Create your own faux magazine ? WHY ?

You deserve to be on the cover of your favorite magazine ... and yet you never be in the head lines !

It is time to redress this grave injustice and to take your destiny in your hands ! Make a faux magazine centered on YOU !!!

Anyway ... This page will explain how to create by yourself your own fake magazine that you can slip into your personal album or offer any of your family ...

There are many sites where you can create a custom an personalized fake magazine cover ... But they are never as beautiful as those you make yourself... If you DIY your fake magazine cover, you'll be more proud of you !!!

Analysis of a People magazine cover...

If you want to perfectly imitate a magazine page, ask yourself the question : what characterizes this page and makes me recognize it among others ?

Here we chose to mimic the PEOPLE MAGAZINE COVER PAGE with its catchy pictures and snappy titles in the news-stands ... The analysis we do is easily transferable to another magazine you like.

The question is : how do we recognize the PEOPLE cover first glance ?

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First, the black outlined white logo on a light blue background... The characters are glued to each other... This LOGO has an important dimensions and is perfectly identifiable (we can see it first glance even if it is a bit hidden by the picture of Angelina).

Then, the arrangement of the images : usually 4 pictures on a blue background (some of these photos have cuttings that interfere with the others). A main one, in the middle of the page : the model looks at the camera (important) and if you can show a bust... it's better !

The Titles, often written with a very simple font of characters, using bright colors: red, yellow, white... here on a solid blue background. And some typical words like "exclusive", "Shock", "always", "reveals" ...

Ah... important ! Always have some red color (photo, title...) on the page ... it's better for the look !

All this contributes to fix in our minds the image of PEOPLE MAG and we immediately identify this magazine among others in the news-stand.

The story board...

Depending on what we have analyzed, it is now easy to draw freehand a story board of our fake magazine cover :

So we must prepare:

. 1 LOGO PEOPLE
. 4 Photos with a cutting
. 5 captions-titles
. 1 Barcode

If you don't want to make the page by yourself... you can click here to DOWNLOAD A READY-MADE PEOPLE FAKE MAGAZINE COVER.

You've just to put your photos inside and write your captions... and it's done !

The PEOPLE FAKE MAGAZINE LOGO

(You can DL a ready made logo PEOPLE... HERE !)

The logo size is 13 x 6 cm. Open Photoshop, create a new image, transparent background 20cm x 10cm ... just to have enough room to work.

Create a selection of 600x300px size and type inside "People" with a serif font like Sylfaen or Times New Roman. Choose a font size of 200.

Reveal the character window (Window> Character or type Ctrl+T). With the text tool, select "People" and decrease the letter spacing in the Character Window...

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When it's done, with the magic wand, select the color of your text.

Create a new layer (name it : title). You have now to enlarge the shape of the characters in this new layer. Do Selection>Modify>Expand and type 3px in the dialog box.

In the layer window, mask the "people" layer and fill with white color the shapes of the title layer (with the paint buck).

Do Edit>Stroke and choose 4px, color Gray Blue. The shapes are now outlined.

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You can now select your outlined title and, by doing Ctrl+T, make it bigger to fill the image by moving the handles...

Type with a small Arial font "Special double issue" above the title... It's done ! Save your "people title".

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HOW TO ARRANGE THE FAKE COVER PAGE.

STEP 1 First, run your Photoshop (or your other favourite image processor) create a new page 11"x14" (it's the standard size for a magazine) with a transparent background.

Take the gradient tool, edit colors and choose the 2 colors : light bue and white. Give to the page such a gradient.

Now, on a new layer, draw the two blue rectangles: one top and one on the right side (you can use the rectangular marquee to draw rectangles and fill them with blue color with the paint bucket). Place the LOGO "People" and the bar code. Here your page :

STEP 2 Now it's time to place the main picture you've cutted out (see on this page how to easily outline a picture)...

It's not a problem if this picture comes over the logo (like Angelina Jolie in the true people issue)... Resize-it by Ctrl+T to reveal handles... dont forget to press SHIFT to avoid distorting the photo.

Place the photos on the right side blue rectangle...

STEP 3  Hmmm ! Now we've to make the rounded picture on the top left corner...

and start by select a circle with the elliptical marquee (using the shift button). Then change for the rectangular marquee and starting from the corner, draw a rectangle covering the previous circle... the selection becomes like :

Do Edit>Stroke and in the dialog box choose : 5px, White color and inside...

Then, Select>Modify>Contract, 5px in the dialog box... and delete... a "hole" appears where you will be able to drag a picture below... like that :

STEP 4 It's time to put the headlines... Imagine some catchy titles... Don't forget to use the "key words" like exclusive, never, always, reveal...

To write your texts use an arial font... adapt its height and use, for this issue of faux-magazine PEOPLE : white and yellow colors... To modify the size of a text, type Ctrl+T, then push the handles...

If the text is not very readable... give it a black or white colored shadow, using the fusion options of the layer window (like for "husband" on the picture above).

Don't forget to put on the cover something with a red color ! It's an old trick painter to give more life to your layout ! Here the photos had not red ... so I typed a caption with a red background.

You're done : save your work and use it in your scrapbook pages !

Other uses for this fake magazine people

There are many people who send their digital pictures to turn them in a photo book... it's a great idea !

For the first page of your photo book... put a fake magazine cover ! It 's very original and it brings additional value to your photo album. I think about some of my friends who did a whole photo book filled with pages of faux-magazines ! Original !

For me, I devoted an entire album to CHLOE ... who is the undisputed star in it !

And if you want an immediate result!

And if you're in a hurry or if you do not want to work with photoshop... you have the ability to compose your fake magazine cover online : many sites are available. Some are free, some not ... it's your choice.

I tested for you some of these sites ... but be aware that the result is never as good as you compose your own page in your image processing software...

1- FakeMagazineCover.com

It's one of the biggest sites... You have to choose beetwin about 500 magazine covers...

Just a little problem : operating weird ... you dowload your photo..  and, when choosing among the magazine lists, you are returned on another page... Sometimes difficult to obtain the mag cover.

Here is one of the obtained results. Note that all covers are tagged with FotoTrix.com... You can remove this tag by paying 5$.

2- MagMyPic

Ah ! A free site ! Yes it's free ! It is a U.S. site ... but there are fewer magazine templa-tes than in the previous ! 

I guess for copyright reasons, the titles are not exactly like the real thing.

Simply upload your image and then choose one of the magazines available to see immediatly the result to appear, very correct ! And here, no tag you've to pay to remove !

3- FakeMagazine.com

It is a pay site ... and it was not possible to have an example of their production ...There is no preview available if payment is not made. Too bad ! I can't show you any result.

4- MyPictureOnMagazine.com

A small site very nice and very friendly and free ! Too bad the choice of magazines available is so limited... but the work is fine !

5- Coverdude.com

Like others, Coverdude allows you to insert your photo on the front page of a magazine ... 

There are many titles available, some are really not well known ... Work is still fast.

A tag at the bottom of the cover page indicates that it was obtained through Coverdude!

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