FREE Skinny Mini E-course by Kim Klassen

So far (first 4 days) she walks you through some of the basic functions of PSE and CS and some editing and adjusting of some photos with blend modes and layer adjustments.  All good stuff, even if just a refresher for you at this point!

From Kim:

^{"About this eCourse....}

It's free. A GIFT from me to you!  

.....
I will be teaching the 10 part mini Course in Elements 9. It is self-paced. Feel free to come and go as your schedule allows! You can even come to class in your pj's! :)
If you have another version of Photoshop, and want some basic knowledge... I would go ahead and give this a try. I mean, what do you have to lose? It's FREE!
Most of the info is applicable to Photoshop CS and Elements.
And so my friend, if you are interested in learning the skinny-mini of pretty picture editing....You wanna start jazzing up your photos.....
Why not start here?  Click the button below to sign up!"

Using Pre-made Clusters in PSE Tutorial

The best thing about using pre-made clusters is the amount of time it saves on creating your digital scrapbook page. I want to show you the steps I used in creating the page below. So, let’s get started, shall we?!

Materials:
Thaddeus Cooper 12x12 Kit
Thaddeus Cooper Elements 3 border cluster

First, create a new blank document by following the path File>New>Blank File (short cut ctrl+N).

The next screen that you see is where you determine what size of page you want.

The next thing is to drop your cluster onto your page. Follow the path File>Place> then search for your pre-made cluster and “place” it onto your page.

Once you place your cluster onto your blank page, you will need to select the red check mark, or “commit current operation.”

Next, drop the picture in. Move it around until you like the placement. But, nothing is set in stone, yet. You can move it around any time til your page is just right for you.

Now its time to drop in a background paper. File>Place>select your paper>Place. (I like to move my window over and turn the thumbnails on so I can judge what paper(s) might look best in the layout.)

Change the order of your layers to make the background paper go behind the photo. I was not excited about the border cluster being vertical. So, I decided to try it along the bottom. Making sure the cluster layer was the active layer in the layers palette, I chose Image>Rotate>Layer 900 Left. This would turn it so I could place it against the bottom of the page.

I do like that much better. So, I added a grungy element behind the photo, added some drop shadowing (see drop shadow settings to the right in the print screen below) and added my journaling on the tag and Voila! All done! A nice, clean layout in no time at all!   I could further add a nice, bold title anywhere on the page.

Let’s discuss the journaling on the tag just a bit more. Since this is a border cluster and everything is together, I had no choice but to have my journaling lay on top of the cluster, I zoomed in so I could delete some of the type to make it look like it was on the tag and under the paper clip and border paper. First, simplify the text layer by doing a right click on the text layer in the layers palette then select Simplify from the list. No, using the Polygonal Lasso Tool, I traced around the paperclip (you have to look really closely at the print screen to see the marching ants for the selection), with the text layer active, and deleted. Use ctrl+D to deselect and get rid of the marching ants box. (NOTE: To select the portion of the “w” that is laying on top of the border paper at the same time you selected the area around the paperclip, use the shift key to start your selection for the “w.” This will keep the first selection active and you can hit the delete button once.)

Now, it looks like the type is on the tag which is layered behind the paperclip and the blue border paper, even though we know it’s really on top! Shhh!! Don’t tell anyone! It’s our little secret! :D

 

Hope that helped you some with what to do with pre-made clusters! And, I hope you can use some of the other little tips I included throughout this tutorial!

Please share this tutorial via the buttons below.  THANKS for stopping by Today!  :D

DIY Home Decor Tutorial

DIY Digital Home Décor
By Vicky Day aka Today’s Scrap

Today we are going to create some wall art using digital products. I have used Photoshop Elements in my creation. I wanted to make something to go in our guest room on top of the dresser where I have a basket of travel necessities in case our guests need something. To the right you can see my finished product. We are focusing on the center item shown in the picture. Now, let’s get started.

Materials:
8.5”x11” acrylic box frame (these come in different sizes)
Friendship Wall Art Templates (free in my store)
Friendship Collab 12x12 Papers by Nini’s Notions
Friendship Collab Elements by Today’s Scrap
Friendship Collab Word art by Today’s Scrap
Printer and archival paper

 The acrylic boxes come in two parts: the clear “lid” fits down over the cardboard box. I love this design because you can also decorate the sides as shown in the photo to the right.

Instructions:
1. Open the free Friendship Wall Art Template.

2. Click on the background layer in the layers palette. Then search for the kit of your choice by following the path File>Place>(your drive)>(your folder)>(your paper choice).

 3. Click the “Place” button when you’ve made your selection. Unless your paper is 8.5x11, you will need to stretch it to cover the background area.

4. Working up the layers from the layers palette, click on the “strip 1” layer. Search your paper the same way as in step 3. As with every paper you add, click the check mark to commit your paper selection.

 5. Now, with your paper layer still active, group (or clip) this new paper choice to “strip 1” by doing a Layer>Group with Previous (ctrl+G is the short cut).

6. Now merge your paper to “strip 1” by doing a Layer>Merge Down (ctrl+E is the short cut).

 7. Continue working up the layers in the layers palette, placing, grouping and merging your papers to each layer until all template layers are “covered”.

8. Now open the Friendship Wall Art Template Sides file. The longer strips on the left are for the sides of your acrylic box frame and the shorter ones are for the top and bottom. You can either use the templates as is or search, group and merge papers to them. I used them as guides for knowing how wide my element borders needed to be. And then I removed them.


9. Now you are ready to print your project. Note: I have a 12” printer, so printing my project is not a problem. If you do not have a 12” printer, you will need to make some adjustments to allow for the printer margins.

Enjoy your creation!

Thread Tutorial in PSE

One of my CT members asked me how to make thread for "tacking down a button" to a page she was working on.  I quickly made her some "pieces" and made print screens as I worked so I could share it with anyone who might be interested.  I used PSE6, but I'm sure you can use it in any version.  So, let's get started!

I like to give my "thread" a rounded end, so I use the "rounded rectangle tool" found in the drop down menu when you click and hold your mouse on the Custom Shape Tool (indicated by the heart in your side tool bar).  Or there is a teeny tiny arrow in the bottom right hand corner of the heart you can click to bring up the drop down menu.  As you can see, I am really zoomed into my work area and the "stitch" I have drawn is less than 2/32nds wide.  This stitch is for a 1" button.  You may have to adjust the length a bit for your stitch, depending on how the holes are set in your button.  Be sure to "simplify" (rasterize) your shape.

I printed this screen to show you the default settings at the top for the rounded rectangle tool.  I did not change these settings any.

Now we are going to add some fiber texture to the thread.  I "drew" my thread vertical because that is the way the fibers are preset to run.  As shown in the print screen below, go to the filter menu and follow the path shown:  Filter>Render>Fibers.

It's a little hard to see, but you can play around with the settings in this screen.  I think the more variance the more fibers. I played around just a bit, but I forgot to keep a print screen of my settings I finally landed on, so this screen shot shows the default settings.

Here's the result (with the default settings).

Now it's time to add some color to your thread.  I chose my foreground color and then just drew another larger rounded rectangle over the top of my threads.  Simplify (rasterize) this new shape.

Now, we will change the blending mode of the new layer to overlay (see drop down menu shown in Layers palette on the right of the screen).

Now you can see the threads through the overlay layer.  Group (aka clipping) the color layer to the fiber layer by following the menu path:  Layer>Group with Previous (short cut key ctrl+G).

Next, merge the layers by following the menu path:  Layer>Merge Layers (short cut key ctrl+E).

Voila!  You are done with your thread!  Drop your button in, rotate the thread as needed.  Duplicate the thread (ctrl+J) and rotate it to criss cross the other thread if desired!  My finished product is shown below.

You can further play around by adding a bit of shadow to the threads if you like.  You could add a slight bevel to the threads, too, if you want.  Depends on the look you like!

Now, suppose the thread showing through the overlay layer is not quite as dark (or light) as the color layer?  Here is how you make an adjustment.  Make sure your thread layer is selected and follow the menu path:  Enhance>Adjust Color>Color Variations.

In the pop up window, at the top, you see a "before" and "after" window of your thread layer in the top portion of the window.  Below that, you see a variety of ways to change the color of your thread.  If you are only interested in making the thread darker or lighter, you will click in those boxes.  If you want to go just slightly darker or lighter, just click in the appropriate box once and the "after" window in the top portion will change accordingly.  When you think it is where you want it, click the OK button.  You may have to play with this setting a couple of times before you get it just right.

I like to draw the color layer especially during my designing because when I change the mode to overlay, I can readily see whether or not I am going to want to darken or lighten the thread layer so it corresponds to my palette. 

However, you COULD do an Edit>Fill Layer>Blending Mode: Overlay to your thread layer and skip drawing a color layer.  BUT, sometimes it is hard to tell whether or not the thread is the correct color to match the kit colors.  With practice, you will be able to determine which process you like the best.


Thanks so much for taking the time to read all the way through the tutorial.  I hope it helps you in some small way!  If you have questions or need me to explain any or all of this better, please feel free to leave a comment and I will try my best to answer your questions!

Tutorial Tuesday

How would you like to learn to make a flower in PSE6 today?  It is very easy.  Just follow the print screens and instructions below.

First of all, determine how many petals you want on your flower.  In my example below, I have 5 petals.  We need to determine the degree of rotation for our petals as we duplicate the first one.  Let's visualize how you determine this.  If you draw a circle around your petals, they are going to touch the circle at 5 points.  The space between each point is the arc.  There are 5 arcs.  Since the radius of a circle is 360 degrees, you will divide 360 by 5 to get the figure to use in your rotation of the petals.

The first thing you will do is "draw" a petal using the raindrop shape from the shapes palette.

Now, duplicate this raindrop (short cut keys are ctrl+J).  You will now see from the layers palette on the right that there are 2 raindrops.  Scroll your mouse over the boundary of the raindrop til you see an object that looks something like <-|-> and left click once.  This will bring up the rotation menu bar at the top of the screen.  The far left diagram is where you will tell the program to rotate the petal from the top center "reference point" of the raindrop by clicking on the top center point.  (If you scroll over the diagram, you will read "reference point location."  Further over to the right of this is a box with 0.0 (degrees) in it.  Highlight these and replace by typing in the figure from your equation as determined by how many petals you have.  If you enter a number with a minus in the front of it, your petal will rotate to the right.  No minus and your petal will rotate to the left.  Since I want to make a flower with 5 petals, I divided 360 by 5 and got 72 degrees.

Here's the result of your first rotation.

Now, click on your original petal (the one on the bottom) and duplicate it again.  Set the reference point the same as you did for the first rotation.  Since we rotated the first one 72 degrees, we will rotate this one 72 x 2 = 144 degrees.  And here is he result of that rotation.

Now, duplicate the first petal again.  This time we are going to rotate the petals to the right, so you will add a minus (-) sign to the front of your degrees (-72).  Set the reference point and the rotation amount.  Here's the result of that rotation.

And for the final petal, set the reference point and this time the degree of rotation will be -144.  Here's the result of the rotation and your flower petals are evenly spread.  Now you can merge all 5 layers and add your style or whatever.

Hope that helped you in some small way!  Thanks for taking the time to read the tutorial and for stopping by Today!

Fall Fun for Decluttering and Some Shadowing Tips

I signed up for a newsletter from "My Simpler Life" and received a Declutter Calendar.  Not sure if that was a special deal when I signed up for it or not, but maybe you can check it out if you want.  It is an Adobe PDF file that includes 12 monthly calendars and each is set up with a daily decluttering item.  I won't be following it specifically, but if I get stuck, I thought it would give me some ideas for items to declutter.

Today's clutter came from my kitchen cabinets.  I thought I would continue posting these to give you ideas if you have decided to take this decluttering challenge with me this year.  And, also to give you some page layout ideas.  This one is a very simple design.  Lots of my layouts have more than one background paper.  That is so that when I upload them for printing there won't be a problem of loosing any of the journaling because it helps me to keep my journaling within the boundary of the upper background papers, if you know what I mean.  I used my kit, "Fall Fun" to create the page, mainly for the colors of some of the items I decluttered.

 I wanted to give you a few tips on how I do alot of my shadowing on my layers.  I use PSE6 right now.  I have the full blown version of Photoshop on my wish list!  But, unless my son can help me get it with a student id, I'll be saving for quite awhile!  :D  OK, go below these previews to take a look at how I do my shadowing, using today's layout as my example.

My Shadowing Technique

I like for my shadows to appear as if the light source is coming from directly in front of the page.  In other words, as you look at my page, you would be the light source.  But, when you apply the "low" distance drop shadow from the effects palette, the default settings are set for the light source to come from between 10 and 11 o'clock (120 degrees lighting angle as you will see in the next print screens) and this causes all of the shadow to be on the under side and to the right side of the element, the purple border in the example below.

So, this is how I tweek the settings to get the effect I want.  In the layers palette, you will see the border element layer is highlighted.  With my mouse, I double clicked over the "fx" to bring up the Style Settings dialog box.

I first change the "opacity" from the default setting of 75% to 50%.  As you can see the only thing this does is to lessen the harshness of the shadow on the bottom of the element.....there is still no depth or dimension at the top of the element.

But, when you change the "distance" of the shadow to zero pixels, you now see there is a slight shadow at the top and bottom of the element.  I am satisfied with this shadow and so I select the OK button.  (If you want to apply this exact style setting to the other items on your page, instead of applying the style and then editing the style settings of every item on your page, copy the style setting by doing a right click on this layer that is still active in your layers palette and "copy layer style" then select the next layer you want to apply this style to and right click on the layer in the layers palette and "paste layer style.")

 You are probably wondering when you would change the "size" of the drop shadow in the style settings dialog box and I am going to show you an example of that right now.

It depends on the "size" of your element.  I copied the same style settings of the border above to the leafy flourish element shown in the print screen below.  For me, this is too much of a shadow effect on this element.  So, I opened the styles settings dialog box again by double clicking on the "fx" of this layer in the layers palette.

Then I played with the "size" until I found a setting I liked, which happened to be a size of 6 pixels.

Something else to keep in mind is how the elements are "laid out" on your page.  For instance, since these 2 flowers are in different "layers" on the page (the one on your right in the print screen below is lying "closer" to the background paper while the one on your left is lying on top of a frame that is on top of the paper) I determined that I wanted more shadow on the flower on the left to give thickness to the frame, whereas the flower on the right is lying close to the background paper and therefore does not need much shadow.  Same principle was applied to the orange paper and it's relationship to the purple paper.   Clear as mud??  :D

Also, I did not put any shadow on the glitter splotches behind the frame because of the extra texture of the glitter I didn't feel it needed any shadowing.  Plus the glitter would be kinda "glued" to the bg paper.

 

Thanks for stopping by Today!  I would be interested in hearing if this tutorial helped you in any way!  Scrap those memories before they fade away!