Advice on creative project for my organization

[dropkickjusty]

Hi everyone,

I've been given the job of creating a poster roster for my organization just like this one:



I'm no stranger to photoshop but have never taken on a project this big and important. My biggest question is... where do i start? I have tons of personel portraits just like the ones above and I also have a background picture and all the elements/photos or graphics needed to recreate an image like the one above.

Questions I have:

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  [*=2]Once I make the portraits smaller, how do I cut and paste them properly so that they are all evenly spread out like above and also all lined up in perfect proportion like above? It seems like it would be hard to just drag and drop them onto the master/background image 1 by one.

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  [*=2]How would you mathematically figure out how much to resize the pictures so that they all fit on the poster evenly?

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  [*=2]Is there any shortcuts you would recommend to complete this project?

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  [*=2]How would you tackle this project?

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  [*=2]This is my first post on this forum and I'm super excited to begin with this project. I also look forward to hearing your input. Any help is appreciated.

Thanks!

J

 

[Remote-Medic]

I would start by finding out how many portraits you have or will need to accommodate. Assuming it's going to be printer, you would need to ensure that whatever canvas size you have that it's is 300dpi.

Resize all the portraits to be the same size, set up a simple grid using the 'Guides' make sure 'Snap' is enabled and then drag or place each portrait on the guides, they should just snap back onto the lines and make everything line up.

Ultimately you need to figure out how many portraits you have/need/want and that would be your starting point.

 

[sprucemagoo1]

Like above mentioned, you need to ascertain how big the portrait image canvas sizes have to be, then you can set some guide lines to make a rectangle to fit peoples faces in, so they will all be around the same.

 

[3headcat]

Every project should start with a brief. You have no idea wants customer wants and in most cases he doesn’t know either. Most people have a “ well.. kind of like that but different.. I will know when I see it” approache. You can’t work with that. The more information you will get the less work you have to put in and the happier customer will be. Doesn't matter if he is a friend of yours, or a corporate CEO. Brief is still your best friend it will force customer to think about what he wants and it will make your live much easier.

Try asking customer and yourself questions like:
What is the overall goal of the new design project?
What are you trying to communicate and why?
What are your target market’s demographics & phychographics? ie. the age, gender, income, tastes, views, attitudes, employment, geography, lifestyle of those you want to reach.
Are there particular colors that you would like to use/avoid?
etc.:

Get yourself familiar with some of those pages to get a better picture:
http://www.attitudedesign.co.uk/2008/the-design-brief/
http://www.owenjonesdesign.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Design-Brief-Questionnaire.pdf
http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2011/03/7-basics-to-create-a-good-design-brief/
http://justcreative.com/2008/09/26/how-to-write-an-effective-design-brief/

And to answer your questions:
Resize the photos to the same size using a batch option before you make the smaller , line them up on one canvas one next to another on different layers and then make them smaller all at once with transform tool. They will be evenly spread through whatever size the project is.

Good Luck

 

[ibclare]

I like the link and resize idea quite a bit. Excellent.

I would also suggest doing this in one document, then arranging them in another. Just easier to keep organized that way. Plus you have all the sized photos should something happen or should one get accidentally deleted. Don't laugh! :mrgreen: Maybe even keep the poster design elements in a separate psd, then pull everything together when you're ready -- in a third document.