I’ve been looking at the PhotoPop graduation cards with the date/text in the background and the photo subject placed in front. Photos are automatically layered and background removed. So easy for the customer. I’ve read that doing this manually is hard for customers to understand. PhotoPop’s designs are impressive, dramatic and really hard to compete with. I would love to be able to sell designs like this with automatic layering! What do you think, Zazzle? Could this technique be available to all designers some day?
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Hi @CherryLane ,
This isn’t a feature at all, it’s a layering and editing way of doing it. The technique is fairly simple, but you will need some light and dark fading or gradient transparencies as one of your layers. Here’s my sample one: https://www.zazzle.com/graduation_sample_of_photopop_only_invitation-256658820753739416 You can open this design and look at the layers.
The bottom layer is the photo that you want to use, with a background. Next layer to use is the transparency layer, in this case, I used black because my background image is a little dark, and I want to use white text of GRAD behind the person’s head. [So use the opposite color transparency to the color text to make it “Pop”.]
The next part is where the magic happens, in the top layer. You take the same image as the bottom, but this time click on Remove BG, it’s next to Change Image on the left. This creates the effect of the person standing in front of the text.
And lastly, and don’t forget this step! It’s important! Click on both photo images, and then click on your Selling Option, so that when a customer changes their photo, it will remove the background on their top layer as one process.
That’s it. Everything on top of the photo can be made as a customizable text. But, this 3 part magic photopop can be created right now.
Interesting, LauraLee. I went to your sample and, in the layers panel, noticed the layers exactly as you mentioned. However, when I uploaded my own photo, the text disappeared. I still had to go to the layers panel, select the top photo and remove the background. If I, or any designer, used this method to design a card, we would certainly need to give customers directions for selecting the layers panel and removing the background. Otherwise, it won’t work. The advantage for the designer, it seems, is that selecting both photos and then choosing Selling Options (as you mentioned) allows the customer to upload their own photo without having to duplicate it – as I suggested in a YouTube video about how to correct an upload where the text disappears. https://youtu.be/fFEK4ZLHDXk
Thanks for posting this. It has been helpful. BTW. I am certainly not a computer guru, just do pretty well for my 91 years on this earth.
@LloydCain-1957 Hi Lloyd, I love your idea and I watched your video but I can’t get my two images – when i try my own version – to line up. I’ve tried “fit” and “fill” for the bottom one but neither seems to make the top image place exactly where it should be. What am I missing here?
You are doing amazing !!
Vivian
Vivian, not sure what the problem is. A couple of ideas for your design. First, be sure that you do not upload two photos. Only one. Then, in the Design Editor right click on your photo and select Copy. Right click on it again and select Paste. This will create the second image – an exact duplicate of the first. You don’t need to do anything else to them except to move them (on the Layers Panel) until one is just above the bold text you want in the background and the other is just below it. On the Layers Panel select the top photo and click on Remove BG (at the top toolbar). This will remove the background from the top photo, and the text will then show up. PS: if you have double-clicked the top photo in order to resize or crop it, do that first BEFORE doing the Copy and Paste process that will create the bottom image. One other thing that I have found helpful. Before posting the design, in the Layers Panel click on your top photo, hold down the Ctrl key (Cmd in a Mac) and click on the lower photo. Now select the Selling Option and choose “Make this a template object”, and also “Force customers to replace with their own content.” When a customer uploads their own photo, BOTH images will be replaced. So, in your description briefly explain how to open the Layers Panel and select the top photo and remove the background. Much simpler.
The same Copy and Paste process holds true if you are editing an existing design except that you will need to first delete the bottom photo (which should be the original designer’s photo) – and also delete the placeholder that remains where the photo was.
Hope this helps.
@LloydCain-1957 “However, when I uploaded my own photo, the text disappeared. I still had to go to the layers panel, select the top photo and remove the background. If I, or any designer, used this method to design a card, we would certainly need to give customers directions for selecting the layers panel and removing the background. Otherwise, it won’t work.”
I see what you mean. I can find no way to get around the “automated” version that Zazzle Studio has. But you can simply say in your description, “Remove BG of the top layered image”. Insofar as when we were able to have our Image template Words showing, it could’ve been easy to show it as “Remove BG of this layer image”, but now it only has “Change Image” shown to the customer. So it would be best to have some kind of directional guide in the description to clarify this.