App Marketing: Perspective Marketing Image Template (PSD)

Recently I created an XCF template for app marketing and wrote a post about how to use it.

Nokia Lumia 1520 is a gorgeous phone. So is your Windows Phone app’s hub in panorama. And you do know that a well developed app is just the half way. Getting the app to its audience is the second half. I created this layered GIMP image to easily sandwich a panorama hub between the layers and showcase your app with your own shining colors. You need to do following to create your app’s panorama with this template: Read more…

Some people wanted the template in PSD format. So, here you are.

Hope you find it useful.

App Marketing: Perspective Marketing Image Template

[This post got a mention on Microsoft Channel 9 This Week]

Nokia Lumia 1520 is a gorgeous phone. So is your Windows Phone app’s hub in panorama. And you do know that a well developed app is just the half way. Getting the app to its audience is the second half. I created this layered GIMP image to easily sandwich a panorama hub between the layers and showcase your app with your own shining colors. You need to do following to create your app’s panorama with this template:

• Have all your panorama pages in a single image. 4 or 5 pages will work great.
• Copy aforesaid panorama image in this XCF.
• Adjust perspective, add your colors, and export!

With very little efforts you can have your app in your choice of colors.

Following is the detailed step-by-step of the process with example of Windows Phone Channel 9 app:

First, grab the GIMP XCF (PSD here). If you do not have GIMP, download here, it’s open-source and free. Prepare an image of all the panorama items of your app (a little help here).

Layers!

Open PanoramaAppShowcaseOn1520.xcf in GIMP. Look at the Layers windows. There are multiple groups and layers inside. Some layers/groups are not editable. Their names start with [DoNotEdit]. So, do not edit them. The layers you will be editing are – “YourApp.YourAppGoesHere”, “UseBucketToolAndFillAnyColorHere”, and “UseBucketToolAndFillBackgroundColor”.

Bring Your App In

1. Open “YourApp” layer group and select “YourAppGoesHere” layer.
2. Copy or Open As Layer from File menu, your app’s panorama image. If you Open As Layer, drag it down to just above YourAppGoesHere and right click and merge down. If you copy, as you see in image, a floating layer will be created.
3. Click on Anchor the floating button at the bottom. You will see now your panorama image is in the layer YourAppGoesHere

Prepare to Skew

1. Make sure YourAppGoesHere layer is selected.
2. Slide opacity to about 50.
3. Select Layer > “Autocrop Layer” menu to crop this layer. You will see yellow marching ant line around the layer
4. Choose perspective tool.

Go 3D

The layer now has a grid with 4 handles on corners.

1. Grab a corner and drag it as close as possible to the corresponding corner on white base. Don’t worry about matching corners exactly, just keep close. Repeat the process for all corners. Look at black arrows in the image.

Now your image’s layout looks something like this:

Micro Adjust and Transform

You are still in Perspective transform edit mode. Here you will zoom-in to every corner and match every corner exactly with the corner of the white base.

1. To zoom-in to the corner you want to adjust, take your mouse pointer on the corner, and ctrl+mousewheelup to zoom-in max. Match both the corners pixel perfect. Repeat for all the four corners. Zoom-in and out to make sure all the corners are matching.
2. Click on Transform button.

Your image now looks something like this:

Your Colors

These steps are to easily change phone’s color.
1. Select UseBucketToolAndFillAnyColorHere layer.
2. Click on foreground color and pick a color from color picker.
3. Select Bucket tool from Tools menu
4. Click anywhere inside the image

More Color and Done

1. If you want to edit background color select UseBucketFillBackgroundColor.
2. Click on foreground color and pick a color from color picker.
3. Click anywhere on image
4. Open File menu and select Export As… Type “filename.png” in the File Name field and save.

If everything goes well, you will have a gorgeous image like this for your app:

And this is my app in the same template:

App Marketing: Panorama Image Template

(An improved one with perspective)

If your app has a panorama hub, an image showing all the pano items with device could be a very impressive marketing image. I have created this template which makes your life a bit easier, if you want to create such image. You can download the template XCF image file here (yes this is a GIMP template 0_0. I may create PSD edition if you insist). Currently the device image in this template is Microsoft Windows Phone stock emulator image, Nokia Lumia device images could also come in future. When you open this XCF in GIMP you get something like this:

Take snapshots of your app’s pano items from emulator and replace screen 1, 2, 3, and 4 in GIMP with respective images. Once you are satisfied with the image, export it to JPG/PNG with File > Export option. You might want to scale the image down before you send it out. Open the exported JPG in GIMP and use Image > Scale option to scale the image to desired scale.

Notes:

• This is 1080P edition (480X800 version is on its way, see below), so your emulator/device screen shots should also be 1080P.
• If your pano has BG image, disable it before you take screen shots and give it a plain #00ff00 color. After copying the screens in GIMP, select #00ff00 color in layer and replace it with alpha. Repeat for all pano items. In the end have a stitched, single background image, and copy it on the background layer in GIMP. You are doomed if you have #00ff00 color in other parts of your pano images, other than BG :-D. (Just kidding, choose some other color for BG which is unique).
• Because of parallax effect in panorama, you will get repetitive panorama title in your app’s screen shots. Initially, copy the screen as they are. Then, in GIMP, with Rectangle selection tool (R), select the title part, Ctrl+X and Ctrl+V to make another layer. Do same with all the pano items. Select Move tool (M) and move pano item 2, 3, 4’s title sections to left to adjust with pano item 1.
• Watch this space for a 480X800 version. Or follow me on Twitter @sanjayAtPilcrow.