Yesterday I posted five quote posters that could easily be created in any photo editing program.  Today I’m posting a tutorial on how to make those posters!  As I was making the tutorial, I thought, wouldn’t it be a great project to give students the camera and have them take photos and then create a poster with their favorite inspirational quote?  I would love to do this and have a whole wall of photos that represent students.  I might just do this next year since my “Wall of Robots” has come down this year.  Now, we don’t have PhotoShop in my classroom, but there are free programs out there, like Gimp, Picnik.com, and Aviary.com which do similar things!

Ready?

1.) Take a photo or download one from the bazillions online that are licensed for Creative Commons. Veer.com offers tons of super creative FREE images!

2.) Open the photo in your favorite program.

 

3.) Find a favorite quote online or type one that you love.  I love to use QuoteGarden.com.  I copied the quote from there.

4.) Go back to your photo program and click “Text” to create a text box. Then “Paste” your quote on. Position is not that important, you can move it around after pasting, and make adjustments to spacing, line placement, and the little details. This is also a good time to choose the font you love. Handwriting-style fonts are available for free at KevinandAmanda.com Fonts For Peas or check out Dafont.com for tons of choices, too. You may want to be sure to install the font you want before ever beginning your poster. Sometimes getting the font to show up in your list while working in the program can be tricky. 🙂

5.) This step is optional, but I love to take one of the words from the quote, make a new text box, stretch it over the entire poster, and then adjust the “opacity,” fancy word for making it transparent. Think of your poster as a series of layers, like a hamburger, with one piece on top of another. Working in the “Layers” panel, you can move the layers around. I’ve put the big “Ideas” in the back, and made the opacity very light at 34%.

6.) You can do this step at any time during the poster making process, but it is important to “Crop” your poster. If you plan to print at your local photo-printing shop or through an online printer, you’ll want to be sure you have the right size so that your quote doesn’t get cut off. Trust me, it’s a real bummer to get your photo poster and see that words are cut off! To avoid this, crop to the size you plan to print. I chose 8×10 here and it fit great.

Here is the finished product!

 

2.) Search for an inspirational quote. I love BrainyQuote & QuoteGarden.

3.) Use a program that will allow you to add text over your photo.  I used PhotoShop (PhotoShop CS4, but Elements would work fine, too!)  There are several other options:

PrintShop:  Great program, lets you import the photo, add “Headline” text, and then you can use “Order” to put the text in front of the photo.

Microsoft Word: You can import the photo, add “Word Art” over the top.  Downside: Printing will only be as large at 8.5 x 11.

 

Here’s a bit of info on using PhotoShop to make posters……