> PHOTOSHOP USER>^ MARCH 2017[ 086 ]
CREATING AN EVENT-SPECIFIC CONTACT CARD
This issue, we’re going to look ahead to Photoshop World (PSW) and something I’ve done for previous
visits to PSW. Many of us have business cards, and we tend to collect them as we venture around
events, tradeshows, and businesses. But, when you get home and add them to your master collec-
tion, you might not remember where you met a particular person. So, back in 2010, for my first ever
PSW, I made some cards specifically for the event; I wanted people to remember where they met me.
So, we’re going to take the previous two lessons from this column—using our bleed and crop setup,
plus guide layouts—to create a fun “We Met at Photoshop World” contact card. Then, we’ll export
to PDF to send it to our print service.For this tutorial, we’re going to make a regular-sized busi-
ness card, but you can make yours any size you wish—just
think about where people will put them when you hand
them over, so don’t make them too large.LET’S SET UP OUR ARTWORK!
The first step is to create our document, but it’s going to
be a little different than normal. Usually, to make a double-
sided card, you would either create two documents and save
them as “Front” and “Rear,” or create one file and make
two layer groups, turning one off to save, and then the
other and save. Today, we’re going to use a new feature in
Photoshop CC: Artboards. Artboards aren’t strange to Illus-
trator users, and InDesign has Pages, which operate much in
the same way. They aren’t scary and are actually very handy!Step One: Jump straight into File>New and, in the New Doc-
ument dialog that you now get with CC 2017, head over to
the right side and set up your document. In this case, we’re
designing an 85mm wide
by 55mm high (about
3x2") standard business
card. Because the size of
this project is quite small,
we’ll add our bleed now
and use guides to mark
it out. Since we need a
3mm bleed all the way
around, we’ll need to add
6mm to each of the two
dimensions—you’ll see
why when we set up our
layout guides. So, enter91x61mm. We’ll also need 300 ppi for print (I always default
to that as it’s the industry standard, and I have room on my
hard drive!), but before you click Create, turn on that Art-
boards checkbox.Step Two: Now we have a blank document on our screen.
But we need two, right? Front and back. A quick way to add
the second side is to switch to the Move tool (V), click once
on the word “Artboard 1” just above the left side of the
document to make the artboard active, and press-and-holdthe Option (PC: Alt) key. When you see the additional arrow
on the Move tool cursor, drag the artboard to the right to
duplicate it, using the smart guides to keep them aligned.
(Make sure you have smart guides switched on under the
View menu, under Show—super handy to have.) Drop the
new artboard to the right, with a suitable gap in between.
Now we have our front and back.Step Three: Next, we’ll use the New Guide Layout
(View>New Guide Layout) feature to add our bleed and
guides (refer to the January and February issues for full
tutorials). The difference with this document is that we’re
applying the guides to both artboards, so we need to select
All Artboards from the Target pop-up menu in the New GuideDAV EC L AY TON
Designing in Photoshop