Making a Brochure Using Photoshop? - Simple method

Brochures are a great marketing tool. They help promote your business, pack a lot of information into a relatively small space, and can be mailed, placed in brochure racks or left on storefront counter tops. These versatile marketing pieces can be do-it-yourself projects, too, provided you have the right tools and a little bit of patience. Adobe Photoshop, while not necessarily desktop publishing software, can certainly be one of the tools used to create professional-looking brochures.

1. Fold a letter-size (8 1/2-by-11-inch) piece of paper into thirds. This will give you an idea of where each panel will be on your finished document. You'll need to create two Photoshop documents, one for the outside panel and one for the inside. You'll focus on the outer panel first.
2. Mark the panels on the folded paper, so you can unfold it and see how it will be laid out. Write "cover" on the front panel, "back" on the back and "inside front" on the inside-front panel. Do the same on the inside pages, although this is a bit easier: "Inside 1," "Inside 2" and "Inside 3."
3. Open a new document in Photoshop. Make it 11 inches wide and 8.5 inches tall, 300 dpi and CMYK color (ideal for printing).
4. Place guides at 3.6 inches, 3.85 inches, 7.15 inches and 7.4 inches. This will give you the template for a tri-fold brochure with 1/4-inch gutters.
5. Place your images and text on the brochure's panels, using the paper you folded and labeled as a template for where to put the cover, back and inside-front information.
6. Create another document with the same settings as the first. This will be the inside of the brochure. You can create a tri-panel layout for the inside, or you can simply stretch your information across the entire document/
7. Print out the first page of the brochure. Place it back into your printer so the back side is aligned correctly to print on the back of the page. Print the second page.

Concentrate on:

• It may take a little bit of tweaking to align the front and back correctly.
• Some sites offer downloadable templates for brochures.