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Homemade Cards and Custom TTM Items

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With my background in web development, I try and be knowledgeable about as many aspects of building a web site as possible. Although I am a programmer, my background in digital photography offered me an opportunity to learn Photoshop. Using Photoshop allowed me to edit, crop, resize, and color correct my photos. Through the years I've found myself using it more for web design.

I've always loved baseball cards, and what kid growing up doesn't want to see his face on a baseball card. While in high school (my pre-computer days) I remember making manual cards and card templates and placing my pictures in them.

When I came across Stu-Man Autographs site, and Upper Deck's Build Your Own Card Application, I decided to customize my Index Cards or Letters as opposed to simply sending out a player's card. Personally I feel that with today's full-bleed card photography and high gloss, many autograph successes can turn to disappointment, and decided to send custom items, homemade cards, or custom index cards (CIC) on matte or non glossy surfaces instead. Listed below are a few reasons.

• Player signs in ball point pen
• Pen color blends with the picture making it hard to read
• Player signs a glossy card which smudges before drying
• You don't get anything back, and have now lost one or more of your cards

With that in mind, let's get started!

While most of the tutorials I will be presenting are in photoshop, I do not have the time to make cards from user submitted requests. If you are looking for premium custom homemade cards, but do not want to attempt this yourself, check out the Game Day Cards Official Website or www.freewebs.com/custommadecards/ they can provide you with high quality custom cards for a fee if that is what you desire.

For those of you willing to give it a shot, the techniques I will be presenting, will hopefully give you enough background to create your own designs, which hopefully you can share with us.

Below is a simple stamp design I like to use on some of my custom letters. My son is going through a "sticker phase" and I decided why not try playing around with a stamp design and make stickers out of them.

With photoshop open, let's create a new file by clicking the "CTRL" key and the "N" key at the same time (CTRL+N). Use the same settings shown here Height: 400 Width: 400 Resolution: 72 Color Mode: RGB Color

Select the "Custom Shape Tool" (shaped like a star). There are a lot of pre-packaged Custom Shapes that come with Photoshop, but we will be working with the stamp custom shape. Once the Custom Shape tool is selected photoshop will display the shapes dialog drop-down in the menu bar area up top, which displays the available shapes. Select the Stamp custom shape or if you'd like to be adventurous, select some other square or rectangular shaped custom shape.

If you hold down the mouse button, and drag the cursor, you will see the outline of the custom shape that you have chosen. Size it to your desired preference, and when you are done simply let go of the mouse button. You should now see something similar to the image on the left. If it's not what you intended you can undo your changes by clicking the "CTRL" key and the "Z" key (CTRL+Z) together to undo your last action.

Select the rectangle tool and draw a rectangle within the stamp so it looks similar to the image below. Click the "CTRL" key and the "SHIFT" key and the "E" key (CTRL+SHIFT+E) at the same time to flatten the image.

Select the Magic Wand Tool and select the area you just created by clicking somewhere within the rectangle. You will now notice that the selected area is highlighted as show below.

Detailed description Coming Soon

For demonstartion purposes. let's go get a test image from the web using Google's Image search. As an example do a search for Mattingly and find an image that you like. Click on the link to view the full sized image, then right click the image and select the copy option from the popup menu in Internet Explorer.

Now go back into Photoshop and with the rectangular area still selected from when you used the Magic Wand, click the "CTRL" key and the "SHIFT" key and the "V" key (CTRL+SHIFT+V) at the same time to "Paste Into" the selected area. You may notice that the image is larger or smaller that the area selected. If the image is larger you can size it down to fit following the steps below.

Click the "CTRL" key and the "T" key (CTRL+T) at the same time to "Toggle" the selected area, and enable it to be resized. You will see the images "Handles" appear outlining the actual size of the image within the selected area. While holding down the "SHIFT" key, click the bottom right corner and drag it to resize it. Holding the SHIFT key will ensure that the image keeps it's proportions while resizing, and will avoid any distortion while accidentally moving from side to side.

Once you have the image centered and sized correctly, it should look similar to the picture to the left. Now all you have to do is save the image following the steps below.

Click the "CTRL" key and the "S" key (CTRL+S) at the same time to bring up the Save Dialog Box shown above. By default Photoshop will want to save to it's native format (.PSD file extension). You'll want to select the .JPG file extension and give the file a name. Finally select the location that you would like to save the file to, and you're done!