The Ohanaware Weblog
Make an Amazing Photo Cube Christmas Card
Want to send a truly original interactive Christmas Card this year? Well, what about a Photo Cube Christmas Card? If you’re Grandma is anything like mine, she loves these cards. You can still include your season greeting, but Grandma or your recipient can cut out and make a beautiful Photo Cube. The card even includes the instructions for making the cube.
These instructions are for Funtastic Photos (download a free unlimited trial), however they may still work in other product.
Step 1 :: Make the Cube
This step is the easiest, use the browser of Funtastic Photos to select some images. Click on the “Print & Layouts” toolbar button to load them into the “Print & Layouts” interface. You’ll need 6 photos to make a Photo Cube. If you don’t have enough photos, you can click the little “+” button in the bottom left hand corner of the “Print & Layouts” interface. Then select your photos and click on the “Print & Layouts” toolbar button again. Once you have 6 images, scroll through the icons at the bottom of the window until you find “Funtastic Cube”, click on the icon and now your screen should look similar to the one below.
Step 2 :: Print, wait I mean Save!
Click the “Save As…” toolbar button, this’ll bring up a little menu, Select “Save As..” from that menu. This’ll produce the “Save As Copy” dialog. Make sure that the format is set to “JPEG”, drag the quality slider as far right as possible. Next change the “Fit Into” menu to read “14 Megapixel”, this’ll produce a fat and wide image, not good huh! Uncheck the “Scale proportionally” box, Then click the little button In-between the width and height text boxes, this’ll reverse the values giving us the correct orientation! Now click the save button, choose the desktop or some other easy to remember location and click “Save” once more. I rotated the picture 90 degrees so’s not to take up too much space in this blog.
Step 3 :: Print, Again?
Now you’re back in “Print & layouts” interface of Funtastic Photos, simply click on the little “+” icon in the bottom left hand corner of the window. This will take you to the browser, where you should navigate to the folder, that you saved the image too. Click once on the image and then click on the “Print & Layouts” button in the toolbar. This’ll bring you back to the “Print & Layouts” interface and you’re Photo Cube image is now at the bottom of the image list. To make it the image at the top of the list, double click it in the list. It may not look like anything has happened, so use the icons to select “Greeting Card”. Now you should see the photo cube image taking up half the page. Click on the “Page Setup” icon in the toolbar and choose the correct paper size and portrait orientation. Click “OK” and then select “Scale Images To Fit Area” from the “Options” toolbar button, then select “Auto Rotate Images For Best Fit” from the same button. Now your screen should look like below.
Okay, now click on the “Print” toolbar button and it’ll produce the standard Apple print dialog, but don’t click on “Print” just yet. One of the secrets to getting great looking print is to tweak the print settings. In the dialog there is a button with a triangle. If it’s pointing downwards click on it to reveal the settings. There is a popup menu which says “Layout”, click on it and select “Quality & Media”. This step can severally improve the quality of your print out. I suggest you to select the correct kind of paper from the “Media Type” popup menu. Then set “Print Quality” to the highest setting possible. Now you can click Print.
When your card is printed, fold it over in half and voila. A Photo Cube card with instructions for the recipient (in my case, my Grandmother) to make their Photo cube.
Tags: Christmas, editing, photo, Photography, photos, tips, tricks, Tutorial, Tutorials