Breaking the Digi-scrapping Code

When I was reading through the comments on last week’s tutorial Another Paper-Scrapping Digi-Hack something Pam K said about my use of the word “coffin” (referring to the weirdly shaped open areas of the snowflake brush I was using) made me laugh. She said, “Jan, I thought “coffin” was a scrapbooking term that I hadn’t heard of yet — LOL!! When I first started digi-scrapping, I was lost by the use of a lot of acronyms (GSO, LOTD, etc) & different words that (to me) seemed to describe the same thing (splatter, paint, graffiti). 🙂” But then I got to thinking… I wondered how many newbies to our amazing hobby are in the same boat, wondering just what the heck we’re talking about. So I decided I’d create a little glossary of digi-scrapping terms and acronyms. I think I’ll start with some generalities then move on to more specific stuff.

Let’s start with Software related terms. (Updated September 18 to include corrections from readers with more knowledge of PS CC and Gimp.)

PS : Photoshop – the most versatile and flexible graphics and image-editing software, from Adobe; expensive with a steep learning curve

PS CC : Photoshop Creative Cloud – a software package that is subscription based, on a monthly basis paid annually; identical to Photoshop above also includes access to online storage (at extra cost). If you don’t renew your subscription or miss a payment, you lose the license for using the software.

PSE: Photoshop Elements – a more economical choice of software, with many shared features with PS but a slightly less-steep learning curve; the most common software in use for both photo editing and digital scrapbooking according to several polls I’ve seen

Gimp: Gnu Image Manipulation Program – a free, cross-platform raster-based image editing software, also quite popular in the digi-scrapping world; it doesn’t allow for non-destructive editing. When using commercial templates, the PSD, TIFF and PNG  formats are compatible (see below)

Artisan: Forever’s digital scrapbooking and photo editing software – less versatile than either PS, PSE or Gimp; close in price to PSE. Autopopulates pre-designed layouts; no ability to use layered templates but is compatible with most digi-scrapping kits. Forever has a small selection of digi kits and a line of photo-based products similar to Shutterfly. My Memories Suite is comparable, but less costly

Layout: an arrangement of images – photos, papers, elements and text – for artistic or documentary purposes. Also LO.

Template: a file containing multiple layers; the layers build a layout from the background up, indicating where paper, elements and text will go. Templates speed up your workflow by eliminating much of the decision-making necessary for positioning items on your layouts, but still allowing for a lot of originality.

Clip: visually altering a photo or paper by attaching and “cutting” it to fit inside a specified outline. (Think multiple layers of paper in different sizes and shapes.)

Clipping mask: a defined shape with uniform or variable opacity, to which papers or photos may be clipped.

Brush: the digital equivalent of rubber or acrylic stamps

Stroke: a customizable outline around an object; options are colour, width, transparency and whether it goes inside, right over or outside the edge of the object

Style: a method of altering the appearance of an object that may include bevel (gives the look of thicker or embossed material), drop shadow (darker, semi-transparent outline), inner glow (highlighted area inside the outline) and outer glow (highlighted area outside the outline) and colour (variably transparent, often completely covers the underlying colour)

Filter: adjusts the appearance of objects or surfaces to resemble other media such as watercolour, mosaic or texture; also includes some options for blurring

Action: a series of automated commands that instruct the software to make adjustments to photos or other images; actions “run” on the image to edit them quickly and easily with some options for manual tweaking. There are a number of sources for actions, including a bunch of free ones from the Coffeeshop blog. They take your really nice photo and elevate it to outstanding in less than a minute!

Extraction: digitally removing the background from a photo or scan; the equivalent of using cuticle scissors to cut out a face or other image from a “real” photo

PNG: Portable Network Graphic – an raster-based object with a transparent background, the format which allows resizing without loss of detail; the most common use of this is for digital elements.

Raster: Bit-mapped images – a grid of individual pixels that together form an image

PSD: Photoshop Document – the entire collection of layers which have been created or altered in the creation of an image; the format for PS and PSE friendly templates

TIFF: Tagged Image File Format – another way of saving a compressed multi-layered document like a template without losing detail; creates a file smaller than a PSD but larger than a JPEG

JPEG: Joint Photographic Expert Group – a compressed image file with some loss of detail, but generally not noticeably so; the most common file type for storage and sharing of digital photos and other images

Are you thoroughly confused? Wait… it’s about to get worse! We’re moving on to digi-scrapping community acronyms and terms.

GSO: Gallery Stand Out – a term first coined by the digi-scrapping blog Fingerpointing; the blog began as a way for new digi-scrappers to learn how to grow their skills through example and constructive criticism. Now it’s more of a place for digi-scrappers to reap the rewards and accolades afforded to excellence. A team of respected digi-scrap artists browse through digital galleries for the major online digi-scrapping communities then post a mini-gallery of their picks for the day with a description of what drew them to the layouts. I’ve had the huge honour of having TWO layouts so recognized this summer.

LOTD: Layout of the Day – some online communities include a layout chosen by the staff of their store as layout of the day according to criteria they determine for their particular community

LOTW: Layout of the Week – here at GingerScraps, we have a weekly GSO that is selected by the community itself. And that segués into the GS-specific stuff…

Sugar Cookie: a member of the GS praise team. These ladies have a responsibility to make sure ALL people who post their layouts in the GS Gallery are seen and commented upon, part of our friendly, welcoming attitude. So the Cookies spend time looking at layouts, sometimes dissecting them for special techniques (right glee?), then leaving some love for the scrapper. Another one of their responsibilities is to choose the contenders for LOTW through…

Baker’s Best: a layout that makes a special impact on the viewer. Anyone can make a nomination for Baker’s Best by indicating it in a comment left under the layout then posting in the Baker’s Best forum thread. The Cookies must choose one each week. And as a former Cookie, I’ll tell you… IT’S HARD to pick just one!! lorigaud manages the BB program; she notifies each of the contenders for LOTW so they can check out their competition and ensuring their layout gets at least one vote.

Fresh Baked: GingerScraps’ name for the weekly new releases.

The Buffet: all designer kits created using the colour palette of the month, as chosen by Ginger; they release on the first day of the month. These kits/collections are on sale for the first 5 days of each month then go to regular price.

Bake Sale: a selection of kits chosen by the designers that are on sale for just a SINGLE DOLLAR for 5 days, from the 15th to 20th each month.

Monthly Mix: a huge collaboration collection created by the GingerBread Ladies team of designers that is only $5.25 for the entire month it’s released in, after which it goes to the regular price of $7. The September Monthly Mix is called Sunny Delight and contains 5 (lowercase only) alphas, 46 papers and 73 elements. Can’t be beat!!

Cookie Jar: where you keep track of your Challenge layouts so you can win the Challenge Reward kit. You will receive this Reward kit, created by the GingerBread Ladies, in the month where you reach 10 challenges completed. Some people get in 10 challenges almost every month and have a ginormous stash of these awesome kits. <hides in the corner>

Scrapping Survivor: a progressive digi-scrapping game modeled after TV’s Survivor, complete with alliances, weekly challenges, tree mail, immunity challenges and tribal councils. It’s a really popular event with separate tracks for staff and non-staff (who aren’t eligible for the grand prize, to make it more fair) and culminates in the crowning of the Sole Survivor. The prizes are pretty fabulous… now that I’m retired and my real job doesn’t get in the way any more I think I might join in for the 10th contest.

And there you have it, my friends. A short (and hardly complete) glossary for digi-scrapping the GingerScraps way! [Can you believe this is tutorial #150?? I can’t!!]

Digital Duplication: Embossing

Lately my head has been turning toward the upcoming holidays, and crafting handmade cards for those special people in my life. I’m also always seeking inspiration for my next tutorial… and suddenly several trains of thought collided in my head. There’s a paper-crafting technique that I LOVE, especially for cards, and it occurred to me that I should figure out how to achieve the same look digitally. That technique is called heat emboss resist, and when you do it on paper it’s a lot of messy steps. Using Versamark ink and a favourite stamp, you first make your stamped image on your paper. Then you sprinkle embossing powder over top of the wet Versamark. Then you heat the powder, which melts, adheres to the ink and gets a nice shine on it. Then you can paint over it with either ink or watercolour. The end result is a raised image that repels the ink or paint, and allows the embossing powder colour or base paper to show through. See the photo below that I borrowed from cardbomb.com. You can see the dimension and the way the paint is repelled. So how can that be done digitally?

I had to play around for quite awhile until I had it all figured out. But first, I wanted to create a suitable canvas for this project. I took three papers from Lindsay Jane‘s Denim and Flowers collection and the mask created by the lovely Jenn of Shepherd Studio for the September Brush Challenge.

I dropped the solid aqua paper on my workspace, then added the purple solid on top of that. Of course, that made the aqua paper disappear. But by changing the Blend Mode on that purple paper, I can create magic! (But magic usually means trial-and error!)

I settled on Color Burn for my Blend Mode and this is what happened.

But just to be REALLY fancy, I also used the patterned aqua paper.

For that I chose Luminosity.

This is what happened with that move. But the rest of my efforts will be wasted if I leave it like this.

So I dropped the Opacity 50% and now I like what I see.

Then I added the mask onto the canvas.

I decided I wanted a purple mask, not black, so I went to my purple paper and chose a spot with the Eyedropper tool, then made it a bit darker. You can see the difference in the color selector box to the upper right of the menu box.

To change the mask’s colour quickly and easily, I clicked Layer>New Fill Layer>Solid Color….

Then when the tool menu opened, I made sure the Use Previous Layer to Create Clipping Mask was checked. The tool will then only fill the selected area with the new colour.

Boom! I like to Merge my Fill Layer with the layer under it so they stay together for later. But you don’t have to do that.

Now I’m going to use a Brush… the digital equivalent of rubber stamps. I ALWAYS put my brushes on their own layer for greater control. If I need to make the brush bigger or smaller, change the orientation of it, copy it or reverse it, I can. Oh, and I can apply Styles to it too…

I didn’t need to play with this brush (created by the talented Karla Noël) to get it to look right, other than to adjust the size so it fits into a solid area of the mask. The colour of the brush doesn’t matter for this technique, so I went with black for maximum visibility.

I want the paper to show through so I moved the brush layer under the mask layer then clicked on the Layer Thumbnail to select the edges of the brush. With the MASK layer selected, I Edit>Cut (CTRL/CMD>X) the brush outline out of the mask.

Remember, I was experimenting and taking screenshots as I worked, so there are some unnecessary steps in here, as you’ll see later. I wanted to give the brush some dimension so it looks like heat embossing, so I clicked on the Styles button at the bottom of the Layers panel then chose Bevels. These styles come embedded in the software. The style I used (after I tried almost all of them!) is the Simple Pillow Emboss style, with the default settings.

This is what it looks like with the default settings. It surely does look like puffy paint!

Here’s where some of the unnecessary steps come in, but bear with me. I duplicated the embossed brush then went back into the Styles menu and chose Wow Plastic, which also is embedded in the software. I chose the White one down there at the lower left.

Black’s gone!

Here’s where you’ll be shaking your head because I’m working hard, not smart! I made a copy of the copy layer with the white plastic style applied. I didn’t need to do it, as I learned in a moment… Then I selected the mask layer. Because I’m going to move it.

By putting the mask layer underneath all three brush layers, I can see all sorts of effects that were invisible before.

So I checked out the fx on the bottom, embossed-only layer. No adjustments to be made there.

But the middle layer, that’s where there’s a ton of potential. I want the brush to look grounded but also dimensional. So I played with the settings here and settled on what you see. Can you see the changes?

Here’s where I found out I wasn’t smart. But I have what looks a lot like a white heat-embossed stamp on my layout, “resisting” the watercolour mask.

I thought I’d leave it at that, but then I started thinking about transparent embossing powder – which really is a thing – and how it would allow the background paper to show through. Could I digitally duplicate that? Let’s see! Up to this point, I’ve blended the papers and merged them, dropped the mask on the paper and recoloured it then added the brush (just one layer) and used the Soft Pillow Emboss style on it. The mask layer has its visibility turned off for now. In the Wow Plastic styles set there’s a Clear one. What does that do?

That’s what it does! But it still needs some help to look more realistic.

With only a single brush layer there’s only a single fx to play with. I made some tweaks, but I’m not sure they’ll be right until I add the mask.

Oh. No. That’s not quite the look I’m after, so I made a few more fx adjustments.

But it still didn’t look quite right, so I lowered the Opacity to 50% and NOW I’m happy!

There’s just a hint of shine on it, some dimension and it looks just fine!

Is there a paper-crafting technique you’d like me to translate to digital? Let me know in the comments and I’ll see what I can do.