HOW TO CREATE A 2018 CALENDAR

Happy New Year Everyone! Since it is the beginning of 2018, I am linking everyone to my favorite Calendars so you can begin making some nice monthly calendars for the coming year. Last year I did a tutorial on how to do this, so I am going to link you back to this blog if you need some quick instruction at. See my How to Create 2017 Calendars in Both Lightroom and Photoshop blog.

Here is the updated link to Calendar Labs.com that has several calendar formats that can be downloaded as Word documents. The image above from Grabbers Restaurant on Great Guana Cay in Abaco, Bahamas, was created using Photoshop and the Word documents. See Screenshot below – just need to click and highlight rows needed, then CTRL+C to copy, then on a New Layer in Photoshop, CTRL+V to paste into your calendar document. This way all the months do not get copied in at once.

So many extra things can be done with this workflow.  Colors were easily added to the word calendar template (since it is still in a table format, just click on the calendar number to select and use the Paint Bucket Tool to change the color from the default gray). If the image and table do not line up correctly, just go to the Move Tool (V) and in the Options Bar, click on the Align Horizontal Center icon. If you need to, just select the two layers with the image and calendar and press the arrow keys right or left or up and down to line up. I had to use several Free Transforms to get the sizes the same. The Sun Ray Filter from Luminar 2018 (see sidebar at my Tidbits Blog for website link) was used to give a slight ray effect in upper left corner. A Gradient Fill Adjustment Layer or Pattern Adjustment Layer can be added under the calendar and image layers to get some nice background effects. Or add another image in a softer monochrome color. Below on my favorite horse image, a heart was added to Valentines Day using a Pretty Preset Valentin Overlay. The possibilities are endless! Here is an updated link to Ed Weaver at Red Photographic site who distributes the calendar templates every year for Lightroom. Matt Kloskowski has a nice video at this site on how to do this technique along with some tips in my blog from last year. A link called 89 Free Calendar Templates for 2018 gives several more options using some different styles of calendars.

Hope you have some fun making calendars for the coming year. This is always one of my favorite activities to do each month. Have a very Happy New Year!…..Digital Lady Syd

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