I’ve been a journaling fiend for as long as I’ve been able to wield a writing utensil. Over the years I’ve filled up countless spiral notebooks, Hello Kitty diaries, handbound journals, and decorative notepads with all my thoughts + ideas. To this day, I still take time to scribble down my musings whenever the mood strikes me. But truth be told, when it comes to scrapbooking, I almost always save my journaling for the last step because I’m never quite sure what I want to say! Weird, right? Well, this is where typing directly onto my photos comes into play. Not only does it allow me to finesse my words before committing them to my layout, but I am able to kill two birds with one stone by taking care of both my photos and journaling at the same time! Win win.
Here are my tips for adding journaling directly onto my photos:
STEP ONE. I drag my desired photo into Photoshop and make a few editing adjustments.
STEP TWO. Using the text tool (highlighted in yellow), I click on the photo and begin typing my journaling. I decide to break my sentences down on individual layers so I can better manipulate where I want them to go, but this is just one way of going about it.
STEP THREE. Since I have five different layers of text (highlighted in yellow), I have to flatten the image to push everything onto the same layer. This will come in handy on subsequent steps. Go to Layer > Flatten Image.
STEP FOUR. Because I want to print multiple photos on a single sheet of paper, I open up a new document (File > New) sized at 8.5×11″ and copy / paste my photo onto the background layer (Mac users: Command + A to highlight the entire image, Command+C to copy the image, Command+V to paste the image). I then experiment with different sizing by using the Transform tool (Command + T) while holding down Shift to maintain proper proportions. Once I decide on the size and location for my photo, I hit Enter to deselect the image and move on to the next step.
STEP FIVE. I bring in additional photos that I want to include on my layout using the same format as described in Step Four. Once I am happy with the way everything looks, I flatten the image (same as Step Three) and print my document.
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