Poster Presentation

This technique gives your work the layout of a professional poster, yet it's incredibly easy to do. In fact, once you learn how to do it, this is the perfect technique to turn into a Photoshop action. That way, anytime you want to give your image the poster look, you can do it at the press of a button.

Step One

Open the photo you want to turn into a poster layout.

Step Two

Go under the Image menu and choose Canvas Size (or press Option-Command-C [PC: Alt-Control-C]). When the dialog appears, turn on the Relative checkbox, enter 1 inch for both the Width and the Height fields, and choose White in the Canvas Extension Color pop-up menu.

Step Three

When you click OK, an inch of white canvas space will be added around your photo.

Step Four

Now you're going to go back to the Canvas Size dialog, so press the keyboard shortcut again. Add another inch of white canvas but only to the bottom of your image. In the Canvas Size dialog, enter 1 inch in the Height field, and then in the Anchor grid, click on the top-center anchor (which makes the area you're adding appear below the current image).

Step Five

Click OK and an additional inch of white canvas area is added below your photo.

Step Six

In this extra inch of white space, you'll add some type. Press T to get the Type tool to add your type (i.e., the name of your studio, the name of the poster, whatever you'd like). I chose the font Gil Sans Light in all caps at a size of 14 points. The extra space between the letters adds an elegant look to the type. To do that, highlight your type with the Type tool, then go to the Character palette (found under the Window menu), and in the Tracking field enter 800. Now, to keep your type from overpowering the photo, go to the Layers palette and lower the Opacity of your Type layer to 60%.

Step Seven

To center your text perfectly within your image area, click on the Background layer in the Layers palette, and then, pressing-and-holding the Shift key, click on the Type layer so both layers are selected. Press V to get the Move tool, and in the Options Bar, you'll see four sets of alignment icons. In the second set from the left, click on the Align Horizontal Centers icon to center your text beneath your image.

Step Eight

Now, we'll add a thin outside border. Click on the Create a New Layer icon in the bottom of the Layers palette, and then press Command-A (PC: Control-A) to put a selection around your entire image area. Go under the Edit menu and choose Stroke. When the Stroke dialog appears, set black as your stroke Color, set the Width to 1 pixel, set the Location to Center, and click OK. Now you can press Command-D (PC: Control-D) to deselect.

Step Nine

To make the outside border thinner and less obtrusive, go to the Layers palette and lower the Opacity setting for this layer to around 30%, giving you the final poster layout shown here.