Ok the high school softball coach has asked me to to the team poster for this year. Of course i said I would as my daughter plays on the team. however, I am not sure where to start.

Has anyone else done team posters and if so can you share the tools you used and the process you followed?

Right now I am planning to use Photoshop elements, as that is the software I have, along with my D80.

Any hints, advice and or lessons learned would be much appreciated.

They have the theme picked out so that should not be an issue.

Thanks in advance.

Tom, JETA and Daniel both have done team pictures recently and should be able to give you some hints. It's been several years since team pics were my thing.

I've been doing a bunch of team shots in a more graphics style than the traditional team photos. My hints:

1: Get a good team shot.
2. Build you templates in PhotoShop using layers
a. find a cool background that is related to your sport and/or team colors (abstract is good)
b. I always come up with some sort of Team Logo using CorelDraw (I like it better than Illustrator) --then I export it into Photoshop where I create cool effects using the standard Photoshop effects tools or plug-ins like Eye Candy.
c. Do your normal color correction and adjustments, clone out things that may be distracting in the original team capture (light poles, cell towers, other kids etc).
d. copy the capture and paste into template.
e. Have fun! Experiment with different things, add the date, a soccer ball to the corner (I took a photo of the official league ball and use it).
f. You'll notice that you get better every time you do a new team. My first one I did this year I kinda didn't do too much with the team name -- but by my third one I had bevelled chrome and flames coming off the copy.

I'll post the first and third teams from this season. Right now I'm working on the fourth (a 6-7 year-old Flag Football team with the same coaches and name as the one below. I'll stretch the team name a bit and do some fine tuning (not a ton so the families with kids on both don't notice too many changes if they frame them together or something).

mbb

Pic 1: My first team shot this season.
Pic 2: My third
Pic 3: An option with individual player shots. The awkward space below the 22 is where the boys name goes.

Note: I'll add the 3rd when I get home. --Got it.

Those are great, thaks for all the hints. When you print them, how big do you go?

Those are great, thaks for all the hints. When you print them, how big do you go?

Those are 8x10s at 300 dpi. I'm having one printed at 20x30 and should have it in the next day or two.

To do it I resampled one of my 5x7s to 20x30 at 150 dpi (on the screen it looked decent enough). I might start doing the 5x7s and 8x10s at 600 dpi in the future so when the poster orders come they will scale up nicer -- but I'll be able to tell if that is really necessary when I get the poster in. Maybe I won't have to.

Also, Eye Candy is great for doing really fun and fast team names. Just type in the name in a font that you like, open the Eye Candy filter and it will rasterize it and do your effect quickly. Then add a drop shadow effect and voila -- you're done. The Lightning Bolts logo was done before I bought Eye Candy -- and the Bad Boyz after (the Bad Boys one was much faster to create as well.

mbb