Good visuals instil a new life to eLearning courses and makes them more appealing for the learners. Coupling instructionally sound content with appropriate graphics helps in providing an incredibly amazing learning experience!

To share my workflow and quick tips related to creating graphics, I conducted a webinar last week on Photoshop Tips for eLearning professionals and 81% of the attendees said that they use a photo creation/editing tool to create their eLearning graphics before importing to their eLearning courses. I was delighted to hear that a lot of us give priority to visual design for our eLearning courses. Considering that Adobe Photoshop is the most loved graphics creation and editing tool, I decided to share some of the tips here with you.

Tip 1: Select Person and Add New Background

When you download a stock photo of a person, it generally comes with a background, and in all probability, you would want to replace the existing background with a new one, which goes well with your course style guide and the content. You can use these quick steps to isolate the subject from the background and replace the background with a new one.

1. Create a Photoshop File.
2. Add the person’s image and the background image as separate layers.
3. Select the Person layer.
4. Select the Object Selection Tool from the Toolbar.
5. Click Select Subject.
6. Press Ctrl+C (Win) or Cmnd+C (Mac) on your keyboard to copy the selection.
7. Press Ctrl+V (Win) or Cmnd+V (Mac) on your keyboard to paste the selection as a new layer.
8. Hide the original Person layer.

You will now see the person with new background.

Tip 2: Blur Portion of Background to Add Text

You have selected a perfect image for the slide, and it looks great. The only problem is that the text is not clearly visible on the slide because of the color scheme the image. To improve the visibility of the text, you can do several things, and blurring out a portion of the image is one of them. Let’s take a look at the steps:

1. Create a Photoshop File.
2. Add the slide image and the text as separate layers. You can add any more objects that you need to overlay on the image.
3. Select the Slide Image layer.
4. Add a new blank layer.
5. Select the Gradient tool.
6. Set the foreground color to black and background color to white.
7. Draw a gradient line from left to right. If you don’t get good results the first time, you can draw again. Stop when you get perfect results where the text is visible completely on the screen.
8. With the Gradient layer selected, change the blending mode to Screen.

The text will now be perfectly visible on the right side of the screen.

Tip 3: Liquid Shape Image Fill

1. Create a Photoshop File.
2. Add the shape to which you wish to fill an image. Add the other accompanying shape and image layers.
3. Move the Image layer above the shape layer.
4. Right-click the Image layer and select Create Clipping Mask.
5. Adjust the size and position of the clipped image on the canvas.
6. If required, adjust the opacity of the clipping image to reveal some color of the shape.

The image will now take the shape of the Shape layer underneath.

Tip 4: Blur Sensitive Information

When you are creating eLearning courses, you sometimes need to use real images and screenshots. These images can include sensitive information. You will need to either remove that information completely or blur it out, so that it’s not recognizable and legible. Let’s take a look at the steps to blur out the information using the Motion Blur filter in Photoshop.

1. Create a Photoshop File.
2. Add the image or screenshot.
3. Make a copy of the image layer.
4. Select the Rectangular Marquee tool and draw a rectangle over the sensitive information area.
5. Go to Filter menu > Blur > Motion Blur.
6. Set the distance to the desired number of pixels so that the information is blurred out completely.

You can also replace Motion Blur with Gaussian Blur for this task.

Tip 5: Image Fill in Text

For your title pages, if you want the text to stand out and look extra special, text with image Fill is a great option. Let’s take a look at the steps:

1. Create a Photoshop File.
2. Add the image.
3. Then add the text to the file. Make sure you are using a font which has a higher font weight, so that there is enough space for the image to be visible inside the text.
4. Move the Image layer above the text layer.
5. Right-click the Image layer and select Create Clipping Mask.
6. Adjust the size and position of the image on the canvas and stop when you get the desired results.

Let me know if you like these tips. If you decide to make your own graphics using these tips, please share them in the comments section below. I would love to see your creations.