#aesthetic tutorial

your first step is going to be making a moodboard as you normally would. Find your pictures, compile them with photoshop. @dear-indies has many moodboard and aesthetic templates at any given time :0c

once you do that and place your psd and all that good stuff, you’re going to want to make sure that your whole moodboard is one whole base layer. If this is daunting you can save and reopen as a PNG. Just make sure that you start this next step with ONE BASE LAYER.

Make a clipping mask group out of your moodboard and add 3 or so layers. This is where you’re going to doodle. This will keep you from doodling in the transparent area.

Now you doodle! As much or as little as you like :D (note: this is going to take practice to look how you want. keep trying! Experiment and play with it!)

Once you’ve doodled and are satisfied you need to open the animation window as frames and make frames from layers.

Once that happens, it’s going to look like this for a hot minute:

you fix this by clicking this

okay so now that you’ve done that, you’ll have 4 animated frames, but you only need 3.

cut this one loose. It’s going to throw your whole game off.

then select all frames and set the delay to 0.2 seconds. That’s the time I find generally works best for these edits. But again. Play around with it.

Make sure it loops forever and then save it as a gif.

idk if this is right tbh but here are my gif settings

1. find some pictures to fit the feel you’re going for. pinterest is a great place to look and you can save them to find them again later. it’s good to have a balance of scenery / objects / people / clothes / words so it’s not too heavy on just one (unless that’s what you’re trying to capture)

2. put them in a collage. you could probably use a psd in photoshop, but i just use befunky since it’s a bit easier for me to maneuver. it doesn’t really matter what kinda grid you choose, but i either use a 2x4 or a 3x3 most times. so put in all your pictures and get them arranged (my generic pattern is to do faceless pics on the top and bottom opposite corners and then two words pictures on the inner two opposite corners and then fill the rest with whatever)

like i said in 1, it really helps to have a mix of pictures of different subjects so it doesn’t look too busy and a similar color scheme also helps it mesh (but if they don’t exactly, that’s why you edit.) you can adjust the border by going to where it says spacing and the automatic size for pics is 3988x3988 which is probably bigger than you’ll ever need so just go ahead and shrink that down as much as you need. tumblr can’t open files that big anyway. pngs preserve more quality without the fuzzy effect you sometimes see on mobile images

3. edit (optional) this helps make it look real snazzy and you can either plop that sucker in photoshop and slap a nice psd on it or you can use a website like befunky or pixlr to adjust the saturation and brightness and colors and filters and all that stuff.

don’t whitewash though! i’m not an expert on coloring to avoid that but that’s what tutorials are for so here are a few i found. x x also check out the poc friendly psd tag. 

anyway, i only made slight alterations to the saturation and brightness and such in photoshop which can easily be done in the websites i mentioned earlier and now it looks a bit more dramatic and matchy

clearly you can make more drastic changes when you edit but sometimes simple works too.

1. Either download a photo-editing app or find a website! I prefer PicsArt for an app, because they have a ton of layouts and options for filters, etc. I usually use BeFunky on my computer though, because there’s a lot less hassle. (I don’t have to email the pictures to myself to get them on my phone.) There are pros and cons to each, so try them both out to see which you like better!

2. For my moodboards, I generally use 9 photos total to make a 3x3 grid. If you have an ultra-specific topic though, and you can’t find many pictures, you could probably go with 4 at the least. Try to make it an interesting layout, though!

3. Find the flag (or, if you’re not doing a pride-themed moodboard, your color scheme). This will provide you will a base for the color palette of your moodboard. For example, if you’re making a genderflux moodboard, you would want to use the colors of the genderflux flag.

4. Open the flag image in a new tab. This will allow you to source your images later. 

5. Now, it’s time to find your photos! First, I google search. My formula is usually “color topic aesthetic”. If I am making a genderflux sunsets moodboard, I would search “pink sunset aesthetic”. This usually yields the best results, but if you need to, drop the “aesthetic” at the end to see if you can find anything else.

6. Try to find two images of the same or similar colors. These will go on opposite sides/corners of the grid and will keep it looking balanced!

7. After you find an image, always open it in a new tab! It’ll be sooooo much easier to source images if you do this, trust me!

8. Now, open up your images in your collage maker. Place the flag in the center (Or if you have two flags, place them on opposite sides/corners on the grid. I’m assuming you;re working with 3x3 here.) of the grid. 

9. Next, place the images in the top left and bottom right of your grid. These are generally the most important because they are the first and last parts of the moodboard that the viewer will see. Go back to Step 6! Try to keep these the same color even if all of the opposite sides/corners aren’t. It improves the balance a lot.

10. Place the rest of the images based on what looks good to you! Again, I always advocate for opposite placements being the same color, but you do you.

11. I prefer to not leave a border or spacing between images, so if you feel like it, now is the time to delete that! (You might have to search a bit in some applications to find the option.) This is by no means an absolute rule, it’s just my preference. Like I said, do what looks good to you!

12. If you so wish and the application allows, add a filter now! If you have the option and don’t know what else to do, I would recommend checking out the HDR filter. It sharpens your images really nicely!

13. Save your image and get ready to post it!

14. Now is where the “new tabbed” images come in. Create a section in the description of your photo post for the sources. I usually do an “x” for each one of the sources I am crediting so that the links don’t take up a lot of space.

15. To create a link, highlight the “x” and click the infinity symbol. Paste the address in there and you’re all set!

16. You can add more to your moodboard description. Here’s an example of mine!:

A pan schrodigender cats+vaporwave moodboard for anon!

Sources: x x x x x x x x x

Request a moodboard! See what else you can request!

Please do not use without credit!

In the first line, I describe the moodboard and tag the person I made it for (or specify that it was an anon). In the second line, I provide image sources. In the third line, I link to my ask box and request page. In the fourth line, I ask that people credit me if they use something that I made.

Yours doesn’t have to look like this, or be as complicated as mine, but there’s some ideas!

17. If you want to get as much exposure as possible from this, make sure to tag it with as much as you can! Check out the tags in my #moodboards tag to see examples!