Pineapple Plantation Designs

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!

AND...

Bet you didn't see THAT one coming did you!!??

So.... you thought with everything going on this week that I would forget didn't you?? Well i DIDN'T! Ha!

Here is March's Desktop Wallpaper for your computer... I used the papers and elements that I contributed to the Digital Candy Charity Kit "Have a Heart". If you haven't picked it up yet, you really should. It has A LOT of great stuff in there for A LITTLE bit of money...and it goes to a great charity; the Animal Rescue Foundation (ARF...get it?? LOL)

The movers are gone and our house is empty :( I've come to realize that there are two kinds of stuff in life. There is "stuff" and there is "stuff to put stuff in or on" Now I am left with an empty house and all kinds of little "stuff" that dh, the kids and I just "can't do without" for the next 5-6 months or so until we're finally settled and get all of our other "stuff" back. (You know, laptops, iPods, Gameboys, makeup, clothes, tv's, the Wii, school supplies...the list goes on...) BUT, I've quickly realized that the movers have taken all of our "stuff to put that stuff in or on!" and now I'm left with too much "stuff" and no where to put it!!! (we can't exactly keep it in the bathroom where we had it safe from the packers (who WILL by the way pack anything and everything - including garbage - lol) I mean my kids WILL have to take a bath eventually! LOL

So I'm busy coming up with some creative storage solutions to hold our "stuff" that won't look to trashy to prospective home buyers! LOL I'm ALSO busy working on a new TUT for you guys for tomorrow's post! It should be a good one so don't miss it! I'm going to show you guys how to do a super quick and easy way to place your photos into cluster frames (or whatever) and you'll be placing them into a QP made with my new Tiptoe kit!

BTW, I love all the comments you guys have been sending my way. I think it's kind of funny that designers post "I wonder" questions into forums for other designers ("I wonder what my customers think of..." "I wonder what will happen to my business if I..." and me? I just ask you guys and quit wondering! LOL)

Enjoy your "double freebie Friday", I'm heading to the beach for an evening of relaxation and a bit of a cool down!! password? twofreebies

Click HERE to download your not ONE, but TWO (did you say TWO freebies Shauna?) Yes TWO freebies!

Click HERE to vist me at Digital Candy... I just LOVE visitors!! (especially if I don' t have to clean before they come!!)

ooh! P.S. Pick up your Grateful Kit freebies quickly! I'll be taking down the links on Monday to put the kit in the store!