#moodboard tutorial

part one: layout setup

i start with a canvas that is 1080px wide (double tumblr's post width of 540px) by 1500px high. i just like that ratio. i find it easier to start bigger, crop height as needed, and export to 540px wide, but if you'd rather start at 540px, go for it!

next i figure out what kind of vibe i'm going for. i look at pinterest, canva, tumblr, or whatever to look at layouts and see what might fit what i want to do.

i picked this one off pinterest and resized it to fit my canvas width; doesn't matter if this is blurry cause it's just a reference.

now we figure out our smart objects and their layout. this moodboard for example has 3 rectangles in the "background", and 2 circles and 2 rectangles in the "foreground", and some words and elements layered in. so i'm going to lay out my background first, then the foreground, to keep the layers in order. i do this by:

using the marquee tool to create a rectangle or circle

creating a new blank layer and filling the shape (colour doesn't really matter)

repeat until all your shapes are how you want them

once all shapes are placed, i convert the layers one by one into smart objects. i like to do this at the end of laying them out so that if you need to change the size of a layer as you go, it won't make whatever you put in the smart object look funky.

hopefully the colouring helps make the "foreground/background" stuff a little more clear! basically it just helps my brain to think of the layout like this.

when it comes to spacing, i usually try to keep it even, but of course this depends on style! one trick i do for this if i want equal spacing between my boxes is, after i've created my smart objects, i add a 10-20px stroke in white (or whatever your background colour is) to each one, aligned to the outside. this helps with lining everything up visually. the only annoying thing with this is (at least in my version of photoshop) the corners will be rounded, but i just pop a little square over top of them as needed.

if i'm leaving my background plain, i just stick with the stroke; if i'm using a texture, i use masks to make the outline transparent so the texture will show through.

part two: images

i, like many other people, have about a million vibe inspo boards on pinterest. i usually try to go to places like unsplash or pexels first, since they have free-to-use images and usage rights from pinterest are murky at best, but ultimately this is a moodboard i am making for fun to post on tumblr dot com that is likely only going to get a few notes and is definitely not making me any money so... yknow. do whatever sparks joy. i'm not your mom or your ethics professor.

once i decide on images, one by one i open the smart objects and paste in the images i want. before you resize, convert the image to its own smart object so if you decide you want it bigger again at some point, it won't be blurry/pixellated. ask me why i started doing this 🫣

for rectangles, you don't have to do anything special; for circles or other shapes, you're going to have to ensure that your photo is using your base shape layer as a clipping mask, otherwise it'll just show up as a rectangle. right click your photo layer > create clipping mask, and repeat this for any adjustment layers you add.

tada! i also threw in the little art piece on the side for decoration now cause i had it in my bookmarks and knew i wanted to include it.

part three: colouring

this is the fun part! first i tweak all the images individually so they feel like they go together. the theme of this one is daycare teacher buck au, so mostly going for light, bright, and airy.

tip: this is easiest (imo!) if you have your photoshop window tiled or pop the smart objects out into new windows when you open them, so you can put them next to each other. that way, when you save the smart object, you will see how your changes are looking with the whole graphic without having to swap windows or close and reopen the object!

now that i have my colour values somewhat evened out (at least to a point i'm happy with to start), i put a gradient map over the whole thing. find a gradient that fits your vibe, and then set it to overlay or soft light and play with the opacity. sometimes i go back into the smart objects and tweak the individual colouring a little more as needed! it's subtle, but i think this does help unify the colouring across the different photos.

this is the point where i start adding the extras. textures, text, go nuts.

"mr evan" uses the alphabet bead font by cheeky bones

doodles are from a png pack from here

star sticker png from here

paper texture from here

permission form i made myself but it uses myriad pro and almonde fonts

tommy and their hands are screenshots from the show; the pic of oliver is from a photoshoot of his that i found on pinterest, i just edited the background to fit the theme a bit better

all other photos are from unsplash/pexels

sometimes when i'm done this stage it will look off-center depending on what i've added. if that's the case, i select everything but the background and adjust the placement until it looks right!

HIII, I will be answering this ask that was sent to me a few days ago, I think I accidentally deleted the original ask because I can't find it anywhere 😭 (im sooo sorry), but anyways, the point is that I will try to explain a bit how I make my edited mbs since the process is a bit mess, so I will do my best to make it understandable (btw, thank you so much for the compliment, I really appreciate it
🫶).

1. As I said before, the process is VERY messy because most of the time I don't have a clear idea of what I can do and the final result is what came out spontaneously when I was doing it lmao.

2. The app I use FOR EVERYTHING is IbisPaint X (my best frieeend), there the tools I use the most are the brushes, the eraser, blending mode, the shapes and the filters.

3. For this Yena's mb, I mostly used images as textures and used the blending mode to see which one looked best. The ones I use the most are Lighten, Screen, Overlay, Soft Light, and Hard Light, although of course this may vary depending on the colors of the images you are using. I also used the eraser with the airbrush and eliminated some parts of the texture so that it wouldn't look so strong (although it's better to simply lower the opacity).

4. For other mbs (like this of Giselle), I simply played with random shapes and images I found related to the mb, and what I did was manually remove the background (since the background wouldn't allow me to erase it with the magic wand). The rest was simply erasing the edges of these with the airbrush to give that blurred effect.

5. For gifs with multiple images, I use the rectangle shape and edit it to fit the shape of the image exactly (for example, the screen of a camera or a tv), and then I place each image there (always using the clipping mask so that it is placed only in the shape we made), and I save each time I add one (my gifs commonly have approximately 6-8 images, 2 of the idol and the other random images), then you go to the app or website that you use to create your gifs and that's it!

(Songs in the video: Dirty Work - aespa, Nemonemo - Yena, Full Moon - VIVIZ)

Here is a video that basically compiles everything said here, if it goes too fast I apologize, it's the slowest I could get it since it's a timelapse from IbisPaint X 😭

first, I like to use this preset to get the size right so it's a perfect square!

now you have a blank page! clicking "design", you can access a bunch of templates meant for a square page.

anything with a crown icon is premium (meaning you need to pay), but there's plenty of other options! the 3x3 template with various colors of clouds is the one that I use.

once you choose your template, you can click the images and hit "replace" to change them with whatever pictures you have in your gallery that you want to use to make your board! you can do the same with the background, or you can choose a flat color. you can get rid of the shadows by clicking them and hitting the trash icon, but I like to keep them for aesthetic purposes :3

Tumblr has once again made a bad decision. As you may know gifs in mobile now work different and many stimboards/moodboards have been ruined by it. Here are some tips to make your boards consistent on both mobile and web.

Why is this happening?

Tumblr mobile now show images as their real size. Before if you have a 600x600px image beside a 400x400 one the images would scale down perfectly since they had the same aspect ratio. Now if you have a 600x600px image beside a 400x400 one the images will be disproportionate to each other throwing off the whole board.

About moodboards

With moodboards I'd personally recommend just compiling them all in one big image then posting that image to Tumblr. This protects your board from current and future Tumblr tomfoolery. I personally use Photopea to make mine but other popular sites include: Canva, Picsart and Ibis Paint. Also you should export your big image as a png since they are higher quality and compress better.

Here is a template for a moodboard layout but you can make your own if you want special layouts or want to make it fancy.

About stimboards

Stimboards require a much more tedious process. You will now have to resize all your gifs and central image to be the exact same size being the same aspect ratio doesn't cut it anymore. I'd recommend going with 300x300px or 350x350px since 400px is where a good amount of gifs start to go over the file size limit (10MB).

For resizing I'd recommend using EZgif it is your best ally when it comes to editing gifs.

What about my old boards?