How to Create Posters from your Family Pictures

Poster printing is not just for those big movie promotions and big business advertising. You can actually do a little poster printing on your own for personal reasons. In this simple lesson in poster printing, I am going to teach you how to create custom posters from your family pictures (indeed even any kind of picture that you want really). We are going to cover here all the crucial steps in detail from the gathering of the materials, all the way to the poster printer itself. Hopefully, even bare newcomers to printing should be able to learn this great process easily.

1. Scan your photos in high resolution - First of course, we will need to scan the particular family photo that you want. It is best to use a scanner for this to get the image in full detail. Just make sure that you capture your photo in full high resolution. Do not just get the preview image. A resolution of 300dpi or higher, or a dimension of 2000 by 2000 or higher should be good enough for poster printing.

2. Do some enhancements - With your photograph now digitally scanned, it is time to do some enhancements to make the image look a little bit better. Now, you do not have to do very complicated effects to make your image for poster printing look better. The most basic thing you can do is to simply adjust the brightness and contrast settings of your image using an image editor. Usually, I would add a little bit more brightness and just a touch of contrast to make the image slightly more vibrant. Of course, if you are an expert, you may want to go all the way and correct all the flaws in your image.

3. Crop the photo properly - Next, once the enhancements are done, you should them crop the image properly. In most cases, you will want to cut some of the background a bit because the image is not quite centered, or there are other elements in the background that you may not want to show. Most imaging software again should be able to help you with this.

4. Download a poster template and load it - To start actually creating your poster design, it is best to download a poster template to make your job a little bit easier. Now, there are plenty of free templates available over the Internet, just use a search engine to get them. Make sure you choose one with the right size for your posters. Of course, take note that you must get a template with a file format that you can work with. Once you have it, load it up in your imaging software.

5. Add an appropriate background - Afterward, you should first add an appropriate background. Of course, the default is usually a white background. However, depending on your image, you might want to set to black or to another color that seems more appropriate. Just use your artistic sense in this one, but white is the best in most cases.

6. Insert your photo - With the background set, you just need to insert your image or photo. Make sure to resize it to fit the poster template's dimensions. Also take not of the scaling so that you do not distort your images.

7. Insert your text - With the image set, you should then add in your text. Choose an appropriate font style and font color that matches your team. Make sure that you put in an area of your layout that is a little bit more blank than the rest.

8. Integrate your elements together - Next, you should try to integrate your whole layout together with some over-arching effects. Adding some special effect filters or textures should do the trick. These effects of course depend on the software you are using. One thing I always like to do is to add a Sepia effect or even a colored filter effect to tie things up together into one theme nicely. Just choose the filter that you think is most appropriate.

9. Review your design - Don't forget to review your design before final printing. Check your image if it fits nicely. Proofread your text to see if everything is perfect with no spelling or grammar errors. Have other people review your design as well so that no mistakes are in your design before printing begins.

10. Color poster printing - Finally, we go into printing itself. You can do some color poster printing online as the most convenient way of doing this. It should be easy enough to log on to the Internet to find an online poster printer with the right price range for you. Just place your order, send in your file and then wait for your posters to be printed. It is that easy! You should get your color posters within a few days.

Great! Now you know how to easily create posters from your family images and other photographs.