For those of you who need a little more visual on the “how to tagline your post photos” tutorial, I’ve used SilverBack to produce a quick video of the process. You can watch it on youtube with annotations or view it now without them. Have a great Sunday!
This post was inspired by Yan of ThouShallBlog, who really wanted to know how I put the text over images such as in my trumpet playing post. Perhaps I’ll post a new tutorial every Sunday, just to switch it up?
A picture is worth 1000 words, but sometimes you want to emphasize the message that the picture from flickr or from your own camera create. The easiest way to do this is to add a tagline. (not to be confused by a watermark, which is used to prevent photo theft and to claim ownership.) In this tutorial, I’ll be showing you how to add a tagline in three simple steps.
First, you’ll want a photograph. You should always use photos licensed under creative commons if they aren’t yours. For the purpose of this demonstration, I went to flickr (the link takes you to a CC search) and picked up an image of a very cute puppy. Then I opened it in photoshop. (Note: this tutorial works for any image editor that has an “opacity” function.)
(optional: before doing this, you can make the photo B&W by going to image –> mode –> greyscale. Sometimes it makes the tagline look cooler.)
The next step is to create a new layer, and select a rectangle somewhere in your photograph. Preferably in the middle, without obstructing the veiw of the picture too much.
Now fill in the layer with your desired color. If you’re not sure what color the layer should be, then just go for black.
Afterward, set the opacity to 36% (this may change based on photograph conditions) by using the slider in the “layers” toolbox.
The final part is to add your text to the image. Simply click on the text tool in the toolbox and click over your newly created bar.
And there you have it! A tagline. If you want to further, you can clip the bar off just after the text ends, to create a sort of flag. And you can even add lighting effects.
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November 16, 2008 | 
