Sunday, March 2, 2008

3.2.08 - Tiptoe Quick Page & Tut on placement!

QUICK NOTE! For those of you who had problems downloading yesterday's freebie - Sorry!! - I've fixed the zip file and you should be able to download it with no problems now (same link as before!!)


So, today's freebie and Tut - it has been awhile since I've had a good Tut, so while I was making this page for myself: (See below) I thought I'd take a few screen shots and show you the quick and easy way that I often place photos in frames. As always, this tut is for Photoshop & Photoshop Elements users (sorry other software users!) I use PS CS3 and try to include specific directions for PSE using 4.0, so if some of my shortcuts or ways to find things are off, email me and I'll try to help for other versions!

So after I made the QP, I wanted to take this picture of me (far left) and my two good friends Lonna and Beth taken while we spent the weekend at the Royal Hawaiian for our mutual birthdays (all in one week in May) this past year. Here we are out for dinner at a Japanese Steakhouse enjoying some drinks and a good time. I could have simply imported the one picture and then duplicated it twice, then dragged the photo three times to the frames and rotated and cropped until they all fit. Rather than doing that though I placed us each in our frames like this:

1. I opened my QP
2. I opened my photo.
3. I edited my photo as desired (here I just used CS3's Red Eye Tool - so cool!) and made a few lighting and color adjustments. (Did I mention that I love photo editing as well??)
4. I saved my photo with the new adjustments.



5. Now I'm ready to place us in our frames:

I select my "Magic Wand Tool" Here it is in the CS3 Tool Bar (SHORTCUT is to press W on your keyboard)


6. I use the Magic Wand Tool to "select" the empty space inside one of my frames. I do this simply by making sure that my QP (or in my case my "Frames" layer of my QP) is my active layer - just click on the layer.



and then Click on the INSIDE of the frame you want to place your picture in (for me this is the far left frame on the QP. You'll know that you've done this correctly when you see the "marching ants" as they're called moving around the inside of your frame (of course in the picture below, they're not "marching" lol - it's NOT an animated tutorial for goodness sake!)


now comes the cool part...

First, make sure that you have both your QP and your photo open and in your workspace (one should not be completely covering the other, you should be able to see at least a small portion of your picture)

7. Now (IMPORTANT PART HERE) click on your "Marquee Tool"


Either select it from your tool bar as shown above or SHORTCUT simply press M on your keyboard (TIP! Have a hard time remembering all these shortcuts! Remind yourself simply by looking at your tool! See the little M next to the Rectangular Marquee Tool? The little W by the Magic Wand? Those are your shortcuts! Click on any tool in the tool bar and they'll give you the shortcut!!)

Now with your Marquee Tool, click INSIDE the marching ants of your frame - if you click OUTSIDE, it will automatically de-select the inside of your frame. If this happens, just use your magic wand tool again and re-select the inside of your frame OR go to SELECT>RESELECT and your selection (marching ants) will re-appear. (Don't give up! I know that this sounds a bit complicated, but trust me it's NOT!)

Ok, click INSIDE the marching ants and DRAG your selection to your photo (doesn't matter where, just drag it there... now your EXACT selection will appear on your photo.

8. Now, again with your Marquee Tool selected, simply click on the INSIDE of those marching ants again and drag the selection to where you want it (select the portion of your photo that you want to show inside the frame. (Here I want to see my drink and cut off some of my arm fat so that's where I put it! ROTFL!!!)


9. Now simply COPY (Ctrl/Command + C) this copies whatever is inside your selection and

10. Go back to your QP (TIP! Click on a ruler or the outside of your canvas somewhere, and NOT on your QP. This will "activate" your QP file WITHOUT de-selecting your selection - does that make any sense? LOL) This way you will STILL have the selection active inside your frame and when you PASTE (shortcut: Ctrl/Command+V) your photo will automatically be placed exactly inside your frame where you want it and there is no need to drag it to place it there!


Voila! You've placed your photo inside the frame, no rotating, no cropping or re-sizing!

Lastly, I repeated the above steps for my two friends (making sure to activate the QP or Frame layer after each time that I paste a photo) and here is the final results!!


Placing all three photos probably took me no longer than a minute or so. This is a great way to place photos into cluster frames that are all the rage here. Doing it the long way tends to get frustrating as you have photos overlapping other photos and it's hard to get placement right. Not to mention the fact that the more moving and re-sizing you do ladies, the more you photos can be "damgaed" by degrading the pixels. (See what I mean sometime when you take a photo or element and then make it really small then really big, it becomes blurry and not nearly as crisp.)

IF YOU'RE HAVING PROBLEMS, it's probably one of two things, you either haven't chosen the Marquee Tool to drag your selection (for example, if you have the move tool active, it will literally drag the portion of the QP you have selected, and not just the selection, to your photo) OR (what I usually do) you haven forgotten to activate your Frame or QP layer and so your Magic Wand Tool won't work (remember, each time you "paste" your picture into your QP, you have created a new layer and now THAT layer is active, if you try to use your Magic Wand Tool to select inside your frame and you have a different layer active, it won't work)

As always ladies, if you have questions EMAIL ME and I'll try to help!

So! That's it...a few Tips, a few Shortcuts and a little Tut! Hope you like it!

NOW, as for the freebie. I'm trying something new here today ladies, so please bear with me ok? I'd like to bring some extra traffic to Digital Candy (it's the least that I can do given all that they have done for me, so every so often I'm going to offer a freebie ONLY through DC. This means that to download the freebie you'll simply need to go to Digital Candy and download it from them instead of from my 4Shared account. I know that some of you may not like this, as it means that you have to take a minute to register an account with them, but let's face it, you only have to do that once and then you're done! LOL I'll provide you with the link to the freebie (it will be in my store) you just sign in, place it in your "cart" and check out. The amount will be zero, you don't need to give any credit card info or go through paypal or anything like that. Just click "checkout" and it will show zero as your balance, submit your "order" and there will be a link for you to download.

PLEASE take the time to register (I promise to make it worth your while as my plan is to have REALLY special freebies for my "exclusive Digital Candy freebies" like add on's to my kits etc.) The added bonus is that you'll already be registered to post your works of art in my gallery (I'm getting MY VERY OWN gallery here soon ladies, and I EXPECT it to be FULL! LOL) and please don't "flame" me too much for asking you to take an extra step or two to download your freebie, ok?? And if you think it's way to big of a deal to go to download your freebie, will you do me a favor and shoot me an email or post a comment? I'd love to hear from those of you who WON'T download the freebie if I put it up only at DC.

Aloha!

Shauna

This post was edited to remove the link - sorry!

15 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thank you for the fabulous tutorial and qp Shauna!

Anonymous said...

Thank you for taking the time to make your tutorials! I think they are great.

Thanks also for the quick page.

kegonzalez said...

Thank you for creating tutorials and all of your adorable freebies...I am relatively new to digiscrapping and this helps me alot!

Lois B said...

I am such a happy camper this morning! THrough your tutorial I now understand how to do the marquee tool and get the right shape and angle! I am so excited. This has been frustrating me for so long.

Please, please keep the tutorials coming as you are able. I know you are so busy, but since I found your site I have learned so much in the last few weeks. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. The freebies are a bonus, the tutorials are the meat and potatoes!

ChrissyW said...

wow - I am sure I do everything the hard way - this is fantastic!!!! thanks! and CUTE QP!!!

Anonymous said...

Shauna, thanks for the great tutorial. I am just a newbie at this digital thing so am grateful for the time you took to explain this to us. Hey! I could do a Lo of this and use your "grateful" wordart. (when I learn how) lol

marilyn

Anonymous said...

Hiya Shauna...

Can you plz help me? LOL I have downloaded the wallpaper & wordart file three times now.. and each day the wordfile is missing!?! Was that file changed or something? Sorry for being a pest.. but I would love to get the wordart that goes with your great kit!!!

Thanks so much for all you do. Also I read your tut yester day.. and wow.. you really know how to break things down for us!! Awesome!! :)

Di

KrisG said...

Thank you for the great quickpage!!! Now all I need is CS3, LOL! It's okay, it ALMOST works the same in PSP12. LOVE your work!

CindyLou said...

I love this kit. It is adorable!! Thank you for the quickpage. Perfect for my two sisters and I.

Anonymous said...

Love the tutorial thank you - this is an easier way than I have started doing it. I had logged on to Digital Candy from a lnk on your site previously. Just starting i am not sure what i want / like so tend to be only looking at freebies rather than buying so likely to be put off by having to register (not a complete no just think twice). HOWEVER, I aleady know I like your designs and tutorials so had no problem registering in the shopping area so I could download the quick page.

Anonymous said...

Shauna thank you so much for this awesome tut and QP. I have tried so many times to get a picture to fit into a frame and not look all distorted, your tut made it so simple to learn, thank you so much!!! Your layout was so cute, enjoyed getting to 'see' you.
Leavin' some luv : )

Anonymous said...

Thanks so much for the fantastic tut and QP, Shauna! Also loved your hysterical air bed story...we have one that we use for company (it's a Coleman one, not the deluxe type that you have) and have heard a couple similar tales from guests. Usually only one person occupies it at a time, tho, so it isn't too much of a problem. We did discover, tho, that no matter how hot the weather was the sleeper was a lot more comfortable if we put a thick comforter between the matress and them as the vinyl is like sleeping on an iceberg. Hope you get things figured out soon so you can get some sleep!

Williams Family Dirt said...

Just found your site, I love it! Thanks for the tips!

Starla said...

Thanks so much. I'm new....so much to learn, but I can hardly wait to try this out. It should make life a lot easier!

Tracy said...

wow, i did it!!! if you would see me size and resize while using templates, it is a wonder i ever end up w/ a clear photo. love this technique. thanks.