Email Newsletter Sign upHoliday eCard Blog Series - Holiday eCards with your Photos / Images
By Sarah Miller 12/12/15
Update 4/9/2020: CorpNote 3.0: more tools, more power, more possibilities...
While many people will use our eCard designs this holiday season, some are making their own holiday eCards with photos and other custom artwork.
Creating your own custom eCard imagery can be rewarding and special to your eCard recipients. For example, some of our customers have created holiday eCards with pictures of their staff volunteering for local organizations and their office/store decked out for the holidays.
So if you haven't thought about creating your own holiday eCard, think again. It's super fun and pretty easy! So pick photos and graphics that you have the rights to use and let's get started!
Our artists use Adobe Photoshop for image editing but there are many options available. You can use the camera and editing tools built into your phone or tablet or other apps from the app store. I am particularly fond of PIXLR.com for compositing several different images into one which is perfect for collage-themed holiday eCards. It's a free app that can be used on phone, tablet and desktop.
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Tips for Creating a Personalized Holiday eCard:
1. Image Start Size. When I create a new image, I use a 4x3 ratio, width to height. CorpNote's maximum size for eCards is 600 pixels wide. You can always start bigger, but when you have thin lines and small text it can get distorted or unreadable when you resize your final image to 600 pixels wide. That is why it is helpful for you to create your art in the actual finished size you will be using. (Note: 800 x 600 is the default image size when you create a new image in PIXLR.)
2. Using a Photo or Image. When using a photo or other pre-existing art image, first make a copy so you don't overwrite your original file, and then scale it to fit the 600 pixel area. You may have to crop out some of the image to make it fit the size and ratio you want, but this will give you an accurate idea of whether the art will look good at this specific size. If it doesn't, try using a higher resolution graphic or another graphic that will better fit the dimensions you are working with.
3. Add embellishments and text. In most graphics programs, you can add corner embellishments, corner designs and more by using the wingdings and webdings fonts. There are also tools where you can draw your own elements. PIXLR offers a lot of cool special effects and ready-made art elements that you can use. Designing attractive art with it can literally take just a few minutes.
4. Export your image. Our sizing guidelines are as follows or you can follow the instructions in our tutorial mentioned below.
- Save the image as a .JPG, .BMP, .GIF or .PNG
- Image width max is 600 pixels wide
- Image file size must be less than 1 MB
- Save at 72 dpi (pixels per inch)
- Save as RGB color mode
5. Upload your finished holiday eCard. Our tutorial guides you step-by-step through the process: How to Create and Upload Images
How to Use your Holiday eCards:
To use your new custom holiday eCards, sign into your CorpNote account and go to Email > New eCard using the navigation. Click the "My Images" tab and you will see all of your uploaded images. Click one to select it and start composing your eCard as usual.
Enjoy being creative, and feel free to contact us if you have questions!
Read the next blog in this series: How to use QuickSend eCard Templates.
