Hi Folks:

This is just a quick update to our previous calendar post as we’ve gone through the thousands of images we’ve made this year and picked out 12 for our calendar. As usual, some of the images were made with our cell phones and some were made with the Sony a7rIII camera. Some of the images were made by Marcia and some by Mike, but none of that really matters. All of this year’s images were made in and around Victoria, BC except for October’s, which was made on Mayne Island, BC.

Combined, our calendar looks like the image below. If you’d like to download a copy for yourself, click the image to link to a .pdf version.

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Part One follows:

As we’ve passed mid-November, we’re slowly closing out 2024. That means it’s time to make our photo calendar templates available, both for MS Word users (for those who don’t use graphics programs) and as .png files for those who do. As before we will be making our own calendar available in .pdf format for those who are interested, but (as we did last year) we’re doing the post in two parts. For our calendar we use images made in that month (i.e. the image for May 2025 was made in May 2024). Since we haven’t yet gotten to December our calendar isn’t yet complete, but we wanted to make the templates available so others can work on their own calendars.

I created a template in MS Word that allows people who don’t have Photoshop, Lightroom, Affinity Photo or the equivalent to make their own photo calendars, so we’ll cover that first; the graphics stuff is below that. I used MS Word 2016 to make the template and saved it as a .docx file. Basically it’s a series of tables, one for each month, that look something like this:

The large square at the top is a blank table cell. If you click on it and go to Insert/Picture you can add your own image. The easiest way is to select 12 images that all have the same size/shape (4×5 / 8×10 landscape aspect ratio); otherwise you may have to fiddle with the cell heights to make the calendar line up from month to month. Here is the template file:

2025 Calendar template – Word 2016

As mentioned above, I created a set of calendar files (transparent .png files) and two Lightroom templates for the 2025 calendars. All of the images and instructions can be downloaded from this file: 2025 Calendar Template.zip. There are 13 calendar images: one for each month and one for the entire year. The monthly calendars look the same as the image at the top. The templates are based on an 8″x10″ image size, so they’ll fit easily on letter-sized or A4-sized paper. The annual calendar, for example, looks like this:Finally, we’ve added 12 more high-resolution calendar images (one for each month), but with each month occupying a full 8×10″ space. They look like this:You can use these calendar files along with your own images to create a 2-sided, spiral bound calendar like this:or, if you want to get fancy, you can do something like this:

We leave the rest to your creativity! Once we’ve completed our own 2025 calendars in December we’ll add those files to the updated post.

Hugs,
M&M

P.S. Ed Weaver’s (RED Photographic) 2025 Lightroom calendar templates (in several languages) are here. Ed’s templates include a Sunday start date and a Monday start date for those who use that calendar format and are available in different sizes. If I come across any other calendar links I’ll add them in; if you know of any, please feel free to leave a comment on this post.

P.S. II, the sequel. I’ve been using Capture One Pro since version 7, and recently I was wondering if one could create a calendar image page using Capture One. The short answer is yes, but the method I’ve used is a little unconventional. We’ll start by assuming that for this exercise we want to create a one-page annual calendar (but it would work the same for the monthly calendars as well.) To create this output we need the calendar .png file and an image (cropped 16×9 for the annual calendar, or 8×10 for the monthly pages). Begin by taking the image and exporting it somewhere convenient (the Desktop for example). Make sure you export it with enough resolution for your print size. Now, select the calendar file and open the Print module. Set the paper size (Letter, Portrait in this case), the cell size (8×10, Portrait) and the margins (0.25″ L/R and 0.5″ T/B for an 8½x11″ paper). Now, in the print parameters, underneath Caption is a tool called Watermark. It’s usually used to add a signature or a copyright to an image, but it can be text or an image and that suits our purposes. For Kind, select Image. To add the image file you can either drag and drop it into the space provided or you can click on the three dots to the right of File and select the image from there. Capture One will add the image to the page being printed. Set Opacity to 100 in this case (if you’re doing an overlay in future you can vary that). Set the Scale slider to fit the image within the frame. and use the Verticals tool to move the image up/down the page. Since our image is to be centered on the page, there’s no need to change the Horizontal slider. Voilà! Your calendar page is ready to print. NB: If you want to create a digital file you can do something similar using the Export module. Set up the calendar file to export, and place the image in the spot within the Watermark tool. Remember to remove the watermark (set Kind to None) before printing or exporting anything else!

P.S. III You can find the rest of our tutorial posts here. We’re well over a hundred now, I think. There are more tutorial posts in the works … I haven’t yet finished the one on our Epson ET-8550 printer, and I wanted to write one on using a monopod. Calendars first, though.