Fork In The Road Music » Photoshop

Two Free Cross Backgrounds

Russell Martin — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 07:30:51 +0000

Here are two cross backgrounds that you can use for worship slides, web pages or whatever. The original photo of the “message cross” is the big white cross at Peace Chapel of Lakeview Methodist Conference Center where I have spent many many weeks leading music for youth camps. The original picture for “Hanging Cross” was an out of focus “mistake” that turned out to make a good background. It reminded me that even an out of focus photo can be redeemed and used for good. Enjoy.

Free Backgrounds

Russell Martin — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 05:25:46 +0000

I have shared some free image resources that I have found or created before. Here are a few more sites I have found that have photos and backgrounds free for you to use. Of course it is always fun to create your own.

Creative MYK- I have mentioned this one before but they have added a ton of stuff since last time. They have not only background slides but Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop files, jpegs and more. Make sure and check out my waterfall slides.

Flickr Shared Worship Background Graphics- This flickr group is designed specifically for worship backgrounds. I have also started my on Flickr site of backgrounds.

Simply Youth Ministry Background Freebies- These backgrounds are some they use for youth talks, worship services etc.

Tim Schmoyer of Life in Student Ministry always has some great giveaways. Freebie Friday #95 has some sky background pics from me, and freebie #43 is a set of powerpoint backgrounds from Stevan Sheets.

What other sites do you know of that have great free worship backgrounds?

How to- Make Your Own Worship Backgrounds

Russell Martin — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 23:33:27 +0000

Everyone is searching for worship background slides. Instead of buying photos on CD or from a download site I would encourage you to make your own. Really all you need is a digital camera and some photo editing software. I take my camera wherever I go and take tons of pictures. Remember that on a digital camera there is no cost for film so take as many pictures as you like. I will take pictures of people, pets and places, but I also go crazy and take pictures I think might make a good background. I have captured brick, water in a swimming pool, really up close shots of leaves, and other strange things. Once you get your photo you can do many things in your editing software. If you have a picture that is out of focus, maybe adding even a little more blur would make a good background. You can also take a good picture and add a solid or semi-transparent box that you can later use to put lyrics. Be creative and be persistent. You will probably come up with many pictures that don’t quite work, but then you will also create the perfect slide for your slide.

Here are some other suggestions of things that might make a good background slide depending on your need: candles, Christmas lights, Christmas tree ornaments, clouds, sun sky, plants, close up of a wicker chair, close up of old lumber or boards, bible, crosses.

Here are some pictures I took on a recent trip to my grandparents house. These pictures are either left alone or have some effects added. Some also include the text box to add your own text. Please feel free to use them for your own purposes. Also I’d love for you to share your creations with others. If you have some original backgrounds email them or a link to Russell@forkintheroadmusic.org and I will put them up here for others to use. Oh and you’ll get a huge thanks and a link to your site or blog.

Media: Where to Find Graphics

Russell Martin — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 15:08:00 +0000

I remember 10 years ago going to a mid winter camp for our conference and the worship leader was leading music and the words were on transparencies being “projected” onto a sheet. A few years later I was at the same event where the white words were projected onto a black background. It seems today though that a slide isn’t a slide without countless number of background graphics. While I sometimes wonder if we may have gone overboard, putting a different picture with every slide, not staying with a theme etc, I do realize the value of a well chosen graphic to go behind the words that we are singing, or for a sermon, announcements and other uses.
There are several websites where you can go to find free graphics for you to use. Here are some of my favorites:

Stock Exchange- http://www.sxc.hu/ – This is a photo exchange where thousands of photos exist for your use. All the photos are huge, big enough to print, but can be easily compressed down for use on screens. Most of them are covered under the normal licenses which allows you to use the photo for free unless you are using it to make money by selling it in a design set or something like that. Some photos require you to notify the artist when you use the photo in public.

Creative MYK- http://www.creativemyk.com/ Creative MYK adds a different twist on the traditional photo site. It allows people to upload not only photos but also Adobe InDesign, Photoshop and Illustrator Files. Most of them upload in layers so if you see something you like you can edit it for your uses. I actually have a gallery here with a few photos.

There are a ton of other sites out there. These are the ones I use the most.
Where do you find your graphics?

Free Photos

Russell Martin — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 16:20:00 +0000

I was reading browsing through one of my favorite sites called plugrug.com and came across a like to a website for free graphics called creativemyk. The cool thing about the site is that it does not only include photos but also adobe files, templates etc for you to download and use. I created my own profile and have been uploading photos. Please use them, download them and let me know what you think of them. Also if you have a place you have uploaded created graphics for use in worship services please let me know and I can post them up here.

Backgrounds

Russell Martin — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 04:33:00 +0000

Have you taken or found a cool picture and wondered how you can turn it into a powerpoint background, but you don’t have a program like adobe photoshop or macromedia flashworks. What if all you had was Powerpoint?

Well it just might be easier than you think. While you may not be able to do all the slick effects possible with some of the other photo programs you can still come up with a usable worship background from one of your photos. Here I have taken a picture that I took at our recent Palm Sunday service. Let’s turn it into a background slide you can use for Power Point or Media shout or even other publications.

First I opened up Microsoft powerpoint. Then I clicked insert > file > palm.jpg.

Second I selected the photo and then found my photo toolbar. I choose brighten and brought up the brightness of the photo. Depending on your photo you may also want to reduce the contrast of the picture or if you wanted to eventually use lighter text on top of the slide then reduce the brightness.

Third I added a text box, I chose the papyrus font and typed in the Text “Hosanna”. I changed the text size to 117pt, then I rotated the text and placed it on the left hand side.

Fourth I created a rounded corner rectangle auto shape from the auto shape menu. I wanted to use the auto shape as a place to eventually put text so I drew a fairly large square on the right hand side of the slide. I went to format auto shape, chose to fill it with white and then set the transparency to 45 percent.

I think that slide would do great as a title slide or for some small announcement but what about a slide to use for song lyrics. With just a few changes I found a way to make a slide for such a purpose.

First I selected the slide and clicked ctrl+d which duplicated the slide.

Second I selected the large rectangle auto shape and dragged it over to fill the entire slide.

Third I selected the “Hosanna” text, rotated it back to horizontal, shrunk the size to 60pt and placed it in the bottom right hand corner

Fourth I chose the text box, right clicked chose order>bring to front. This placed the text box in front of the text so you can see the text faintly behind the box.

This created a slide that I would use for a song background or maybe a scripture background.

Finally to save the slide as a photo choose file>save as> jpeg and named my file palmbkg. When the box comes up that says “do you want to export every slide” I chose every slide. This creates a folder on my computer with each slide saved as a jpg image in the folder.

As you can see this is an easy way to create background files. However you are somewhat limited to the photo effects you can use. If you do have adobe photoshop then please check out this easy to follow photoshop tutorial posted on life in student ministry. Adobe Photoshop has also just launched Adobe Photoshop Express, which is free and can be used to crop, change colors, add cool effects like blur, sharpen, and more.