Making ‘MoodBoards’ in Photoshop (for Podfic Covers and for Fun!)

[peasina]

Anyone who follows my DW or has ever visited my Internet Archive page may have noticed that all my podfic covers are the same style: a six-panel ‘moodboard’ above a strip of colour featuring the story title. Thanks to a voiceteam challenge about documenting podfic practices, I’m making this post to share my tips and tricks for making similar moodboards! Whether you’d like to put them on the cover of a podfic is up to you. I hope you’ll find something useful here regardless.

Please note: This post involves using images that aren’t copyright free, and I’m not here to give my opinion on that topic. If you don’t like the sound of it, I totally get it, and you might want to give this post a miss.



Just quickly, I’ll tell you why I make covers the way I do. My day job involves graphic design, so designing distinct covers for every podfic I make feels like work. Sad, but true. However, making moodboards is something I find relaxing/therapeutic. They also allow me to get super involved in the fic’s world visually—as someone with aphantasia, this rocks.

Now, I’m not saying that making moodboards doesn’t require effort or that they don’t look as good as other podfic cover styles—I mean, I often feel like I’m cheating, even if it takes me an hour on average to make each one if you include image hunting—but I personally find them easier. Knowing in advance what my cover will be when I record a podfic also totally removes that additional stress. (And yes, covers aren’t mandatory! This is totally a Me thing.)

Now, the tutorial, hopefully peppered with some tips you might find helpful.

What are we making a moodboard cover for? (Answer: A hypothetical podfic!)

I asked my voiceteam teammates to give me some random items that might appear in a fic I’m theoretically podficcing and making a cover for. These were: peeler, freeze, blazer, orange, glass, mouse, wainscot, and walls. I also asked for some tropes and received: "there was only one bed", "and they were roommates", and "must cuddle because hypothermia". I put my Spotify on random to get a title and it gave me ‘Bedspell’ by Zolita. Because this post isn’t self-indulgent enough, I went ahead and put together this quick summary for an imaginary fic about my OTP that contains these items/tropes:

Title: Bed Spell
Author: ImaginaryAuthor
Fandom: Independence Day (Movies)
Pairing: Milton Isaacs/Brackish Okun
AO3 tags: Canadian Shack, Huddling for Warmth, Christmas, Christmas Dinner, Hypothermia, Phobias, Food & Cooking
Summary: Brackish and Milton spend their Christmas vacation in a picturesque cabin nestled between snow-capped mountains. Nothing could go wrong, right? There absolutely won’t be an avalanche, their Christmas dinner won’t burn leaving them only the oranges in their stockings, nobody will get hypothermia, and there definitely won’t be any small, mouse-shaped visitors to scare a certain scientist silly.

Okay, I’m resisting the extreme temptation to go and write that fic, but we’re here to MAKE A COVER FOR THIS FAKE STORY, so let’s go, let’s go!

First thing’s first – I ask myself: What colour is this story? For this one, I’m thinking woody, brown tones. This might not go anywhere, because I might not be able to find any images that work for that colour palette, but it’s my starting point. White/grey might also work, so if I happen to find some images like that on my hunt, I’ll probably collect those as backup.

I’ve made a folder on my computer for the images I’m about to collect. I know I need to find at least six, but I usually grab three times more than that so that I have a selection to work from.

What images to use? (Answer: Whatever your heart desires!)

This is the fun part (I say this about six times throughout this tutorial – it’s all fun!) Whatever you think works with the story’s content or its feel is up for grabs with moodboards. It’s the “mood” of the story how you see it!

I’ve made a list of the main things I’m going to hunt for this non-existent story:

• Oranges
• A fireplace
• A cabin in the snow
• A mouse
• A bed
• Brackish and/or Milton in a non-canon setting

*fires up Google Images*

For my first search, I’m going with “Christmas oranges” and I’m going to filter the image results by colour. To do this, hit “Tools”, then “Color”, then select the colour you’ve already got in mind for your palette. I selected brown and did lots of scrolling until I found a few images featuring an orange with those brown, wood tones I’m looking for. Now it’s time to scroll, scroll, scroll, and find the remaining images I need. I’m going to keep that brown colour filter selected during my entire hunt.

Most of the time, when searching for general objects, you get tonnes of stock images covered in watermarks. You can find non-stock images by adding “-stock” to the search. You might still get some, but most of them get filtered out and it saves a lot of time. You can also try adding “photography” to your search if your results are a bit rubbish.

Here’s an example of what I get for “peeler” (a word given to me by my team) vs, “peeler photography -stock” when brown images are selected. I put a red box around the images that I think look awesome!




And… I’m done! (I should’ve set a stopwatch, damn.)

Here are the results of my hunt! Twenty-three images, all brown in tone.



Now, to Photoshop!

If you’re super invested in the fandom, pairing, fic, hit play on your fanmix/playlist so you’re fully immersed :-D (I adore an embarrassing number of playlists full of cheesy 70s love songs for these two, so I’m having the best time right now listening to this Brackish/Milton fanmix by a friend of mine!)

Seeing as this is supposed to be a tutorial, here are the dimensions I use for my covers:

Canvas: 540 x 540 px
Each image in the moodboard: 180 x 180 px
Font: Open Sans, light

Cropping and arranging the images

I’ve opened all 23 images in Photoshop, so it’s time to crop them into squares. With the crop tool selected, you can choose “1 : 1 (square)” from the “Ratio” dropdown box (or whatever size you're going with.) This makes everything super easy.

This might be a controversial tip, but I recommend trying to stick to the rule of thirds when cropping your images, even when they're square format. This means, try to keep the focal point(s) of the image where the lines intersect on the grid Photoshop conveniently displays while cropping. This doesn’t work with every image of course, but it often helps make things look balanced.



Do not listen to what Pokémon Snap told you as a child. Professor Oak was wrong! Seriously, no shade, that game got me into photography, but this is incorrect XD



Once your images are all cropped, drag them all into your main document. To make this process quicker, you can use Window > Arrange > Tile All Vertically. Then simply click and drag them all over at once. When you’re done, it’s Window > Arrange > Consolidate All to return to your prior view of one image.



The fiddliest but the most fun part is arranging the images. I’d recommend that you balance light/dark images and separate colours for an even spread. (I.e., Don’t put two dark images next to each other or two red images side by side in a dual-colour moodboard.) Here are a few examples of where I’ve employed that with my covers.




For 'An Improving Occupation' (left) and 'Like Mountains in Streams' (right) I've gone for the dark, light, dark, light layout. For 'Tainted Blood (centre)' I've separated red images with the blueish darker ones.

Colouring the images

If a panel looks out of place colour-wise, try Image > Auto Colour on the layer. Photoshop might use its big brain to automatically make the image blend with the rest. This works 50% of the time. I love it.

After many horrible decisions where I was forced to cut images I loved because they didn’t quite work or flip coins to choose which image looked best, I’m left with this. Notice that the images with busy, bright sections are separated by those with cooler tones and more space. Please also notice how cute and cuddly Milton looks <3



Colouring the images is next. That’s my favourite of my tricks and dare I say the most fun part! On the top layer (below any text layers), add a new Selective Colour layer via Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Selective Colour. This allows you to adjust colours for all the images simultaneously to give them an even appearance. This step is mostly trial and error, but I love moving all the sliders around to find that perfect tone.



Have a play with all the colours in the Colors dropdown. Starting with the dominant colour is usually beneficial (and be careful not to overdo it with the black, white, and neutral colours. I often find surprises and end up going with colour combinations I wouldn't have thought of because I slid a slider a certain way. Something ends up looking gorgeous and I'm like, *cough* yeah I totally meant to do that from the start. Thank you Photoshop for keeping my secrets.

Annnnnd, I'm done!

Here’s what my cover looks like after I've applied a Selective Colour layer.



I don’t have many of my older covers saved as PSDs, but here is one I found that allows me to toggle the Selective Colour on and off so you can see what a difference it makes.



And that’s it! Have fun making moodboards for anything you fancy :-D

I hope there is at least one tip nestled in this post that will help you with your creativity! Feel free to ask me any questions about this post or to clarify anything I haven't explained clearly - I will be happy to!

Comments

[bluedreaming]

This was so interesting! I do all my editing on my phone so the process is different, but I really resonate with having a personal “template” for podfic covers. Thanks for sharing this! (And if I ever make moodboards I’ll try to follow some of these principles! It’s surprisingly hard to find a guide on the theory of moodboards.)

[peasina]

Thank you for reading - I'm so glad you found it interesting!

I would be lost without my cover template. The one time I made a non-moodboard cover, I must've spent hours dithering over the tiniest details, haha. If I stick to my plan, my evenings are usually safe!

[bluedreaming]

Exactly! I've been making covers for teammates and it's so much stress, comparatively! (I still like it though.) Must keep those evenings safe!

[greedy_dancer]

AH HA!! I think I looked at this actually when you posted it, but then I never really applied it?? But I feel like, even though I don't have photoshop and so I can't use some of these features, I still feel like I have learnt things, in particular about finding good images! Thank you!

[peasina]

Oh that's fantastic, I'm so pleased it was still useful <3 Thank you for your comment, friend! <3