Make Your Own Digital Photo Gifts

Create a Snazzy Magazine Cover

This is one is always a big hit, and it's very easy to do. If you've got a nice photo of someone, make it the cover story of a magazine all about that person. For Mother's Day, for instance, why not make Mom Magazine and stick a picture of her on the cover? When you're done, just print it out on glossy paper using your ink jet printer, and put the finished photo in a frame. Here's how to do it:

1. Select the photo you want to use as your cover photo, and load the image into a new Paint Shop Pro screen. Your picture should be at least 2 megapixels (3 is even better) to make a sharp 8-by-10-inch print.

2. The first order of business is to add a border around the photo to give it a magazine-like format. A solid red border, for example, will give it a Time magazine look. In Paint Shop Pro, start by right-clicking the color palette (it's on the right side of the screen) on a red tone. That'll change the current background color to red.

3. Choose Image, Add Borders and enter a border dimension in the Add Borders dialog box. Leave the box beside Symmetric checked. Set the size of the border to a number between 60 and 100 pixels--the right size depends upon the image you're using. Click OK, and you'll see a red border appear around the image. If you think the border is too large or too small, choose Edit, Undo from the menu (or press Ctrl-Z) and try again.

4. It's time to add a title. You can call it Super Mom, Kristin Today, or anything else that strikes your fancy. Click the Text button in the toolbar and click in the upper half of the picture, more or less where the title should end up. The Text Entry dialog box will open. Set the text to Vector and check the Antialias option. Type a title, then select it with your pointer and adjust the font style, size, and color to taste. If you move the dialog box out of the way, you should be able to see the text change in the image. Don't worry about the exact placement, because you'll get to fix that in a minute. When it looks good, click OK. When the dialog box is gone, you can drag the text around the screen and even change its size. Move the pointer over the center of the text, then click and drag to move it. You resize the text by grabbing a corner. If you want to get fancy, you can even slant the text by clicking and dragging the small box to the right of the center of the text.

5. From here, it's all up to you. You might as well go to town on it. Add some cover lines to your magazine to make it look more like a real publication. You can inspect your favorite magazines to get a good sense of what looks right. Use any attention grabbers you want, like "Mom's 10 Hottest New Cookie Recipes," or "Jeremy's Street Hockey Adventure." Add an issue date and a price (your magazine isn't free, after all!), too. If you're ambitious, you can even photograph the bar code from a real magazine with your digital camera and paste it into the lower left or right corner of the cover.

6. When it's done, print it on glossy photo paper. This kind of paper usually runs around a dollar per sheet, but the final print will look much better than if you use regular ink jet paper. Then frame the cover. Whoever receives your gift is sure to love it.

For more tips on how to enhance your expertise with your digital camera, sign up for Digital Focus, Dave Johnson's weekly newsletter. For back issues, check the Digital Focus Archive. And go to Top Image Editing Tools to download some shareware image-editing utilities.