Can We Talk?

Today I’d like to take a baby step outside my comfort zone and talk about journaling. I struggle with it. I don’t love it. I’m VERY uncomfortable with it. But I know it’s an important part of memory-keeping, so I work at it. I know some of you are shaking your heads, because you’ve read my tutorials and you know how wordy I am. 😉 But somehow, I hate to put all those words onto my layouts.

So let’s deconstruct journaling a little. Why is it important? Well, first of all, the viewer isn’t necessarily going to know who is in the photos, what they’re doing, when it occurred, why they’re together or where it happened. Basic journalism 101. Some of these factors aren’t important every time, but for a scrapbooking layout to be meaningful, at least a couple of them should be included. A date and a location might be all that’s needed. For other layouts, like heritage layouts using very old family photos, more detail isn’t only needed, it’s what makes the layout special. Take this one for example.

I’ve put all the pertinent details in there. Now when others see it, they know a little about this boy. What it doesn’t say is why this layout is important to me, how Kenneth is connected to me… it’s lacking context. But if I tell you it’s part of a family history scrapbook, where I’ll include an extensive, multi-generation family tree, then it might not matter. (Kenneth is currently part of a genealogical mystery my cousin Lynne and I are trying to solve. He’s my first cousin twice removed while Lynne is one generation closer to him; he may have been “born on the wrong side of the blanket”. Now to prove it!)

Another aspect of journaling that matters is format. My personal dislike of narrative journaling is reflected in many of my layouts by its absence. But to other scrappers, narrative works. They’re able to tell a complete story within their page, filled with detail… and my deepest admiration! When I try to do that, it sounds stilted and boring. Here’s a glimpse into Katherine Woodin‘s life; her pages are always filled with day-to-day events and are like a pictorial diary.

Others use narrative journaling to process difficult events, as Biancka did here. That takes GUTS, ladies!!

So how can I inject some context into my layouts without resorting to my brand of stiff, boring, wordy text? Oh there are SO many ways!

Quotes are a good way of both illuminating the layout and grounding the subject matter. If I can find a quote that says what I want to say much more eloquently than I can, I’ll take it! Here’s an example.

Song lyrics are, in my mind, PERFECT for journaling! When I heard this song for the first time, this girl instantly came to mind. Then the perfect photo (by Erin Wallis Photography) came into my hands. Meant to be?

Word art can help tell a story very effectively. This layout is part of my Ireland collection and will be bookended by other layouts related to the Famine to provide more context.

This layout has more detail to flesh out the story.

Let’s not forget journal cards. They’re a combination of word art and sentiment, which can be very useful. Even if they’re just a spot to put your journaling, they can be just what your layout needs. I know I don’t use them as often as I should. For this layout I used a card that had space for me to put my own words, and I used a quote from my daughter. It says it all!

What about word strips? I LOVE them! They can take on the whole job of telling your story; it’s just a matter of finding ones that work. If you have a sense of humour, you can use word strips that actually relate to something else, but communicate your message effectively. In this example, the word strips I used came from a 2014 July Buffet kit from Ponytails, who no longer is a member of the GingerScraps family. They’re Canadian slang terms: Double Double is a shorthand Tim Horton’s coffee order, Beauty is a synonym of fantastic and Eh! is a pure Canadianism. But they made sense with my photo.

What creative journaling methods do you use? Help a girl out here!

Pick Your Pivot Point

Today’s tutorial is a quickie – short, sweet and very much to the point. The PIVOT POINT that is! I’d seen a tutorial at another site that was compiled by the talented Yobeth Puckett, and I filed it away to examine more closely another time. Yesterday, I dragged it out and tried to make sense of it. Unsuccessfully. At first. Because I was overthinking it. But believe you me, this is going to be a boon to all of us because it’s going to speed up our scrapping and reduce frustration by a lot. I know I’m going to incorporate it into my workflow, starting today.

So you know how sometimes you’re using a template and you decide you really want the stripes on your paper to run diagonally instead of horizontally. So you drag and drop your paper onto your template, then you rotate it to the desired angle. But it looks like my screenshot – the paper isn’t covering the whole paper shape mask you’re planning to clip it to. Then you nudge the paper until it covers the shape. Many steps. But…

Have you paid any attention to the controls the Move tool provides? I know I didn’t. But I’m never going to ignore them again. See that little box made up of dots? It’s a POWERFUL thing. Notice that the central dot is selected.

That gray dot signifies the Pivot Point around which the object rotates. So if I left the centre dot selected, the paper would spin on centre. But if I MOVE the selection to another one of those dots, it changes the Pivot Point!

See? By moving the Pivot Point to the middle of the right side, then rotating my paper on THAT point, the shape is completely covered! To quickly get the exact angle I want on the pattern, I typed in a numeric in the Angle box rather than try to hit a moving target.

Then all I had to do was clip the paper to the shape. As you already know, I use keyboard shortcuts rather than click on a tab, drag the cursor down an options list then click on the one I want. Quick clipping is achieved by CTRL/CMD>G for versions prior to 14 and CTRL/CMD>ALT>G for versions 14 and up.

Sweet! Now I know a shortcut for rotating a paper. But what about something that isn’t symmetrical, like this piece of ribbon. I want the knot to sit on top of the bow’s knot, but I want the ribbon to be at about a 30° angle to the bow. How can it be rotated around a different Pivot Point? Is it even a thing??

Here’s what usually happens. I rotate the ribbon. Then I have to nudge it until the two knots line up. Not the end of the world, but boy, it would be nice to be able to do it even more quickly and easily. Work Smart Not Hard is my mantra after all!

The actual Pivot Point is at the centre of the bounding box around the ribbon, but I want it on the knot. I tried using the tool’s command box but it was a colossal fail. None of the options was right.

This is what happened when I selected the upper left corner of the box. Better, but not what I want.

This is the part where I struggled with Yobeth’s tutorial. I was really overthinking it, trying to drag the Pivot Point to where I wanted it while holding down the ALT key. But all I had to do was hold the ALT key down and CLICK on the spot where I wanted the Pivot Point to go.

It really IS that simple!!!!

I can think of so many ways to use this trick. One that immediately jumped to mind is for rotating photos to match the angle of photo spots on templates. It’ll save so much nudging, I’m not even kidding!

Now I’m ready to create my layout for the Storytelling Challenge. My examples here were set up using some of the items I’m going to use from LouCee Creations‘ Shampoodle and Setter kit. It should be finished and in the Gallery by the time this tut goes live. See you all next week!

Even Sketchier Still!

I know, I know… I’ve already shown you more than one way to turn a photo into a sketch. But I haven’t shown you THIS way, which is the easiest and most interesting method I’ve learned to date. And it’s a GUIDED EDIT in PSE 2019 (Amazon Prime Day – $59!) so you know it’s going to be a cinch. Well, it can be as easy or complicated as you make it. I tried this Edit on several photos before deciding that for the sake of expedience, I’d go with the photo below.

This Partial Sketch Edit is reached via Guided>Fun Edits. Right there in the middle!

The Control Panel looks like this and completely leads you through the process. I’m going to show you the results of each of the four options so you can see how it looks and lets you imagine how you could use it.

I’m going to move top to bottom and left to right with the options, starting with the Pencil Sketch. This photo is divided horizontally so it’s not going to be a lot of work to make my selection. The selection portion is the most difficult and time-consuming part of the process. (Just a reminder… the Cancel button takes you right back to Square One, literally, so don’t click it unless you WANT to start all over.)

One thing I discovered right off the bat is that the effect appears as the selection is made. You can see it as it changes. I’m showing a selection made with a fairly small brush at 100% Opacity but there’s nothing that says you can’t do whatever you like. If you’re adept at selection, you can use a bigger brush; don’t forget that you can toggle back and forth between Adding to your selection and Subtracting from it. That means you can remove areas from your selection that you don’t want to convert to a sketch while you go. The Undo (CTRL/CMD>Z) command will take you back a single step if you find too much of the photo is selected with one click.

So, in the Pencil Sketch mode at 100%, there’s not a lot of detail visible in the lake. The mountains are well-defined but that’s about all. The clouds are so important to the overall composition so let’s find them.

Ah, there they are! To my eyes, this looks like it’s part sketch and part watercolour. After the Opacity is where you want it, if there’s any fine-tuning your selection needs to give you the look you want, you can click on the Detail Brush and fix it up.

The refining I did isn’t really obvious, and there wasn’t a lot needed.

The best sketch effects blend gently into the photo, and PSE makes that as simple as moving a slider over to the right. Watch as you slide so you know when to stop.

The software developers at Adobe are really upping their game. This Edit also includes a Flip Effect option. So you can turn the part of the photo you DIDN’T select into the sketch and the sketch part back to a photo just with one click.

The second option is a Colored Pencil Sketch. I didn’t know if it would look substantially different from the Pencil Sketch version once I adjusted the Opacity, so let’s take a look.

There definitely is a hint of colour in the lake this time.

With a little tweaking I’ve got this.

And with the edge between photo and sketch softened…

Before I use the Flip Effect button, let’s look at the Pencil and Colored Pencil side by side. Remember there’s a 20% difference in Opacity between them. There is a difference, but I’m not convinced the software is why.

Okay, here’s the Flipped Colored Pencil version.

This one has a lot of promise. How will an Old Photo sketch effect look?

Ah! Very cool!! For reasons I haven’t divined, I had trouble making my selection for this one to exclude the little spit of land at the centre-right of the photo. So after a number of failed attempts to duplicate the selection used in the previous versions, I just let PSE have its way.

See how the mood is SO different with this version? I can’t wait to try it on some of my real old photos.

I really like the way this one looks.

Flipped, maybe not so much. But I do love all the texture.

What will Old Paper do that Old Photo didn’t?

There is a noticeable difference; those creases are awesome!

Dropping the Opacity to about 45% (yeah, too quick on the PrtScr finger!) looks like this. Still moody, but not quite as stormy.

Flipped is pretty. I can’t pick just one!

I can see any (or all) of these printed and framed. Or on a greeting card. Or surrounded by beautiful elements on a layout. So many ways to use this!! I hope you’ll give it a try and let me know how you like it.

Deconstructing the Custom Shadow

I think we all agree that shadows are an essential and integral part of a great digital layout. There are lots of ways to add shadows in Photoshop Elements, and some of them are easier than others. But to create a true, realistic-looking shadow, there are a few things to keep in mind. Drop shadow styles are included with the software and can be useful; a number of digital designers have also created a set of drop shadow styles that make the task simple. However, to have the most realistic shadows, it’s not enough to “drop” them onto your layout. That’s because objects don’t have even lighting and they don’t have uniform and even shadows either. Objects CAST a shadow. So let’s deconstruct this concept a little.

Here are three identical flowers. I’m going to show you the default drop shadow style, a commercial drop shadow style and how I shadow a flower like this. See if you can pick out the differences.

First let’s look at the PSE default Drop Shadow set, found in the Styles menu. It’ll add a drop shadow to the object with one click. Because I’m shadowing a flower, I selected the Soft Edge version. Don’t know which is which? Hover your cursor over the thumbnail and it’ll tell you. These Styles are adjustable; by double-clicking on the fx icon on the layer’s thumbnail in the Layers panel you open up the adjustment menu. Move the sliders for Size (this determines how sharp the edges of your shadow will be – the bigger the size, the softer), Distance (this isn’t accurate, because it adjusts the size of the shadow) and Opacity (darkness) until you like the look.

There’s the default shadow on the far left, unadjusted. For the flower in the middle I’m going to use a commercial drop shadow styles set from Tracie Stroud. (Tracie has retired from designing, so her products are no longer available. Mommyish and Sahin Designs currently have drop shadow style sets in their stores.) This set is the 120° lighting angle set and I hovered until I found one called Flower. Click!

Hmm. Do you see much of a difference between the first one and the middle one? The one on the right side is the one I created a custom shadow for. This method seems to be really hard, with a lot of steps, but with practice it’s become almost automatic for me now and takes about the same amount of time as using a style does. I think you can see the difference here.

Here are the steps. The real thinking-about-it comes later with the adjustments. Start off by creating a NEW LAYER underneath your object. To do this hold down the SHIFT key and click on that little icon that looks like a piece of paper with the corner turned up at the left-top of the Layers panel.

This is what you’ll see in the Layers panel. If you forgot to hold down the SHIFT key, you can move the new layer down using the keyboard shortcut CTRL/CMD>[.

Next, click on the object’s thumbnail in the Layers panel. The thumbnail is the little picture.

Now the outside edges of the object have been Selected and have a line of marching ants around it.

Before you go on, make sure the BLANK LAYER is the active one. Otherwise you’ll be undoing. Then choose the Paint Bucket tool (K), set your foreground colour to whatever your desired shadow colour will be (I just used black, 000000 but some people like to use a slightly browner colour like 2C1902) then click on your workspace. Elements will fill the selection with the foreground colour.

And there it is!

To Deselect the object’s outline you can go Select>Deselect, or just CTRL/CMD>D.

Next, decide where your light source is. Looking at the object can help with that, because there will be subtle highlights and shadows there already. For this flower, the light is clearly coming from the upper left. Now you need to activate the Move tool. I usually just go V. Then move the dark outline in a direction AWAY from your light source. Use the arrow keys to nudge it, if you like.

This is the interesting, fun part! Think about what parts of your object would actually touch whatever it’s resting on. The centre of this flower will be resting right on the paper, so the shadows around that part will be less noticeable – light can’t get underneath whatever is touching the surface, so no shadow can be cast. Use the Smudge tool (R) to push and pull the edges of the shadow into place.

Can you see how I’ve adjusted this shadow? I pushed the shadow toward the centre between the petals. I pulled the shadow sideways and away from some of the petals and imagined the petal at the very bottom is twisted a bit so the left edge is touching the paper.

When you feel like you’ve got the shadow looking natural and real, it’s time to soften it up. Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur is how that happens.

To see how much of an effect the Gaussian Blur has, click your cursor on a point somewhere over the edge of your shadow and your preview pane will shift to that spot. Move the slider until you’ve got a nice, soft edge. How soft will obviously depend on what it is you’re shadowing. A button would have a sharper edge, string a softer edge.

Almost done! Change the Blend Mode to Linear Burn for more of a shadowy look nearest to the object. It also allows the shadow to take on some of the colour of whatever is under it, in this case the blue of the paper.

Then lighten up up by decreasing the Opacity to somewhere around 40%, plus or minus. Keep an eye on what’s happening and you’ll see when it looks right. If you think the edges are still too sharp, use the Gaussian Blur again.

Last thing to do is to Link the shadow layer to the object layer. To do that, select the two layers then click on that little icon that looks like a couple of chain links. Alternatively, you can Merge the two layers by selecting them then right-click>Merge or CTRL/CMD>E. Why do this? Well, if you move the object and it’s not either linked or merged with the shadow, the shadow is going to be left behind and you’ll have a bunch of hassle positioning it right later.

When your layers are linked to each other, this is what you’ll see in the Layers panel.

This was a very basic custom shadow operation. Practice it a bit, then I’ll show you how to layer objects on top of other objects and get the shadows right in that situation. Even more fun!! Just let me know when you’re ready to take it up another notch.

Restoring those Vintage Snapshots

Halfway between my birthday and Mother’s Day, I had the most amazing visit with some relatives I’d never met before. One of the ladies I spend the day with is my Grandmother’s first cousin, who is actually only four years older than my mother. This delightful woman brought along a huge collection of vintage photos, some of them well over 100 years old. Today I’m going to show you one of them and take you through a Guided Edit to restore it. (Spoiler alert: This is NOT a quick edit. It took me about 2 hours to get it to the final version.)

The Guided Edit I’m going to demonstrate today is simply called Restore Old Photo. It’s in the Special Edit toolbox. What I love about these Guided Edits is that everything you’re going to need (pretty much) is all in the Edit toolbox. It’s especially helpful for those who are still learning how to use their software, because each tool in the box has a little explanation of how to use it. Like a mini-tut, if you will.

Here’s my photo. The little girl is my first cousin twice removed, Lily Annie Delia. She was nicknamed Laddie (for her initials) and she really didn’t like it! This photo was taken in the fall of 1916 and was sent to her grandmother as a Christmas gift.

This Guided Edit has more tools within it than can be shown all at once, so don’t forget to scroll down and take a peek. Be cautious of that Cancel button I’ve circled. It resets EVERYTHING back to the original.

The tools are listed in the order you’re most likely to use them, but I found I was bouncing between them as the condition of the photo demanded. Zoom in really closely so you can see the imperfections better and what changes the tools create when you use them.

But first… This is a personal preference here. I like to crop off the white paper border before I do anything else. But there may be times when you want to leave it. Here I show you how I cropped this one. The image was printed slightly askew so I straightened the Crop window level to the demarcation between the carpet and the wall.

This is my new starting point.

The Spot Healing tool in the Expert edit mode has a number of options for the tool, but within this Guided Edit, it doesn’t. If you’ve never used it before, you’ll be surprised at how one click can make a huge difference. The secret to a great, invisible edit is to take your time and use a SMALL diameter brush.

See how all that discoloured scratchy stuff is gone now? Typo spotters… that should read “down”. You can move your photo around on your workspace by using the Hand tool.

That scratch and the messy corner will need more help than the Spot Healing tool can provide, so I’ll use the Healing Brush. It’s similar to the Clone Stamp but can be stroked across a blemish like a brush. More details on how this tool works best are to follow.

Now you see it, now you don’t!

This is where I started moving back and forth between the Spot Healing tool and the Healing Brush.

This shows how sometimes there are several types of blemishes in a small area.

The Spot Healing tool is active in this screenshot. I’ve removed most of the discoloured stuff.

It’s very easy to change the size of the brush you’re using in either the Spot Healing tool or the Healing Brush. Those square brackets that don’t have much use outside of algebra are the volume up and volume down buttons for brushes. The [ one makes your brush smaller, while the ] one makes it bigger. I just made my Healing Brush slightly bigger than the scraped area, selected an unblemished area of my photo and painted over it.

These scratches and creases might be erased with the Spot Healing tool, but I didn’t take any chances. I used the Healing Brush.

Here’s the secret to making the Healing Brush and Clone Stamp tools work to their best advantage. (And I literally discovered the trick LAST NIGHT!) If you don’t move the cursor away from your ALT>Click selection before you start using the tool, your “source” point will be… what you’re trying to cover. So always move it, even just a little bit, before you start trying to fix an area. You’ll be able to see where your source is because there will be a little white “plus” sign at the spot where the colour or texture is being sampled. Below I’ve mocked up what you’ll see, but in black to make it more easily seen.

When using either the Healing Brush or the Clone Stamp, work AWAY from your source so you’re moving from clear to unclear. You’re trying to blend away the blotches, not replicate them.

No matter what tool you’re using, when you’re in a spot where there’s lots of detail, you need to slow down and use the smallest brush possible. If you’re too close to an area where the colour or tone is different, your correction will actually only create another flaw.

Hair. It’s one of those love-it-or-hate-it things!

Use the zoom! The keyboard shortcuts – and + make it easy to do. Get in tight where you need to, pull back to make sure it looks right when you need to.

I used the Spot Healing tool, the Healing Brush and the Clone Stamp freely in this area. The Clone Stamp tool is terrific for repeating shapes and sharp edges. By selecting a spot along the edge, for example, I can replicate that perfect spot all the way down the rung.

And on it goes.

Spot Healing worked well for the cross piece here.

I made my way across the photo from the upper left corner over to the right, dropped my working area down then worked back from right to left, repeating until I’d covered the whole photo.

I could stop here, but I want to show you some more options, so let’s press on.

Even though I think I’ve done a great job, I think I want to use the Dust Removal tool to refine the image even more. It’s one of the hidden ones I had to scroll down to find. Adjusting the pixel size, I can tell Elements to find all the remaining flaws that size or smaller and Elements will fix them.

I wanted the Dust Removed first before I went on to the Blur tool. It does exactly what it says it does. It softens the hard edges of an edited area so it doesn’t stand out. I just brushed it over some of the background.

The next several adjustments aren’t using any of the tools, just adjustment modes, so the Blur tool looks like it’s still active. But this screenshot shows my photo after I used the Auto Levels mode.

Then I let Elements adjust it with Auto Contrast.

And a touch of Sharpening.

When I’ve gone as far as I want to with the Guided Edit, I can click on that Next button and go into the Expert edit mode.

Since I discovered Enhance>Haze Removal, I’ve used it SO OFTEN! It does several things all at once – sharpening details and deepening contrast.

And the effect is fully adjustable. I’ve moved both sliders to the left from the default settings.

Don’t worry that you’ve gone too far… you can ALWAYS Undo it all! CTRL/CMD>Z is a scrapper’s best friend! (CTRL/CMD>Y will Redo, so you’ve got options!)

Don’t foget to save your hard work! I named my new photo Laddie Xmas 16 for ease of finding it later.

What do you think?