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Holiday Issue
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Making Greeting Cards with Adobe PhotoDeluxe

~ by George Osborne

1. The program generally comes free with scanners, printers, cameras and maybe even bundled with other software

2. The program is designed to be easy to use but will also do more advanced projects. You may have it on a CD and not even know it

Since the holidays are coming up, I will start with greeting cards but along the way you will learn how to get pictures from your camera, scanner, or file directly into PhotoDeluxe. You will also learn how to fix pictures that are not perfect in color or sharpness or too light or dark, remove redeye, rotate, apply special effects, etc.

• If PhotoDeluxe is not installed, install it from a CD.
• Launch PhotoDeluxe.
• Keep the CD in your CD drive.

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The following instructions will be for PC but, since the Mac version is very similar, the instructions should work for Mac too. The first window you see will have on the left side "Get and Fix Photo", "Cards & More" and "Connectables".. Click "Cards & More"

From the dropdown menu click "Greeting Cards". Now click "1.Layout" then "Double Fold Side-fold".

Next click "2. Style" Then click "Choose Style".  Card templates will appear.

Choose the one you want and drag it out of the gallery. Wait for the file to open. You will now see the front page of your card with view buttons on the right side so you can move to the back and center of the card.

On each part of the card there will be text that can be edited. The tip says to double click each line to change the text. You can do it that way but I always select each line of text and delete it until there is none left. Then click on the letter T at the top of the window and a box will appear to write whatever you want to. Here you can choose the font, size, color, etc. When you click OK the text will appear on your card. Now you can move by click/drag or change the size or shape by clicking the little handles and dragging in whatever direction you want.

 This is a good time to mention that this also works the same with a picture but on a picture you usually will want to maintain the proportions so you must only drag from the corners.

In this picture I have moved to the center of the card by clicking the "center" button. I have also clicked "add" to add a picture or text to this page of the greeting card. As you will see you can add any picture to the little square provided. The program will size the picture automatically, but you must use a picture that is the same shape as the rectangular space provided. At this point, if you want to edit the picture first, you must click on the minimize square and the card will go into a holding area at the left of the screen. In this picture, it is under the popout tip tab. You can get rid of the tip tab by clicking the little green triangle at the end of the tab. Now you must click "Done". Then click "Get & Fix Photo". Here you should be able to navigate to your camera, scanner (your scanner software window will appear), or file to get the picture you want to use and then it is self explanatory how to change your picture to suit your needs. It is optional for you to prepare all of your pictures first and when you click the minimize square above the picture the picture will go into the holding area on the left to be dragged onto the greeting card and used there. When you add a picture to your card you don't have to crop it. The area provided for the picture will do that. You can drag on the corner handles to make it bigger if necessary and then drag the portion of the picture you want to use to center it in the frame. None of the picture will show on the outside of the frame. You can also edit the picture after it's in its frame by clicking "Done", click "Get & Fix Photo" and then click once on the photo to select it. The above paragraph should also tell you how to handle a picture when you are not building a greeting card.

These steps are for converting the picture to a jpg format to be used as an email attachment or to print seem a little complicated but if you follow them step by step, they are easy to follow.:

1. Click "Get & Fix Photo'

2. Click "Save & Send near top,

3. Click "Export " from the drop down window,

4. Click "1.Export" from the top,

5.Click "Other Export" from the far right, A box will appear to choose destination at the top to the right of "Save in" by clicking the little black triangle (Desktop is recommended , you can always move it later)

6. Go down to" Save as" Click the little black triangle to the right and choose JPG, JPEG from the drop down window.

7. Type in any name but be sure it ends with .JPG (that is JPG with a dot in front of it)

Now that you have saved the card in a jpg format there is one more thing to do to it, to make it print properly. This should have been built into this program but it wasn't.

1. Click open under file and the card will be displayed.

2. Click Front.

3. Go up to "select", down to "selection tool" and out to "rectangle". Your curser will now look like a + sign.

4. Trace carefully around the edges of the front page image. This selects it.

5. Go up to "orientation" and click "Free Rotate". Little rotate handles will appear.

6. Click and hold on one of those and rotate the picture 180 degrees (upside down).  When you are sure it's right, click anywhere. Move to the Back of the card and repeat the above steps. Then print and fold card.

Below is the finished card the way it will look after it's printed or sent to someone as an email attachment.

A word about email attached pictures or, in this case, greeting card. Usually pictures printed from an email program do not turn out satisfactorily. The attachment should be opened with a graphic editor program and then printed from there. You launch your graphic editor (PhotoDeluxe or there are many more). Click "open" under file, navigate to the picture, click "open". When the picture is displayed click "Print".

If you have any questions contact me at: GOsborn5785@earthlink.net
 

Please take time to visit George's website and read about the Lucky Fairy Cross.  They are not man-made but are found on a mountaintop in Virginia.
http://www.webspawner.com/users/fairycross/