Due to some computer issues this week, I found myself without Photoshop. But I’m in the middle of that big office decorating project, so I really needed to keep making mood boards. I ended up finding an online solution that I actually like even better than Photoshop! It’s called Olioboard.
I just found out about it yesterday, and I paid for a pro account. They don’t have any idea who I am, and they didn’t ask me or reward me for telling you about them. I’m just sharing because I like it.
Just like with Pinterest, there’s a bookmark tool that you use to add things to your Olioboard account. You can even add them to different sets to stay organized. When you’re ready to create a mood board, you simply drag your images over from a little library of what you’ve added via the bookmark tool.
I usually spend quite a bit of time clipping out images in Photoshop. Olioboard clips them automatically, and does it quite accurately. It’s no more accurate than the Photoshop magic wand tool, though. And it doesn’t allow for creating your own clipping path. That complaint didn’t keep it from working well for me, though.
Being able to layer things on top of each other, and not being limited to a grid was really important to me. Olioboard let me move my images around and layer them easily, and it has a “move to front” or “move to back” button.
The feature that made me like it better than Photoshop for mood boards was the budget. Usually, as I’m making a mood board, I pin every item to a private Pinterest board so that I can find it easily later when I need to buy it. I guess I could also make a spreadsheet as I go, but that’s a pretty big additional step. Olioboard keeps track of where everything is sold and how much it costs, and it puts it all into a nice PDF that you can send off to the client. I’ve put the one that matches the mood board above on my site, so you can click here to download it. So handy!
The budget feature, and the ability to add text to the mood board, cost me $8.99 a month. I won’t be keeping a permanent subscription, but I think it’s totally worth it for this particular project. It saved me a lot of time yesterday with my mood board creation + ordering everything once it was approved.
