{"id":9824,"date":"2009-11-30T16:14:15","date_gmt":"2009-11-30T14:14:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/onsoftware.en.softonic.com\/photoshop-tutorial-make-your-own-advent-calendar\/"},"modified":"2025-07-02T02:18:21","modified_gmt":"2025-07-02T09:18:21","slug":"photoshop-tutorial-make-your-own-advent-calendar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/photoshop-tutorial-make-your-own-advent-calendar\/","title":{"rendered":"Photoshop tutorial: Make your own advent calendar"},"content":{"rendered":"

Believe it or not, it’s that time of the year again. 2009 is almost over and the countdown to Christmas has already started. And what is the best way to keep track of that countdown? An advent calendar, of course! Nowadays you can buy advent calendars of all shapes and kinds, but I still believe that the best advent calendar is the one that you create with your hands. Here’s an easy tutorial to design your very own advent calendar in Photoshop.<\/p>\n

1.<\/strong> First, you need a base image for your calendar. Ideally it should have a Christmas-inspired design and enough room for 24 days. I’ll use this image<\/a> from Stock.xchng. You can ask your kids to help you select the image, get them involved in the creative process.<\/p>\n

\"How<\/p>\n

2.<\/strong> Using rulers (Ctrl+R<\/strong>) create a grid<\/strong> on top of your image to design the calendar. Make sure you have at least 24 squares – or 25, if you want to make your calendar up to December 25th.<\/p>\n

\"How<\/p>\n

3.<\/strong> Grab the Rectangle<\/strong> tool and draw a rectangle inside each one of the square, leaving some margin between them. It doesn’t matter if you don’t make them all identical; in fact, it looks nicer if each square is slightly different in shape or size.<\/p>\n

\"How<\/p>\n

4.<\/strong> Now right click on any of these squares and select Stroke Path<\/strong>. In the drop-down menu, choose Brush<\/strong> and press OK<\/strong>. The squares will have now a noticeable margin.<\/p>\n

\"How<\/p>\n

5.<\/strong> Grab the Text<\/strong> tool and with your favorite text font, start adding the numbers from 1 to 24 (or 25). The ruler will help you align the numbers perfectly inside each square.<\/p>\n

\"How<\/p>\n

6.<\/strong> Here’s my calendar so far, with all the numbers. I decided to put a star in the last day, instead of number 25, and add a small shining effect to it.<\/p>\n

\"How<\/p>\n

7.<\/strong> Now it’s time to choose the Christmas pictures you want to appear behind each number – that is, each day on your calendar. Again, you can have your kids help you select the images. There are many good sources for images on the web. For this tutorial I used Flickr advanced search<\/a>, using “christmas” as keyword and selecting only pictures with Creative Commons license. Of course, you can also use photos of your own.<\/p>\n

\"How<\/p>\n

8.<\/strong> Make the calendar layer invisible by clicking on the eye icon, and start copying and pasting all your 24 images in your calendar, each one on a different layer. Resize them with the Transform<\/strong> tool (Ctrl+T<\/strong>) and align them to the grid with the Move<\/strong> tool (V<\/strong>). The grid will make sure they appear exactly where they’re supposed to, under each day in the calendar.<\/p>\n

\"How<\/p>\n

9.<\/strong> We’re almost done! Once all the 24 images are copied into your calendar, it’s time to turn it into two separate files. Make sure the calendar layer is visible and active, and press Ctrl+C<\/strong> to copy it to the clipboard. Create a new document in Photoshop – which will already have the calendar’s exact size –\u00a0 and paste the layer onto it. You can now delete it from the first document, and you’ll have two separate files now: one with just the calendar, and another one with all the 24 images.<\/p>\n

\"How<\/p>\n

10.<\/strong> Flatten both images (Layer > Flatten image<\/strong>) and print them out. On the calendar page, cut out three sides of each one of the numbered squares. The 24-image page should then be glued to the back of the calendar, so each Christmas image is revealed as you open all the squares from December 1st to Christmas Day.<\/p>\n

\"How<\/p>\n

Happy Holidays!<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Believe it or not, it’s that time of the year again. 2009 is almost over and the countdown to Christmas has already started. And what is the best way to keep track of that countdown? An advent calendar, of course! Nowadays you can buy advent calendars of all shapes and kinds, but I still believe … Continue reading “Photoshop tutorial: Make your own advent calendar”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2011,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","wpcf-pageviews":0},"categories":[2441],"tags":[],"usertag":[],"vertical":[],"content-category":[],"class_list":["post-9824","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-how-to"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9824","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2011"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9824"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9824\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":335257,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9824\/revisions\/335257"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9824"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9824"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9824"},{"taxonomy":"usertag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/usertag?post=9824"},{"taxonomy":"vertical","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/vertical?post=9824"},{"taxonomy":"content-category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cms-articles.softonic.io\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/content-category?post=9824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}