How to make Lightroom blogboards / storyboards

I love those storyboards or blogboards that you see on websites and blogs – don’t you?  They are designed to “tell a story” even more than just the individual photos would do with a sequence or by showing relationships between the photos.  They do a wonderful job – don’t you agree? 

I call this blogboard/storyboard “brother and sister love” as  it shows a number of interactions between my kids. 

Well, there are some that may be free (although I haven’t found them!) but because they do take some work to set up, most people sell this as a product, like… for money (lots!).   I just couldn’t stomach paying that much for something seemingly so easy.  But, yet I wanted the same look.  But I don’t have enough knowledge how to do this in photoshop elements (what I own, but don’t use that often).  Although, I could do the research and try to learn and read a ton and test it out and finally figure it out (after how many hours and hours) – I don’t have that kind of time anymore with 2 kids!  I use Lightroom 3 ALL.THE.TIME and would love to use this in a blogboard/storyboard way.  How could I do this, I thought…

 

I was reading one of the many blogs that I love (oh there are so many blogs I love to read!) and one reminded me about the Print module in Lightroom 3.  I totally haven’t played around with this module at all – I mean – I get all my prints from professional printing places.  I don’t even have a black and white printer at my house.  If I have to print something, I do it at work or ask my husband to print it at work.  It’s just too much hassle with all the ink and calibrating and plus, they never look as good as I’ve received from a professional printing house. 

 

So, I took a few minutes one day and played around with the print module in Lightroom and figure out that making blogboards or storyboards in Lightroom 3 was so easy and intuitive – just like everything in Lightroom! 

 

I started with one of the Lightroom templates and make alterations from there.  I added photo borders to add some space between the photos, which further down the right hand side of the program you can choose the background page color.  I chose white since my family blog background is white – but, oh the possibilities! 

 

Then you drag and drop different sizes of photos onto the page.  There are some standard sizes available, but endless possibilities when you start playing around with those templates.  Then, you drag and drop your photos from your filmstrip below – just select a picture and put it in the spot you want.  The standard sizes that were added to the page can be customized to fit the picture you want, the size you want, anything!  Here I chose one portrait with 2 intersecting squares.  As I said, just drag your photo from the filmstrip and drop it where you want it. 

 

 

You can add your identity plate as a watermark, or add your watermark to each photo.  For my final photo – I chose the identity plate (which is totally customizable!).  This allows you to move the “watermark” anywhere you want and choose the opacity and scale. 

 

 

Now, we’re almost ready to print!  But, first – you can choose to have the blogboard or storyboard the size of your pictures or have a bit on the side or bottom for another choice for identification of your studio or watermark.   I didn’t choose that here, but this is where you could add some size of the paper, if you will, to the final size to make that happen.  I chose “print to JPG file” and hit “print to file”.  Choose where to save the image and voila! 

 

 

Perfect Blogboard or storyboard for your blog using software that you already have. 

 

Plus, hit the “plus” sign next to “template browser” and save your template to use again and again.

 

 

 

 

My final blogboard / storyboard – pretty snazzy huh?

  And shown with a black background, too!  (See how easy templates are!)

Next month, I’ll try to see if I can learn something about the web module!