; close the Tool Options; click to highlight the text box; drag to highlight the initial type; and "MB Productions 2014 Calendar."0441

MB Productions...we'll click Accept, but it didn't give me the typeface that I wanted, so I'm going to go with the Type again, move this up so I can see it, highlight the type, and click and drag, and change Myriad Pro...0466

It didn't take the first time; we'll try it again--Helvetica Bold Oblique; we got it.0490

Click Accept, and we have that; click outside.0497

Now, you see the other text box--you can either create one or you get one; we'll just highlight it, and hit the Delete (or Backspace on a PC); delete the selected layer; yes.0500

Now, if I wanted more text and there wasn't one, you just click and type, and you have a new text box.0511

OK, so that is how we do the text.0518

I want to rearrange that positioning; let's just go ahead and center it; so I'm going to take the Move tool, click, and click inside the bounding box, and reposition the title, and there we go.0520

Now, we have this page.0536

Now, with the calendar as well as the photo book, I suggest: as we go along, save your work, because you don't want to be going down here 5 or 6 pages and have something go wrong--a crash, a power failure, or something.0537

We'll go to the File menu; we'll go to Save; and when you try to save the first time, you get the Save as dialog box.0551

You notice that the format is automatically Photo Project format; this will save all of the work that you have so you can reopen it and adjust it if you want--or send it to a printer, and they can deal with it.0560

We'll call it MB Productions 2014 Calendar, and we'll save it on the Desktop, .pse (Photo Project format); we're good.0573

We'll go ahead and include it in the Organizer, so we can open it from there, and click Save.0587

Now, from here on (it will take a little while, because it has to save all of the pages)--as you resave, if you use (remember what I told you about Save and Save as)--if you do Command/Control on a PC, S, to save, after the first time (the Save as dialog box) it will automatically save over itself.0593

Once again, as always, I would recommend highly that you go to the File menu and use the Save as dialog box, so it can remind you of everything.0617

This thing is still thinking; it's just taking a couple of moments here; it should be done pretty soon...0626

Now, we have saved the work that we have, so we have a basic calendar in case something happens.0630

Now, we're going to move on.0636

We have our title page--that is right over here; I want to move on down; most of the other pages are pretty similar.0637

Let's just review one time: we're going to take this particular page, and it came in with a bounding box on both the frame and the image; I'm going to make it a little smaller and re-center it, just like that; it looks pretty good; click Accept.0645

I also want to change the size on the photo; click outside and double-click inside, and you will get the Zoom, and now we're going to zoom it down until that image is about the correct size.0664

Let's move it around and see if it's any better to the right or to the left.0679

I kind of like it over here; just pretty much like that looks pretty good.0684

We'll click Accept, and you're going to move ahead; I'll just do Command/Control, S, because I know that...no, I won't.0691

I have told you not to do that; I won't violate my own teaching.0700

Go to the File menu, Save as; there it is; Save, Replace, and it should save fairly quickly, because it only had to modify that one part.0704

See, I caught myself; always use the Save as, just in case.0717

All right, click outside; let's do spacebar, Hand tool; check that out; it is January--we're good.0722

I'm going to go ahead and (we're going to do this, obviously, for each one, but) I'm going to move down to the May page, and we'll have that come up.0728

This was a vertical image, so what we want to do here is: let's first look at our options for layouts and see if we have a single page...there is one photo vertical, right there; let's see what else we have.0737

Let's try that; we're just going to do one portrait; I'll double-click it, and it will change that layout page.0754

Now, you see that what happened is it rotated the image, so what we're going to do is Control/right-click on a PC, and we're going to rotate 90 degrees to the left, and there it is.0762

Now, let's go ahead and zoom it up, bring it down, click inside, and we'll drag the entirety over.0777

I want to make it a little bit smaller overall, because it's still just a little bit large.0785

That looks pretty good; should I offset it?--no, I think I'll keep it in this case; we'll just make this a highly symmetrical calendar.0791

It looks pretty good; we'll click Accept; I'm going to click outside, and then double-click inside again, and I want to make sure that I get as much of this image in there...0799

You notice, we're going to zoom it in until it fits.0810

There we go--that looks pretty good; we'll accept that.0816

Now, that shows you how we fix an image that was vertical.0820

Remember, what we did is: we did Control on a Mac/right-click on a PC; rotated to the left, and that rotated our image; then we went ahead and resized it down by double-clicking on the image; and you get the zoom and zoom it to where you want it.0826

I'm going to going to do (I almost saved it again) File, Save as; I'm going to save it the same; include it; Project format; Save; Replace.0844

This will only take a moment--it was a very small change.0855

There we go--so now, that shows you how we deal with the layouts.0857

Let's change the graphics on this thing: let's go back to the pages and move up to the top.0862

By the way, I could have just gone backwards and forwards with the arrow keys from page to page; and of course, I can zoom up and down here; I prefer the Command/Control +/-.0869

We have Advanced mode, as well, which gives you all of your Toolbox and a limited selection of other items; I'll show you that in a moment.0881

Basically, it looks the same.0890

Go back to the Basic mode; all right, we are on the title page now.0892

I would like to change out the frame and the background.0896

Let's take a look at what we have on Options on graphics.0900

Now, we're in the Basic mode; that is why you see the Advanced mode button.0906

Notice, we only have three choices for backgrounds, one choice for frames, and just a few graphics.0910

By the way, for graphics, if you want to embellish, click and drag, and it comes over in there; with the bounding box, you can make it smaller; move it over in the corner; rotate it if you wish; and then you have some little swooshy item in there.0916

As a graphic...I'll just leave it there--why not...oh, I don't like it.0936

I'm going to highlight it and click Delete; do I want to delete it? Yes, I do.0940

OK, what I would like to do is change out the frame and the background; but we don't have a lot of options.0945

So now, we'll go to the Advanced mode.0950

What this is going to give you is the access in the Graphics panel to every graphic that can be included from Photoshop Elements itself.0954

It's loading them up right now.0965

It's taking a little while to load them--there are a lot of them; there we go.0970

There are the pages, and we'll click the graphics; there we go.0973

If you remember from the photo book, we have all sorts of backgrounds; we have all sorts of (get down to it) frame options, and also the graphic embellishments that are down here below--all sorts of things you can do.0977

We're going to start by changing the background (let's scroll it down); I want to make this a completely clean calendar.0993

There is a white background, so I'm just going to double-click it, and it should load it; or I can click and drag it; there it goes.1000

Oh, that is white with little circles--I didn't want that; I couldn't see the circles; let's just go down to find a nice, neutral color.1012

There is a blue gradient, the gray gradient...I wonder what that looks like.1022

Double-click, and it loads it.1031

Remember, if you see a blue triangle in the corner, that asset does not reside within the computer; you need to be connected to the Internet, and it will go out and find the asset.1034

Let's just do that with this gradient blue; I'll double-click; it's downloading it from the Internet, and it put it in there.1046

That's a little bit obtuse; let's go with a gray again.1054

OK, I'll just leave it at that for now; and now, we need to do the frame, so let's go on down from the backgrounds into the frames.1060

There we go: I'm going to take a black frame about this size right here.1070

Double-click, and it should...there it goes; and it changed the frame.1075

That is interesting; that is very interesting; we'll delete that.1087

Ah, I know what I did wrong; I made a mistake.1097

It loaded the frame, but it didn't know where to load it; this is one that you may have happen to you.1100

What you want to do with the Move tool is highlight the frame, and now, if you double-click the (where is the black frame again?--there they are) basic black...double-click, and now...1103

See what happened there (and this is a good thing I made that mistake): if you don't highlight the framed photo, it will add a separate layer that doesn't replace, but just adds another frame.1122

So, you saw what we did; I'm going to undo that; we go in with the Move tool and highlight the frame-photo combination (see the bounding box).1133

Now, double-click the frame that you want, and in it comes (we'll just click away), and there: we replaced the background; we replaced the frame--it looks pretty good!1142

All right, so that is how you do the graphics; I'm going to do one more time File, Save as, and the same thing: .pse, same place, same format, include in the Organizer, save, replace; and it shouldn't take too long.1152

There we go; it has a couple of saves; there we are.1169

All right, so let's go to the title page.1174

Let's take a look at what we have done.1181

I showed you how to organize your images by making an album and rearranging the pictures in the album the way you want it.1185

The Calendar layout options: pick something that is OK, and it's better to go into the Advanced mode for the layout options--there are more choices.1193

Remember, you can always change it later.1205

The Calendar workspace: you notice that we worked on how you adjust the images and how you adjust the frame-image combination--just click once on the frame; then you can adjust the entire thing.1207

Let's go back to the calendar itself.1220

Remember, if I click on the frame, I can now drag everything the way I want it.1224

If I click outside the frame, and then double-click inside on the image, I get the Zoom box, so that I can adjust the image.1229

Let's go back to the title page again.1241

That is how you work in the Calendar workspace.1246

Adjusting and modifying the images--I just showed you how you modify the frame with the single bounding box; double-click inside to work the image.1249

Customizing the calendar appearance--let's go back to the calendar again.1258

Remember, if you go to your graphics, you can change layouts, as well; remember, we did that--we took our page (let's find the page that has that on there).1262

Back to the pages; scroll down; there it is, right there; we'll load that up.1271

Remember, this was a big image squished in a horizontal frame, so what we did is: we went to the layouts, found a single frame, and readjusted it; and you can rotate your image by holding down the Control on a Mac/right-click on a PC (it's hard for me to say), and rotate right or left.1275

Now, you have the image oriented; double-click on the image again; zoom it to size; click outside; and now, you have it the way you want it.1296

Let's go back again to the title (there we are), and customizing the calendar appearance--the final thing that we did.1303

We'll go back one more time; and remember, use the Advanced mode; go to the graphics; you will see that you have a gazillion options.1318

That is actually the Basic--we're in the Basic; you see that--there is just a little bit.1327

When you see the Advanced mode button, you need to click to go to it.1332

Now, still working on the layers: click the Graphics button, and there are all of those gazillion choices for backgrounds, for frames, and for embellishments.1336

Let's say we wanted to...let's find an embellishment for this page, just to close this off with.1348

What do we have that looks interesting?--Not a palm tree at the ocean side!1354

Maybe just a little graphic...oh, I like this; this is cool.1361

What is that, a gold bush? Fine.1369

Let's--I'll get crazy; we'll do a Christmas gift: so we double-click the Christmas gift, and in it comes; and I can make it larger, and we can put it over in the corner; click OK.1372

Now...I know it looks really bizarre; it is.1388

We click OK, and now we have a little Christmas gift ornament in the side.1394

So, there, with that funny little finish, we have all that you need to know about creating a photo calendar in Adobe Photoshop Elements 11!1401