How To Make Social Media AU Graphic
The lovely itspotteractually asked me how to make my social media AU graphic so I decided to go all out in as much detail to help. The assumption is that people have a fair amount of knowledge on photoshop but this graphic isn't too difficult. Just a whole lot of adjusting and following a template. I mostly cover the edits of Snapchat, Instagram and Facebook in this so without further ado...
Firstly, HELVETICA FONT IS KEY! That font is majorly used for these edits as it's used mainly on the social media websites. So make sure you have helvetica font handy. (I ended up using Helvetica Light which still works).
With the snapchat edit: it was the easiest because all it required was:
Caption in helvetica font
A black rectangle going across with the set opacity of 60%.
Now the instagram edits: You have the option of using the desktop instagram or the mobile instagram. I used the latter and first screencapped someone's instagram post on mobile (I used my sister's just FYI) as a template.
STARTING WITH THE IMAGE (since it's a pretty easy step):
Select an image and edit it as you like.
You'll have to make sure it has square dimensions so you can place it into the allocated spot on the template.
For this image, it was 640x640px but it depends on how you've resized your template. (The template was sized at 640x1092 which was the default size of the template when I saved it)
Soon enough, just place the image on the template and you now have the photo for the post.
Should look like this so far:
Next with the text:
Use helvetica font again and the eyedropper tool to color the font the same as on the template
Size of the font will depend on how you've sized your template (The size of the font on here with the set template size was 25.5 for me).
Type out the certain phrases/captions/time and place them on the appropriate place on the template - at this point you use your imagination to put whatever comments you like.
I used Arial font for the account names and placed them at their right spots.
Select the template to erase the original font (by painting the selected area white) and then you'll have your personalized text on the edit.
6. (Bonus step) I adjusted and moved the comment bubble up because I changed the likes section to a numerical value rather than listing the people that liked it (But you can do whatever you like with that section)
Should look like this so far now
7. (Bonus step) I ended up extending the comments section to fit additional comments. You can play around with the length of the comment section/bottom area using canvas size because as shown in this one it's slightly longer than the others because I extended the bottom area to fit the comments. This required Canvas Size and cutting out certain sections and coloring.
First, you highlight the bottom bar section
And Cut it out/Delete it (But paste it elsewhere so you can put it back to its place afterwards)
Use Canvas Size to extend the height of your template with the Anchor Setting as depicted
Highlight the grey area and paint it white to match the background of the template
Paste the bottom bar back on in its appropriate place
Add more text in the new space provided
Final touch is the instagram DP.
Find and select another picture again and edit it as you like. (You don't need to be too fussed on editing the DP because it'll be pretty small anyway)
If you have knowledge of clipping masks, then you'll know how to be able to make the image have circle dimensions which you then can place onto the template and size it down to the size of the circle on the template.
[Side step - In case you don't have knowledge of clipping masks:
Use the ellipse tool to create a circle (double click on the image to create a perfect circle) and place it over your image.
Click on "Show Transform Controls" near the top to enable the option of maximizing/minimizing the shape.
Holding down the shift key, maximize/minimize the circle to whatever size to capture what you want of the image within the circle.
Your layers menu will look like this
5. So you'll have to change the layer order to this so that the shape is beneath the image.
6. Next, you right click on the image layer and click "Create Clipping Mask"
7. Which will result in this.
8. For a quick method, right click on both layers and merge them (the shape and the image) so that it'll retain the circle shape and transparent background
9. Drag the new circular picture onto your instagram template and minimize it down to the size of the circle on the template.]
Then it's all done!
Finally the facebook edit: THIS WAS QUITE TIME CONSUMING! Thankfully, I actually got a facebook timeline template online (x) and it really helped.
Save and Open up the facebook template PSD
I only used the post template from the timeline template.
3. Drag the "Post" onto a new photoshop document sized at 500x572 4. You'll need to maximize the entire document to the dimensions of the document.
Firstly, since it's a photo facebook post, find an image and edit it how you like.
The image I selected for this post turned out to be bigger than the area allocated on the post template so this required some shifting of the template.
Using Canvas Size, I extended the document height to 857px
3. Place the image on the template and size it down to fit the width of blue rectangle on the template (Don't mind the the fact that it covers the comment sections We'll fix this).
4. Go to the Layers Panel and Expand the Post Folder.
5. Go further down the list and select both the "Like Comment Share" folder and "Comments" folder. Then you'll be able to move down those two sections past the photo.
6. Make sure to Duplicate the Rounded Rectangle so the expanded background is white and move it down to fix the background.
So now it looks like this:
NEXT: THE COMMENTS SECTION
I actually ended up adjusting the comments section and extended it so more people were commenting - you can adjust the section however you please.
Go to the "Comments" Folder and Duplicate it
Expand the "Comments Copy" Folder and delete the following:
View All 15 Comments
79 People Like this
Layer 3
Layer 2
Rectangle 1
Rectangle 1 (Underneath the 1st Rectangle 1)
3. Now you can move down the "Comments Copy" folder to cover the "Write a comment" section of the first "Comments" folder so it now looks like this.
The product looks like this so far:
So now adding the facebook profile picture DPs:
Find and select particular pictures to match the profile pictures of the people that are commenting.
These pictures will require square dimensions again of which you will save and size down to match the size of the squares of the profile pictures on the template
Next editing the text: (actually quite easy)
Click on whichever text you want to edit and adjust it however you like
Due to the specific font that they are set to (unless you have the same fonts), just adjust the fonts to Helvetica again.
You can edit the:
"__ People Like This" line
"View all __ Comments" line
Number beside the speech bubble
Time that people have commented
Name of person that "added a photo"
All however you like.
Then it should all be done with the final product:
So there you go! The rest is just your imagination/creativity/preference with whomever the instagram/facebook account belongs to and how others interact with it.
Hope this has helped! If you couldn't tell, this was my first tutorial so I hope it made sense. Feel free to PM me if you have problems with particular parts.