Group Photo Silhouette Key

vbrestorer · #1 02-21-2008, 02:52 PM

Has anyone come up with a simple yet easy way to create a key (or legend) for identifying people in a group photo? I use either PhotoShop CS3 or CorelDraw and Corel PhotoPaint version 8. I have attached (or at least have attempted to attach) an example of what I mean. Once you see it, you'll say "Oh, yeah, I've seen those before". Thanks for any feedback. Oh, and "sorry" if I've posted this in the wrong place -- my first post.

madclark · #2 02-21-2008, 04:18 PM

Doesn't Flickr have a feature that you can create hot areas over different things in a picture to identify them?

vbrestorer · #3 02-22-2008, 09:00 AM

Madclark:
I'm sorry, I should have been more specific: I need the silhouette feature for PRINTED output of digital pictures. I would like to be able to frame a printed group photo which, if you flip it over to the back, will have the key as to who is whom. My wife hosted a huge family reunion this past summer, and we tried to get group photos of each "branch" of the family tree. The family is so large, and the offspring within each branch so numerous that not everyone knows who everyone else is.
Thanks for your feedback.

Dave.Cox · #4 02-22-2008, 10:08 AM

I have made these. I used the pen tool to create my outline and added a stroke to the path. Very simple in Photoshop or Illustrator.

vbrestorer · #5 02-23-2008, 08:55 AM

Thanks, Dave.Cox, for your response. Your method is pretty much what I thought I'd have to do, but only knowing the basics of PhotoShop I was hoping there was some slicker, less manual way of doing this. Something like "Select the Magic Wand, set its tolerance to XX, click on the shoulder of the first person in row one and voila, everyone in that row is selected. Click on "turn marque into line" and row one is done". I guess I'm not going to be that lucky.
Also, after thinking more about it, my goal should be to outline the people in each row with a black line and have the background white/blank -- that would save me a ton of black ink.
If I come up with a more automatic way of doing this, I'll post it. I have to admit that I was surprised at how little there is on this subject after searching the web. Maybe pictures are going totally digital and no one is interested in hardcopy printouts anymore.