Scrapster

When I was still a paper scrapper, I joined a Yahoogroup for Belgian scrappers where I found a lot of ladies who shared my passion. It’s a fun group and I’m still a member of it, although most of them still solely scrap with paper. But, that is beginning to change! My good friend Vanessa has already taken the leap and started to learn to work with The Gimp and in the mean time she has built up a quite impressing gallery. And others seem to be following because lately I’m getting several requests to help them get started with digi!

I can’t tell you how thrilled I am with this, finally I won’t be the only "weirdo with the fake stuff" on the group anymore! (Not that they have ever called me that, I kind of felt that way among all those paper scrappers, lol)

So I thought it was time for my first tutorial. I’m going to explain how to build up a (simple) layout step by step, so you get to know your software, Photoshop in this case.
For this opportunity, I’m offering you a free kit: ‘Mutual Devotion’. It was one of my earlier releases that is already retired from the shop. This is the preview of the kit:

 

And you can download it here (papers) and here (elements & alpha)

MAKING YOUR FIRST DIGITAL LAYOUT IN PHOTOSHOP

Unzip the files and save them on your computer. If you haven’t got Photoshop on your machine, you can download a free trial version at www.adobe.com

This tutorial has been written using Photoshop CS3, but will also work for other versions of Photoshop and for Photoshop Elements.

 

If you’re new to Photoshop, then the best way to learn to know your program is by following step by step tutorials. That’s the way I learned it and I’m sure most other scrappers as well. By taking these steps, you’ll soon understand what the basic actions of your program are: tools you’ll use over and over again on every future page. We’re keeping this first layout rather simple, because of that reason. There are many advanced techniques to create breathtaking pages, some of which will require a tutorial by themselves.

For now, let’s start at the beginning! This is the page we’ll be making!

 

1.       Open your Photoshop. You can find it in the start menu under programs, in the Adobe folder.  Depending on the speed of your computer, it will take some time to load.

2.       Once it’s open you’ll see plenty of menus and palettes.  Don’t let this overwhelm you.
First we need to open our canvas to work on. In the top menu, click on File, then choose New. You’ll see this window, now choose the following settings:

 

Name your project. In my example I’m calling it first digipage.

Now we will set the width and height to 3600 pixels. This is the standard size for a scrapbookpage, and most papers you find in digikits have this size. It equals 12 inch or 30.4 cm.

Set the resolution to 300 pixels/inch.  This will make sure the page doesn’t lose quality if we print it. Even if you’re not going to print it, choose 300 because all digital scrapbookstuff is made in this resolution (or at least: IT SHOULD BE) and otherwise your proportions won’t match with your digital products.

 Leave 8 bit as it is and change the background contents to Transparent. Click ok.

 

3.       No we see our canvas. The grey and white squares you see mean you’re working on a transparent background. Let’s open our paper.
Go to the File menu again and this time choose Open. Browse to the location on your computer where you saved the Mutual Devotion kit and open the folder KDeSmet_MutualDevotion_Papers.  Select KDS_MutualDev_p4 and click on Open.

 

You now have 2 windows open: 1 transparant canvas and one with the green backgroundpaper. 

 

4.       Now let’s take a look at the tools palette first. It should have opened by default, but if it didn’t then you can open it by clicking Window and then Tools in the top menu. This is what it looks like.

 

There are lots of tools on there but for now I’ve only explained the ones we’re going to use in this tutorial. The first tool we’re going to select is the move tool, we want to move the paper into our canvas. Click on the move tool.

With this tool we can not only move objects from one window to another, we can also move objects within one window, and we can move the windows themselves.

That’s what we’re going to do first.

BEFORE WE GO FURTHER, IT’S INTERESTING TO KNOW THAT IF YOU MAKE A MISTAKE, YOU CAN ALWAYS GO BACK A STEP (OR MORE IF YOU WANT). TO DO SO, GO TO THE EDIT MENU ON TOP AND YOU’LL SEE AN UNDO AND REDO BUTTON. (step backward and step forward) THOSE WILL BECOME YOUR BEST FRIENDS IN PHOTOSHOP!

 

5.       Click with your arrow in the blue title bar of the window that contains the paper. Hold your mouse key and drag the window to the right, so now you can see both the canvas and the paper on your screen.

 

6.       Ok. Now let’s move the paper to our canvas. Click on the green paper. Hold your mouse key and drag the paper to the canvas.

 

We now see that we copied the paper to our canvas.

 

7.       Now close the original paper with the name KDS_MutualDev_p4 by clicking on the cross in the top right corner. Only your canvas should be open now.

8.       Now is a good time to take a look at the Layers palette. It should be open by default, but if it isn’t open it in the menu Window.

You notice that our transparent canvas is on Layer 1 and the paper is on Layer 2. This is how Photoshop works, everything you will move into the canvas will be on its own layer. This is in fact very good, because this allows us to move everything within the canvas, to place one object on top of below of another, to temporarily hide certain objects or delete them.  Notice the little eye on the left of each layer? Click on it and see what happens. Clicking the eye hides the layer. Clicking it again reveals it again. You will see this come in handy sometimes.

Let’s double-click on the words ‘Layer 1’. We are going to give our layers names, so we can easily find them back once we have several other objects in our document.

Make sure you click ON the word and not next to it, because that’ll bring you to another menu. The word is now highlighted in blue.

 

Now you can begin typing a new name for this layer. We are going to call it canvas.

Double-click also on Layer 2 and call it green paper.

 

9.       Alright. Back to our document. Hover your mouse over one of the corners of the document until it changes in a white double arrow. When it does, drag the corner outwards, this will enlarge your canvas. You now notice that the green paper is not completely in its place (unless you payed attention to that when you moved it!) With the move tool selected, we can also drag objects within our document, so click somewhere on the green paper, hold your mouse and drag it so that none of the transparent background is visible anymore.

10.   Now let’s bring in our photo.
REMEMBER: the photo is the most important part of our page. A beautiful page starts with a beautiful photo. Pick a picture that is sharp and has enough lightning, but not too much, with not too many objects or colors in the background distracting the attention from our subject.

 I’m picking a photo of my daughter wearing a hat.
When picking a photo, I always try to match the papers and elements I use in my page with the colors in my photo. If they don’t match, I usually turn it into black and white.

Since you didn’t get to pick the colors of this kit and I don’t know which colors are in your photo, let’s turn it into black and white.

There are MANY ways in Photoshop to turn your picture into b&w. The easiest way is to desaturate it.

Assuming that you already opened your photo in PS (click File/Open and select your photo on its location) and that the window in which it is, is selected, click Image in the top menu. Then click Adjustments, then Desaturate. You have now turned your photo into b&w. Just like we did with the paper, we’re going to drag the photo in our canvas. Click on it and drag in to the canvas. Go to the layers palette and change the name of Layer 3 to Photo.

 

11.    In most cases, your photo will be too big. Let’s make it smaller. Make sure your photo layer is selected in the Layers palette (the layer is marked in blue)
In the top menu, click on Edit, then Free Transform. Notice that next to that menu the program mentions a short key for Free Transform: Ctrl + T

Almost every action you can take in Photoshop has a short key. So instead of going to the Edit menu, you could also press the ctrl key together with the letter T. That fastens up your process.

No need to do that now, since we’re already in the Edit menu. Click Free Transform and you will see a box showing up around your photo that has little squares on it. Hover with your mouse over one of the corners of the box until you see your cursor change into a double arrow. Before dragging the corner: hold your shift key. This is very important, holding the shift key while we drag will make sure the proportions of our photo will remain! So while pressing the shift key, drag one of the corners of the box inwards to resize your photo, making it just a little smaller. Press enter.

12.    Go to File/ Open and browse to the folder KDeSmet_MutualDevotion_Elements.

Double click on it to open it, then click on the flowerspray (KDS_MutualDev_flowerspray)
Drag the flowerspray to your canvas and place it above the photo. In the layers palette, name your new layer Flowerspray.

It now looks like this:

 

13.    That looks a little odd, a circular shaped photo would fit better. In the tools palette, go to the rectangular marquee tool. RIGHT click on it. You’ll see a new menu popping up. Select the Elliptical marquee tool.

We want to use this tool to make our photo circular, so in the Layers palette, select the Photo layer.  We are going to make our circular selection based on the size of the flowerspray, so if you made your photo too small in step 11, you’ll have to enlarge it again so the edges are covered by the spray. To do so, press CTRL + T, hold the shift key and drag on one of the corners. Press enter.

Making our circle shaped photo. If we drag while the elliptical marquee tool is selected, we will make an elliptical selection. If we hold the shift key while doing so (remember shift makes sure the proportions remain) we will make a circular selection.
Start dragging on one of the edges of the flowerspray, then hold shift. (always start dragging first and then press shift) Make a circle that is as big as the flowerspray. If the circle is not where you want it, you can move it by pressing  the space bar, while you are keeping the mouse and the shift key pressed as well!  Release both the mouse and the shift key (and the space bar if you used it). You should see a circular selection in a dashed line, we call this the marching ants because it looks like the dashes are moving. It looks like this:

 

If you happened to make a mistake and you’re not happy with your selection, you can DESELECT it by pressing CTRL + D, then start over again. (or click the undo button in the Edit menu a couple of times, shortkey CTRL + ALT + Z)

 

14.    We will now copy the part of the photo that is selected to a new layer. Double check whether your Photo layer is selected in the Layers palette, then press CTRL + J. In the layers palette, you now see a new layer that contains your circular photo. You can’t see it yet on your screen, because the rectangular photo is also still there. Rename Layer 1 to Circular photo. Now click on the eye next to your RECTANGULAR photo to hide it. Now you can see your circular photo on the screen!

 

15.    Select the move tool again to move the photo and the flowerspray to the center of your page. To move them both at the same time, select the circular photo layer in the layers palette, hold shift, and select the flowerspray layer. If both layers turn blue, they’re both selected. If you move your photo on your screen, you’ll see that the spray moves along.

16.    Ok. Let’s make this page a little more interesting! Go to File/Open, browse to the folder KDeSmet_MutualDevotion_Papers and open KDS_MutualDev_p6.
Drag this patterned paper to your document. It will come on top of everything else, but we’ll change that in a minute. (if it’s not completely on top, don’t worry about it) Make sure the paper fits your window, so move it until it completely covers your canvas. In the layers palette, change the name of this new layer to Patterned paper.

We want this patterned paper to show in the background. To move it there, click on the layer Patterned paper (in the layers palette) and drag it under the green paper. Release your mouse. You don’t see it on your screen anymore and your layers palette now looks like this:

17.    We will need to resize the green paper to make the patterned paper show in the background. In the layers palette, select the green paper. Press CTRL + T to resize it.
We want this green paper perfectly centered on our canvas, and there’s a trick for that. Instead of holding the SHIFT key while resizing, we are now going to hold SHIFT + CTRL + the left mouse button. Drag one of the corners inwards. Press enter.

18.    That’s starting to look like it! I want to have a better contrast between the patterned paper and the green paper, so I’m going to add a border to the green paper.

         IF YOU USE PHOTOSHOP ELEMENTS: please go to step 18b

In the layers palette, make sure the green paper layer is selected and double click on it. Don’t click on the name (or you will rename it) but in the space on the right, just next to the name.

This will bring up the layer style menu. As the name says, here we can give all sorts of styles to our layer.

At the bottom, we see the STROKE style. Click on it (not on the check box but on the name). The stroke menu opens.

If you drag this window out of the way, you will see that our green paper now has a red stroke. This is not what we want though. Let’s change the color. Make sure this window is dragged out of the way of our canvas, we need to see what we’re doing.
Click in the red box next to color. This will open the color library. Again, drag this window out of the way of your canvas. If you now hover your mouse over the canvas, you’ll see your cursor changes in a little color picker symbol. With this, you can select any color on your page.  I want my border in the same brown that is in the flowers of the flowerspray. So click on one of the small brown flowers. You can see in the color library that the color has changed:

Click OK once.  Back in the Stroke menu, the size is set to 3 by default. We’re going to change it to 20. You can either drag the slider or type 20 in the box. Click OK.

18b: ONLY FOR PSE users: Select the layer with the green paper by CTRL + LEFT CLICK on the icon of the layer. You should now see marching ants around the green paper. Go to the top menu and choose EDIT>Stroke (outline) selection. Pick the dark brown color of the flowers in the flowerspray with the color picker (it shows up after you click in the color selection box in that menu). Set your stroke to 20 px. Click OK.

 

19.    That’s it! We’re almost finished. Now let’s add a title to our page. In the tool palette, click on the TYPE tool. You will see a change in the top menu bar of Photoshop. There you can set your font, fontsize and a couple of other options. Next to your font, there’s a black arrow, if you click on it a drop down menu will open. Choose a font you like. I picked the font CK_Alis_Writing. Set the font size to 35. Depending on the font you choose, this can be bigger or smaller. Leave everything else by default.

 

Click (with the type tool still selected) on any spot on your page where you want your title to be. I’m using the title ‘Always having fun’. Type your title. When you’re done, click on the text layer in your layer palette. That layer looks like this:

To put extra emphasis on the main word of my title: ‘Fun’, I’m using the alpha that is included in the kit. You could also make your entire title with the alpha, that’s up to you.
Go to File/Open and browse to the folder called alpha. I need 3 letters and I will open them all at once. To do this, click on the first letter you need, then hold SHIFT and select all the other letters you want to use. Click OK. The letters will open and you can drag them into your page. Don’t forget to rename your layers accordingly.

My letters are too big, so I’m going to resize them . You can resize them all at once. To do this, select all the letter layers in the layer palette (CTRL + CLICK on all), then press CTRL + T. Hold shift while dragging the box inwards. Then select the move tool and put the letters on their place.

20.     I’ve added a little accent by placing the staples from the elements folder in the bottom right corner. If you want to add more elements, go ahead and experiment!

21.    Maximize your window and take a closer look at your page. Select the zoom tool and click on any place on your page. Clicking a couple of times will zoom in further. Now select the hand tool. With this you can drag the entire page, so go ahead and take a look around. Sometimes you’ll notice little imperfections by taking a closer look, then it’s up to you to correct them.

22.    Our page is finished, but it looks a little flat. We need to give it some depth by adding dropshadows to the various elements. This is a very important step, you’ll want to make your page look as realistic as possible.
Click on the flowerspray layer in the layers palette to select it. Then double click it (next to the name) to open the style menu again. Look for the dropshadow tab on the left.

Click on it and press OK. See how your flowers now have a shadow? It looks like if they’re laying on top of your page. Do the same thing for the staples layer and the layers containing your alpha.

23.    We’re finished! Now we need to save our file. Go to File/Save and save your file as a PSD file. This is a Photoshop format in which all your layers will remain, intact. This is important, because sometimes you might want to change or add something later on.

Then we need to save it as a JPG file.
 First, go to the top menu and click on Layer. Then click on Flatten Image. This will merge all our layers in one. A window will pop up asking you if it is ok to discard all hidden layers. Press OK. You’ll notice that the layers palette now contains only one layer, with your entire page (called Background).
Go to File/Save As. You’ll want to make a new folder that contains all your digital layouts. Pick a good place on your computer, like for example My Documents, right click in the white space inside that folder and choose: New/Folder. Name your folder (My Digital Layouts for example). Then open it. Give an appropriate name to your layout. We have named it ‘my first digipage’, but I recommend you give it a better name, so you can easily find it once you have made several pages. I always include the date the photo was taken in my filenames, so I’m calling it: 2008_07_WithHat.
Click OK. Now a window pops up asking you to specify the quality. If you want this page printed, the quality needs to be good enough. Choosing the maximum (12) would be good, but that takes a lot of space on your computer. I have experienced they also print out wonderful if you choose 9 or 10. Click OK.

24.    Saving for the web.
If you want to show your page to others on the web, like for example in a gallery or on your blog, you’ll need to resize it.
To do this, go to Image/Image Size.
Next to Resolution change 300 to 72. Change width and height to 600 px. (in that order) At the bottom dropdown menu, choose ‘Bicubic Sharper’.

Click OK.
Now go to File/Save for Web and Devices. In this menu you can set the quality again at the right side of the window. Something between 50 and 60 usually works.
Pay attention to the words below your window, where it tells you the format (JPG) and the document size. Your document should be no bigger than 150 kb.
If you click the black arrow next to QUALITY at the right, a slider will appear. Slide it, keeping an eye on your document size. Most galleries online will allow file sizes up to 150 kb. Click Save and name your file. Mine is now called 2008_07_WithHat_web

You’re completely done! Now you can start over and try to make your second scrapbook page all by yourself. Experimenting is the keyword.

I’d love to hear if this tutorial was useful to you! Please feel free to leave me a comment to tell me about it. If you have any questions, please also post them in the comments and I will try to answer them ASAP!

 

 

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 14th, 2008 at 10:48 pm and is filed under Photoshop - beginner, Tutorials, freebies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.