Posters from Photos

By Christina VanGinkel

After my recent introduction to photo books, I started thinking about other things that could be done with photographs that I might not normally think of. That was when I discovered posters! With a twelve year old son who is into baseball, football, and snowboarding, besides constantly redoing his bedroom, save for his Kawasaki green walls, which he has informed me he has no plans to change, ever, posters from photos we took might be just the thing to decorate with!

We started by looking at the different sizes available to give us an idea of what we could use them for. He currently has four matching generic posters on his wall above his bed of four different sports, one snowboarder, one skateboarder, one surfer, and one motorbike rider. If we could have posters produced in the same sizes as those, along with a larger sized one that matched, for the back of his door, I thought we might be onto something as far as pulling together a theme for his room.

Well, sizing was not a problem. A 12" x 16" would be ideal for the smaller posters, and a 20" x 30" would be perfect for his door. So, now that we knew we could order sizes that would work, we had to decide on prints to use. I suggested that we use photographs of his self, participating in his sports of choice. He vetoed that idea immediately. He did not want to be looking at his self.

My next idea was not much different. I suggested we use photographs of him, participating in the sports of his choosing, but before we had them printed, we would alter them, so that no one would know who they were unless he told them. He wanted to see some samples before he decided.

I found a few photos that I thought might work, one of him on his motocross bike going over a jump, one of him riding the rails in the snowboard terrain park, up at bat on the baseball field, and a close-up of him making a tackle during football. I opened up Paint Shop Pro Studio, and opened up the motocross picture. I clicked on Effects on the toolbar. From the drop down menu, I opened up Artistic Effects, and then clicked on Chrome. We also looked at the pictures with several of the different effects, including colored pencil, pencil, chalk, and more. We also looked at several of the effects underneath Texture Effects including fur, rough leather, sculpture and more. We ended up going back to the chrome.

By choosing chrome, we had actually found a color scheme that would not clash with his green walls, and while he knows all the pictures are of him, nobody else will unless he tells them. We had one minor problem, and that was we needed a fifth picture for his door. Instead of going back through more, he decided to reuse the motocross one going over a jump. That way they really tied together the overall look of the posters. Once ordered and put up, I must admit they look cool, and the big bonus is that he likes them too! Who would have thought that a digital camera would lead to so many fun things, including decorating my son's walls!