Photo Editing Help

September 8, 2022 9:51 AM

I need to take some pictures and cut out a shape from them, put a name on them and then stick them in a word document to print.

The long story...

I'm now a Head Start Teacher (god help me). We have a daily sign in board and for the beginning of the year, I just want to kids to move their picture with their name on it from out to in. I also need to do something similar with a different shape for our Question of the Day board (put their picture under their answer).

The one online site I tried didn't work for me because there was alway blank space around the picture.

I have the kids pictures and then a cropped version with their face and shoulders.

Windows. Free is best, but something cheap ($5 or so) is possible if it makes it super easy. I tried to do it in paint, but couldn't figure it out. It's the year 2022, this should be something that's easy peasy.

posted by kathrynm to Media & Arts (8 answers total)

Can you just print the photos with the text you want and cut out their head (with scissors)? Even if you print from Word with a silhouetted image, it will still have a white background. Or do you just want a square/rectangular shape with a head on a white background?

It's a little unclear what you're looking for, but here's what I think you could do:
--make a new word file
--insert image
--Type text under it as you want it to appear
--repeat as needed
--print
--cut out and add magnets/velcro to the back
posted by hydra77 at 10:21 AM on September 8, 2022 [3 favorites]

It isn't really clear from your description what you're trying to do. Do you mean you need the resulting image to be a shape other than a rectangle, like a heart shape or circle or something? And that outside that shape, but within the rectangular bounds of the image file, you need it to be transparent so you can put it over something and only the stuff in the shape is opaque and anything outside it shows through?

If the site you used returns the photo image within a shape cutout, which is then surrounded by white, you can use tools in Word to crop the inserted image down to the boundary of the shape.
posted by under_petticoat_rule at 11:55 AM on September 8, 2022

i'd need a few more details, but i can probably do this in photoshop in a few minutes. feel free to memail or email me (melissa at melissakelly.com).
posted by rinosaur at 12:19 PM on September 8, 2022

Best answer: I whipped this up in Canva in about 4 minutes. Is this the kind of thing you're looking for? Canva can export PDFs which will print very easily. I'm on the free plan and I'd bet $119.99/yr that you can do everything you need on the free plan.
posted by wemayfreeze at 12:36 PM on September 8, 2022 [2 favorites]

Best answer: Yes - you want to do text frames in Canva (yt link)
posted by lyssabee at 1:21 PM on September 8, 2022 [1 favorite]

Rereading your question ... is it that you have say a rectangular shape and when you want to make them a circle instead, that there's not enough background? That you end up with white where you'd prefer that it match the existing background of the photo?

In that case, this is a super quick fix in Photoshop or Photoshop Elements, and I'd imagine that other free editing tools have some sort of option to perform this task which may be called: Extend background; add to canvas; etc. Gimp is often cited as a good free photo editor. I've never used it though.
posted by hydra77 at 1:42 PM on September 8, 2022

If you just want to crop an image to a shape, you can do that in Word with these instructions.
posted by under_petticoat_rule at 2:23 PM on September 8, 2022

Response by poster: Wemayfreeze that's exactly what I want to do! I'll see if I can get it to work.
posted by kathrynm at 3:48 PM on September 8, 2022 [1 favorite]