Design Thoughts:
- I wanted to make an invitation that I could mail to family members to invite them to a Halloween get-together. Initially I was going to use photos I had taken at Cherry Hill of the Bone Yard Wagon Ride to entice family members to attend, but I couldn't find a skeleton photo that looked professional enough, so I used a photo from Pixabay.
- Underneath the skeleton photo I listed all the things family members could do. That list didn't look good aligned right or left, so I centered the list and it formed an arrow that pointed to the next area.
- I used a script font for the invitation words, but for contrast I used a decorative font for the rest of the words for a spooky Halloween look. (For version two I used a chalkboard font for most of the words to make it easier to read.)
- I used a picture of the climbing tower I took because the lime green colors in it created a split complementary triad with the purple and red-orange used in the invitation. I made the blue in the sky a little more purple to match the color scheme, and I took out some of the distractive objects on the right with the healing brushes and content aware move tool.
Photoshop:
- I created a new file that is rectangle envelope size. It is 300 pixels for printing so I can mail it or email it. I filled the layer with purple to use as the background.
- I made three dark grey rectangles to go behind the words so the words would contrast with the grey and stand out. (On version two I made the rectangles black for higher contrast.)
- I put a skeleton picture underneath the title and made it into a smart object so I could lighten the exposure in Camera Raw to bring out the skeleton a little more.
- I created a list of activities and used the dissolve blending mode to reduce the contrast so the yellow words did not stand out more than other important words.
- I used contrasting fonts in the invitation portion--a script and a decorative font. (In version two I used one font for the invitation area.)
- I added a photo I had taken of the climbing wall at Cherry Hill. I used the healing brush, the paint brush, and the content aware tool to take out some distractive elements on the right side of the photo. I also made it it into a smart object so I could edit it in Camera Raw. (See the before and after picture below.)
Images and Fonts:
- Skeleton photo https://pixabay.com/en/halloween-cemetery-graves-skeleton-2543447/
- This Corrosion font is from Fontsite at http://www.downloadfreefonts.com/search.php?q=this+corrosion&submit=Search
- Machine Script is from 1001 Free Fonts at https://www.1001freefonts.com/machine_script.font
Camera Raw Settings:
- In the Skeleton picture I lightened the exposure.
- In the rock wall photo I increased the clarity, reduced the luminance noise, and increased the yellow luminance.