How To: Create an Email Newsletter

In this tutorial, we will demonstrate how you can take the Studio Newsletters: Portrait Collection and turn them into a quick and easy (and beautiful!) email newsletter.

Some notes:

• We used MailChimp for this example. While every email program is different, we used features that are available in most programs, such as adding images and text.
• You should expect to spend 30 minutes to an hour completing this, depending on how much of the newsletter you use.

1. Open the Portrait Newsletter Collection (Spring) and decide what elements you would like to include within your newsletter. You can include all of it or just bits and pieces. For this example we are going to pull bits and pieces.
2. In a separate Photoshop window, create a new document that is 600px wide x 400px tall.
* Please note that this size can vary based on your email program, however 600px is the standard size.

 3. Select a horizontal image to use as your header image for the email and insert it into your new document. You may need to re-size if necessary. We recommend an image where the subject's attention is toward the top of frame.
4. Once you have your image placed, go back to the newsletter and grab all of the elements from the cover except the logo and drag them over to the new document created earlier.

5. You will now need to resize all of the elements and can do this by using the Move tool (or hit V on your keyboard) and the shift key, dragging inward from one of the corners.

6. As you can see, we made the banner a little smaller than the document, and then just extended the lines and box to fit the width (using the move tool again). You can select all three layers and extend them at one time to make it easier.
7. You can also easily change the accent colors to fit either your brand or the images you're using. Remember, you will want to keep this color consistent throughout the email, so make sure it's a color that will mesh well with all of the images you are using.

8. Once you have changed the colors (if applicable) and tweaked the year and text, save the image as a PSD in case you would like to go back and re-edit. Also save it as a flattened JPEG (for web) to upload to your mail system.
9. We are basically going to repeat steps 3-8 for each element you choose to add to the newsletter. You will need to play with the new document sizing depending on what elements you choose to incorporate.
10. If you are just pulling elements (without text), you can simplify the process by transforming them into a smart object. For instance: let's say I want to pull the colored bar from Panel 3 to use as a divider in my email. I convert it to a smart object by CTRL+Clicking on it (or right click), and then select "Convert to Smart Object"

11. After converting it to a smart object, another icon will appear next to the element. You can then double-click on the icon, which will open up the element in a new document. This makes it so you do not have to predetermine the size of the elements you want to use.

12. You can then re-size the elements to your email width after bringing them into a new window. To do this, click on IMAGE > Image Size. Type in 600px into the width section and let the height readjust itself accordingly. In this case, it will resize to 18px.

13. After resizing, save as a flattened JPEG (for web) to incorporate into your newsletter.
14. Now we get to the easy stuff. The Studio Newsletters have already been professionally pre-written for you, so you can simply copy and paste the text from the Photoshop files and tweak according to your studio.
15. Using Mailchimp, we selected a one-column template and then added the images and text as needed. You can see the finished and functional example HERE.

*Special thanks to Pink Fly Photography for providing us with the lovely image