Expanding Your Repertoire

If you’re a Gallery regular, then you’ve probably seen this layout I created in May with Ooh La La Scraps‘ Buffet collection Mom and a template from Trixie Scraps‘ If the Slipper Fits. I turned this layout into a Mother’s Day card for my mom and was so pleased with how it turned out. But I went beyond just printing it and calling it good… I went hybrid!

This is my own method, so if you’re doing something different and you’re happy with that, you don’t need to read on. Or if you’re not into making cards, I’ll see ya next week. But if you’re like me and started out as a paper scrapper, have a huge hoard of paper and embellishments you can’t bear to give away and like to make occasions more special with handmade cards (a win-win-win for me!) then let’s get to it. I start by Resizing my layout so that it’s slightly smaller than the card I’m planning to make. I have a stash of variously-sized cards and matching envelopes, and the 5 1/2″ square ones are perfect for this job.

See, I’ve resized to 5×5″ square and kept the resolution at 300 pixels per inch.

Next, while the PSD file for the now-shrunken layout is still open on the work space, I create a New File in the same size as the cardstock I plan to print my card parts on. If I was a thinking person, I could name this file something like “Card Parts”, but alas, I didn’t do that.

Once I’ve got that blank document with a transparent background ready, I start looking at the layout to see what parts I can print then glue to the original to make it more 3D. So any element that is sitting on top of the stack will work. Like this cluster of three little flowers…

So I selected three layers from the Layers Panel that have those elements on them. (They’re not the exact 3 I’m showing in the image, but they’re all the same so it doesn’t matter. Then I right-clicked and chose Duplicate Layers from the drop-down menu.

Then I copied them to the No-Name file in the Duplicate menu.

When I opened up that No-Name file, Elements had put the flowers in the exact same spots they occupy on the original. I moved them closer together so I could save some paper.

This butterfly is PERFECT as a 3D addition to my card, so over it goes.

Same exact steps as for the flower.

Voilà!

There’s still lots of white space there, which is a good thing, because I still have some things to add to this file.

Like some more of these flowers. I can just duplicate the two that are already on my No-Name card parts file.

The journal card and this dark brown mat will work too, so they’re coming over.

Last but not least, I flattened the original layout at its smaller size and added it to the card parts file. Once everything was on the page, I printed it out on my trusty Canon printer.

I used my guillotine paper cutter to separate out the larger pieces and then trimmed them right at their edges. Next I glued the mat and journal card to my layout copy right on top of their flat counterparts. Then I used my tiny sharp scissors to cut out the flowers and butterfly. To give some dimension to the flowers, I used the blunt end of a crochet hook to make a dimple in the middle where the centres are. That just curves the paper a bit. A dab of glue or a little piece of foam goes on the back at the centre of each flower then the flowers are applied to the same spots on the original. The blue flowers on the layout from Katie’s digital kit have pink pearl centres, but didn’t have any in my card-making stash, so I added some white pearls over top of them. You can see them if you look really closely at the image below… it’s a photo of the finished card. I creased the butterfly cut-out down the body and used a piece of foam to stick it on top of the layout. Again, if you look closely you can see the shadow it casts. And last, but not least, I add.d a 3D heart-shaped flair that just happened to match the pink from the kit pretty nicely.

And, without the arrows and circles… My mother loved her card.

I did a similar project with the layout I made with Katie’s June Buffet collection Dad for my Father’s Day card but didn’t get a photo of the finished project. You’ll just have to trust me…

Another Way to Have the Photo You REALLY Wanted, Not the One You Got

I have another amazingly simple Guided Edit to show you today. When I took the photo of the young lady you’ll see in a moment, I didn’t really have any control over the situation and wanted a shot of her one way or another. Later, when I started looking at my photos critically, I saw an opportunity to create the photo I REALLY wanted and at the same time, I had food for another tutorial, so prepare to be awed!

The cars in the photo of the piper are really distracting, but I knew I wouldn’t get another chance to get a photo of her alone. She was preparing to lead a “parade” of Irish Canadians into a field for a special event and there would be a lot of people in the way later. So I went for it. The lighting in the second photo is similar and the time of day is similar so I chose it for my new background.

This was my very first attempt to use this Guided Edit, so don’t feel intimidated. It’s very user-friendly! It’s called Photomerge Compose and it lets you move things from one photo into another quite quickly and easily.

The first step is to drag and drop the “source” photo onto the workspace. I’m going to move the woman from in front of the cars and stand her in front of the cork tree, so I put the photo of her here.

The second step was to begin defining the part of the photo I wanted to merge with the background photo. I started with the Quick Selection Tool. If you’re not familiar with that tool, it uses a brush to add or subtract parts of your photo. I dragged a fairly small brush over her body and bagpipes to crudely select her from her background.

As I dragged my brush over the photo, marching ants appeared around the areas I’d selected. It really doesn’t have to be precise at this stage because there are several occasions for fine-tuning the selection in later steps.

I like to zoom in on my image so I can be more precise, but when I’ve gotten what I want selected in the area I can see, I need to shift the area I’m working on to another part of the photo. It’s easily accomplished here by using the Hand Tool to click and drag on the photo to another area. Then I clicked on the Quick Selection Tool button on the tool panel again and went back to work.

Once I had a (very) crude outline of the woman I used the same tool with the Subtract setting to remove more areas of the background.

I was THRILLED to see how this next tool works! The Outline Select tool makes refining the edges of a selection so much easier and cleaner! Who knew?

Whoa! It uses a red mask to cover up the parts of the photo I’ve already excluded and lets me see how raggedy the edges of my selection really are. The brush for this tool can be either dragged around the edges to smooth them or to slice away small areas by clicking on them.

I tried to see some redeeming quality to the Subtract mode for this tool, but couldn’t really see one.

If my image still needed a bit more refining, I have the option of using the Refine Select setting and it’s good with a small brush to crisp up the edges where fine detail exists and for areas where colour differences are very subtle. I could push out the edge a little or pull it in a little where needed.

When I was satisfied with my selection, I clicked on the Next button at the bottom right corner of the workspace. Elements automatically moved my woman onto the photo of the cork tree.

Well, look at that! I wasn’t all that careful when I hit the Next and now I see I missed an area of her sleeve with my selection. But have no fear! I can fix it!! I moved her down a bit so she looked like she really was standing under the tree using the Move and Resize button. Then I clicked on the Reveal tool. It let me “paint” her sleeve back into the photo.

Down by her feet, I didn’t bother to select out the grass, and now by using the Hide tool I can “paint” in the leaves and grass as it is under the tree.

It really was easy!

As I said at the beginning, I had two photos that had very similar lighting and saturation, taken as they were at roughly the same time of day, with similar weather conditions. So I didn’t need to make much of an adjustment. But this Guided Edit knows not every pair of photos are going to play so well together. The top button shown is called Auto Match Color Tone. When I clicked it, I didn’t see any difference. So then I went on to look at lighting. Could I tweak it a smidge to make it look mroe natural?

Well, I adjusted both the Luminance and the Contrast just a tiny bit.

Because she was standing under some trees in the original photo and is here too, she wouldn’t be casting much of a shadow, so my work was done.

I’m so happy with how this turned out and I know I’ll be using this again!