So you want to create a 2-pager...

...but you don't know how you would save it to be able to print.  This is something I struggled with too when I started using PSE, so you are not alone.  There are many, many ways to go about creating and saving a double-wide layout, but here is the one that I use.

Start by creating a 2 page layout.  I do this as a single file that is 12"x24" and 300 dpi.  If you need to know how to do this, see my post on how to create a new layout.  I save this file as a full 12"x24" 2-page layout so that I don't have to worry about finding the separate sides if I make a mistake. 

Now I begin my process of saving the individual pages.  First select the Rectangular Marquee tool (M) and select Fixed size from the drop-down menu on the tool bar.

Enter 12in into each of the boxes in the toolbar.

Now click into your layout and slide the marching ants to the left hand side of your layout until it doesn't move anymore.  

 Go to Image>Crop.  This will crop your image to just the left hand side.

Now save your image as a jpg and make sure to label it as the left hand side. This is a good time to also save for the web in your usual way.

 

Now press Ctrl+Z to undo the crop and move the marquee to the right hand side.  You shouldn't have to press anything to be able to move the marquee, but if you are having trouble, press Esc to deselect and then reselect as above.  Crop and save the same as before. 

I hope this helps you create more 2-page layouts.  They are quite fun to do!

I haven't forgotten

I haven't forgotten about you all, I've just been busy planning a secret vacation.  We surprised our 2 young boys with a Disneyland trip and just got back.  I'll try to get a few new posts together soon!

How to Capture Firelight Photos

Do you ever stay up late roasting marshmallows in the dark? Have you ever had a bonfire so big and hot that you could see perfectly clearly, if a little orange? Do you add those little color packets to your fire to get interesting colors?

What is it about fire that you want to remember and maybe add to your scrapbook? Is it the patterns the sparks make as they rise from the flames? Is it the dancing of the flames? Is it the amazing variety of color? Whatever your reasons for taking a fireside photo, you need to have the techniques to do it effectively.

I love taking photos of fire for two reasons. First, it stretches my photography skills and I learn something new every time I try. Second, it seems to be a big part of every camping trip and deserves to be documented.

Taking fire photos isn’t as easy as it may look. While there might seem to be a lot of light, your camera may not see it the same way you do. And your camera certainly doesn’t see the motion of the fire the same as you do. It’s then your job as the photographer to tell the camera how to see.

Let’s look at a few examples.

If you’re using a point-and-shoot camera, your first reaction may be to put your camera into night mode. After all, it’s dark outside, right? Yes, it’s night but what happens to your camera in night mode? Because your camera expects a low light situation when you tell it to work in night mode, it opens the aperture up all the way, thereby creating a shallow depth of field. It also slows down the shutter speed to allow more time for the light to hit the sensor, thus creating the opportunity for blur to appear in your scene. Usually, you would use a tripod at night to reduce blur but because the fire is constantly moving, you won’t be able to prevent it. The end result of using night mode on a campfire is that you’ll get a lovely photo of a blurry campfire.

Instead, if you want to remember some of the details of the fire like the hole that keeps popping open or the flash of green from the piece of copper pie, then you’ll need to do something different with your camera. You could try sport mode, as it does the opposite of night mode, but your fire is probably too dark for that. You could try portrait mode as it will open the aperture but only have a medium shutter speed. This option would capture more details than night mode, but it may not be enough.

1/80s shutter speed

1/250s shutter speed

The real trick to capturing a great fire photo with all of the shadows that come from the flames is to use one of the creative modes. These are Aperture, Shutter Speed or Program modes. Ideally, what you want to do is open the aperture to let the light in, but keep a faster shutter speed to freeze the motion. You may need to increase the ISO (sensor sensitivity) of your camera to get good exposure. I prefer to work in shutter speed mode because I’m usually taking photos of my kids, and the same principles apply to fire. They’re both constantly moving, so you need a faster shutter speed to capture the details. I generally try between 1/60 and 1/15000 of a second for my fires. It really depends on the fire. The difference between 1/80 and 1/250 of a second is clear in these photos.

1/1000s shutter speed

And when you bump up to 1/1000 of a second, wow!

What about some more creative photos? I love to take photos of sparks and I have some pretty fun photos to show for it.

If you want to try some of these photos, here’s what I usually do: I put the camera into Shutter Speed or Program mode and set the shutter to stay open for three to ten seconds. I then focus and open the shutter. While the shutter is open, I’ll play around with moving the camera in different directions and patterns. Depending on the light from your fire, you may need more or less open time.

Sketch It!

For some people, part of the fun of scrapping is finding new and inventive ways to share photos.  And we find inspiration for these ways in a variety of places including art, and in the case of this tutorial, graphic art.  For the June 2012 Stylelift Challenge, we are inspired by the work of Nikki Farquharson's Mixed Media Girls.

To create the sketched look, we can use Photoshop Elements. First choose and open an image that has a clear main subject. Duplicate the background layer by pressing Ctrl+J or dragging the thumbnail to the new layer icon at the bottom of the layers palette.

Turn this layer to black and white by going to Enhance > Adjust Color > Remove Color.

Then, apply the filter, Glowing Edges.

Depending on the size of your image, you will need to adjust the settings to get the edges well highlighted.

Next, invert the layer by pressing Ctrl+I.

Now we need to get rid of some of those greys, so add a threshold adjustment layer.

Adjust the slider so that your edges are clear.

 

I hope this tutorial has given you some inspiration to play with your photos.

Polygons and a Math Lesson

Have you ever wanted to try cutting a paper into something other than a square, rectangle or circle?  Sometimes it's a nice, refreshing change.  Today, I'll show you how to create the matting in this layout.

Friends Are page kit by Erica Belton

Friends

To create this look, we are going to use the polygon tool.  It is located with a whole bunch of other tools, including rectangle, rounded rectangle and custom shape.

The polygon tool is located under the Rectangle Tool

When you are ready to add a polygon to your layout, right click on whichever of these tools is on top and select the polygon tool, or cycle through them by pressing the U key.  In the toolbar, choose the number of sides you want for your polygon.  The higher the number, the more circular it will look.  I chose 10, which was also an easy number for the math part of the lesson.

Enter the number of sides you want for your polygon.

 To draw the polygon, drag your mouse from the centre of your layout to the side.  This tool is different from most of the others in that you always start at the centre.  The angle you move your mouse at will determine the rotation of the polygon.  I want the sides of my bottom layer to be vertical so I am watching for that when I draw my polygon.  The other option is to press Shift while drawing and that will keep the top side horizontal and then you can rotate it after the fact. 

Draw your polygon from the centre out.  Keep an eye on the sides if you prefer things to be square to your page sides.

Now add your bottom paper to the layout.  Ctrl+Click on the polygon thumbnail and add a layer mask to the paper.

Add paper, Ctrl+Click on polygon thumbnail, then add layer mask.

Back on your polygon layer, you need to rotate it for the next paper.  Here's your math lesson.  There are 360° in a circle.  Divide that number by the number of sides in your polygon.  For a decagon (10 sides) you get 36°.  Now divide that answer by the number of papers you want to stack.  For this layout, I want 3 papers, so I will divide by 3 to get 12°.  That mean that I need to rotate my shape layer by 12°.  I will do that by making sure that layer is active and then pressing Ctrl+T and entering 12 into the rotation box.

Rotate shape by 360° ÷ # of sides ÷ # of papers

Now repeat adding your next paper, applying a layer mask and rotating the polygon until all of your papers have been added.  Add drop shadows and you're done!  That wasn't so bad now, was it?  You can delete your shape layer if you like, but it won't show so it's up to you.

Don't forget to rotate your shape for each additional paper

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial. As always, please let me know if there are any techniques you would like to learn or if you have questions.

New to Photoshop Elements? Make a layout now!

I'm often asked by new digi-scrappers how to get started in Photoshop Elements.  I hope this quick tutorial helps!

Open a new file.

Choose settings of 3600x3600 pixels for a 300 dpi page, or 2400x2400 for a 200dpi page.  This is your choice based on which products you purchase.  Print quality is 240dpi, but most people don’t notice any degradation in quality using 200 dpi products.  For 200dpi file sizes are much smaller so if hard drive space is an issue you may want to go that route. I always name my files as scrapbook_date_title so that they are easy to find and sort by chronological order. I use the date of the photo, not the current date as that is already stored in the computer when you save. Click OK.

Press Ctrl+O or File>Open and browse to the page kit you want to use.  Open the BGs and Elements. These are the graphics of the kit.  Also open the photos you want to use.  You will see all of these items in your project bin, usually at the bottom of your page.

Drag your kit pieces into your empty file from the project bin.  Some people will copy and paste them, but if you drag them in, you retain the file names and that’s helpful when writing your credits.  Everything you drag in will show in your layers palette on the side of your screen.  Think of the layers as all of the layers in a paper scrapbook page.  They show from the top to the bottom.

If you want to resize or rotate an item, make sure you have your move tool selected.  It’s the top one in the column at the left.  The handles of the element make it easy to rotate or resize.  Try not to use the side handles, only the corner ones to avoid distorting things.

Add text with the text tool.  PSE uses all of the fonts installed on your computer. 

Save as a jpg for printing and as a psd for future edits.  I hope that helps!

Using Layer Thumbnails for Selections

Sometimes in digital scrapbooking we want to do something that would be so easy with paper but we don't really know how to get the right look digitally.  One of the ways that we can create certain effects is to use layer masks to selectively hide parts of layers, allowing lower layers to show through.  That is just what I did in this layout to have the T. Rex. stepping through the frame.

Tyrant Lizard King (Royal Harvest value collection by Erica Belton)

For me, one of the tricks of making layer masks work for you and not against you is to use the layer thumbnails to make selections for you. We do this by pressing Ctrl while clicking on the thumbnail of a layer to create a selection of all of the pixels over 50% in opacity.  With this layout, I used this technique to hide part of the dinosaur that we want to be behind the frame.  Here's what I did:

First, I created the basic layer structure of my layout.  This ended up changing by the time I was done the layout, but for now it works.  (I used Topaz ReMask to create my extracted dinosaur layer and then duplicated that layer, placing one over and one under the frame.)  Then I added a layer mask to the topmost layer.

Then, I pressed Ctrl while clicking on the thumbnail of the frame.  You can see from the layout that the frame is selected with the marching ants while I still have the layer mask active in the layers palette.  

Finally, I painted with black on the layer mask to hide the parts of the dinosaur that were to be behind the frame.  Because I have an active selection, my painting only affects the areas within the selection.  This gives me a very accurate line compared to free-handing the brush. 

Now it appears that the dinosaur is stepping through the frame.  


I hope that this technique will help you to create more realistic interaction of elements on the page.  You can use it to wrap ribbons, flourishes and leaves around other elements more quickly and accurately.  Here are a couple of other layouts where I used this technique.

Kindergarten 1979 (Peaches and Sage Add-on Pack by Erica Belton)

 I added a layer mask to the frame and selected the photo.

First Green of Spring (Glitter Me Spring 2 by Erica Belton)

 I added a layer mask to the circle frame and selected the paper strips one at time.

Silk Dyed Eggs (Tasty Tangelo Value Collection by Erica Belton)

I added a layer mask to the string and selected the punched paper.


I would love to know if this technique adds to your layouts!

Putting the Quick back in Quick Clicks

I've heard it over and over that quick clicks (or layered templates) just aren't quick.  For some people, it's because they just can't decide on a paper combination. For others it's more about making the software work better for them.  Here's the good news: there is a shortcut to make it faster! 


The method I'm going to share with you works best on layered templates with shadows on separate layers.  Some templates don't have the shadows on separate layers so you might get imperfect results with this method, but I'll give you a tip on those another time.


The first step to making layered templates, like the one below, work for you is to open the .psd file in Photoshop Elements.

 You can see from this screenshot of my layers palette that this quick click has 20 layers.  Almost half of them are shadows!

Now, here is the first big trick to working quickly with quick clicks: turn on auto-select.  To do this, select the move tool (press V) and make sure the first box is checked on. This will allow you to click on the layout itself to select a layer.

 Now, working from the back forwards, select the background layer and drag your chosen background paper onto the layout.

 

Now select one of the blocks and drag another paper onto the layout.

Now your layout should look something like this:

Here is the magic step.  On your keyboard, press Ctrl+G.  This will 'clip' the paper into the shape below and you will see that magically most of the paper has disappeared.  It's not really gone, but only the part over the layer below is now showing!  Cool, isn't it? 

On your layers palette, you'll see this:

What this shows is that the BG layer is clipped to the Block layer below it.  The whole of the BG layer is there, but most is hidden. You could even make that layer bigger or smaller to show more or less of a pattern if you liked, or shift it to show a different part. Just use the move tool (V) to do that.


Now, continue adding papers and photos and clipping them to the template below using the move tool and Ctrl+G.  In just a few minutes, you should have a layout ready to embellish!  Here is my finished layout with this quick click.

One on Blocks Quick Click by Erica Belton and Feeling Free 2 page kit by Erica Belton