Making DIY Family Photo Christmas Cards
The Best Way to Create Personalized Christmas Greetings on a Budget
Nov 3, 2009
It has long been a tradition for many families to include a family photo in their annual Christmas card mailings. In more recent years, it has become popular to meld the two items together in the form of photo Christmas cards.
There are many stores and photo services that offer these photo cards in various stock designs, none of which are truly original and most of which are overpriced. Making DIY photo Christmas cards not only saves money, but ensures a custom design that no one else will have!
Choosing Photos for Christmas Cards
The first and most important element of this project is a family photo. It can be an existing photo, or could be a photo taken especially for the cards.
Make sure all faces are clearly visible in the photo, and that no one in the picture will find it unflattering of themselves. Also, make sure that the picture is of a high resolution. Using compressed or low-quality images will result in a grainy finished product.
The photo will need to be loaded onto a computer. If the photo was taken with a camera that uses film, either choose to get a CD of the photos when getting them developed or use a scanner to transfer them to the computer.
Editing Family Christmas Card Photos
For those who do not have access to Adobe PhotoShop or other fancy image editing software, there are some great free online image editors that work nicely for projects such as this. In this instance, all edits have been made using Picnik.com. Register a free account at Picnik and upload the chosen photo to begin editing.
Before adding any embellishments to the photo, make any adjustments needed to the original photo. Picnik has an Atuo-Fix tool for adjusting many technical aspects of the photo such as exposure and color balance. There is also a blemish tool, which allows users to airbrush any skin imperfections on the photo's subjects.
Under the Create tab, find the Frames menu. Add a border to the photo with the border tool. Adjust the width of the border to 25 and the corner radius to 25 as well. (See Fig. 2.) Remember to hit the Apply button to save these changes.
Use the text tool to add a personalized message to the photo Christmas card. Be sure to place the message in a highly visible place, using a font that is easy to read and in a color that contrasts with its background. (See Fig. 3.)
Don't be afraid to play around. Once familiar with Picnik's tools and menus, there are nearly limitless possibilities for creating custom photo cards!
Printing Custom Christmas Photo Cards
As long as the original ratio of the photo's dimensions have not been changed during the editing process, they can be printed just like any other digital photo. Save the completed file to a CD-R, USB drive, SD card, or other portable storage device and take it to a photo processing center for printing.
Alternatively, anyone with a high-quality color printer can print their cards at home, saving even more money!
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