Click here to download templates (2.6MB)
Seeing as it’s Christmas time I thought I’d share some of my storyboard templates. I use them to make quick collages like the ones in Matt and Nikki’s wedding post and this fun one of Eve and her groovy shades back during the summer. You can do them by eye in Photoshop but it’s a bit of a pain so I find these templates make the whole process a lot easier and they really help if you want to use shapes other than straightforward squares or rectangles. Plus, once you have a template you can recreate the same look again and again.
So, if you click the image above it will prompt you to download a zip file. Once downloaded, unzip the files (they are PSD files so they will only work in Photoshop I’m afraid) and you will find 8 different templates to get you started, once you see how easy they are you can start to change the shapes around and create pretty much any shape or configuration that takes your fancy. The secret to using the templates is Clipping Masks and I’ve included instructions with each template.
If you don’t want to download mine, the basic idea of clipping masks is that you create a shape in Photoshop…you can do this with a brush, a shape tool, the marquee selector, text….whatever you use just create a shape and then in the layer directly above this shape paste in the photograph you want to use:
In the layers palette, right-click your photo and choose “Create Clipping Mask”:
and you will be able to move and resize your photo to fit inside it. Easy!
Happy Christmas :o)
31 replies on “Storyboard Templates”
Excellent, I’ve been using rulers and lots of patience 🙂 Happy Christmas Claire, hope you all have a wonderful one.
This is really lovely of you, thank you so much 🙂
I am going to have a go at this over the holidays!
Thanks Claire.
Wishing you and yours a peaceful and love filled Christmas and year ahead!
Nice one. People kept asking me for them and I was always like “Er, just do it by eye.” I didn’t even think to do something like this. Happy christmas!
Merry Christmas!
Aww feck.. another thing to add to the list of ‘stuff to try in early 2009’. Only thing that’s holding me back now is my unnatural skill for procrastinating… I’m a bit late for Christmas, but happy new year!
Thank you, Claire, these are gorgeous!
Here’s my first effort 🙂
You’re all very welcome, I hope they’ll come in handy.
Siobh, that’s really nice, cool idea.
Ah very handy altogether, I never thought of making them up for future use! Thanks a million!
Heard so many good things on other blogs about your templates, I had to come take a look. They look great, I’ve always had to upload photos and then merge them into collages.
Thanks Claire!
These are great, and time-saving. Much appreciated
Can’t wait to play with these when I get home from work! I never thought of using clipping masks to do this, it’s a great idea. Thanks!
Thanks Claire jst what I was looking for. Christine
Excellent idea – many thanks Claire. Makes me realise just how much I have to learn about making full use of PShop. However every little helps!
I’m delighted everyone’s enjoying these 🙂
Hi, I also want to say thank you for the templates.
Just downloaded them today and played around a bit, in GIMP actually where they also work perfectly fine. If anybody else wants to try it, here is a tutorial on Youtube I found on how to do clipping masks in GIMP.
[…] such composition of different shots came from Kevin, who in turn got the template (as I did) from gingerpixel. I think it turned out pretty cool. What do you think? Isn’t it too “crowded”? […]
Hi Claire,
I stumbled on your great website not long ago as I’ve been trying to figure out how to make storyboards. I was really happy to see that you were willing to help so many of us tech challenged people out! I do have a question for you I hope you can answer. I have photoshop 7 (2002) and I can’t find clipping masks in it anywhere…is this a relatively new thing in photoshop or was it previously referred to by a different term? I’ve tried searching the online tutorial to no avail. Any help you could provide would be greatly appreciated!
thanks again for this 🙂
Hi Samantha, thanks so much for the kind words. Unfortunately clipping masks aren’t in earlier versions of Photoshop. The tutorial that Thomas recommends in the comment above yours is for a programme called Gimp that works extremely well and most importantly it’s free!
I cant seem to get the open with GIMP.
Hi Jackie. I don’t know if Gimp can open Photoshop files, I’ve never used it. I do know Gimp has clipping masks so you could recreate the effect of the templates following the tutorial on You Tube in the comments above.
Thanks for sharing! Those are great 🙂
Thanks so much for sharing these awesome storyboard templates – much appreciated!
Wow! Thanks for saving me hours and hours of time trying to figure this out! I really appreciate you sharing these!
Hi, thanks so much for putting these up (a year ago!) They won’t open up for me-I have PS3…ahhhgh what am I doing wrong? It says they cannot open as they are the wrong type of document…..
Hi Phillipa, I think your version of Photoshop is probably a little bit old for these. I made them in Photoshop CS3 and I they require clipping masks which I don’t think older versions of Photoshop had. Sorry 🙁
[…] GingerPixel has a few more. […]
[…] Thanks again to Claire for the storyboard layouts. […]
Hi Claire, thank you very much for the templates. It’ll help me out a lot. I’ve done it the old way, and you’re absolutely right, it’s grueling. Have a Happy New Year. 🙂
Thank you so much for the template! I have searched all over for a way to make a storyboard but this is something that always is just out of my reach! I am having a hard time getting my pictures re-sized once they are in the template. I can move them around but can not make it smaller so you can see the whole picture. Sorry if this is a beginner question but I am getting frustrated! Thank you again for the boards and the beautiful example. It is so nice to see someone willing to share something they have made instead of being snobby about the knowledge which is how a lot of people act!
Hi Amanda, if you select the layer that contains the photograph you want to resize and press Ctrl+T that will activate the transform tool and you can drag the photograph to the size you want. Just remember to hold down the shift key while you resize to keep the proportions the same.