It is not easy to choose a suitable present for the loved ones even when you know their tastes. A good present should be individual and original. What can be better than a hand-made greeting?!
We offer you to create an ideal greeting card - it is funny and exclusive. We used the program Adobe Photoshop with two plugins AKVIS Sketch and AKVIS MultiBrush.
First we should choose suitable images. Let’s take this photo.
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We have found a cool image with two expressive-looking cats from “Big Fat Cat Book” of Ronald Searle.
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These lovely cats remind us of our sweet couple!
Let’s begin our work:
- Step 1. Open a photo in Adobe Photoshop.
- Step 2. We should select the sweet couple using any selection tool (Magnetic Lasso, Lasso, etc). In Adobe Photoshop we can use the Quick Mask mode. Press the button
on the Toolbar. Then choose Pencil and outline both sweethearts.
- Step 3. Now we choose the Paint Bucket tool and fill in the area inside the outline. In this way the figures get selected.
Quit the Quick Mask mode. Press the button 
.
- Step 4. In the main menu of the photo editor choose Select->Inverse. Here we get the selection:
- Step 5. Copy the selected image Edit->Copy.
- Step 6. Now we open the image with the cats.
Erase the black border and the inscription:
- Step 7. Press the button Сrop in the Toolbar and select the image without the black border.
Press the button
in the Options panel in the upper part of the window.
- Step 8. Press Set Background Color and then choose Eyedropper and click on the area near the inscription to define the color. Remove the inscription using Eraser.
- Step 9. Paste the selected image Edit->Paste. Then we adjust the position of the couple on the image using the command Edit->Free Transform. Set the size of the picture by changing the value W (Set horizontal scale) and H (Set vertical scale) in the Options panel. Set the same value of the parameters to keep the image proportions.
- Step 10. Now choose Move to place the pasted image to the appropriate place. The result should be as follows:
- Step 11. Now let’s call AKVIS MultiBrush (Filters -> AKVIS -> MultiBrush) to remove the facial shine.
Select the Chameleon Brush tool. Set the source area. For this purpose, keeping the Alt (Option on Macintosh) pressed, left-click on the area that we are going to clone. Deactivate the check box Aligned and adjust the size of the brush.
You can choose other source areas for better cloning.
Apply the result and close the plugin window.
- Step 12. Now we'll make a sketch from the photo. Call AKVIS Sketch (Filters -> AKVIS -> Sketch). Set the values of the parameters: Watercolor=1, Charcoal=0, Coloration = 10 at the Effects group. At the Strokes group set Stroke Thickness = 7. We won’t change other parameters.
Press the button 
. The result will be shown in the After tab.
Press the button 
to apply the result and close the plugin window.
Here is our final result:
You can frame this image to give it the final touch:
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You can draw a frame yourself, but it is better to use AKVIS ArtSuite.
 "Original photo of the sweet couple")
 "Ronald Searle cats")
 "Framed postcard")
— Sweet Couple: Create a Postcard