Heather's Tips: Getting Creative With Photos

Getting Creative With Photos

One of my favorites things to do is alter the photos I place on my layouts.  I love to turn them to black and white, to recolor them, to change them into sketches, to add text, and especially crop them in unusual ways.  I think it really adds interest to a page. Now that I have digital images I don’t worry so much about destroying a photo when I cute - I can always reprint the photo.

I use Adobe Photoshop for all my editing but I’m sure similar options are available in other editing software. I know my daughter has a lot of fun using her iphone features to distort and add cool effects to her photos.

Probably the easiest thing to start with is to add text to a photo - you can write directly on it with a slick marker , use rubons, stamp (very carefully) with quick drying pigment ink or add the text in an editing program before printing.

Adobe PSE has numerous filters which make photo editing very artistic.  The one I mainly use is Sketch.  Using  photos with not too much detail works best.  You can adjust the amount of dark and light you get,  Here’s a page where I turned the photo of my friend and our dogs on the beach into a sketch.

Cropping doesn’t have to be complicated or fancy.  Simple shapes like circles, triangles , tag shapes or chevrons are effective or even cutting a rectangular photo into different sized strips adds interest. For a fun or funky page try cutting a photo into an irregular shape or cut out portions and substitute that bit of photo with patterned paper.  Corner rounders, diecuts and other punches can alter the shape of your photo easily.

For this page I hand cut the photo into a simple banner shape

When I’m cropping a photo in an unusual shape I will open it in Adobe Photoshop.  Then I can mask it with whatever shape (s) I like, I can move the photo around so that specific parts of the photo are visible and resize as necessary.  When I have the desired image I print and cut.

For this page I created a hexagon mosaic for the photo to match the pattern on the paper.

Here’s a tip for creating a mosaic of a photo.  I normally have the background color be the same as my page.  After I print I cut only around the outer edge of the image, not the individual sections. It’s easier and you don’t have to reconstruct all the little pieces on your page

Try making a large title for your page where the letters are actually photos -  very striking.