Hi lovelies!
Thought i will write something different today!
I noticed something that has bothered many brides is doing up a pretty wedding poster / save the date graphic. Many brides are not willing to pay, but yet they don’t have the tools (e.g. Photoshop) to do it properly.
Canva is very popular nowadays as it is free and easy to use – however, it compromises on quality. You may have uploaded a high-res photo on Canva, but when you save it, you will notice that the quality decreases by a lot!
Hence, today i will introduce an ubiquitous software which you can consider using to do your graphics / posters – Microsoft Powerpoint!
Say whhhaaaa…aattt??
Yes, really. I actually swear by Powerpoint to do minor add ons on my photos when i’m using a computer without Photoshop.
Benefits:
- Everyone has Powerpoint.
- Easy to resize and drag-drop texts / elements
- Minor text effects available (e.g. drop shadow, embossing, transparency)
- Saving doesn’t decrease quality considerably
Of course, one can’t expect the photo quality to still be as good as the original, but it is pretty decent.
So how do we begin?
1. Open Powerpoint and select a Blank Presentation.
2. Go to Design > Slide Size and you will see this pop up:
For posters, select the size of the paper you wish to print out on – I think a B4 size is good enough for me – so imma select that. My photo is in portrait orientation, so i’m going to select “Portrait”. Select “Landscape” if your photo is in landscape orientation!
For save the dates, you can work with the default slide, but you can also choose a bigger slide size for a graphic with higher resolution!
3. Insert your photo. If your photo is large enough for the dimensions you selected, it will fill the entire slide like this:
4. Type your text! Add your name and your husband’s name or “Save the Date” or whatever. Pardon my lame cliche text lol.
There are many pretty fonts available for download on the web! One site i usually go to is dafont.com. They have a section specially for calligraphy fonts! Fonts are free for personal use (so using it to do your wedding posters is fine), but most fonts are not free for commercial use – meaning you can’t use it for business purposes, unless you purchase a license.
You may notice that white text is not so obvious on the brick wall background. Well, not to fret, because…
5. You can adjust text effects! Highlight text, right click and select “Format Text Effects”.
Then, the “Format Shape” sidebar will appear:
Click on the second icon to open up the “Shadow” options:
I’m going to add a shadow to my text so it will stand out from the background. I usually pick the first effect, but it is up to you!
Tada! See the difference?
Basically you can play with the various text effect options until you are happy with it – there is reflection and glow as well.
This is how my text look like with shadow and glow at this settings:
6. When you are done adding all your texts and elements and you are satisfied with how it looks, it is time to save your picture!
Remember to resize all your text and element boxes within the photo dimensions! This is so that after saving, there won’t be empty spaces outside of your photos.
After that, drag your cursor over all the elements, or select all elements, and right click > Save as Picture.
Type in a file name for your picture, and you are done! If the slide size you chose earlier is A4, your picture should be good quality enough to print A4 size!
This is a simple tutorial with just text – be creative and experiment! For inspiration, these are some other posters i did using Powerpoint (in 5 min or less):
Hopefully this tutorial is useful for you! If you have any questions, or wish to know more about designing on powerpoint, feel free to drop a comment below!
xoxo
Oh, Pearls! 