Deckle the Halls

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Ellen (gmae) asked for a deckle edge tutorial almost instantly after last week’s tutorial appeared. So I obliged. I’ll show you a couple of ways to do it; the hardest part is the math!

Start off with a new blank canvas. Make it a bit bigger than your desired paper strip/tag/photo mat. Then turn on the Grid. View>Grid.

Let’s review how to set your parameters for the Grid. You can choose the colours for your Grid and Guide lines – helpful for those of us with old eyes – and the details of your Grid. Click on Edit>Preferences>Guides & Grid.

I’ve found that light red works well for my Grid lines, so that’s what I’ve chosen. I’m old enough that I learned feet and inches before Canada went to the metric system and I still think in feet and inches, so my Settings reflect that. There’s a Gridline every inch, with 4 Subdivisions of each large section, or every 1/4 inch. These Settings are completely up to you and how you think, so set them up for success.  Just pick them so that they make the thinking and mathing easier.

Now make a Custom Shape. Straight sides – square or rectangle – will be easier than curves for your first attempts, especially when it comes to mathing.

Make sure you Simplify the Shape Layer. Elements won’t let you do anything with that shape until you do. Right-click>Simplify Layer if your version doesn’t provide a Simplify button.

Because this technique requires uniformity in the size and placement of the bites you take out of the edges, you may benefit from a Guideline of your own. Drag out an internal border using the Rectangular Marquee Tool using the Grid to help you keep it consistent. Alternatively, you can CTRL/CMD>click inside the shape layer thumbnail then Select>Modify>Contract to the distance you want.

Drop a new blank layer onto your layer stack above the shape layer, then Edit>Stroke (Outline) Selection. You want it on its own layer so you can make it disappear when you’re finished with it.

Choose a contrasting colour (so you can see it), decide on a Width (I went with 5 pixels) and a Location (I went with Outside).

After you’ve got your personal Guideline in place, turn off the marching ants by Select>Deselect Layers or CTRL/CMD>D. Elements won’t let you do anything else while the ants are marching.

Activate the Eraser Tool. Choose a hard, round brush, and make the diameter something manageable. I’m using 100 pixels. Then, using your personal Guideline and the Subdivisions on the Grid, position the Eraser cursor so the edge of the cursor’s outline is touching the Guideline you created and the crosshairs are centered on the Grid Subdivision line. Click to take a bite, then move on to the next spot as shown.

Here’s a closer look.

Once you’ve gone all around the edges, you’re done and your personal Guideline can be deleted or turned off. If you want to go for a postage stamp look, leave the Guideline there and that layer active. Go back to Edit>Stroke (Outline) Selection.

This time you’ll want the Stroke to hang over the edges all the way around. You might have to try a few Widths to get it right. You can’t really make it too big! I ended up at 45 pixels.

There shouldn’t be any little bits of the deckle edge visible.

Again, with the Stroke Layer active, CTRL/CMD>click on the Shape layer thumbnail to Select the deckle edge.

To remove the parts of the Stroke hiding the bites, Select>Inverse or CTRL/CMD>SHIFT>I to move the Selected part OUTSIDE the Shape layer’s edges.

Then Edit>Cut or CTRL/CMD>X to make the Stroke layer deckled too.

Here’s another sample for you. I used the same size Eraser, 100 pixels, but instead of using an inner border as a guide, I positioned the cursor’s outline so it intersects the corners of the Subdivision. That positions the Eraser perfectly each time and the bite is quite a lot shallower.

I felt the corners were a little too acute so I nobbled a tiny bit off each one and this is the end result.

There are so many ways this can be customized by varying the Shape used for your Eraser, but that’s a whole other conversation!

I hope if you’re in the part of the country getting blasted with yet another blizzard that you’re safe and warm, and don’t have to leave the house until it blows over. Oh, and Happy Pi Day!

Quick Trick: Content-Aware Fill

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We all have those photos that just don’t… quite… make us happy… but the memory is important. I have a lot of photos from my two visits to Ireland where the subject is ancient and meaningful, but the trappings of modern life just intrude. Cars, signs. poles, wires, you know what I mean. If they’re in the photo it’s because I couldn’t get the image without including them. Here’s how I make them disappear.

Okay, so the wire in this photo isn’t really that bad. But it bothers me enough that I’m going to eliminate it. These thatched cottages in Adare, County Kerry, have been there for at least a couple hundred years, long before electricity and cable TV. In the past, I would have used a combination of Spot Healing and Clone Stamping to hide it, but not any more!

First, I’m going to make a mask for it using the Pencil Tool. Since it’s essentially a straight line, that’ll work well. I chose a hard, round brush a bit wider than the wire.

This mask needs to go on a new blank layer so that its’ edges can be Selected in the next step. So I plopped down a new layer.

Next, I put the tip of my pencil down at one end of the visible wire and clicked.

Then, holding down the SHIFT key, I put the tip of the pencil down at the other end and clicked again.

By clicking on the mask/red line Layer Thumbnail (the little image that shows what’s on the layer), I’ve told Elements I want the edges of the line Selected. That turns on the marching ants. Then I clicked Select>Modify>Expand so I can be positive I’ve gotten ALL of the stuff I want gone covered.

It doesn’t need to be expanded much. 5 pixels for this is enough. That’ll move the marching ants away from the original selection by 5 pixels in each direction.

This step is optional, but I feel like it’s needed here because of the straight, sharp line. The edges could be visible in the finished image and I’d rather they not. Select>Feather or CTRL/CMD>ALT/OPT>D will open a new option menu.

The edges just need a touch of softening so a Feather Radius of 5 pixels is likely enough.

Now, prepare to be amazed! Make sure your photo layer is active – not the mask layer – and click Edit>Fill Selection…

Choose Content-Aware from the Fill Layer options menu. Content-Aware Fill was introduced in Elements 13, so if you’re using an earlier version, it won’t show up for you in the options. Sorry…

The image speaks for itself.

To turn off the marching ants, click Select>Deselect or CTRL/CMD>D. And it’s done!!

I took the original photo in May 2014, but now, it could be any year.

I’ll just show you another quick way to eliminate distractions before we go. It’s thought this castle was built around 1216 on the shore of Lough Leane, near Killarney, County Kerry by an Anglo-Norman named Roche. Over the last couple of centuries it’s fallen to ruin. And those signs have GOT to go!!

This time I used the Lasso Tool to draw a rough circle around the sign and post. As long as the line you create with it crosses itself you’ll be able to “close the loop” and have a specific Selection. Don’t be too fussy, because it doesn’t matter!! (**You won’t have a red line around your loop. I did that to make it easier to see where I’ve got my marching ants.**) Then again, Edit>Fill Selection…

And choose Content-Aware again.

A really close look will tell you Elements has Cloned the shrub to the left of the Selection to fill the space, but the average eye won’t notice.

The owners of the property has tried to make the “historical marker” thing blend in with its surroundings, but it’s a fail for me. So let’s disappear it too.

Back to Content-Aware.

Hmm. Elements has Cloned part of the fence post and it looks dumb. It’s outta there!

I made a new, smaller selection to capture only the offending fence post and Filled it with Content-Aware and now it’s perfect!

Now that I’ve started, I’m hooked! I’ll be spiffing up a LOT of photos, and getting much better results, in the coming days.

Anybody jumping into the Scrap-a-Thon? Since my son has finally recovered from his injury, life is back to normal for us and I should be able to take part. So excited!! See you on the weekend with the Designer Spotlight.

Pattern Files, Custom Shapes and Styles Mash-Up (Replay)

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Well, my son hasn’t bounced back from his infection the way I’d hoped. He’s fine… just not back to normal, so that means I’m not back to normal either. I’m feeling a little depressed and unmotivated. Hence the reprise of an older tutorial. This one came about when Ellen (gmae) and her sister Carol (gnana96) wanted to learn more about using Photoshop Elements in more creative ways. Since we’ve been talking about Styles a lot lately, this seems to be a good fit.

I don’t have the original screenshots any more, so I’ll caption the images where the red type on gray background makes them impossible to read.

First thing I did was open a blank canvas so I could experiment.

Time to play around with some of the lesser known and underused features of Elements

One of the items Ellen mentioned was shapes. I touched on the Shape tool in the tutorial about rounded rectangles, but there’s a LOT more to it than that. Let’s look at the Custom Shape tool, the one that looks like an amoeba. Below is a screenshot of where to look for the tool in the Tool panel, as well as what the menu looks like. As you can see, there are a number of categories; if you know what kind of shape you’re looking for you can zero in by selecting the category and carrying on. I usually look at them all.

That little window holding all the thumbnails is teeny-tiny and only shows about 12 thumbnails at a time, so I made the window bigger. There’s a wedge-shaped collection of dots in the upper right corner of the window frame that I clicked and dragged on to make the window really big. Now I could get down to business.

For this demo I decided to choose a Grecian key shape. To create your shape, you put the cursor on your work surface and drag it across the screen. You can adjust proportions by moving that cursor around or you can tell Elements that you want to “constrain proportions” by clicking on that control bar I have circled below then entering in the dimensions you want. You can set it to create the shape from the centre out, or from one corner. If you’re particular or you have a specific idea in mind then select the controls you need to make the software work for you.

Grecian key shape… nice for a border

There are two ways to Simplify this shape layer. You can select it in the Tool options panel (for Elements 14 or later), or you can right-click on the layer in the Layers panel and select it there. Why Simplify the layer? That’s how you get a transparent background! With a transparent background, your shape becomes a “smart object” that you can move around, resize, rotate, skew and any other alteration you can think of. You want to have as much control and as few CTRL/CMD>Z moments as possible.

Two ways to Simplify the shape layer. That’s how you get a transparent background.

We’ve talked about Styles a lot lately, so this is just a review. There are dozens of embedded styles in the software; they’re found in the Effects panel you open by clicking on the big fx button at the lower right of your workspace. We’re focusing on the Styles section of this set. Open up the menu by clicking on that little bar the arrow indicates and select Patterns to see this menu. These files have .asl as their file type. and are stored in the Presets folder of Elements on your computer. Hover the cursor over the thumbnails to see what Elements calls each pattern.

Let’s look at two different Pattern Styles on identical shapes

The software needs to know where you want to put the Pattern Style, so CTRL/CMD>click on the layer thumbnail to select the contents of the layer. Voilà… marching ants!

This Pattern Style gives the look of polished copper

CTRL/CMD>click on the layer thumbnail and get those old marching ants

This is what the Copper Pattern Style looks like on the Grecian key shape. To apply the style double-click on it.

This Pattern Style gives the look of polished copper

I wanted to show you one more of the choices from that menu, so I selected the top strip of the Grecian key shape.

Marching ants on the unaltered layer for a side-by-side comparison

Hmm… dry mud? Why not!

Wow!

Let’s just refresh our memories about those style files several of our GingerScraps designers include in their collections. (Aimee Harrison, Miss Mis Designs, Just So Scrappy/Ooh La La Scraps, Kristmess and Magical Scraps Galore are the ones I can think off right off the top of my head.) I used a different custom shape for this part.

Refresher on Styles… two ways to Simplify

I’m going to apply a glitter-gloss style from Miss Mis Designs’ collection called Hustle and Heart.

The menu for that Style group looks like this.

You’ll notice that this type of Style adds some dimension and reflected light to the shape.

There are many embedded Style categories, as I mentioned. What do the ones in the Complex styles folder do? (OMG, I have a typo on my screenshot! Oh well…) This particular style adds dimension, reflected light and drop shadows all with just a double-click.

Here’s another Complex style that looks like enameled or epoxy’d metal. Think of the ways you could fiddle with that!

Ellen also had Swatches on her list. There are a few choices with this one. To see the swatches you can click on the Window tab at the top of your screen and select them from the drop-down menu. Or, if you’re in the Text tool clicking on the Color box as shown will open up the same menu. I rarely use this feature because it’s so much easier and more satisfying to use the Color Picker tool (eye-dropper) to select a colour from either my photo or one of my papers/elements. The sky’s the limit with that method; this one is quite limited.

Here’s a happy little accident I experienced while I was experimenting. I checked out the Wow styles way down at the bottom of my (lengthy) styles list and the Wow Neon style looks like that fancy coloured Niobium wire.

See what I mean?

The style adds a drop shadow, which I felt might be a bit too far from the text for wire, so I opened up the fx menu on the layer to tweak the shadow and noticed that I had the option of changing the colour in there too.

Pulling the shadow in closer to the text looks like this. There are other ways of amping up this look too, by copying the original layer above the one the style is applied to and then applying another style to that layer, playing with the opacity until it looks incredible.

Now to the heart of Ellen’s question. Pattern files. Those ones with .pat as the file type. There are some designers who include a .pat file along with a .asl file in their kits. There are also a number of embedded .pat files in the software. I wasn’t able to find a shortcut for installing these files, so below I’m going to give you the steps for installing them manually. After you’ve extracted the .pat file from your downloads, copy the file (CTRL/CMD>C) then in Windows Explorer, look for the path I’ve shown. C:> Program Files (x86)> Photoshop Elements> Presets> Patterns. then paste the file into the folder. (CRTL/CMD>V)

Now let’s play with some .pat files! When you use a font for anything, you have to Simplify the layer before you can make any alterations to it. Don’t worry if you forget this step, because Elements will remind you. But ONLY with fonts!

Now how do we access those Pattern Files? By using the Pattern Stamp tool, of course! It does the same thing as the Clone Stamp tool, but rather than stamping a sample from the image you’re cloning, it uses a pattern. If you use the keyboard shortcut <S> you can toggle between Clone Stamp and Pattern Stamp easily.

The Stamp uses Brush tool options to select the area it covers. I used a hard square brush for my sample, but it really doesn’t matter what shape you use. You’re just going to click and drag the brush over the item you want to use the Pattern Stamp on anyway. Make sure you have NORMAL selected in the Mode box, otherwise you won’t see the effect you think you should.

This is where Elements hides those .pat files. There are several defaults, and any that you’ve installed into the Patterns folder will appear in the menu.

The Pattern Stamp will cover everything unless you select where you want it to go. So make sure you’ve selected the areas to apply your pattern to.

Do a quick visual check to make sure all the settings are correct.

Click and drag your Pattern Stamp brush over your selection… Bingo!

It looks neat, but I want it to look even neater, so I added a Bevel.

I used the Simple Inner bevel to add dimension.

Then I added a stroke to the resulting rounded text.

And here’s how to find the .pat files you’ve installed. My experience with those that come in kits is that they’re generally just glitter, but I only have the two you see below so what do I know?!

I haven’t completely wasted the last two weeks; I’ve been watching Facebook reels (lots of reels… so many reels!) of Photoshop tricks that I just may be able to replicate in Elements. It’ll take some experimentation but I think I should be able to make them work. Stay tuned! Next week I’ll be letting YOU shine in the Challenge Spotlight.