The artwork for the 20+ Q&A with Tanya Memme was certainly a challenge, but it was also a lot of fun to create. For the page where we discuss her upcoming movie, Terror Inside, I thought it would be cool to have a sort of scrapbook effect, with shots of her and fellow actors on the set done up as old snapshots, the highlight being a vintage touristy postcard of sleepy Montverde, Florida (where TI was filmed). Not only does it capture the quiet innocence that reflects the early part of the film's story, but also the easy-going charm of the real town as well. The same technique was used to make all three images above. Nothing outrageous here, just some basic photoshop tools and filters. Like much stylized graphic design, the real trick is figuring out the qualities that make the originals look the way they do.  What's funny is that it will probably take longer to explain my technique than it did to actually make the image. Here's how I designed the card... This is the original photo, the Green Moose Cafe (one of the locations in the film), shot on an overcast fall afternoon. While I used a normal shutter speed, I probably could have made this a time-exposure of several hours, and the shot would have looked exactly the same. That's a joke. You see, not much happens in Montverde, as in...nothing really moves? So, ya see? Several hours? Exactly the same? A'hem. Let's move on... Now, an old vintage postcard isn't going to show "accurate" colors in a scene, so the first thing I did was tweak the original by using a nik Pro pastel filter to boost the color saturation and soften everything to give the image a slightly surreal look... The filter is simply a photoshop action, meaning you could create the same effect manually with several normal ps tools, but this is quicker, and I'm lazy... :) On to the type. My reference for the postcard design was the Greetings From America series of postage stamps issued by the USPS, which included fifty different postcard designs, one for each state. In fairness, their inspiration was clearly the thousands of similar postcard designs over the years that everyone knows as a classic staple of Americanna. The type face? Good ole Arial Black. Nice and large... I knew I'd be outlining the basic type using two seperate colors, so I adjusted the tracking using the type tool to leave some extra space in between each letter. The graceful bend in the type needed to cascade the text across the top of the card was easily achieved using the type warp tool... Outlining type in ps is simple. Ctrl-click (pc) the type layer icon to create an outline selection. On a new layer, use the stroke tool and choose the color. I choose a bright green (I knew I'd be toning down in Another layer, another outline selection, another color. This time white stroked on the inside of the type... another step) and had the stroke tool add the outline to the outside of the type... This is called a blend, and it will be the color(s) on the inside of the type. The blend tool in ps makes it a snap. I choose two nice autumn earthtone hues, and on a new layer click hold the mouse and pull across the screen top to bottom at a slight left-right diagonal. The diagonal is so the color goes fairly evenly across the curved letters (see next image)... Hey, I think we're almost done! I now use what's known as a clipping mask to place the color blend only on the type. To complete the postcard message, I choose a much smaller and more ornate serif typeface to compliment the main block type. In the style of the old cards, I place Greetings from and Florida at opposite ends as well as above and below the town name. Ok, let's assemble all of our elements. Not bad, but it doesn't really look like a vintage card. The devil is in the details, so we need to keep working it... Another photoshop nik Pro filter to the rescue! This time I use the Old Photo: Color filter, which again replaces a long series of steps with a few clicks... NOW we've got something... So, how do we take the final design, whose colors, tonality, and contrast are now just right, and give it that real worn vintage quality? Easy. Old photoshop trick with textures and layer blending modes. The technique I use involves placing one image over the other (seperate layers), and making the blend mode of the top layer multiply. First I found a great old photo of my mom's. I scanned it, then cloned out the image area, leaving only this nicely yellowed, dog-eared, slightly fray-edged texture to use with my card. It actually works with either layer on top, it's just that the results will be different . In this case, I put the card artwotrk on top. The layer blend mode allows the texture underneath to show through. Add some low-opacity (see through) white rectangles to look like pieces of tape, angle everything slightly, and we're done!