Digi Tip December: Spell Check

Ever get done creating a wonderful digital layout with really terrific journaling, print it out or publish the layout, only to find that you have a misspelled word or words?  Today I'm going to share some ways to spell check your journaling, even if your software does not have a spell checker.

If you are using Photoshop (full version):
Photoshop has a spell checker built in!  This is one of the little known facts about the software. Since Photoshop is not considered a word processor, it is not a main feature.  But it is really simple to use.

First, be certain that you have the correct language selected for your text. You can do this when you are typing your text. In the Character panel at the lower left is the language drop down box.  Select the appropriate language here.

Once you have all of your text layers completed, simply choose Edit > Check Spelling.  Or you can check individual parts of text by highlighting them first and then choosing Edit > Check Spelling.


A dialog box will open that will locate all the misspelled words and give you the option to correct them.

The most likely correction will be displayed in the box "change to:" you can select that choice by clicking "change" or you can choose one of the suggested words from the list by clicking on it and then click "change". After all the misspelled words are corrected, click OK to close the spell checker.

If you are using software that does not have a spell checker:
Many photo editing software are not word processors and do not have built in spell checkers. But you can still check your text.  One way would be to type the text in your word processing software (such as Word) and spell check it there, then copy and paste it to a text layer in your photo editing software.  If you are working on a machine that does not have a lot of memory, you can use a web based spell checker. It will not hog as much computer resources as having a word processor running in addition to your graphic intense layout design in your photo editor.  One that you might give a try is SpellCheck.Net.  

Simply copy (Ctrl-c) and paste (Ctrl-v) your text into the block. Then click on the "Spell Check" button, on the left under the text box.

A dialog box will open with choices. Simply select the correct spelling and click "change to".  Then copy and paste your text back into the text layer of your photo editing software.

Now you can be assured that you've got the correct spelling before you print or publish your digi layouts.

Digi Tip October: White Teeth

Happy Halloween!  Can you believe it is the end of October?  Time for trick-or-treaters!  And it's the last Monday of the Month so it's time for a Digi Tip. I've got a trick you can use in Photoshop/Elements that is a real treat!

A quick and easy way to whiten teeth in your photos.  You can do this in any version of Photoshop.

Open the photo that you want to brighten the smile on. Zoom in to the smile so you can see what you are doing.

Choose the "magic wand" selection tool. Be sure the "add to selection" option is chosen.  Click on the teeth to select them. You may need to click in a few spots on your teeth to get the majority of the area selected. It does not have to be perfect.  If you get too wide of an area, reduce the tolerance for the magic wand tool.

Now that you have the teeth selected, we are going to simply adjust the hue. In the full version of Photoshop click Image>Adjustment>Hue/Saturation.  In Elements choose Enhance>Adjust Color>Hue/Saturation.  In the dialog box that opens, next to the word "edit" open the drop down menu and select "yellows".  Slide the Saturation slider to the left. You may also have to slide the Lightness slider to the right a tiny bit.  Don't over whiten the teeth or they won't look natural.

There you have it. A quick and easy way for you to play dentist and apply a whitening treatment to teeth!  Now if it only were that simple on real teeth!

Digi Tip August: How to Recompose a Photo

Good day everyone!  Cathy here with another Digi Tip for you.  Ever take a photo and then when you get it on your computer, you wish you had taken the time to do a better job composing it?  Never fear, you can use the handy-dandy crop tool to help you!

I'm going to use a photo from a recent trip. Not the greatest photo, but it will make a good example.  What do you see when you look at the photo?  Some people dab smack in the middle of a bunch of trees. Not the greatest composition.  Maybe you'd like to have a photo that really has the family as the subject and a bit closer so you can see their faces.  This would be a time that you would use cropping. The crop tool  is used when you want to change the composition of your photo.

Start by selecting your crop tool.  It's the one that looks like a weird square.

There are settings that you can set up on your tool.  They differ in Elements and the full Photoshop versions.  In Elements you can select to use the “Aspect Ratio: Use Photo Ratio.” setting. This will keep the relationship between the height and width of your photo the same as it was when it came off the camera. Most cameras produce images that will print at 4x6 ratios.  In the full version of Photoshop you can select the "crop 4in x 6in" option from the tool drop down. Be sure to keep the dpi setting the same as your original photo.

Click and drag it over your photo.  You'll see the area that is selected will be lighter than the rest of your photo. Release the mouse when you have selected the area that you want to keep.  You can move it about to relocate it on your photo.  When you are happy with the selection, press the check mark to crop your photo. 

This is my cropped photo. Notice how the composition has been changed?  The sign post and most of the trees around the peripheral are no longer in the photo.  The subject of the photo is now the family gathered on the bench.

Remember when you save your cropped photo to choose File > Save As, and give it a new name. This way you will not overwrite your original file and can retain it for future use.

Hope you enjoy this little tip to help you get the most out of your photos!

Digi Tip July: Layer Thumbnails

When thinking about this month's digi tip post, I decided to share a tip that I use constantly. It may not be a way to make your scrapbook pages or photos look extra special. But it will really help you to see what you are doing.  Especially if you are like me..... I find myself needing to hold the newspaper a bit further from my eyes so that I can read it, I have reading glasses stashed in my car, my purse and just about every room in the house.  My eyes aren't getting worse, my arms are just getting shorter!  LOL

You should have seen me squinting trying to determine what was on each layer of a Photoshop project that I was working on. Those thumbnails in the layers palette give you a peak at what they are. If you can see them!  Here is how to make sure you can see what is on your layers.

The default setting is for small thumbnails.  They look like this:

If I had not renamed the layers, would you know what was on them?  I wouldn't. If you would like to see them better there are 2 settings you can choose in Photoshop (and one in Photoshop Elements which I'll cover in just a bit).  In Photoshop right click on any thumbnail in the layers palette and a selection box will appear.  Toward the bottom you can choose:

• No thumbnail
• Small thumbnails
• Medium thumbnails
• Large thumbnails

I've switched to the medium thumbnails and you can see some improvement here:

 

Hmmm, you're saying "I don't see much improvement!" You're right, there is some improvement, but not much. I'd still be reaching for the reading glasses!  But there is one more setting that you can change that will really make it better. On that same selection box, below the thumbnail size, change the bounding selection. The default is to clip thumbnails to document bounds.  Change this to "clip thumbnails to layer bounds"

This is how your layers will now appear.  Isn't that so much easier on your eyes?

If you work in Photoshop Elements, you can adjust the size of the thumbnails, but you don't have the option to clip the thumbnail to the edge of the layer.  To change the size of the thumbnail in PSE, right click in the gray area below the layers and select the size you would like for your thumbnails.

I hope this tip helps to keep you from squinting as you work!

Digi Tip June 2011: More on Shadows

Can you believe that another month has come and gone? Here we are at the end of June already! Hi! Cathy here to share this month's Digi-tip. We are going to pick-up where we left off last month with shadowing tips. In last month's post, we covered some basics about creating shadows in Photoshop and Photoshop Elements, you can read that post here.

This month I'm going to share a few more advanced tips about shadowing. I really feel that good shadowing can make the difference between a good digital scrapbook page and a fabulous page. I also think it is a skill that takes patience and practice to learn. Let me admit to you that I am still learning and always practicing. It is one skill that I do not feel I will ever master. As the software evolves, we get more and easier tools available to helps us create more realistic shadows. So please, don't be afraid to try new things and practice, practice, practice!


Sometimes the item that you are creating a shadow for is not flat. So you would like to create a shadow that is not "flat", but that flows or maybe you'd like it to "lift" the item off the page a bit. Strings are a great example of this. In the image above you can see a string with the basic drop shadow that we learned about last month. It looks fine. But we can make it even better!


In Photoshop (the full version), you can move the shadow to it's own layer, giving you more control over how you manipulate it. To do so, In the layers panel for the particular layer, right click on the layer effects (make sure to click on the "fx" to open the effects for that layer if it is not already opened). A drop down menu will show. Click on "Create Layer". This will separate the shadow from the element, placing the shadow on it's own layer directly below the element's layer. You can also do this through the menu, simply select Layer> Layer Styles> Create Layer.


Now, being certain to make the shadow layer active, you can begin to edit it. Select the warp tool. Edit> Transform> Warp or by pressing ctrl+T and then select the warp icon (see the image below).

The element will be surrounded by the warp grid. You can alter the shape bu pulling and pushing on the warp grid. Use the mouse to click on any of the points (or cross grids) on the warp grid and drag to modify the shadow. Play with moving various parts until you have the shadow the way you would like it.

Since this also makes the string appear to be further away from the paper beneath it, I like to reduce the opacity of the shadow layer as well.


Above is a comparison of how the two different shadows look. You can see that the 2nd shadow has a bit more character.

Another way that you can edit the shadow is with the smudge tool. Once you have the shadow on it's own layer, select the smudge tool. Use a soft round brush set fairly larger than the area of the element you are adjusting. In my example it was set to 425 with strength set at 50. Use the smudge tool to pull the shadow slightly in the direction that you want.
Below you can see the examples.

• The top most has the basic shadow
• The middle shadow was made using the warp tool
• The bottom shadow was made using the smudge tool

Have some fun using new tools and techniques to create shadows on your next project. As always, if you have any questions or suggestions for PS tips you'd like to see, please let me know.

Digi Tip MAy 2011: Only the Shadow Knows!

OK, so that pulp character was way before my time! But still a classic line!  Cathy here to share this month's digi tip and it is all about shadows! I'm going to share some basic shadowing techniques you can use for digital scrapbooking in Photoshop and Photoshop Elements.

I'm using Photoshop CS4 in my examples and screenshots. These are all basic tools that are available in earlier versions of PS (and PSE) as well. The PSE screens will look different.

Shadows are a very subjective item in digital scrapping. So everything that I am sharing here is just a starting point.  Play with the settings, modify them, nudge them and tweak them. Make the shadows your very own!

To me there is no one set way to do shadows for every item.  You'll want to change up the setting for the type of item you're casting a shadow for, the depth of the shadow, as well as the intensity of the paper the shadow is being cast upon.

I'm starting out with a flower on a kraft paper background. In the above image there is no shadow applied. In PS to apply a shadow, click on the element layer to make it active (in this case the flower layer) and then click on the Add Layer Style button at the bottom of the layers palette (fx) , select Drop Shadow from the drop down menu that appears.  In PSE you can select Layer > Layer Style > Style Settings from the menu (or fx in the Effects palette).

The Layer Style window opens. Notice that Drop Shadow is checked on the far left side. The things that I change in my shadows are: the blend mode, color, opacity, angle, distance and size. I like my light source to be the upper right corner, so I set the angle to 45.  For an item such as the flower I would set the distance and size to between 25-30.  For the color, I pick a warm brown. In this case color #2c1a04

The default blend mode in Photoshop is Multiple.  You can use this. I prefer Linear Burn. This blend mode is very similar to multiple in that it increases the intensity of the blended image (combining the colors of this layer and the layer beneath it), but with linear burn it does so over the individual color channels of the bottom layer, where as multiple does it for the average color of the bottom layer.

Umm, that was a lot of techno babble, what did she just say? Basically linear burn mode has the same effect as multiple, but linear burn picks up on subtle differences in color of the bottom layer. So if your shadow is being cast on patterned or textured paper, it will produce a variant blend giving your shadow subtle color differences.  In other words... extra realism!

Linear burn mode will be quite a bit more intense than multiple, so you;ll want to bring the opacity down to around 40%.

Let's take a look at how this shadow compares to the default shadow. In the above image, both shadows are set at the same size, distance and angle and they both look nice. The one on the right is using the default blend mode of multiple and the default color of black.  The one on the left is using the linear burn blend with the other custom settings. It just appears a bit more warm and natural.

 Depending on what you are creating a shadow for, you'll be adjusting the distance and size sliders to the most appropriate looking shadow.  Above is just a sampling of some settings you may want to try for  different elements such as stitches, ribbons, beads and buttons.

Don't be afraid to step into the Dark Shadows on your next project. OK so that TV series was during my time, and yes I do mean the original. And yes, I'm looking forward to the movie with Johnny Depp!  But before that will be available for your viewing pleasure, I'll be back next month with some more advanced shadowing techniques.  So until then, have fun playing in the shadows!

Digi Tip April 2011: Using Glue on Digi Scrapping!

What??  The best part about digi scrapping is that there is no adhesive!  Well, at least to me that's one of my favorite parts. I never run out of adhesive, and if I change my mind about where I've placed something on the page, I just click and drag it to a new location, no messy adhesive to un-do.

Sometimes when you are digi-scrapping you wish you could "glue" things together.  So for this months Digi-Tip, I'm going to show you 2 types of "glue" you can use in your digi scrapping.

Just like in traditional scrapping, digi scrapping has both a permanent adhesive and a temporary adhesive. 

I'm using two of the elements in the above layout as my example today. The angel and the wings in the lower right corner.

They are 2 separate elements and therefore 2 separate layers in my Photoshop file.

If you want to "stick" things together, but you don't want to permanently alter them, you can link them in the digi world. To do this, in the layers palette click on one of the layers, then Ctrl+click on the second and any subsequent layers that you want "stuck" together.  Once you have all the appropriate layers selected, click on the chain link to "link" these layers together.  You'll see the chain link show up next to the layer thumbnails in the layers palette. Now if you move, or resize the linked layers, they will all move and resize together.  Even though these layers are linked together, you can still apply styles such as drop shadows to them individually.  You can see in the above sample, the angel (top layer) has a shadow that is cast on the wings (lower layer).

If you need to manipulate just one of those layers, just click on that layer in the layers palette to make that layer active, then click on the chain link and it will un-link that layer. To un-link all of the layers, select them all and then click the chain link.

If you want to permanently "glue" layers together, you can "merge-layers". This will actually combine the selected layers together and make them into one single flattened layer. To do this Ctrl+click to select the appropriate layers in the layers palette.  Then right click and select "Merge Layers" from the drop down menu that opens.  Notice in the above image that there is now just one layer. So you can see now that there is no shadow cast for the angel individually, but rather for the angel AND wings as a flattened layer. You no longer see the shadow of her arms cast on the wings.  If you need to un-do the merge, you can use the Edit>Undo. But once you continue to work with your project, that option will no longer be available for you. This is much more permanent, so really give thought to how you want your final project to appear before you decide to merge layers.

So there you have it, you can make things sticky in digi-scrapping!

Digi Tip March 2011: Open Files and Change Canvas Size using Short cuts!

Hi everyone! Time for another monthly digi tip.  I've been so busy lately. I love it when I can find things that help me get my work done, but save time. so I thought it would be a good idea to share some Photoshop short cuts.

The first short cut I'm going to share is how to easily add canvas to your image.
I started with an image that is 1200x1200 pixels

 

I filled the image with black just to make it easier to see.  

Now to add canvas just use the crop tool. Drag out a crop area and release the mouse.  As in the image above.

Now drag the crop handles outside of the image area as shown in the image above.

When it is the size that you want, apply the crop and you've just increased your canvas size! You can see that my canvas is now 2400x2400. The added area will be transparent if your bottom layer is a layer, rather than a background. To convert it from Background to layer, simply double click on the word Background in the Layers Palette.

Here's another short cut you can use when you need to open multiple files and would like them all in one document. 

From the menu select File > Scripts > Load files into Stack. The above dialogue box will open. Click Browse and select all the files that you want opened and you will see them listed.

 

 When you click OK, all of the files will be opened and each will be placed on a separate layer.

I hope you find these short cuts helpful.  Happy Scrapping!

Digi Tip February 2011: On the Edge

Good day!  Cathy here to share this month's Digi Tip.  Today I'm going to show you how you can make some cool edges for your photos in Photoshop Elements. You can also do this in the full version of Photoshop, but since many of you use Photoshop Elements, I thought I would use that for my examples today.

If you recall, in last month's Digi Tip post we created clipping masks for photos and elements with rounded corners. Well, the idea of "clipping" is going to be used in today's lesson as well.  Only this time instead of clipping to a shape, we are going to clip to an adjustment layer!  Ready?  Here we go....

Open a photo in Photoshop Elements. Now select File>Save As and save a copy of your photo with a new name.  This will keep us from accidentally overwriting our original photo. This is a photo of my darling bull dog. Isn't she the cutest?

If you want to crop your photo, go ahead and use the crop tool to do so, Just be certain to leave enough room around the subject of your photo for your decorative edge.

Double-click your photo layer in the Layers palette to make it a regular (not background) layer. The above dialog box will open. Just click OK.

Next hold the Ctrl key and click the Create a New Layer icon on the Layers Palette. This will add a new layer below your active layer.  Or you can select Layer > New from the menu, then drag the new layer beneath your photo layer in the Layers Palette. Click this new layer to make it active.

Choose white for your foreground color and press Alt-Backspace to fill this layer with white.
What you have now is two layers: Your photo layer and a layer of white as shown above.


Now we are going to select an area of the photo that you want to draw attention to. Click the photo layer in the Layers palette. Using the Marquee tool, (looks like dashed lines) make a selection around your focal subject in your photo. Leave a bit of margin so you don't cause your edge treatment to infringe on your subject.

Note: Turn off the Feather option in the Options bar by setting it to 0 pixels before you make your selection.

Click the icon for Create a New Adjustment Layer. It's a half-black half-white circle in the Layers Palette tools. Choose Levels and click OK without changing anything. You're not applying any adjustment to your photo so it will not change, but the selection markers will go away.  Your Layers palette will look like mine above, with your selected part showing up in white on a black background on the square next to your Levels icon. That square is going to be your clipping mask. Basically in this clipping mask, the white area allows the item clipped to it to show, the black area will hide those parts of the clipped item.

Now clip your photo layer to the adjustment layer by positioning your mouse in the layers panel on the line between the photo layer and the adjustment layer, press and hold the Alt key, you'll see the mouse cursor change to a symbol of intersecting circles, click and you will "clip" the photo layer to the clipping mask (adjustment layer). 

Now comes the really fun part!  You are going to choose a filter and apply it. But first... I know that you are going to want to play with different options and try several of them. To make it easier for you to compare how they look. I'm going to suggest that you first make copies of the clipping mask so you can apply different filters to each.  To copy a layer, click on it in the layers palette, then press and hold the Alt key while you click and drag the layer in the layers palette to a new location. This will copy the layer and place it in the stack where you have dragged it to.  You can also copy a layer by selecting Layer> Duplicate Layer from the menu or by right-clicking on the layer in the layers palette and then select Duplicate Layer and click OK. There is often more than one way to do things in Photoshop/Elements.  Just get comfortable with what works best for you.

Make several copies of the adjustment layer, then turn off the visibility on all but one of those layers. Click on that layer to make it active.  You'll need to un-clip your photo from layers you are not currently using (simply pressing alt-click between the layers will also un-clip/un-group them) and then clip it to the active mask layer.  Now let's try applying a filter!

In my first example, I created a simple vignette, by selecting Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur. I set the radius to 45. You can play with that by sliding the selector in the preview panel that displays.

When I was ready to apply a new filter to my next clipping layer, I ungrouped my photo from the blur layer, turned off the visibility to the blur layer, then dragged my photo layer down to be directly on top of the next clipping mask. I turned on the new clipping mask visibility and clipped my photo to it.

For this example I chose Filter>Pixelate>Cyrstalize. 

 I have a rather large photo so I set the cell size to 75. But you can use the slider in the preview panel to decide how you want yours set. 

In this sample, I chose Filter>Distort>Glass

Once you have an edge treatment that you are happy with, you can trim down the white border around the photo.  Use the crop tool to outline the area that you want to keep.  Save your newly edged photo.

I hope you have fun trying out some new edge treatments for your photos.  Join me next month for another Digi-tip.  If there are any Photoshop or Photoshop Elements techniques that you would like to see featured in the monthly Digi-tips, please email me at: scrappycath@gmail.com