Creating your own calendar in Photoshop

If you're looking for another way to show your favorite photo, try creating a calendar in Photoshop. You'll use several powerful, yet simple, Photoshop techniques, including layers and layer styles, cropping, text options, linking layers, and copying layer styles.

First of all, choose an image that you want to look at for a whole year. Horizontal images work best for this project. Now size the image. The final print size of this calendar will be 12 x 18 inches at 240 dpi so the image also needs to be at 240 dpi (or ppi while we're still in Photoshop). A good photo size is 10 inches wide. This will give you one inch of space around each side of the main image. If scanning for this project, scan for a 10-inch wide image at 240 ppi then optimize and sharpen your image as you usually do. If you need to resize your chosen image from one you've already digitized, it's best to start with one that's bigger than what's needed in both dimension and resolution. After optimizing and resizing, be sure to save.

Open a new document (File> New). Name your document and set the width to 12 inches, height to 18 inches, resolution to 240 ppi, mode to RGB, and background to white.

Start by putting in a background image. Open your calendar image and choose the crop tool. At the top of the screen (in the OPTIONS BAR) notice the input boxes for width, height, and resolution. Set these to 12 inches wide, 18 inches high, and 240 ppi. Now use the crop tool as you normally would. You'll notice that proportion is restricted. You can make the crop larger or smaller, but the proportions stay the same. Pick out a vertical portion of your image that you want to use as the background. You may want to take a slice right out of the middle from top to bottom. Or you may want to use other portions of your image. Don't worry about the fact that you could be taking a small part of your image and increasing it's size to 12x18, it's going to be screened back anyway, and this part of the poster won't need to be sharp. Once you've made your choice, hit enter or click on the EXECUTE check mark in the OPTIONS BAR. You can also double click anywhere inside the crop.

Using the move tool, drag your chosen background onto the empty document. To make alignment easier, you may want to choose SNAP under VIEW in the MENU BAR. Now go to Opacity on the layers palette and adjust it to about 30%. This will fade your background image. Later, once you've got the rest of the calendar put together, you can easily change this opacity to your liking. Also, if you later discover you'd prefer another section of your image for the background, you can always change it. Just delete the layer. Do this in the layers palette by dragging it to the trash bin in the lower right. Re-open your main image and using the crop tool again, take out a different part of the image. Then just drag it to your calendar poster. You may have to move the new background layer to the bottom. Drag the layer to the bottom of the layers palette. You'll see the other layers scrolling up. When you get to the last layer, look for double lines to appear beneath it. Release the mouse and the layer will be placed on the bottom. You can use this technique to move any layer wherever you want it. Just click and drag. When you see the double line, you can drop the layer.

Making the calendar itself is probably the most time consuming and detailed part of this project. I created a calendar in Word using tables. Here’s how:

In Word (or any word processing program that will allow for tables) create a table that is 4 columns wide by 6 rows tall. In the first cell of the first column (upper left hand cell), type “January”. In the next cell, type “February”. Continue with March and April.

In the third cell of the first column, type “May”. Continue for June, July, and August. You guessed it. In the fifth cell of the first column, type “September” and so on.

In the second row of the first column, right under January, create a table within that cell. This table should be 7 columns by 7 rows. In the very first row, type the first letters of the days of the week starting with Sunday. Copy and paste this table into the remaining cells. You now have a template for each month.

Starting in January, begin filling in the numbers. January 1^st is on a Wednesday this year so that’s where you’ll start. If you have another 2003 calendar handy, just refer to that and start filling out all the cells in the table. Along the way you may need to resize your master table so it will all fit on to one sheet of paper. A hint is to go into page setup (File>Page Setup) and choose Landscape. Also click on the Margins tab and make the margins as small as possible.
Once you have it all filled out you can play around with fonts, font sizes, making text bold, or whatever you wish to do. Adjusting some spacing and eliminating the borders of the table will improve the look and feel of your calendar. Experiment.

When you’re satisfied, print your calendar on photo quality inkjet paper at the high quality setting and then scan it with your flatbed scanner. (Since the table formatting won’t transfer to Photoshop you won’t be able to simply copy and paste.) Scan at a higher resolution than what your final calendar will be. This will give you some leeway in resizing. I suggest scanning at 300 ppi. Once in Photoshop crop and resize it to 10 inches wide at 240 ppi.

Using the move tool, drag the calendar to your poster and place it near the bottom. Notice that a layer is added. You’ll see that what you get is a big white rectangle with a calendar right on top of your beautiful background. To get rid of the white and leave the text behind, make sure you’re on the calendar layer and use the magic wand tool. Set tolerance to 0 and uncheck the contiguous box in the OPTIONS BAR and click anywhere in the white part. After you’ve made the selection, press the delete key. Deselect (CTRL-D) and you’ll see your calendar text on top of the background. If you need to increase contrast on the calendar text you can use the unsharp mask filter. Experiment with amount and radius. I found that about 150-200% for amount and 7-10 pixels for radius works well.

If your imaging program can’t eliminate the white, don’t worry too much. You can still use the calendar you made and scanned; you’ll just need to put it on the bottom, below your background image and just above the white background layer. It will show through the faded background image.

Ok, that was the hard part; the rest is a piece of cake.

Make sure your main image is opened (the photo you want to use for the calendar) and at the proper size and resolution. Drag it to the calendar poster and place it centered in the upper part, above your calendar.

To make centering it easier you may want to place some guides. Go to View>New Guide and enter 1 inch. Repeat this and enter 11 inches. This will place guides that are ten inches apart and they can be used for placing the main image and the calendar. You may want to set up more guides as needed.

Now use the text tool and start placing text. You’ll notice that each time you place some new text you’re making a new layer. This is very important as it gives you a great deal of control over each part of your poster. You can move and make changes to text on one layer without affecting other layers. Or you can link layers and move all the text at once.
You may want your name at the top, above your main image. You can also put your website address or a quote at the bottom. Place the calendar year beneath your image, right above your calendar.
In placing text, you’re not stuck with the font sizes that are listed in the drop down list. If you open the character palette (Window>Character) you’ll see an array of options for text including font, font size, color, font height and width and something called leading, which controls the spacing between lines.

Go ahead and place your text using these tools. A hint: If you want your name to spread across the top of the poster, insert extra spaces between the letters.
Now add drop shadows to the image and the text. Start with the text at the top. Choose that layer and then click on the Layer Style icon in the layers palette. It looks like a stylish “f”. Choose drop shadow from the list that pops up.
Now play with the controls until you get a drop shadow that you like. Remember, less is sometimes more, and subtlety can be very elegant.

When you’re satisfied with your drop shadow click OK. You’ll probably want to make the same effect for your other text layers and your main image. You can either write down all the particulars of what you just did and repeat what you did for the first layer, or you can just copy the layer style to all the layers you want at once. To do this make sure the active layer is the one for which you just made the drop shadow. Now on each layer that you want to apply the style click on the little box next to the eyeball icon in the Layers palette. See the chain link? That means that layer is linked to the active layer. Once you’ve linked all the layers you wish to apply the style to, go to the menu bar and choose Layer> Layer Style> Copy Layer Style. Next go back to the menu bar and choose Layer>Layer Style>Paste Layer Style to Linked.

Now all your text layers and your image layer have the same drop shadow. You can do this for all your layers, including the one with the calendar. But since the calendar letters and numbers are relatively small you may not want a drop shadow. Give it try and see what you like. It’s easy to turn on and off the layer styles for individual layers, just click on the eyeball in front of the effect you want to turn off.

If you’d like a thin border around the finished product you can place a stroke around it. Click on your background layer and go to Select>Select All. Then go to Edit>Stroke and choose the size and color you like. (You can also do this with your main image if you like. This will help offset it from the background-you'll need to do this before dragging it on to the calendar!)
Save your poster as a PSD file with all the layers intact. That way you can go back later and make changes to the text or swap out images without having to start all over.
That’s all there is to it. With the basic skills used in this project you’ll be able create posters, calendars, post cards, business cards, and more. The possibilities are endless.

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