All I had to do was isolate out the white background and replace it with a chalkboard texture. I used this one by Karin Dalziel on Flickr. I won't go into details about how to isolate an object in Photoshop since there are gazillion tutorials out there on the topic already. Generally, it's easier to isolate your subject from a less busy background, like a solid color in my case. This is how my photo looked at this stage:
Now that I have a blank chalkboard canvas, the rest is all about personalization! You'll need a few fonts and dingbats to give it that chalk feel and to embellish your art. I think it looks better when you mix a lot of different fonts and things look a bit more random and messy like a real chalkboard. Go crazy and decorate to your heart's content! These are some of the fonts I used:
1. Aria Penci Roman 2. Pencil Pete 3. Eraser 4. Chalk Hand Lettering Shaded 5. KG Flavor and Frames
It actually took me a while to finish this last part, because I was trying to figure out the layout and the wording on the fly. I think a little planning on paper beforehand would've made things go much quicker...oh well, that's what I get for being lazy! Here's the finished photo:
So, would I recommend this method to people? Hmm....I'm not sure. It's certainly less time consuming and simpler to just use a real chalkboard for your backdrop. It's also much more organic to use real handwriting than computer fonts and also you can decorate it any way you want. However, I think the photoshop-generated chalkboard does allow you the flexibility to edit your writing later if you need to, and not everyone is artistic or has nice enough of handwriting...and I think it looks "realistic" enough. So, I think it really depends on your individual project needs.
