Source & Mix Botanical Illustrations with Typography to Create Timeless Designs in Adobe Photoshop

1. Introduction & Class Overview 2026: Elegant typography paired with beautiful botanical artworks never go out of style! And whether it is a vintage print or your own illustration, combining it with thoughtfully set type can turn it into a polished professional design, ready for sharing, selling or printing. I'm Jenya from Attitude Creative, and as a graphic designer, I love using vintage imagery in my collages and designs. And over the years, I have taught a few popular classes on this subject. And with this class, I invite you to explore combining botanical illustrations with strong minimal typography in Adobe Photoshop and creating striking compositions that are perfect for printed products, such as greeting cards or posters, wedding stationery, packaging designs, branding elements, playlist or podcast covers, or social media graphics. In this class, I will start by sharing tips for sourcing high quality, free to use public domain vintage botanical illustrations for your designs, and then step-by-step guide you through the complete process of working with your sourced images and combining them with digital type in Adobe Photoshop. And along the way, I will also share tips, tricks, ideas and resources that will help you easily get on with experimenting with images, composition, typography, colors, and even messaging. Whilst I will cover a complete range of different techniques you might need to create refined work and complex layered designs, you can easily adapt the process and only use the techniques required for the design of your desired level of complexity, time you want to invest in your project and your skill level. Whether you're a graphic designer looking to elevate your work with well-crafted vintage illustrations and stylish typography, illustrator or artist with a botanical portfolio looking to transform standalone artworks into complete designs, or a student exploring composition, typesetting, and learning Adobe Photoshop, this class is for you! I'm super excited to share with you this process of turning botanical illustrations into striking timeless designs, and I cannot wait to see what you will create following this class! So join in and let's create something awesome! 2. How to Approach This Class & Your Project: Hey, welcome to the 2026 edition of this class! Before we dive into all of the techniques, here are a few tips on how to best approach this class and your project. First of all, our main project and my demo will focus on creating a greeting card. But you can easily adapt this project to your own creative goals, whether that's creating wedding stationery, packaging design, or anything else for print or digital use. But if you want to create a greeting card or wedding stationery, in the class resources, you'll find a couple of downloads, which will help you tackle this sort of projects with more ease, even if you haven't created anything like this before. Secondly, in this class, I will be using vintage illustrations and share resources and tips for sourcing high quality public domain images in the next lesson, so that you can use them in your project if you want. But if you're an illustrator or artist with a botanical portfolio, of course, you can use your own work as well, regardless of whether it has been created digitally, or you have high quality digitised, preferably scanned, versions of your traditional artwork. And finally, you can decide how complex you want your design and process to be. Whilst this class is a complete guide to the tools and techniques you might require to create professional and polished designs that combine botanical illustrations with digital type, you don't have to follow the complete process and all of the lessons and can skip some of the steps, depending on the source material you're working with and how you want to approach your project. I will be sharing tips about how to progress through the class in the video lessons, but to make it easier for you to follow along and learn or revisit exactly what you need, be sure to reference the PDF with a detailed table of contents that you can grab from the class resources. Regardless of how you decide to approach your design, be sure to post your project in the projects and resources tab for this class and share your final design or designs, the source material you have used, any mock-ups you might create, as well as any variants or work-in-progress images. I always love seeing and learning more about your process, and it also makes it easier to provide more detailed feedback and answer any questions you might have. I cannot wait to see how you're going to approach your botanical designs, so without further ado, let's get started! 3. Vintage Resources & Tips for Sourcing Images: If you want to create your design using vintage botanical illustrations, then the first thing you need to do is find some nice images! And these days, there are a lot of various online archives of vintage free to use public domain images, and my favorite resource when it comes to anything botanical, is the Biodiversity Heritage Library. It is a treasure trove of beautiful vintage prints, and it is easy to get lost for hours exploring all of the available albums. But to save you some time and make it easier for you to find suitable images for your designs, I have put together a PDF with a list of direct links to the albums containing various kinds of exciting, out of copyright and free to use in any project high quality botanical illustrations. And these include not just flowers, but also fruit, berries, and other plants, all of which will pair beautifully with some type. But if you want to browse the whole archive and select other images, just double-check that their copyright status says either Public Domain or No Known Copyright Restrictions and avoid any damaged images with stains, and generally images in a poor quality. And here are a few tips to help you source images in the best quality and resolution possible. Start by browsing the Biodiversity Heritage Library albums on Flickr to easily see what sort of images are in each publication and find some images you would like to experiment with. Then open the page for a specific image you like and check the available download sizes here. More often than not, you will be able to download images in decent size and quality right from Flickr. But in some cases, for example, like here, the largest size available isn't great. So instead of downloading this image from Flickr, you can go and check whether it is available in a better quality and size directly from the Biodiversity Library website. You will find a direct link to the page containing this image in the publication in the image description on Flickr, or if not, you can find the link to the whole publication in the album details instead. So follow the link, inspect your chosen illustration and quickly check out some other pages to see what's there and the general quality. If the illustrations look better than what you have just seen on Flickr, click on the Download Contents here and select the Download Book. And this will allow you to get your chosen image in the best size and quality available. And since you will be downloading the whole book, you'll get every page as a separate image. So you'll get your hands on all other illustrations at the same time, as well as on all other pages that you won't be able to find on Flickr, like text, title pages, and some blank pages. And these can be used as well, for example, as textures, graphic elements, or typographic references. So don't worry about downloading more than you think you need! Make sure to select the JP2 format option here and ignore other options. And this is super important. Then wait for your download, open the archive, and you'll find the complete book with all of the images and other pages. You can delete any pages you don't need if you want, but don't rush because you might want to use them later. If you download complete books, I would recommend keeping all of the files for each book together so that it is easier to find images for your new designs later on. And it is a good idea to rename your folders and the individual files, either with the sequential names featuring the book title and the plate numbers or page numbers, or the plant names. And to create your design, it is a good idea to copy the source images you want to use into a separate project folder, and I'll talk more about the effective project organization in a moment. So find some exciting botanical images you want to use in your project, download them in the best size and quality available, and then join me in the next lesson where I'll share my tips for organizing your project files for a smooth workflow. 4. Organising Project Files: Before we start working with our images and creating our designs, it is a good idea to set up a separate folder for this project. In this folder, you will need quite a few other subfolders for different kinds of files. First of all, you need to have a source folder where you can store your unmodified original files. Then if you're going to be cutting out your elements, you'll need a separate folder for cut-outs. Then you'll need a separate folder to store your Photoshop files. And then it's a good idea to have a few other folders for other types of files you'll be creating or using throughout the process. For example, I have a separate folder for materials, which contains a couple of textures, which you can also download from the class resources. Then I have a separate folder for references, which contains a title page from one of the vintage books which has some nice typography. But you can put any images in the reference folder, which you might need to reference throughout the process, whether for different color treatments, or for inspiration for different typefaces or compositions. It's always a good idea to export your work in a few different formats, so here, I've got a separate folder to export my design in high resolution in RGB color mode. Then I have a folder for design previews that will contain smaller JPEGs for sharing online. And because in this class I'll be sharing with you how to prepare your card for print with bleeds and crop marks, I also have a few separate folders: one will contain Photoshop documents where I'll be preparing cards for print, and a couple of folders with files exported for print, one in CMYK and one in RGB. I also have a folder for mock-ups here just in case if I want to create some mock-ups of my cards. So set up a folder for your project, create all of the necessary subfolders, and collect all of the materials you'll need throughout the process. And when you're ready, join me in the next lesson, where we will start preparing our images for use in the design. 5. Preparing Images for Use in the Design: With all of your files ready and organized in the project folder, now you can start preparing your source images for use in your design. So go to Adobe Photoshop and open the illustration you want to use. If you have downloaded your images in the JP2 format instead of the regular JPEG or TIFF formats, you need to make sure that you open them through Adobe Photoshop because by default JP2 format is usually opened by some other apps. Regardless of whether you are working with the image in the JP2 format or in JPEG or TIFF, as soon as you open your source image, hit Command+Shift+S or Control+Shift+S in Windows to resave your image in the Cut-outs folder. Set the format to Photoshop. Make sure that the file name is clear and descriptive. Embed the color profile, and hit Save. Now there are a few things you need to do to prepare your image to be used in a print project. First of all, press Command+Option+I or Control+Alt+I in Windows to open the Image Size dialog and change the resolution of your file to 300 pixels per inch. If you are starting with a relatively small image in 72 DPI, make sure to set the Resampling Method to Preserve Details 2.0. Check this box, and play around with the Reduce Noise slider to avoid any excessive pixelation. Also, if you're starting with a small file in 72 DPI, pay attention to the pixel dimensions of your file and make sure that they are not too huge. Then set the units here to either centimeters, millimeters or inches depending on what you're used to working with, and adjust the physical dimensions of the image if required. In my case, the image size is pretty decent. But if you see the size which is way too small for the card, you will need to increase it, and if it is huge, do not hesitate to make it a bit smaller. With the resolution and size of your image changed, hit Okay, and be sure to save your document. Next, if your source image includes more elements than just the illustration you want to use, switch to the Crop tool. In the Options Bar here, hit clear so that you can crop it freely. Then check Delete Cropped Pixels and resize the crop box to crop out any unnecessary information. Don't go too close to the edges of the illustration to avoid cropping out any of its details, and when ready with the crop box, hit Enter. Then save changes to your PSD document. And next, we can move on to cutting the illustration out of the background. 6. Tips for Selecting Elements with the Quick Selection Tool: The next step in preparing your illustration for use in the design is isolating it from the background. You’ll need to cut your illustration out of the background, either if you're planning to have a different background, recolor your illustration separately from the background, or use multiple copies of the image or its elements. But if you want to keep your background as it is, whether it is because you don't plan to do anything I have just mentioned, or because you're working with illustrations with soft edges and color washes that interact and blend with the background, or because you're working with digital illustrations that already have transparent backgrounds, you can skip this step and simply work typography into your design composition using masks and techniques that I will be sharing with you later in the class. To cut your illustration out of the background, you can use a number of cutting tools. In this class, I'll be sharing with you how to use the Quick Selection tool, Select and Mask workspace, and manual adjustments to create clean and crisp cut-outs of botanical illustrations. But if you want to learn how to use other selection tools, including the Object Selection tool, Lasso tools, Pen tool and Select and Mask workspace, be sure to check out my class about creating digital collages, where I cover all of these tools and techniques in detail. So select the Quick Selection tool. In the Options Bar here, check Enhance Edge, and make sure it is set to Add to the Selection here. Then if you're working with a complex illustration and only want to select and use specific elements, go and select any element you want to add to your selection. If you need to subtract from your selection, you can simply hold down the Option or Alt key and brush over the areas you want to remove from the selection. Because this tool is brush-based, you can change the brush size using the square bracket keys as you go to be able to quickly add or subtract elements from your selection. This is a super useful tool for selecting specific parts of the images, for example, separate buds or leaves on the plant. But the Quick Selection tool works best when there's a strong contrast between what you're trying to select and the background. If you're trying to select something which has a similar color to the background, you might notice that it will blend together with it and you won't be able to select what you wanted to select. To create selections of this sort of tricky areas, it is best to use the Select Subject option here. But before you use it, make sure you go to the drop down menu and select Cloud to create better, detailed results. Then hit this button. In this case, you’ll need to discard your previous selection and then proceed to creating a selection based on the subject. Recently, Photoshop has developed quite a bit when it comes to the subject selection, so you will most likely end up with pretty decent result with all of the tricky areas getting selected properly. But if you've been using the Quick Selection tool to select specific parts, now you’ll need to remove anything you don't want from your selection. For this, you can simply again hold on the Option or Alt key in Windows and brush over the elements you want to remove from your selection. And when you're doing this, make sure you don't have any small edges and areas selected like this. So select the elements you want to use in your design. In my case, I want to use both the flower and the branch with the leaves. So I'm going to discard this selection and then go and hit the Select Subject button yet again. Regardless of whether you're selecting your illustration overall or some specific elements when you're done with the initial selection, next for the best results, you'll need to refine it using the Select and Mask workspace, and I'll share my special tips for quickly refining the selection in the next lesson. But if you don't want to spend time on any refinements just yet and want to quickly move on to developing your design and playing around with the composition, you can simply apply your selection as a Layer Mask as it is, then skip the next few lessons for now and move on straight to the retouching and adjustments section, or even further to the Design Document Setup lesson. And for the best results, be sure to revisit the refinements, retouching and adjustments lessons later on. 7. Refining Selection Edges in the Select & Mask Workspace: With the whole illustration or the desired element selected using the Quick Selection tool, next, you need to quickly refine the selection before applying it as a Layer Mask. So with the selection active, go to the Options bar and click on the Select and Mask button here. And this will launch the Select and Mask workspace. Here, first of all, go to the Properties panel and in the View Mode, select Overlay. Then set the color to some bright color so you can clearly see the edges. Make sure that Masked Areas is selected here, and then you can slightly reduce the opacity to be able to clearly see what is included in your selection and what you're cutting out. Whilst the Select Subject generally creates a pretty good selection along the outlines of the elements in your illustration, if you zoom in, you will notice that the edges are a little bit fuzzy. So to refine the edges and improve the quality of your cut-out, go to the Global Refinement section and play around with all of these settings. Start by increasing the Smooth value to about 10, and you'll immediately notice that the edges become smoother. But at the same time, you'll still notice a little bit of transparency. So go to the Contrast settings and start by setting it to about 50% to immediately make all of the edges considerably crisper. This might already work pretty well, but to make edges even cleaner, you can also go and increase the Feather amount to about 1 to 2 pixels, which together with the Smooth and Contrast refinements, will allow you to create cleaner edges. These are the sort of settings to get you started, but it is always a good idea to go and inspect all of the edges after you have changed any of these settings. And then if necessary, go and play around with them a bit further. For example, I'm going to increase the Contrast a little bit more to make my edges a little bit sharper. And then to eliminate any fringing or differently colored pixels around the edges of my cut-out, I'm going to play around with the Shift Edge settings and use negative values to cut a little bit more around the edges of the image. Shift Edge value is set in percentages, so the value you’ll need to use will depend on the size of the image you are working with. And it is best to play around with changing this value and see how it affects the edges throughout the image. And to avoid cutting out a bit too much, you can go and lower the Opacity a little bit more to better see what is being cut out, and then increase the Opacity back to 100% and further inspect the edges. These Global Refinements are a super quick way of refining the edges of your cut-outs. But because of how all these settings work, you'll notice that some of the sharp corners in your cut-out have been rounded. This is mainly due to the Smooth setting, and you'll need to refine all these tiny bits outside of the Select and Mask workspace. Whilst this can seem annoying, I find this process to be much faster because the majority of the edges are perfect and you won't need to manually retouch them. So when you're ready with the Global Refinement settings and the majority of the edges in your cut-out look good, go to the Output settings here, select Output to Layer Mask, and hit Okay. And here is your isolated cut-out ready, and in the Layers panel, you will notice a Layer Mask next to the image thumbnail. And now with your Layer Mask added, next, you’ll need to make a few final manual refinements, and I'll share with you my special tips for perfecting the Layer Mask in the next lesson. 8. Refining the Layer Mask to Finalise Your Cut-out: With your illustration successfully isolated from the background, now, you’ll need to work with the Layer Mask to finalize the edges of your cut-out by removing any selection defects. If you're new to using Layer Masks, they are used to non-destructively hide parts of the layers or seamlessly blend layers together. Basically, Layer Masks control the opacity of the layer they are applied to and the areas you see as white on the Layer Masks are fully opaque, areas which appear as black are fully transparent, and if you have any shades of gray in your mask, these will represent different levels of transparency. To have hard edges and no semitransparent areas in your cut-out illustration, you need to make sure that you are using pure black and pure white colors whilst refining your mask. So to be on the safe side, press D on the keyboard to reset the colors in the Tools panel to white and black. To be able to easily see what you're dealing with whilst refining your mask, it is a good idea to add a background layer behind your illustration. So go to the Layers panel, click on the Add New Fill or Adjustment Layer button, and select Solid Color. In the Color Picker window, set the color to some bright color that will have a reasonable amount of contrast with your illustration. And hit Okay. Now drag this layer below your image layer, and now you are ready to start refining your mask. To work with the Layer Mask, start by selecting its thumbnail in the Layers panel and make sure it has a border around it that indicates that it is selected. To refine your mask, you can use a few different tools. For example, to refine corners like this, you can use the regular Lasso tool, and go and draw a selection around the area that you want to remove. When you release the mouse button, Photoshop will automatically close the selection. Now, to hide this part of the image, you'll need to fill the selection with black color. Because currently the black color is assigned to the background, to fill the selection with it, you need to press Command+Delete or Control+Backspace in Windows, and you'll see this area disappear. Now you can go and repeat the process to refine all of the rounded corners in your illustration that still contain a little bit of the background. When you get used to using the Lasso tool and this technique, this process won't take much of your time. It is good to be zoomed in quite close to be able to better see all of the details as you work, and then simply go through your illustration and concentrate on retouching all of the similar problems. So if you notice any other defects in your illustration, ignore them for now and concentrate only on getting rid of any rounded corners. And when you are ready with those, you can turn your attention to fixing any other issues you have in your mask. When you have finished with the last area you have selected with the Lasso tool, be sure to press Command+D or Control+D in Windows to deselect all and to be able to work with the whole image. Now, if you have spotted any other areas you need to refine, for example, like this tip of the leaf, which doesn't look quite right, you can go and refine any of these areas. To better see what is happening here and what part of the illustration got masked by mistake, with the Layer Mask thumbnail still selected in the Layers panel, go to the Properties panel and turn down the Mask Density. And you will see what you need to refine. For example, to refine an area like this, again, you can make a selection using the Lasso tool. And this time, press Option+Delete or Alt+Backspace in Windows to fill the selection in with the foreground color, which is set to white in the Tools panel. And this will make this area visible yet again. Now I'm going to hit Command+D to deselect all, so I can work the whole mask area. You can further refine your selection by bringing back or hiding any other elements using the Lasso tool, creating the selections and filling them with the respective color. Or you might also want to use the Brush tool to brush along some of the edges. To effectively use the brush tool to refine your mask, go to the Options bar, select the Hard Round brush and keep the Hardness value set to either 100% or turn it down to about 98% to have a touch of softness. Whilst refining the corners in my illustration, I noticed this area on the stem, which is a great candidate for being refined using the Brush tool. To remove bits from your illustration using the Brush tool, you need to make sure to cover them with the black color. If your foreground color in the Tools panel is set to white, you need to switch these colors either by pressing on these arrows or by simply hitting X on the keyboard. And then go and paint over any area you need to remove. Use the square bracket keys to change the size of the brush head in relation to the size of the area you need to refine and then go and brush over it. If you're dealing with straight edges like this, you can also hold down the Shift key to draw in a straight line and create a cleaner outline. So inspect your mask and refine any areas which need refinement and use either the Lasso tool or the Brush tool depending on what you are working with. Whilst refining your mask, concentrate on removing any bits of the background or a different color around the edges, which will look like color fringing, and retouch any areas which haven't been properly selected to begin with. Unless you're dealing with an illustration with a lot of small details and a lot of tiny corners, this process won't take a lot of time. When you feel like you're done refining your mask, go back to the Properties panel and increase the Mask Density back to 100%, and then go and double-check all of the edges once again. At this point, it is also a good idea to go and change the fill color to some other color to make it easier to spot anything you might have missed. If necessary, go and refine your mask further, and when everything looks good, be sure to save your document. Now, with your image successfully isolated from the background, to finish preparing it for use in your design, you might need to retouch some defects, restore some of the elements, and make some color adjustments. I will be covering all of these techniques in the next few lessons. But if you don't need to retouch or adjust your image, feel free to skip ahead to the lesson about the Design Document Setup. 9. Retouching & Restoring Your Images: Depending on the quality of your source image, you might need to do some retouching. And this retouching process can include removing some dust or stains from the images, restoring some damaged elements, and if you're up for it, generating some new fragments of the image or entirely new elements of the illustration. To remove any dust or stains from the image, you can simply use the Spot Healing Brush. To retouch non-destructively, go to the Layers panel, add a new empty layer, place it above your image layer, rename it to Retouching, and then Option+click or Alt+click in Windows between these two layers to clip your retouching layer to your image layer to ensure that anything you have on your retouching layer will be contained within the visible area of your illustration. With the retouching layer created and selected, and the Spot Healing Brush selected in the Tools panel, go to the Options bar, make sure the Type is set to Content-Aware, Sample All Layers is checked, and the Mode is set to Normal. Then go to the area of the image you need to retouch, zoom in, then right-click with the Spot Healing Brush tool and set its Hardness to about 60%. You can also change the brush size here or you can simply go to the area you need to retouch and use the square bracket keys to change the size of the brush in relation to the defect you will be retouching. And then simply click or paint over any defect you need to cover. Spot Healing Brush is really fast and easy to use, and it will probably be enough for retouching most of the small defects you might encounter in the illustrations. But if you want to learn about other manual retouching tools, such as the Healing Brush, the Patch tool, and the Clone Stamp, be sure to check out our class Beginner's Guide to Retouching Old Photographs in Adobe Photoshop, where Dominic covers in detail different tips and tricks for using all of these tools effectively and non-destructively. But apart from using the Spot Healing Brush and other manual retouching tools and techniques, if your Photoshop version and Adobe plan include the latest AI-based tools, you can try using them to quickly retouch and restore your images. For example, if you need to remove or retouch a large area in your image, you can use the new Remove tool. When using this tool, again, make sure that you work non-destructively and sample all of the layers below. Remove tool can help you to rebuild some of the elements of the illustration. But as its name suggests, it is designed for removing things. And if you need to restore or generate some new areas in the image, instead, you’ll need to use the new Generative Fill feature. Before you start generating any new elements, go to the Layers panel and hide any background layers you might have in your document. To use the Generative Fill feature, first, you'll need to create a selection within which you want to generate something new. For this, again, you can use the Lasso tool and draw a selection in the shape which you want to generate. Make sure to include in your selection some of the existing parts of the image to give Photoshop more context for what it is going to be generating. With the selection ready, make sure to select the thumbnail of the image layer that contains your illustration. Then click on the Generative Fill button in the Contextual Task Bar. If it is not open, you can open it through the Window menu. When generating parts of the image, in most cases, you can keep the prompt field empty, and Photoshop will guess the context and what it is generating by what is included in the original image. But if you need to generate some larger elements, for example, a large part of a leaf, you might want to specify it in your prompt. For example, in my case, I can type Magnolia Leaf. Then make sure that Photoshop is using the Firefly Image 3 model for better results, and hit Generate. Then compare the generated variants, select the one which works best, or keep on generating more to find better results. Because of how the Generative Fill works, it’ll most likely generate a little bit of the background around your element. So you’ll need to go and carefully revisit its mask to remove anything unnecessary. So retouch and restore your images as required, and then join me in the next lesson, where I'll share with you tips and tricks for retouching colors in your images. 10. Retouching Colours in Your Images: Apart from retouching and removing any graphic defects from your image, you will most likely need to do some minor color retouching to improve the visual quality of your illustration. When dealing with hand-painted illustrations or vintage color prints, you might notice that some areas are colored differently to the surrounding areas. For example, this leaf here on this side has a different color from this area here, and this leaf here has a different spot of color here. To rectify these issues and make the coloring more consistent, you can do a little bit of easy color retouching. Start by going to the Layers panel and again create a new empty layer. Rename it to Color Retouching, clip it to the image layer below and set the Blending Mode over this layer to Color. To retouch the colors, you will need to use the Brush tool. In the Options bar, make sure that the Opacity is set to 100% to start with, flow is also set to 100%, Mode is set to Normal and set the Brush type to Soft Round brush. Depending on the area you want to retouch, you might want to keep Hardness set to zero to better blend the new color you'll be painting on with the existing colors in the image, or make it a little bit harder if you want to have a harder border between the colors. With your initial settings ready, hit Enter, then go to the area of the image you want to retouch, zoom in, then use the square bracket keys to change the size of the brush in relation to the size of the area you're going to be retouching. Then press and hold Option or Alt key to activate the Eyedropper Tool, and sample the color you want to be painting with from the correctly colored part of the element. With the color sampled, release the Option or Alt key, and go and paint over the area you want to retouch. If this looks a little bit too strong in terms of the color, undo the changes and turn down the brush opacity. You can do it in the Options bar here. Or simply use the number keys on the keyboard to change the percentage. For example, I'm going to change it to 30% by pressing number 3. Then when I go and paint over this area again, the changes look a little bit softer. To create a more organic coloring, it is a good idea to sample slightly different hues from the image and work on layering them over each other. When going from retouching one area in the image to retouching some other area, pay attention to the brush hardness and brush opacity to ensure that everything works predictably. For example, for this area, I'm going to reduce the hardness to 0%, increase the brush size, increase the opacity to 60%, and quickly retouch this area. You probably won't need to do a lot of color retouching, but if you're up for it, be sure to pay attention to small details and edges between the different colors and retouch them if necessary. And remember that if you're using the brush opacity, which is not 100%, you can build up the coloring effect by painting over the same area a number of times whilst releasing the mouse button between the strokes. And don't forget to sample colors from different areas for a more organic coloring. When you're done your color retouching, make sure to reset the brush opacity back to 100% to avoid any surprises when you start working with the Brush doing some other task later. Even a little bit of color retouching makes a huge difference to the overall look of the images. So be sure to use this technique when and if necessary. Next, let's have a look at a few essential color adjustments that will help you further enhance the look of your image. 11. Applying Non-Destructive Colour Adjustments: Even if your illustrations don't require any color retouching, if you're working with scanned images, whether your own or sourced vintage ones, they will most likely benefit from a few color adjustments, including working with the tonal and color contrast, adjusting the saturation and vibrance of the image, and applying some color correction. And let's start with the latter. Color correction is particularly important if you are working with vintage prints that had yellowed over the years. For example, whilst this image actually looks quite nice and natural, there is still a fair amount of the yellowishness, which comes from the paper color. So if you need to deal with a similar problem, go to the Layers panel, click on the Add New Fill or Adjustment Layer button, and select Levels. Make sure that the new levels adjustment is above all other layers, and again, clip it to the image layer below. Then select the icon for the Levels adjustment layer and go to the Properties panel. To apply color correction, you will need to go to this drop-down menu and work with the individual color channels. If you have never done any color correction or worked with color channels, it might seem daunting at first, but it is actually pretty straightforward. For example, to deal with the yellow tint which comes from the paper color, go to the Blue channel and you'll notice that there is no information on this side. So you can go and safely start dragging this indicator to the left and you'll notice the yellowish disappear from the highlights. But don't overdo it because otherwise you'll start shifting the colors in the image. With the Blue channel ready, go to the Green channel, and repeat the process. If at this point the colors will start looking slightly different, don't worry about it, and then go to the final Red channel. Again, move the white point indicator to the left. If you need to further adjust the highlights, go between the channels and carry on tweaking the values until the white and light colors in your image start looking more neutral. Then go to the RGB channel, and if you want, go and play around with the midtone indicator here to slightly boost the contrast in the image. And this is your initial color adjustments done, and in some cases, you might even want to stop here. But if you want to boost the contrast in the image a little bit further, I recommend applying an additional adjustment for this purpose. In this case, I would recommend using the Curves adjustment instead because it will give you more precise control over different tonal areas in your image. With the Curves adjustment layer added, again, clip it to the image layer below. Then go to the Properties panel and start by adding a couple of new points to your curve. One somewhere around here and another around here. When working with the RGB curves and histogram, white will be in the top right corner and black will be in the bottom left corner. To gently boost the contrast in your image, you need to drag this point a little bit below the diagonal, and this point a little bit above the diagonal. Whilst the Curves adjustment might seem intimidating, it is all a visual process. So play around with the position of the points, add any extra points to the curve if required, and fine-tune the tonal contrast in your image. The only thing to keep in mind here is to make sure that your curve is smooth and you don't do anything like this. Adjusting the Levels and Curves will help you to boost the colors in your image. But if your image still doesn't look vibrant enough or looks a little bit too vibrant, you can go and add a Vibrance adjustment, clip it to the image layer below, and play around with the Vibrance and Saturation sliders to create your desired look. So apply any required adjustments to enhance the look of your image, and then go and hide your color fill layer, so you only see your cut-out against the transparent background. Make sure that all your retouching and adjustment layers, and any Generative Fill layers you might have created are all clipped to your image layer. Double-check that the Mask Density is set to 100%, and Feather is set to 0, and go ahead and save your document. And now your illustration is ready to be placed in your design file, which we’ll be setting up in the next lesson. 12. Design Document Setup: Now that we've got our illustration ready, let's move on to setting up a new document where we'll be creating our design. In the New Document setup window, specify any size that works for what you want to create. I'll be creating a greeting card in an A6 format, but you can choose any other size which makes sense for your region. If you are not sure what size to work in, do not hesitate to reference the PDF guide I have created specifically for this class, which contains popular greeting card sizes and wedding stationery sizes that are used in different countries. With your size selected, make sure to set the resolution to 300 pixels per inch, and then select your desired Color Mode. You can set it to CMYK straightaway if you really want, but I will be working in RGB because on the one hand, I find looking at the dreary CMYK colors on screen a little bit depressing and also even more importantly, because most modern printers and print-on-demand services accept RGB files for print and convert them to CMYK on their end if required. So I would always recommend starting to work in RGB and convert your print files to CMYK later when preparing them for print. Because we will be creating a separate background layer for our design, you can set the Background Contents to Transparent so you don't have any extra layers in your document. With the general document setup ready, give your file a descriptive name here, for example, because I'm planning to create a card with a thank you message, I will include it straightaway in my file name. But if you're not sure what you're going to be creating, you can simply include the name of the flower or a plant in your illustration and specify what design it is going to be. When you're ready with your document settings, hit Create. And with your new document created, straightaway, go and save it in your Designs PSD folder. Make sure to set the format to Photoshop here. Check Layers, embed Color Profile, and hit Save. Next, let's quickly place the illustration into this document. We won't be copying and pasting anything from this document with the original illustration. So you can now close this document. Now in the document for your card design, go to the File menu and select Place Embedded. Then locate your cut-out illustration you want to use, and hit Place. You will see it pop up on the canvas like this, and now you can simply hit Enter to confirm placement. Working with Embedded Smart Objects will allow you to do anything you want with this illustration in this document, and in the Layers panel, you'll only see one Smart Object layer like this. But if you double-click on the layer’s thumbnail, this will open the contents of this Smart Object in a new tab, and you'll see all of the layers and adjustments you had in your original cut-out document. If necessary, you can make any further changes to your illustration. Then save this document, close this tab, and the changes will be applied to illustration in your main design document. But your original cut-out document in your Cut-outs folder will remain unmodified because the Embedded Smart Object is stored within the document it is used in. This is the main benefit of using the Embedded Smart Objects instead of the Linked Smart Objects, which work directly with the external files. And because you'll be working with a Smart Object, you'll be able to easily fine-tune the scale of your illustration in relation to the canvas. And this will give you a lot of flexibility when developing your design composition. So set up your design document in the desired size, place your illustration as an Embedded Smart Object, and then let's get started with developing the design composition. 13. Getting Started with Your Design Composition: Now that our design document is set up and the illustration is embedded, we can start working on the initial composition. First of all, let's go to the Layers panel and add a new Solid Color layer to act as a background. Set it to any color you want to begin with, and drag this layer below the illustration layer. We will be fine-tuning all of the colors later, but if your initial background color doesn't work with your illustration at all, go and quickly change it to something you have in mind for the feel of the overall design you're going to be creating. With the color adjusted, hit Okay. Now let's quickly talk about the general composition. Before you start scaling and moving your illustration around the canvas, think about what kind of relationship you want to create between the type and the illustration. For example, if you want to create a delicate and elegant design, you can pair a single illustration with type which will complement it and make both of them have a similar visual weight, so neither of them will dominate the composition, but will work beautifully together. If you want to create something more impactful, you can either scale your illustration up so it covers the majority of your canvas, or you can create a few copies of your illustration and arrange them into a non-repeating pattern that will cover the whole canvas. Then you can contrast either of these compositions with either very small and delicate type, or go the opposite way with oversized type that entwines with your illustration. And another direction you can explore if you're working with some short text, for example, initials, abbreviations or numbers, is to use very large type so that the letterforms can be perceived as graphic shapes, and the illustration can live around it and interact with the type to create a dynamic composition. So decide on the approach you want to take and then start playing around with the scale of your illustration. Make sure that the Smart Object with your illustration is selected in the Layers panel, then hit Command+T or Control+T in Windows to enter the Free Transform mode, and start playing around with the scale of your illustration in relation to the canvas. Make sure you constrain proportions whilst scaling. And if you're scaling your illustration up, pay attention to the scale percentage here and avoid scaling it above 100%. Apart from scaling, be sure to explore rotating your illustration to make it sit better on the canvas and to create the composition you're after. Whilst scaling and rotating your illustration, consider how different elements within it either make the composition look more dynamic if that's what you're after, or make it more focused and static. When you have finished scaling and rotating your illustration, hit Enter to apply transformations. And if you need to further scale or rotate your illustration at any point during the process, simply go back to the Free Transform mode and make any changes you need. And because you're working with a Smart Object, the quality of your illustration won't be affected. I'm happy with how this looks already. But for example, if you need to reflect your illustration, you can go to the Edit menu, Transform, and use either Flip Horizontal or Flip Vertical options. And if you want to create and use multiple copies of your illustration, be sure to duplicate your illustration using the Command+J or Control+J shortcut, which will create a copy of the Smart Object, which leads to the same Smart Object content. And this will allow you to apply the same changes to all of the instances of your illustration without needing to apply them to individual copies separately. I won't be needing this separate copy, so I'm going to quickly delete it. So scale and position your illustration or multiple copies of your illustration in relation to the canvas whilst keeping in mind that you are yet to add your typographic elements, but don't overthink it and be prepared to adjust your composition later to make all of the elements work better together. With your initial composition ready, be sure to save your document. Next, let's move on to adding text and selecting a typeface. 14. Adding Text & Selecting Typeface: With your illustration or multiple illustrations now in place, now it is time to add the text. If you have done color retouching and have some random colors in your Tools panel, now it's a good idea to reset them back to black and white. Then select the Type tool and go and click with it somewhere on the canvas, and type in your desired message to replace the default Lorem Ipsum. Since I'm creating a card with a thank you message, this is what I will type, but you can use any message you want. If you need some ideas for what you can write on the greeting cards, be sure to reference the PDF with the card message ideas included in the class resources. With your message ready, next, you'll need to select a typeface, and there are a few different approaches you can take. If you're going for a clean, modern and minimal look, it is best to use some geometric sans-serif typeface. If you're going for something more timeless and sophisticated, you can explore some elegant serif typeface, and those with a strong stroke contrast will work best. If you want to create something more playful and quirky, you can explore various decorative serif typeface that have been popular in the recent years. To make it easier for you to find typefaces that will definitely work with any botanical illustrations, I have created a PDF guide with recommended typefaces that you can find in the class resources. And apart from selecting fonts from scratch or from my recommended list, you can also use the Match Font tool available in Adobe Photoshop. To use the Match Font tool, you'll need to start with a reference image. For example, I am going to open this image, which is a title page from one of the vintage books. But of course, you can also match fonts from any modern designs with the typefaces you like as well. Before you start using the Match Font feature, decide on which typeface you want to match from your reference design and go and type the same word or words to make it easier to see how close the match is. With your sample text ready, switch to the Move tool. Then quickly scale the text up so it is easier to see, then select the Rectangular Marquee tool, draw a selection around the text you want to match, then make sure that your type layer is selected in the Layers panel, and go to the Type menu and select Match Font. Set the Type Option to zero to make the matched fonts as similar as possible to your source font. And you'll see all of the different options on the list. For example, here are a few options which I have installed from Adobe Fonts, and here are some similar system fonts. And here are a few other options available on Adobe Fonts. When they're not installed, you won't be able to preview them the same way as these ones, but you can quickly go and install them from here and then go and preview them the same way. If you're matching font from an all caps composition, it might be also a good idea before you open the Match Font window to set your sample type composition to all caps here to make it easier to compare the two fonts. But if you haven't done that to begin with, you can simply apply the selected typeface and then go and apply the upper case transformation to compare the fonts. So use the Match Font feature if you're after some specific typefaces. And when you have found something that you like, note down the font name, close your reference image, and then go and change the font in your design. You will see the Character options in the Properties panel. Or if you want, you can also open a separate Character panel and Paragraph panel that contain all of the settings you'll need to typeset your text. So select the typeface you want to use in your design either from your favorite typefaces, my list of recommended typefaces or by using the Match Font tool, apply a chosen typeface to your text in the design file, and then join me in the next lesson where we'll work on typesetting the message and placing it in relation to other elements in the composition. 15. Typesetting & Developing Your Design Composition: With the message typed in and the typeface selected, now we can work on typesetting. First of all, if you cannot clearly see your text because of its color, go to the Character options either in the Properties panel or in the Character panel, and change the font color here. Unless you have a white background, white color for the text will work in most cases. With the color selected, hit Okay. Now let's have a look at a few different options for typesetting. Because at the moment I have the Move tool selected, and my type layer is selected in a Layers panel, any changes I make to the Character options or Paragraph options will be applied to this whole text. If you want to apply changes to individual words or letters, you will need to use the Type tool instead. And you’ll also need to use the Type tool, if you want to switch between the horizontal type and the vertical type, which you can do by hitting this button here. This can be a fun option to explore, but I will stick to the horizontal type. I'll also switch back to the Move tool because I want to make uniform changes to the whole text. First thing to consider after choosing your typeface is your font size, and you can change it here in the Character options. You can either select the size from the list, or you can type in the value manually here, or select the value and use the arrow keys to change the font size and see all of the changes as you go. Next thing to consider is the spacing in between the letters, which is called tracking, and you can change it here. With some fonts, you might want to go a little tighter, or if you want to go for the all caps treatment, which you can select here, you can explore looser tracking, and then change the font size to make your text work better within the composition. Using all caps sets a very different mood in comparison to using either a combination of the uppercase letters and lowercase letters or all lowercase letters, and it will also work very differently in different typefaces. For example, if I go and change to a sans serif typeface now, you will notice how the whole vibe changes and the text also becomes a little bit more readable. So explore uppercase typesetting if you want, and explore different tracking values, but I'm going to quickly undo the changes. And let's have a look at other settings here. If you're working with a single line of text, you won't need to worry about line spacing, also known as leading, which you can set here. But if you want to break your text into a number of lines, you'll need to adjust both the leading and the alignment settings here. There are a couple of ways or breaking your text into multiple lines. One is to switch to the Type tool, select the space between the two words and hit Enter, or a better way is to go to the Layers panel, right-click on your type layer and select Convert to Paragraph Text here. Now when you click on your text on the canvas, you will see a text box around it and you can resize it like this. And one of the reasons why it is better is because now you can work with the alignment options available in the Paragraph settings in a much more predictable way. For example, you can select all of your text and change the alignment consistently. Or if you're after a more dynamic composition and don't want to split your text into multiple layers, you can align one line to the left, then select the space after this letter and hit Enter to add a hard line break, then select the next line and set its alignment to the right. Now you can easily play with the placement of these two words in relation to each other by simply scaling the text box. And then to change the line height, you'll need to select all of the text and change the value here. It will depend on the typeface you're working with and whether you're working with the lowercase, uppercase or both lowercase and uppercase letters, but a good starting point is to set it to the same value as the type size and then go from there. So experiment with typesetting your message, and if you need to change the position of the text box with the Type tool active, simply hold down Command or Control key in Windows and drag it around the canvas like this. If you feel like the typeface you have chosen originally doesn't quite work with the illustration and doesn't create the vibe you're after, do not hesitate to go and try out other typefaces. For example, I want to use this typeface that is included in the list of my recommended typefaces. And apart from fine-tuning your typeface choice, another thing you might want to play around with is changing the case of the letters. Apart from changing to all caps, like I have shown you earlier, you can also consider using all lowercase letters, and that will also change the feel of your design and will make it look more intimate or friendly. So go ahead and finalize your typesetting and work on the scale and placement of your type, both in relation to your illustration and to the overall canvas. And if you want to align your text centrally to the canvas, switch to the Move tool, then go to the Options bar, in this menu here, select Align to Canvas and use these buttons to centrally align your text to the canvas. And this will be particularly important if you're working with either a single line of text which you want to have aligned centrally, or if you're working with multiple lines of text that are aligned centrally using the Paragraph settings. If you're happy with the arrangement of words in relation to each other and with the line height, but want to quickly change the scale of the whole typographic composition, with the Move tool selected, activate the Free Transform mode and scale your text as you would scale any other layer. And if you want, you can even rotate your text as well. But I think I'll keep mine horizontal. So finalize your typesetting and the placement of the text in relation to the illustration, save your document, and next, it is time to add more visual interest to your design. 16. Adding Depth with Easy Layering Techniques: Now that you have finished typesetting your message, you need to decide whether you want to keep your text layered on top of the illustration or develop your design further by hiding some parts of the letterforms behind the elements in your illustration. If you're happy with keeping your text over the illustration, at this point, it is a good idea to go and further play around with the text color. If you're up for adding a little bit of depth to your composition, there are a few ways you can go about. If you're working with cut-out illustrations, the quickest and easiest way to add depth to your composition is by using two copies of your type layer. And if you are not working with the cut-outs, you will need to use the masking technique, which I'll cover in the next lesson. After duplicating your type layer, select both type players by Shift+clicking on them and then link them together by clicking on this button. This will ensure that if you move either of these layers, the other one will be moved automatically. Now, to create a layering effect, place one of the type players below your illustration or illustrations, and then go and play around with the Opacity value of the type layer above your illustration. How well this works will depend on the complexity of your illustration, the size of your text, and its placement. And now, if you want you can quickly explore other placements to enhance the composition. Or if you want to keep your composition as it was, to improve the readability of your message, you can explore an alternative graphic treatment. Go to the Layers panel, double-click on your top type layer to open the Layer Style dialog. Then in the main Blending Option section, increase the opacity back to 100%, and instead, go and play around with the Fill Opacity. Now with the Fill Opacity reduced, you'll be able to go and add a Stroke effect to your text, and it will be fully opaque. With the Stroke added, play around with its size to create your desired look, but make sure to keep the position set to Inside, Blending Mode to Normal and Opacity to 100%, and use the same color as the one applied to your type layer. When you're happy with how your Stroke looks, you can go back to the main Blending Options and further play around with the Fill Opacity, and you can even reduce it to zero, so you'll only see a fully opaque stroke and fully opaque parts of the letterforms that are visible in the gaps between the elements in your illustration. And when you're happy with how everything looks, hit Okay to apply these changes. You’ll see Stroke applied as an effect to your text layer, and you can revisit its settings by simply double-clicking on its name here. This effect will work best with geometric sans serif typefaces. And if you are working with serif or decorative typefaces, it might make the composition look a little bit fussy. And when working with serif or decorative typefaces, the opacity treatment might be a better option. For example, in this case, I'm going to turn the Stroke effect off, then increase the Fill back to 100%. And again, go and reduce the Opacity instead. Whilst this technique of using two text layers is super quick and easy, and can work like a charm in some cases without any further refinement, in some other ones, for example, like here, this treatment makes the message just about visible. But there is an easy way to fix this issue and at the same time add more depth to the composition. And I'll show you how in the next lesson. 17. Adding Depth with Layer Masks: Regardless of whether you have reduced Opacity or added Stroke to your additional text layer, you can further develop your design, add more depth to it, and make the message more readable with a little bit of masking. And you’ll also need to use Layer Masks if you're working with the illustration or artwork that is not isolated from the background, and you want to hide parts of the letterforms behind the elements in your illustration. To effectively mask your text, start by putting all of your text layers above your illustration. Then you'll need to add a Layer Mask to your fully opaque type layer. Next decide which parts of the letterforms you want to bring above your illustration and which you want to hide behind some of the elements. So analyze your illustration and work out which elements should be above your text to add a realistic depth to your composition. For example, in my case, I can hide the letterforms behind this petal, behind this stem, behind this bud, and behind this part of the leaf. To create a mask out of your chosen elements, select your illustration layer in the Layers panel. Then select the Quick Selection tool, make sure that Sample All Layers is not checked in the Options bar, zoom in on the element you want to select, change the brush size, and add it to your selection. And then repeat the process by adding any other parts of the illustration you want to appear above your text to your selection. And be sure to subtract any areas which were edited by mistake in the process. Depending on the type of the illustration you're working with and how defined the edges of the different areas are, you might end up with a pretty rough selection. But even if it is not great, it will be good enough to get you started. When you're ready with your selection, select the Layer Mask applied to your text layer, make sure that the foreground color in the Tools panel is set to black, and then press Option+Delete or Alt+Backspace in Windows to fill the selection in with the black color on the mask. And that will hide these parts of the letterforms. Then press Command+D or Control+D in Windows to deselect all, zoom into the areas which you have just masked and inspect the edges. If necessary, switch to the Brush tool. Double-check that it is set to the Hard Round brush and then go and refine any edges in your mask if required. In most cases, you’ll need to remove some unwanted transparency, so set the foreground color to white and paint along the edges of the elements to make them cleaner. And when you're done with your mask, you can go and further play around with the Opacity of your second type layer. So explore different ways of layering your text with your illustration, and this way, finalize your composition. And when you're ready, remember to save your document. And with your composition ready, next, you can move on to finalizing the colors, and if you want, playing around with recoloring your designs. 18. Finalising Colours in Your Design: With your design composition ready, now it is time to finalize the colors. To set the desired mood, you might want to change the background color in your design, tweak the colors or contrast in your illustration, and change the text color to ensure that everything is readable. Even small changes like slightly tweaking the hue of the background color can dramatically affect how the type, illustration and the background work together. And at this stage, I would recommend concentrating on fine-tuning the look of your design as it is rather than drastically changing all of the colors. And if you want to explore making some more dramatic changes or to develop a few color variants, it's best done separately, and I'll share the tips, techniques, and workflow for creating color variants and treatments in the following lessons. With the illustration being really prominent in the design, I would suggest starting with making any further adjustments to it. There are a couple of ways you can do it. If you want to keep your design document less cluttered, or if your design features multiple copies of your illustration, go and open the contents of the Smart Object containing your illustration and make any desired further changes within this document by modifying the settings of any of the adjustment layers you have added during the stage of editing your cut-out. Or add any new additional adjustment layers on top of all other layers and use them to finalize the look of your illustration. For example, I'm going to use the Hue/Saturation adjustment layer and adjust the saturation in this image ever so slightly. When you're done adjusting your image, be sure to save the Smart Object document contents. Then close this document and you'll see your illustration updated in your main design document. If you have multiple instances of the same Smart Object containing your illustration, all of them will be updated at the same time, so you won't need to make any further changes to individual elements. And if you're using a single illustration in your design, you can choose between editing the colors within the Smart Object document contents or editing them directly in your design file. If you choose to do it directly in your design file, it is best to select your Smart Object layer containing your illustration in the Layers panel and then apply any adjustments to it as Smart Filters. And to do this, you’ll either need to apply the desired adjustments to your layer via the Image menu, or by pressing the respective shortcuts with the layer selected in the Layers panel. For example, I'm going to go and quickly tweak the contrast in my illustration. And as you can see, the main benefit of applying adjustments right in the design document is the ability to see all of the changes as you make them. And when you apply your adjustment, you'll see it added as a Smart Filter to the Smart Object layer containing your illustration. And if you need to further tweak your added adjustment, simply double-click on its name here and make any desired changes. So finalize the look of the colors and the contrast in your illustration using adjustments and then go and fine-tune the color of your background to make it work better with the colors in the rest of your design. But be mindful not to reduce the contrast too much that your text becomes unreadable. When you are happy with your background color, apply changes. And then if necessary, go and further adjust the color of your text. I'm happy to keep it white here for maximal contrast. But if you need to change the color of your text and you're using multiple type layers, remember to consistently change the color for each of them. And if you have applied stroke to your text, do not forget to change its color as well. So finalize the colors of all of the elements in your design and make sure that they all work well together and set your desired mode. Then save your document. And then if you're up for a little color play, join me in the next few lessons to explore a few techniques for creating color variants and a different, more graphic look of your design. Or if you're happy with your full color design as it is, you can skip ahead to the lesson about texturing. 19. Setting up Artboards for Creating Colour Iterations: If you want to push your design further, you can experiment with recoloring it, which will allow you to completely transform the mood and feel of your work. For this sort of project, I recommend creating all your color iterations using artboards and keeping them all inside one document, so that you can see all your variants side by side and easily compare them. To create artboards in your existing Photoshop document, start by selecting all of your layers and group them together. Next, hit Command+A or Control+A in Windows to select your entire canvas and add a mask to your group based on this selection. This is a little trick which will allow you to create an artboard in the exact size of your canvas, even if you have some design elements that go over the edges. With all of your layers grouped and the mask added, right-click on the group in the Layers panel and select Artboard from Group. And now you can simply duplicate your group as many times as you want for the number of the color iterations you want to start with. You'll see all of your artboards side by side like this. With the artboards created, now you can switch back to the Move tool and you'll notice that both the Artboard tool and the Move tool have the same shortcut and are kept under the same button in the Tools panel. And even if you switch to the Move tool, when you select an artboard you want to work with either by clicking on its name here or by selecting it in the Layers panel, Photoshop will automatically switch back to the Artboard tool. This is something to get used to, but since we are not going to be moving anything around, in this case, we don't really need to worry about which tool is selected. So create a desired number of artboards in your document, and next, let's explore a few different techniques for creating color iterations. 20. Creating Colour Variants Using Hue/Saturation Adjustments: With a few copies of your design ready on separate artboards, now it is time for the fun part of playing with the colors. Colors can completely transform the mood and impact of your design, and there are a few ways you can go about recoloring your work. And in this and in the following lesson, I will share with you some of my favorite techniques and special tips and tricks, which will help you experiment with the colors in a number of different ways. Keep your original color variant on the first artboard and to create your first color iteration, go to the Layers panel and open the contents of your second artboard. Now, if you want, you can explore further modifying the background color, saturation and contrast in your illustration and the text color. Or you can explore altering colors in your illustration. For this, you'll need to add your desired adjustment layer inside the group for your artboard. For example, you can change the colors in your illustration using the Hue/Saturation adjustment, which is great if there are some specific hues in the image that you want to change. With the flower in my design here being white, this illustration doesn't have the range of colors for the exciting and effective hue adjustments. So I'm going to quickly use a different example to share with you this simple recoloring technique. To effectively use the Hue/Saturation adjustment, add a new Hue/Saturation adjustment layer above all of the layers you want it to affect in your design, but keep it below any other layers you want to remain unaffected, for example, your type layers. Then select your new adjustment layer in the Layers panel, go to the Properties panel and then either work with the default primary color components to shift the specific colors in your image, or go to the Preset dropdown here and select Prominent Colors. This is a relatively new feature introduced in the 2025 version of Adobe Photoshop that allows you to work with the specific colors detected in your image. So simply select any color you want to adjust from the available range here and then go and shift the hue. To fine-tune the effect and which colors are affected by the hue changes, play around with the range slider here and adjust the range of colors that are affected by this specific hue shift. And watch your illustration to see all of the changes you make in real time. Adjust as many Prominent Colors in your illustration as you need to create your desired look and fine-tune your new colors. And if you like the full color illustrations and simply want to experiment with changing the hues in the colorful flowers, this sort of hue adjustments will allow you to easily create a few different color variants. So play around with this technique if you want and create as many new colour variants as you like. But if you're after a more graphic look and creating colour treatments using reduced color palettes, or if like me, you're working with a white flower, you will need to recolor your illustration or the whole design using Gradient Maps instead. And I will share a few different approaches to using Gradient Maps and some additional adjustments in the next lesson. 21. Creating Colour Variants Using Gradient Maps: Recoloring your images using Gradient Maps will allow you to reduce the number of colors in your design and take full creative control over color communication and create striking work regardless of whether you're going for something playful, bold and modern, or something more subdued, elegant, or sophisticated. And they are a fantastic and versatile tool if you're keen on experimenting with colors in a more graphic way. Gradient Maps are my favorite technique for creating color treatments. And in this lesson, I will share with you a few tricks for using Gradient Maps and combining them with some additional adjustments to further develop the look of your design. So let's create a Gradient Map adjustment layer and then drag it below the type layer or layers that sit above your image layers so that this Gradient Map adjustment will only affect the colors in the illustration and the background. With the Gradient Map adjustment layer added, select its thumbnail in the Layers panel, then go to the Properties panel and click on the gradient here to open the Gradient Editor. Gradient Maps work by replacing the colors in your image with the colors from the gradient you can set up here, and you can change the colors here manually, or go and select some colors from the available default presets. Or if you want, grab the set of the gradient presets from the class resources, which are designed specifically to create different moods in this sort of designs. Or if you want to get your hands on even more curated gradient presets, check out my Duotones Essentials collection that is available as a separate affordable digital product. To make it easier for you to follow along, for this demo, I will use the Gradient Map presets that are available in the class resources. In this class to keep it concise, I'm not going to go into how to effectively choose the colors and set up your Gradient Maps. But if you want to learn more, do not hesitate to check out my class about Mastering Duotones in Adobe Photoshop. If after applying a gradient map preset, you want to slightly tweak the colors, go to the gradient slider here, double-click on the color stop you would like to change, adjust the color using the Color Picker, and apply changes. And when you're happy with the look of your duotoned image, hit OK to apply the gradient map adjustment. After applying your gradient map adjustment, you might want to go to the Layers panel and further tweak the contrast in your illustration and the background color. To adjust the contrast in your illustration, and especially if you're working with a number of illustration layers, it is a good idea to put all of your illustration layers into a group, then add a new levels adjustment above this group and then clip the levels adjustment to the group. And then go and adjust the tones and contrast in all of the illustration layers contained within this group as required. When you're done with the contrast in your illustration or illustrations, go and further adjust the background color to better work with the tonal range in your duotoned illustration. Then apply changes. And this is your first color iteration done. So here we have applied the gradient map adjustment to both the image and the background to keep the hues in the design consistent. But if you want, you can also apply the gradient map adjustment solely to your illustration layers and keep your background colored differently. So let's go to our next artboard. Again, if you have multiple illustration layers, you need to group them together. But since I only have one illustration, I will keep it as it is. Select your illustration layer or the group containing your illustrations in the Layers panel. Then go and click on the Add New Fill or Adjustment Layer button, and again, add a Gradient Map adjustment layer. Make sure it is added above your illustration layer or above the group with your illustrations and then clip it to. Now when you go and change the colors in your gradient map, you will see that it only affects your image. Again, select your desired gradient map preset or set up your gradient map manually, and apply changes. And next to make your recolored image work better against the background, you'll need to go and further tweak the background color. And if you want, you can even explore using some contrasting colors to completely change the look of your design. But in my case, I'm going to go for something a little bit more subdued. With the background color ready, again, you might need to go and further adjust the contrast in your image, and the process will be exactly the same as I have shown you earlier. And this is another color iteration done! But if you want, you can also take it a step further by changing the color of your text. Again, you can change the color of your individual type layers and any stroke applied to your type. Or if you have all your multiple type layers above the gradient map adjustment, you can experiment with recoloring them simultaneously. In order to do so, start by grouping your text layers, rename the group and then go and add a new Solid Color fill layer, set it to any random color to begin with. Hit Okay, and then clip this layer to the group with your text. And when it's done, you can go and further tweak the new color of your text to make it work better with the colors in the rest of your design. And when ready, apply changes. Recoloring all of your text layers using a single solid color fill layer, makes it much easier and quicker to play around with the colors. So if all of your text layers sit next to each other in the Layers panel and are not mixed with any illustration layers, be sure to explore this technique. These two ways of using Gradient Maps to recolor your design will be enough to get you started. But if you want to take your recoloring even further, you can also play around with applying different gradient map adjustments to separate parts of your illustration. To do this, you simply need to apply Layer Masks to your adjustment layers and mask the areas you want each adjustment to affect in your image. For this, you’ll need to use the same selection and masking techniques I have shared in the lessons about creating selections using the Quick Selection tool and using Layer Masks to layer your type with the illustration. Whilst the Gradient Maps are great on their own, there is also a little trick, which will allow you to easily and quickly fine-tune or change the look of your recolored elements. So let's go to the contents of the next artboards and again, add a new gradient map adjustment layer above all of the image layers and the background color. Then let's quickly change the gradient map preset. And apply changes. Now, if you generally like the look of the tones in your design, but want to quickly explore slightly shifting the hues, apart from changing the colors in the Gradient Editor, you can go and add a new Hue/Saturation adjustment, place it above your Gradient Map layer, and then go and play around with the hue slider here. This is one of my favorite tricks for fine-tuning the colors when working with Gradient Maps. And apart from changing the hues, you can also quickly play around with the saturation and lightness sliders, and further develop the look of your design. Using the Hue/Saturation adjustment on top of the Gradient Map adjustment allows you to easily build upon any gradient map treatments and fine-tune the look of the colors to your liking. So be sure to explore this technique, and then if necessary, add a new Levels adjustment and further adjust the contrast and tones in your design. So play around with creating as many different color variants of your design as you want and be sure to save your document from time to time to avoid losing any changes. You can save your document containing all of your color iterations over your original design file, like I have done here, or save it as a separate document. But in any case, when you have finished creating your color iterations, you'll need to export them all into individual PSD documents for further development. And I'll walk you through this process in the next lesson. 22. Exporting Colour Variants for Further Development: Apart from keeping all of your color iterations within one document, it is a good idea to export them all into separate files to make it easier to develop each of them further using texturing and then to prepare individual files for print. Before you export your individual artboards into separate documents, you need to go and rename your artboards in the Layers panel, both to keep this document better organized, and to be able to easily tell apart all of your exported files. With the artboards renamed, again, save this document. Then go to the File menu, Export, and select Artboards to Files. Here set your destination. In my case, I'm going to be saving it to the same folder as my original file. Then set your desired descriptive filename prefix and to have a neater names of your files, type in space dash space after the prefix to have a clear separation between the name of your design and the artboard’s name, which will be included in your file name automatically upon export. Here, select Artboard Content Only, uncheck Export Selected Artboards to export all artboards in your document. Make sure that Include Background in Export isn't checked. Then set the file type here to Photoshop. Keep these options like this, and hit Run. Then wait for all of your artboards to be exported into separate Photoshop documents. And when it is done, hit OK, and now it is time for the finishing touches and texturing your designs. 23. Texturing Your Design: Now that you have finalized the colors in your design and developed some color variants, it is time to take your chosen design or designs further with a little bit of subtle texturing. Even if you're creating designs for print application, adding a little bit of texture to them will add more character and make them look more tactile. So start by opening the design that you want to texture first. And at this point, you can go ahead and close your file that contains all of your color iterations. Now in your chosen design document, start by ungrouping all of your layers and then decide what texture you want to add to your design. You can texture design with any realistic paper textures, or you can generate some textures directly in Photoshop. If you want to learn how to texture your work using Photoshop Filters, be sure to check out my separate class on this subject. And in this lesson, I'm going to show you how you can easily texture your design using a couple of textures that I have shared with you in the class resources. So be sure to download them. Then go to the File menu and select Place Embedded. Locate the downloaded textures, and let's start with the Old Paper texture. Hit Place. Then scale it up so it nicely covers the whole canvas and goes over it, which will make the process of preparing your design for print with bleeds a little bit easier later on. But since we are placing this texture as a Smart Object, you can always revisit its scale or position whenever necessary. So when ready with this texture, hit Enter, and make sure that it is placed above all other layers in the Layers panel. Then set the Blending Mode of this texture to Multiply and play around with its Opacity to make it a little bit more subtle if desired. Because it is an old uneven paper texture, which contains a lot of imperfections and some stains, after multiplying it over you design and changing the opacity, you might also need to desaturate it ever so slightly. In order to do so, select the texture layer and press Command+U or Control+U in Windows to open the Hue/Saturation adjustment. And then reduce the saturation to your desired value to make any colors and yellow stains in the texture a little bit less obvious. Then apply changes and then finalize the placement of this texture over your design. Then if necessary, go and further adjust its opacity. Adding just this one texture will immediately make your design look more tactile and a little bit vintage. But if you want to give your design even more character, you can do it by adding a few additional textures. Again, go to the File menu, Place Embedded, and select the Dust and Specks texture. Hit Place, and as before, scale it up, position it over your design, and hit Enter. Now there are a couple of ways you can use this texture to add imperfections to your design. One option is to place it above the top text layer, but below the paper texture layer, then set its blending mode to Screen and reduce its opacity to your desired value. This will create tiny lighter specks around your design that will imitate the look of tiny areas in the print where the ink hasn't been printed properly or has flaked off. You can stop here, or if you want to add a bit more variety to your texture, go and duplicate this Dust and Specks texture, drag the copy just under the Gradient Map layer if you are using any or just above all your illustration layers. Then increase its Opacity back to 100%, set its Blending Mode to Difference. Then enter the Free Transform mode and then rotate and reposition it so that this texture looks different from the original Dust and Specks texture we have added earlier. Then apply changes and check out how this texture affects your design. Because we're using the Difference Blending Mode, you should see some darker specs over the lighter areas in your illustration and some lighter ones over some darker areas. And if the effect of this texture is too strong, in this case, you’ll need to reduce the Fill value instead of the Opacity because when working with any layers set to the Difference Mode, these settings affect the look in a different way. I love how much character these three simple textures add to my design. So be sure to experiment with textureing your work the same way. And if your texture layers, particularly any paper textures affect the colors or tones in your design too much, be sure to further tweak the Hue/Saturation adjustment and if necessary, add another Levels adjustment layer above all other layers and use it to further tweak the contrast or tones in your design, or to compensate for any contrast changes which were caused by textures. And when you're done with texturing your work and applying any final adjustment, be sure to save your document. And if you want to apply the same textures to any other design, there is a little trick which will help you do it faster. Start by opening any other design variant you want to texture the same way. Ungroup the layers, then go back to the design you have just textured, select all of your texture layers by clicking on them whilst holding the Command key or Control key Windows, then move your mouse over your canvas, make sure that the Auto-Select is not checked in the Options bar, then hold down Shift and drag the texture layers that are still selected in the Layers panel over to the document you want to texture, and drop them onto the canvas like this. And all these textures will be placed in the exact same position on the canvas where they were in the original document. Now you can rearrange the order of the layers, change their Opacity or Fill values, and you’ll have pretty much the same texture applied to a different design. But of course, you will probably want the textures in your different design variants to look different. And if this is the case, simply go and move the textures around the canvas, rotate or scale them to create a differently looking texture. And when you're done, save your document. And then repeat the same process to texture any other designs you want to finalize. And when you are ready with all of your designs, join me in the next lesson, where I will share tips for exporting your work in RGB color mode. 24. Exporting Your Design: With your design or multiple design variants ready, the next step is to export your work for sharing online and then, if required, prepare it for printing. Before you start saving any other versions, make sure that your Photoshop file with all of the layers is saved and ready to be archived. Then hit Command+Shift+S or Control+Shift+S in Windows, and first, save a high resolution flattened version of your design in RGB color mode. So select the destination folder for your file. Set format to JPEG, embed color profile here, and hit Save. Here set quality to maximum, select Baseline (“Standard”), and hit OK. And that's your full size high resolution image version done. You can now use this file for print with services which do not require files in CMYK or with bleeds or crop marks, or you can share it online. And if your design size is a little bit too big and not optimal for sharing online as it is, simply go and open the file you have just saved. Open the Image Size dialog, change the size here as required, set the Resampling Method to either Bilinear or Bicubic Sharper, Then hit OK, and go and save this version of your design in your Designs Previews folder. Again set format to JPEG, Embed colour profile, Hit Save, again set quality to maximum, and hit OK. And this is the version of your design that you can share online ready. Be sure to share it in your Skillshare project because I would love to see what you have created! Apart from saving a few versions of your design as it is, you might also need to prepare it for print with bleeds, crop marks, and in CMYK color mode. And I'll cover all of this in the next lesson. 25. Preparing Your Design for Print: If you're planning to print your work professionally or even print your greeting cards yourself in a foldable format, for the best results, you'll need to add bleeds and crop marks to your design. And for this, you need to go back to the original Photoshop document with all of the design layers, and start by saving this document in your Prints PSD folder. And to be on the safe side and to make it easier to tell all of your files apart, you can also add “Print” to your file name. Then set format to Photoshop. Keep the layers checked, and embed the color profile, and hit Save. Next, to start preparing this document for print, start by going to the Layers panel, select all of the layers and group them together. Next, if you don't see the rulers in your workspace, hit Command+R or Control+R in Windows, then go to the rulers and drag the guides out of them, and align them exactly with the edges of your canvas. And if your guides do not snap to the edges of the canvas, go to the View menu, check snap here, and then everything should work just fine. If you want to create a foldable greetings card, now you’ll need to add a back to it. And if not, skip this step. To add the back to your card, hit Command+Option+C or Control+Alt+C in Windows to open the Canvas Size dialog. Go to the width field and multiply it by 2. Then set the anchor point to the right and hit OK. Now with the back of the card added, go and add another guide along the left edge like this. Next, depending on how you have textured your work, you might or might not have some textures covering the back of your card. And if you want to have a consistent background on the front and the back of your card, now you can go and further work with the textures to make them cover the entire canvas. Or alternatively, you can keep your design just on the front of the card and keep the back of the card colored differently or white, which is the most common look of the greeting cards. To keep your design only within the front part of the card, again, you will need to mask it. So select the Rectangular Marquee tool and create a selection over this side of the card snapping your selection to your guides. With the selection ready, select the group with your design in the Layers panel and add a Layer Mask to it. Then go and add a new Solid Color fill layer, set it to white or to any other color you want to have on the back of your card. Hit OK, and place it below the group with your design. Next, if you want, you can add any additional design elements on the back of your card, for example, your logo name, website address, or social media handles, but I'm not going to add anything now to keep it simple. With the front and back of your card ready, the next step is to add the bleeds that are the areas added around the print to ensure that when it is cut to size, all of the edges are perfect. In order to add bleeds, again, open the Canvas Size dialog, change the units here to either millimeters or inches, depending on the print units used in your country. And then you need to go and add the bleed size to both width and height of your document. Choose the size based on the country you're in. For example, to have 5 millimeter bleeds, I need to add 10 millimeters to both width and height of my document. With the bleed size added, in this case, set the anchor to center, and hit OK. With the bleeds added, you’ll need to go and extend your design so that it goes up to the new edge of the canvas. So select the mask applied to the group with your design. And again, using the Rectangular Marquee tool, create a selection over this part of the canvas. Press D to reset your foreground and background colors in the Tools panel to white and black, and fill the selection in with the white color. Then deselect all, and repeat the process for the back of the card if it also features some elements which cover the whole canvas. So these areas outside of your guides will be trimmed. So don't worry if your composition at this point starts looking a little weird. But if you have some design elements or textures that don't go all the way to the edge like my texture here, you might want to go and address these issues, for example, scale any textures to ensure that if your design isn't cropped properly along these guides, you won't end up with some weird elements or something that can be perceived as a graphic error. Now with the bleeds added and adjusted, we are ready for exporting our files for print as they are, and then, if necessary, adding crop marks to these exported files. So quickly save your print prep file with all of the layers, and then go to the File menu and select Save As. In the Save As dialog, select your Prints RGB folder, set format to TIFF, uncheck layers here, embed the standard sRGB profile, and hit Save. Next in the TIFF Options window, set Image Compression to None. Keep these options unchecked. Make sure that Discard Layers is selected here, and hit OK. And this is your first print file ready. Next, if you're printing professionally, you might be required to submit your files for print in CMYK Color Mode. To create a CMYK version of your document, start by opening the TIFF file you have just exported. Then go to the Image menu, Mode, and select CMYK Color. At this point, you might notice colors in your document change, and this is absolutely normal. Next, if you're printing professionally, apart from changing the color mode of your document to CMYK, you might also need to change the color profile, and you can do it by going to the Edit menu, selecting Assign Profile, checking Profile here, and selecting a required profile from the list. If you're printing professionally, you’ll need to ask your print shop which profile to use. And in most cases, the printshops will do the prepress on their end and assign the required profile themselves when preparing your file for print. So it's good to know that these options exist, but it's highly likely that you won't need to worry about the color profiles yourself. With your document converted to CMYK ready, open the Save As dialog and save this file into your Prints CMYK folder. Again, set format to TIFF, embed your assigned color profile, and hit Save. In the TIFF Options window, yet again, set the Image Compression to None. And hit OK. And here is your CMYK document which you can send to the professional printers ready. But if your printshop requires you to submit your files for print with crop marks, or if you're planning to print and trim your cards yourself, here is how you can easily add crop marks to your document in Adobe Photoshop. With either of your TIFF documents you have just exported for print open in Adobe Photoshop, go to the File menu and select Print. Select your printer from the list. Choose the appropriate page orientation. Then if you're planning to print yourself, in Color Handling, select Printer Manages Colors, select Normal Printing and Relative Colorimetric rendering intent. Then scroll down to the scale settings and make sure that the scale is set to 100%. Then go to the Printing Marks section and check Corner Crop Marks. And you'll see them pop up in the preview here. And by default they will be added around the edges of your document. But to take into account your bleed allowance, hit the Bleed button here and input the bleed size you have added to your design. For example, in my case, I have added 5 millimeter bleeds around my document. With the bleed value added, hit OK, and you will see your crop marks shift in the preview. Apart from adding crop marks, for professional printing you might also want to add Registration Marks. And if you're printing yourself a card in a foldable format, you might want to add Center Crop Marks, which you can use to help you fold your card perfectly, especially if you can't easily see the edge between the front and the back of the card, for example, if they have the same background color. Now with the crop marks added, double-check all other settings here and make sure that there is no border or background added to your document, and then hit Print. Now, if you want, you can change all these settings to your requirements and send your file to print. But because we are using these print settings to prepare a print file with crop marks for export, instead, you need to go to this drop-down menu here and select Save as PDF. Save your PDF file to the appropriate folder based on the color mode, remove the TIFF file extension from the title. Double-check your document’s name, and hit Save. And now you can print from this PDF document yourself, or send it to your printers. And now you have your design exported in a number of different ways. So repeat the same process if you need to export and prepare other design variants for print. Then if you want to print your card yourself, print the version with the crop marks and use the crop marks to neatly cut your card to the final size. And that's it! So let's wrap up this class! 26. Conclusion & What's Next: Thank you so much for joining me in this class! I hope that you have enjoyed it, learned something new, and will have a lot of fun mixing botanical illustrations with typography to create compositions for any projects, whether it is cards, wedding stationery, packaging designs, or anything else. And I cannot wait to see what you will create following this class! So be sure to share your finished designs and source images you have used in the project and resources tab for this class. And if you want some specific technical or creative feedback, please include some work-in-progress images or screenshots, and ask any questions you might have. If you're going to share your work created in this class on Instagram, please tag us @attitudecreative in your posts so that we can easily discover them and share your work with our followers. We share our favorite student projects on Pinterest, Instagram, and on Facebook, so do not hesitate to follow us there and join our broader online community. Regardless of what you are creating your botanical designs for, it is always a great idea to bring your designs to life and visualize the potential applications as mock-ups. If you want to learn how to create your own captivating mock-ups for showcasing your work, be sure to check out my classes about creating unique mock-ups using Adobe Firefly and Adobe Photoshop, and present your botanical designs in any setting you desire. If you're interested in exploring more complex digital collages as a form of illustration, check out my class Source & Mix Digital Collages from Vintage Illustrations in Adobe Photoshop. And if you're into a more minimal and graphic collage look, be sure to join me in my other class, Create Minimalist Digital Collages from Vintage Graphics in Adobe Photoshop to learn how to reimagine found vintage graphics as timeless collages in reduced color palettes with a hint of a risograph look, which will also work beautifully for botanical designs! And if you want to learn a few super easy techniques for texturing work, do not hesitate to check out my class Texturing in Adobe Photoshop: 5 Easy Techniques Using Filters. So that's it for this class! If you have found it helpful, please leave a review in the Reviews tab for this class. It really means a lot to us and helps other students discover our classes! If you have any sort of questions, be sure to leave a comment in the Discussions tab for this class, and I'll happily answer and provide feedback. And be sure to follow us here on Skillshare to be the first to know about our new classes and updates. And also, do not hesitate to subscribe to our newsletter, in which we regularly share insights, tips and tricks, resources, and exclusive offers. Thank you for watching this class and I hope to see you in our other classes!