Is one of your goals for the new year to learn something new? If you're not yet a digital scrapbooker, why not learn some tricks of the trade? Traditional scrappers can apply digital techniques to enhance photos and to add creative details to make hybrid layouts.
Once a month, we'll be presenting a technical tutorial to give you some digital know-how.
(Please note that if you're on a Mac, you'll want to hit the Apple key instead of the Control key for the steps below.)
1. Open your photos. Adjust your exposure/settings, if needed.
2. Select your photo with the Marquee tool. Hit Control+C to copy your photo.
3. Drag your frame onto your layout.
4. Use the marquee tool to draw a selection for your photo. Keep your selection inside the edges of the frame.
5. Create a new layer under your frame layer.
6. Go to Edit>Paste Into. (This will paste your photo into your frame.)
7. You must then re-size your photo to fit. Use keyboard shortcut,
Control+T to transform/re-size your photo. Hold down the shift button
while you drag your photo from one of the four corners. Holding down
the shift button keeps your photo from distorting while you re-size.
8. Repeat these steps to fill your frame with photos. When you’re
finished, merge your photos and the frame together into one layer by
using keyboard shortcut Control+E. This will allow you to move the
finished element around your page.
(This digital frame technique, by Michelle Coleman, appeared in the March/April 2008 issue of
Memory Makers magazine. Visit our
online store to order a copy of the March/April 2008 issue.)
For lots more digital techniques for scrappers, featuring both Photoshop Elements and Word,
check out Paper + Pixels here.