Tutorial Tuesday (Photoshop Elements)

October 24, 2023 by

Quick Trick – Hiding Multiple Layers

PDF Version : https://bit.ly/40foM33

Have you ever been working with a template and found yourself struggling with placement of elements because there are SO MANY LAYERS in the way and you wish they would just disappear? This happens to me a lot when I’m trying to adjust photos for size. I don’t want the clipping mat to be visible, but sometimes one or more edges is invisible because they’re underneath a cluster or another photo spot. If this sounds like you, read on! I JUST learned this trick and I can’t believe it took me this long!! I’m using a template from Miss Fish‘s Just the Basics (retired) collection. Look at all those layers…

I want to isolate the layer this bow is on. I right-clicked on the eyeball (visibility icon) and this menu appeared. So I chose Show/Hide all other layers.

And POOF! All the other layers are sleeping. It’s magic. It has to be! But this is one situation where Undo [CTRL/CMD>Z] won’t work. To turn on visibility for all the sleeping layers, just reverse the process… Right-click>Show/Hide all other layers. Of course, you know there HAS to be a keyboard shortcut, right? For the Work Smart Not Hard crowd, it’s just ALT/OPT>eyeball.

How’s that for QUICK??

It looks like autumn is here to stay. Yesterday I was doing yard work in shorts and a t-shirt, this morning we woke up to snow on the mountains (none at our altitude… yet) and the mercury is struggling to stay at 6°C (43°F). There are still lots of leaves on the trees, even though we had gale-force winds yesterday, but winter is definitely on its way. What’s it like where you are?

Filed Under: Be Inspired, Behind the Scrapbook, Creative Style, Digital Scrapbooking, Tutorials Tagged With:

Tutorial Tuesday (Individual Style)

October 17, 2023 by

Challenge Spotlight: Pinterest

This month, Lisa Minor chose this fall wedding photo as her Pinterest Challenge inspiration.

Her description of the photo is “it’s all about the colors!”, “floral fall colors” and her Challenge is to use the photo to scrap what the Pin says to you. So far, eleven scrappers have taken her up on it. They mostly seem to have chosen the same theme for their layouts, as you’ll see. As with each month’s Challenge Spotlight, these layouts appear in the order they were uploaded. I’ll point out the aspects that caught my eye, and each layout is linked to the Gallery so you can pop over and offer some praise. Just click on the scrapper’s user name and you’ll fly over to the Gallery.

First up is B2N2Scraps. She’s got the fall theme, the colours from the photo and the flowers. She didn’t miss a trick! Her simple layout puts the focus on the smiles in her photo.

KarenDiamond has the fall theme as well, with a bit more of the blue from the Pin. I see she’s anonymized the child in the circular photo as a silhouette. This technique works perfectly in a backlit photo, instead of just blurring features.

DianeInOz went for the colour palette, creating a whimsical layout with a clever nod to autumn. I love that wood-look cow cutout!

This stunning layout is from greenfiend27. Her choice of soft oranges and corals against a gray, dusty background, with ample floral elements, provides the perfect foil for that beautiful photo. The result is elegantly grungy. I think this is my favourite of the bunch.

Windswept has all the colours in there, and chose our major autumn celebration as her theme. Her focal photo is so cute!

The pocket style of zippyoh‘s layout works so well with all those pumpkin photos. The harvest/autumn theme is obvious but not in-your-face. She accents all the orange in the photos very nicely with touches of purple, gold and white. Aren’t those little foxes just too sweet?

For her layout, pinklily chose to document a week of her late fall activities from last year. (I’ve been to that mall… just sayin’. Winkwink!) The colour palette was what inspired her here.

Route66 pulled only 4 of the dozen colours in the Pin for her layout. Looks like somebody’s been playing with title tuts. 😉

The subject of this layout from gmae is a somber one. It could be seen as a play on “fall”, and a clever one at that. She has pulled a few of the fall colours from the Pin, and added some floral elements. Possibly the only flowers these resting places see these days…

Pippin went all in on individual style here. Her sole connections to Lisa‘s comments are her floral clusters and the pinks and blues from the Pin photo. This is a layout after my own heart.

 

Last up is this very autumnal layout from snojewel. She has some subtle hints of gorgeous teal stamped in her background. The oranges, browns, golds and burgundies complement her photos of Ben very well.

Next week I’ll have a Quick Trick for you. I haven’t decided which one from my little list of topics… we’ll all find out together!

Given what’s happening around the world these days, I hope this has given you a brief break from fear and worry. I also hope the people you love are safe and healthy. And that we all stay out of harm’s way.

Filed Under: Be Inspired, Be Pinspired, Behind the Scrapbook, Challenge Spotlight, Creative Style, Digital Scrapbooking, Tutorials Tagged With:

Tutorial Tuesday (Dingbats)

October 10, 2023 by

Four Ways to Use Dingbat Fonts

PDF Version : https://bit.ly/3PVn7eh

After last week’s tutorial, Lisa commented, “… now that you bring up dingbats I’d love a tutorial on how to really use them in a layout!” So today, I have four techniques to share. There are many more than four, but for now we’re just looking at four. These are all relatively simple techniques we’ve used before so I’m not going deep into the weeds with step-by-steps. If you think of other ways to use dingbats, I’d love to try them!

First, if you’re not using a font manager like High Logic MainType, and aren’t familiar with Wordmark It, figuring out which characters will give you the image you want means either searching your computer for “character map” or trying one character at a time. If you look at the screenshot, I’ve enlarged the character V for this spider from Witch Night Dingbat as shown on the Type Layer.

I think this spider would look a lot more scary with some glowing red eyes. So I added a New Layer to put the eyes on, then using the Elliptical Marquee Tool, set on Fixed Ratio 1:1, I dragged out a circle just slightly bigger than the eye hole.

Then using the Paint Bucket Tool, I filled the circle with red.

He’s got two eyes, so I Duplicated the red circle [CTRL/CMD>J], positioned the new circle over the other eye hole then Merged [CTRL/CMD>E] the two layers.

I intend to layer two Styles on the eyes, one a red acrylic Style that adds both a Bevel and a highlight, and a glass Style which will add some shine and a Drop Shadow. While it IS possible to layer Styles on a single layer, the two I plan to use won’t work that way. So I Duplicated [CTRL/CMD>J] my eyes layer.

The acrylic Style is opaque and changes the colour of what’s under it. The glass Style makes the layer it’s applied to transparent or translucent, depending on which glass Style you choose. This is why the acrylic was applied to the lower eye layer and the glass to the upper. I wasn’t totally jazzed by how the glass layer looked so I made some adjustments; I double-clicked on the fx symbol on the glass layer and moved the sliders until I liked the look. To put the highlight in the right spot, I changed the Lighting Angle. Once I was happy, I Merged [CTRL/CMD>E] the two layers and moved them under the spider body layer.

All that was left now was to add a Simple Scalloped Bevel to the spider’s body and it looks quite evil!

Dingbats are ideal for creating Brushes. The character for this black cat in Witch Night Dingbat is the letter O. Resize the image until it’s about 2500 pixels. Then click Edit>Define Brush.

My example is 1583 pixels, but can be enlarged when it’s used as a Brush. I gave it a name, Black Cat. A highly original name.

This part is just for fun. I want to add some dimension to the image, so I’m going to apply a Layer>New Fill Layer>Pattern Fill. Then I scrolled through the options in the Pattern Fill menu to Texture Fill and chose Denim. It’s the one that looks most like fur. Only problem is now the cat’s gray, not black. So…

I Merged [CTRL/CMD>E] the Fill Layer and the Brush Layer together. Then I adjusted Levels. [CTRL/CMD>L] I also filled the eyes with green and added a pupil, but that was for me! Now if I add a little Bevel, I’ve got a puffy sticker to add to my layout.

The third use I’ve got for you today is to use dingbats to create a border. I’m still using Witch Night, and the character that produces a pair of witchy shoes is either E or Y. All I did here was to type out a row of 13 pairs of shoes.

Don’t forget that dingbats are actually fonts where Elements is concerned. So they have to be treated like fonts. Before I can add Texture, Styles or do much of anything, the font has to be Simplified.

For the top of the border, I just Duplicated the base layer [CTRL/CMD>J] and moved it to the top of the canvas. Use your View>Grid (not shown)! It really helps with positioning and symmetry.

Now, I could have just Duplicated the base layer again and rotated it, but I decided I wanted to have the soles of the shoes all “touching the ground”. I knew there were individual shoe dingbats in the set, so I changed the Type Tool from Horizontal to Vertical then typed out a line of alternating Is and Rs. I ended up with one too many shoes, but that was easy to fix.

There. I have a border!

This last example is using both a traditional font and a dingbat. My favourite Bugs Bunny cartoons are the ones with the vampire, the witch, bats and the two-headed buzzards. In one, Bugs and the vampire have a spell-casting battle. So this just seemed to create itself. The traditional font is called Abracadabra (of course, what else could it be?) and the dingbat is from Alit Halloween. I typed out Abra ca dabra – with spaces for the bats, then Simplified the text. If I didn’t do that, when I switch to the dingbat, the font will change to it too. So nope!! I typed out the bats (character is b) on their own layers so I could tilt them. I wasn’t happy with the way everything aligned and fitted together so I Cut the “ca” out, Pasted it back onto the canvas then moved it into place a bit lower than the baseline. This could be used as a sticker by adding a white Stroke to it, or it could have a Style applied, or a paper clipped to it, or… whatever suits my fancy.

If you think you might want to reuse any of the things you’ve created from dingbats, make sure to Save As a PNG so the transparent background is preserved. I hope I’ve given you some ideas here. If the kit you’re working with doesn’t have that one special object in it that you’d really like to include, check out your dingbats!

 

 

Filed Under: Be Inspired, Behind the Scrapbook, Creative Style, Digital Scrapbooking, Fantastic Fonts, Tutorials Tagged With:

Tutorial Tuesday (Fonts)

October 3, 2023 by

Autumn and Creepy Season Fonts

PDF Version : https://bit.ly/48Ay6lP

Have you chosen the font(s) for your October Signature Challenge siggy or Inspiration Challenge? Have I got some options for you! Now, Heather‘s instructions for the Signature call for a “beautiful font”, while Joy just wants 2 different fonts in the title. Since beauty is in the eye of the beholder, I think you’d be quite safe using a creepy/spooky font for the siggy, and anything goes for the other. I took a quick wander through the dafont.com collection of FREE fonts and found some I didn’t have but must… and I’m going to share them with you. Each font/dingbat’s name is linked to the site so you can quickly and easily download the ones you love.

I didn’t find any fonts that really proclaimed *AUTUMN*, but there are some lovely dingbats (little drawings). This one is called LCR Autumn Harvest Dings. The scarecrow sold me on it!

KR Fabulous Fall has some lovely leaves.

Next up is WM Leaves 1, which is literally all leaves, complete with the Canadian stylized maple leaf from our flag.

Autumn Days Clipart has a selection of solid symbols. Just look at that cute little fox.

I love the line drawings in Arboris Folium. They can be used like stamps or brushes and are filled with potential.

While we’re doing dingbats, let’s carry on into the Hallowe’en sets I found. Freaky Halloween has some classic images, like those creepy jack-o-lanterns.

I LOVE the frame in Alit Halloween. And the spiderweb, and the crow, and the haunted house… well ALL of them.

Look at the creepy witches’ hats here in Halloween Dreams Doodles!

This set, simply named Halloween, has more, very detailed line drawings.

Ooh, Vintage Halloween is really creepy.

Now on to some actual fonts. I’ve never seen this one before. Gnarly Skeleton has both an outlined alphabet and a bold version. That skull is in the glyphs section, along with an assortment of symbols and accented letters. No numbers though.

Halloween Guises is a bubble font with more of a cute look to it. There are numerals and a bunch of glyphs too.

Spoky Spider (not a typo) is both cute and creepy.

Halloween Party 3 has elements of both font and dingbat. There are numerals and glyphs galore here.

I feel like Spooky Halloween is my favourite of all today. It has upper and lower case alphabets and numerals but no glyphs.

Nightside is a bold, Gothic font that made me think of Tim Burton’s Nightmare Before Christmas. It’s a demo font, meaning only upper case alphabet, no numerals or glyphs.

Then I found Nightmare 5… which also made me think of Tim Burton, or maybe the Addams Family. It has no numerals or clyphs; to achieve the look in the sample, use alternating upper and lower case letters.

And THEN… I found Burton’s Nightmare! It’s not really scary or creepy, but definitely has a vibe. There are numerals, some accented letters and some punctuation.

Okay, so maybe Single Ghost is my actual favourite! It’s got it all, wrapped up in a very elegant package.

Last, I have Dracolas for you. It’s Goth, it’s vintage and elegant. It’s a bold, all-caps font with the lower case characters smaller and less fancy. And there are glyphs!

Did you see anything you like? Did you find Inspiration for Joy‘s Challenge? I think I might pair Nightmare with Single Ghost. I’ll have to go back and make sure I’ve downloaded all the ones I love.

Filed Under: Be Inspired, Behind the Scrapbook, Creative Style, Digital Scrapbooking, Digital Scrapbooking Freebies, Fantastic Fonts, Tutorials Tagged With:

Tutorial Tuesday (Photoshop Elements)

September 26, 2023 by

Quick Trick: Special Effects Brushes

PDF Version : https://bit.ly/45anqqZ

I was yesterday-years-old when I learned that Special Effects Brushes are well… special. Some of them don’t behave the way most brushes do. For example, the butterfly Special Effects Brush doesn’t use the foreground colour, it uses its’ complementary colours. It also gives you random sizes and rotates itself between clicks so you’re never exactly sure where it’s going to pop up on your canvas, or what colour it will be. That can be fun! If you want to click>hold the mouse button and draw a curlicue with the brush, it’ll give you a flight of multi-coloured butterflies in all sizes. Try it! It’s fun!!

What I learned while I was experimenting with these Brushes is that they can be really useful for adding some oomph to those reads-as-solid papers we were making a few weeks ago. Let me show you what I mean.

Start by creating your background paper using a colour from the kit you’re using, or from a photo you want to coordinate. Size is up to you; I scrap 12×12, so that’s what I’ve got. I just randomly picked a light green colour. I’ll go with a slightly darker, grungier avocado for the zhuzh. As I always say, put this zhuzh on its own layer so you have ALL the control.

Now grab your Brush Tool and look for Special Effects Brushes in the pull-out menu. These are brushes that you got with your software, like the Basic Brushes and the Drop Shadow Brushes. You may be able to see in the screenshot that I’ve gone into the Presets>Brushes folder and put a period in front of all the PSE preloaded brushes so it sorts them to the very top of the list. Advanced users might try that. Anyway. Let’s click on the Special Effects Brushes and take a look.

You can hover your cursor over the Brush thumbnails to see what they’re called. I’m going to use the one described as Scattered Flowers Mums. It doesn’t actually look like a chrysanthemum when used, so I’m a bit confused. Some of these brushes do have an identifiable shape, like the daisy, roses, rubber duck, leaf and butterfly. None of the Scattered Flowers do, they’re all variations on texture. I’ve set the Size to 2500 pixels (maximum) and the Opacity at 100%.

This is an entirely optional step. I decided, after playing with the various brushes in the set, that I’d use Guidelines to help with positioning of my brush clicks. To create a horizontal Guideline, click-and-hold your cursor somewhere inside the horizontal Ruler (if you’re using them) or the top edge of the canvas then pull the cursor down to the place where you want the Guide and let go. To create a vertical Guide, click-and-hold inside the left side Ruler or at the left edge of the canvas, drag the cursor laterally to the spot where you want the Guide and let go. I’ve made my Guidelines thicker for visibility, You’ll see in the next screenshot how skinny they really are.

If you don’t want to be precise, you can randomly click your brush over the background, or drag it in a pattern, change the size and orientation of the brush or pretty much whatever appeals to you. It’s 100% up to you!

The brush cursor is a large circle with crosshairs in the centre. I used this bounding box to position the brush in each of my squares: the bounding box intersected with the inside corners of each square, which gave a bit of overlap where the brush fades. I can’t show you an example – I didn’t think of it while I was working this all out, and now Elements is PMSing on me. Sorry. Suffice to say, I covered the whole canvas with this splattery texture.

To turn off the Guides, click View>Guides and they’ll vanish. Or if you’re a keyboard short-cutter, CTRL/CMD>; will take care of it.

You could stop here and be very happy with your work. Of you could play with Blend Modes to see what might look better for your purpose. This is the Dissolve version. Once you’ve moved off the Normal mode, you can scroll through the Blend Modes using the Up and Down arrows.

If the result is too bold, you can adjust Opacity. That might be all you need. Here I’ve left the Blend Mode on Dissolve but decreased the Opacity to 10%. Now it’s subtly textured.

The following screenshots are pretty self-explanatory. I’m not going to show you Modes that really didn’t change the background green – that would waste all our time! Here’s Darken.

Multiply. The only change I’ve made from my original sample is to a new Blend Mode. It’s fun to see what they do.

Color Burn is really subtle, so I felt I should Zoom in so you could see it. This might be my favourite.

On to Linear Burn.

Darker Color seems softer, don’t you think?

Screen lightens and softens.

I didn’t expect Color Dodge to lighten and alter the colour this much.

Linear Dodge is just Color Dodge but MORE.

Vivid Light changes the avocado to more of a chartreuse. It’s hard to see in this image, because it’s so subtle.

Hard Mix is similar to Screen, but MORE.

Difference changes the colour completely and darkens it too. You can see the tic-tac-toe effect a lot more clearly here.

Exclusion has turned the avocado colour to a deep, almost purple blue.

Last is Luminosity. It’s more delicate. When you’ve found the look you like, you can adjust Opacity, enlarge the brush layer and rotate it, or any other thing you might want to try. CTRL/CMD>Z will Undo if you’re not happy. Don’t be afraid to experiment! Nothing is permanent in digital scrapbooking until you decide it is.

I couldn’t resist trying another of the Special Effects Brushes, this time Petal Crystals. I used an aqua colour and really like this one!

We’re getting some of the rain from the big storm coming up the west coast right now. Looks like it’s going to bring some snow to higher elevations, and will linger around for the next couple of days. Maybe the two fires close to us will finally be snuffed out. A girl can dream, right?

Filed Under: Be Inspired, Behind the Scrapbook, Creative Style, Digital Scrapbooking, Tutorials Tagged With:

Tutorial Tuesday (Individual Style)

September 19, 2023 by

Challenge Spotlight: Minikit

September is surely flying by, isn’t it? It’s already almost the autumnal equinox and the slow slide into winter here in the Northern Hemisphere, while our GingerScrappers down under are looking toward spring. And life goes on…

This month’s Spotlight Challenge is the Minikit Challenge, hosted by Joy of Memory Mosaic. As the name implies, the Challenge is to use the pieces of a supplied (free) minikit to create a unique layout. This type of Challenge showcases individual style very well, since all participants are starting with the same tools. This month’s mini is shown below.

Now I’m going to share each of the layouts that have been posted to the Challenge Gallery as of noon today PDT. They’re in the order they were posted, and I’ve linked each to the Gallery so you can get a closer look and leave some praise for the Scrapper. Just click on their Forum handle.

KAPOH has created a calendar with the mini. I see today is Talk Like a Pirate Day. I guess we should brush up on our “arrrhs”.

Alasandra has blended the papers to give herself some more options and flexibility, and flanked the ornate frame with two simple clusters.

As most of you know, I’m a sucker for heritage photos. I LOVE how trinanne has adapted the frame to encompass each of the people in her photo. The emphemera she’s added are scans of her aunt’s actual teaching diploma and license… precious!

MarilynZ has used the frame very cleverly here, with one being lightened without losing detail. The diagonal placement of the ribbon, with the key centred and the repeating small paper squares, gives the layout balance.

Pippin chose the perfect photo to coordinate with this mini! The purple sunset behind the house is a very close match to the purple paper. Her simple cluster and all that white space are very effective at drawing the eye to her photo. Brava!

NHSoxGirl has reversed the order of Pippin‘s papers to create a minimalist layout where the photo is the star. Good choice to go with black and white. The white stroke around the purple paper is brilliant.

This is something I would do! Those old keys in the photo play with the key in the mini so well. I see angbrey has also recoloured a flower and has used the frames as mats. Creative!

AnnieA has used everything but the tape, and kept her layout minimalist, with strong diagonals. I like the rotated purple paper, it’s exquisitely shadowed. Very eye-catching!

What an interesting layout PixyGirl has created, with a very vintage feel. The patchwork effect with the papers is beautifully executed. The slight tilt to the frame mimics the slight tilt of her great-grandmother’s head for a very effective focal point.

It took me a few minutes to deconstruct kabrak1207‘s layout. She has used additional elements and papers from the coordinating Buffet bundle from Memory Mosaic – totally allowed! – and has created an outstanding piece. That centre cluster is perfection.

CathyS has also added some elements from other designers in the September Buffet. I like how she’s faded the papers together and mirrored the brick behind the flowers in her photo with arty paint.

Oh my! Look at that beautiful dissolve/fade effect lulumoon has created with the papers!! The clusters provide a pop of colour and the entire layout is a showstopper.

The mini is cleverly disguised in nimble4u‘s layout. The only element from the mini that I couldn’t find is the tape. She’s added some elements from other kits, which are included in her credits.

Lastly, this layout from hkeith87 has included the whole mini, pairing it with a stunning sunset photo. The purple clouds in the photo look like they just merge into the purple paper strip. Beautiful!

It’s always a learning experience to browse the Gallery. Next week it’s Quick Trick time again. I’ll have to see what I can pull out of the ether to share with you all. Have a great week!

Filed Under: Be Inspired, Behind the Scrapbook, Challenge Spotlight, Creative Style, Digital Scrapbooking, Digital Scrapbooking Freebies, GingerBread Ladies, Tutorials Tagged With:

Tutorial Tuesday (Photoshop Elements)

September 12, 2023 by

Using Alphas for Titles – a Technique Tweak

PDF Version : https://bit.ly/3LJ2wZo

A newish GingerScrapper whose user name is rmcd100 asked this question in the Forum: 

“I am looking for a tutorial on how to easily add alphas to a layout. It seems really cumbersome inserting each letter individually and then trying to place them all on the page in a uniform manner. There has got to be an easier way than the way I am doing it.”

I replied with some links to some tutorials I’ve already posted and gave her a brief description of my workflow. But then I got to thinking about it and recognized that my technique has been fine-tuned quite a bit since those tutorials were new. I also want to be sure she understood what I was saying, so today’s tutorial is an updated alphas-for-titles workflow breakdown.

I knew exactly what she meant by “cumbersome” and could feel her frustration, because I’ve been that person! Elements can make it so much harder, because it seems to drop objects where IT wants them and not where I want them, especially the newer versions. This title technique grew out of all of that.

When I’m planning a title, I usually have an idea of what I’ll call my layout before I even choose photos, template or kit to work with. I choose the photos first, then a template that will work with the number, orientation and importance of my photos. Only then do I choose a kit. I love using alphas and have quite a stash of them so I can always count on having an appropriate one on hand. For my Back It Up Challenge layout, the prescribed theme is books/reading/library so that helped with making my choices. I opted for the GingerBread Ladies Must Love Books kit. I had 4 photos I wanted to use and chose a retired template from Connie Prince as my basic layout.

As you can see, the template’s title spot is a good-sized rectangular area, which makes the process a LOT easier! I like to work BIG, so I can see easily what’s going on; resizing later is a snap. I also like to reduce repetition if possible. So I’ve created a bunch of preset project formats: a 12×12″ Scrapbooking canvas, a 6×1.5″ Title Strip and a 6×3″ Large Title canvas are some of them. So when I click New>Document [CTRL/CMD>N] I can choose one of them. I’ve planned a two-word stacked title so I’m going to use the Large Title canvas. One important note: ALWAYS work on a TRANSPARENT BACKGROUND when creating titles with alphas using this technique.

So here’s the canvas. I’ve opened all the letters I’ll use for my title into the Photo Bin.

Then I started dragging and dropping the letters onto the canvas. Remember I mentioned that Elements does what Elements wants? Well, I can guarantee at least one letter will be out of order. It’s just a rule. 😉 Before you move on, check to see that the letters are all where they should be. Elements will stack from bottom up, and it’s easier to move one or two letters than rearrange all of them. Also take note that all the letters are aligned by the centre of the letter. That’s easy to address.

Before we continue, if you want your title to have a wandering baseline, you can skip a step – the one where we Align the letters’ bottoms. Also, if you want some letters to overlap others, you can adjust your workflow accordingly. For MY title, I want the baseline to be a single straight line. So I’ve activated all the letter layers except the “g” – it extends below the baseline and will need special attention. To quickly activate multiple layers, click on either the top layer or the bottom. Then hold down the SHIFT key and click on the layer at the other end of the stack. BINGO!

Using the Move Tool, Align the letters at their bottoms. If you don’t see the Arrange, Align and Distribute menu, click on Tool Options at the lower left of your workspace.

Now the “g” can be nudged into place. I use the top edge of another lower case letter as my guide for this part. Nudging with the up and down arrow keys is the most accurate method for this.

This is a step I’ve recently added to my technique, and it’s made a big difference. Activate all letter layers again – click>SHIFT>click – and move the whole bloc of letters all the way over to the left. The first letter of your word will be along the left border. Don’t worry about the size of the letters just yet.

Activate the very top letter layer (or the last letter in your word, if you’ve rearranged them) and using the left and right arrow keys, move it to the right until you can see the entire edge of the letter right next to it. My word is Raising; see the “g” and the “n” are no longer overlapping. Decide how much of a gap you like between your letters.

To start moving the second-last letter along with the last one, hold down the CTRL/CMD key and click on the layer. Now both letters are active and can be moved to the right until the third letter from the end is entirely visible. Pick up the third letter, the fourth letter, then the fifth letter in the same way. Move the train of letters over as one piece until they’re all nicely separated. If you have room! 😀 Now I can see that the letters are indeed much too big.

To fix that, activate all the letter layers again then estimate how much to shrink them. Then using one of the corner handles on the Bounding Box, move the handle toward the letters until you’ve got the size close enough to fitting. I’ll just go with 75% for now, and ensure I’ve Constrained Proportions.

There! All my letters are neatly spaced. Since my title is going to be two stacked words, I’ll move them all to the top of the canvas and turn off Visibility to eliminate distractions. Click on the little eyeball icons.

I took a little detour here. My title is alliterative, so I want to see how I like it with just a single GIGANTIC “R” at the beginning of each word.

I’ll use the same drag-drop-align process for the second word. I’ve got “eaders” here to go with my giant R and have ensured the letters are in the correct order.

None of these letters extend past the baseline so I can Align all of them. Then, while they’re all still active, I Resized them to the same 75% I used before. They may need further adjustment later.

Hmm. Let me show you another way to make the title fit inside the canvas by Resizing the Canvas! Image>Resize>Canvas Size… or CTRL/CMD>ALT/OPT>C

The dialog box shows the Current Size, New Size, Anchor point and Canvas Extension Color. I want to make my canvas wider, but the height is fine. Remember, the background must be transparent here too.

I’ll just change that “6” to a “7” and make any tweaks as needed.

Alrighty. Everything fits on the canvas but it doesn’t look right yet.

So I activated all the letters for “aising” and moved them in a group to the left. That looks better.

***If you’ve chosen to have your letters overlap, you’ll need to add shadows to your individual letters at this point. You can later shadow the whole title on the layout but where those letters overlap, the shadow style isn’t going to get the overlapping areas and it’ll look funny.***

Now to get the title onto the layout! If you don’t think you’ll need to do anything other than some resizing, you can activate all the layers [click>SHIFT>click] right-click and choose Merge [CTRL/CMD>E]. Then the entire title is a single layer and can be dragged and dropped onto your template/layout.

Alternatively, you can choose instead to Link Layers… but you’ll still only be able to resize it on the layout.

All that’s left is to slide it into place, adjust the size to fit your chosen space and make any other minor adjustments you want. Add a shadow to your title layer and you’re done! It sounds like a long process but you’ll be surprised how well it flows and once you’ve done it this way a few times, you’ll never go back.

Next week is the Challenge Spotlight. Will you see YOUR layout here? Swing by and see!!

Filed Under: Be Inspired, Behind the Scrapbook, Creative Style, Digital Scrapbooking, GingerBread Ladies, Tutorials Tagged With:

Tutorial Tuesday (Potpourri)

September 5, 2023 by

X-Fonter – a Powerful Font Manager

PDF Version : https://bit.ly/3Z81CLe

First off, I apologize in advance for the lateness of the hour. I’ve had a MILLION interruptions today and am desperately playing catch-up. Now, on to the tutorial!

There has been a lot of chatter about font managers, both for digital scrapbooking and for Cricut users. I’ve used High Logic MainType for a few years and ran a tutorial on it a while back. Recently I got this PM from Kathi (aka granny5pics):

Hi Jan,
1) I have used the free version of X-Fonter for awhile and last month bought version 12.0.1 because I could no longer find it on my computer! Now I have forgotten how to load a font sample into a “Collection” I have created. Are you familiar with X-Fonter and how it works? Do you or designers have a font management program you like?

2) Why do some font folders show an example of the font and others do not?

3) Which is better to load–a .tff or .otf font file?

So, of course, I downloaded the free trial version and took it for a test drive. Let’s discuss.

1) The reason why Kathi couldn’t find X-Fonter on her computer is because it has a self-destruct after 30 days. Every time the app is accessed, it has a countdown timer and a reminder that if you plan to continue to use it, you have to buy it. The most recent version is 12.0.1, as she said, and today’s price is $35 (discounted from $40). Follow along for the Collection part.

2) Font folders on your hard drive may not always show a thumbnail of the font. I haven’t found an answer to why, but I looked at my own folders and there are quite a few that didn’t come with the thumbnail. So a font manager can be a handy way to see what those fonts look like before deciding to use them. Or try wordmark.it which will pull all your fonts and show them to you online. It doesn’t store any of your information so don’t worry about it being safe.

3. The difference between .otf and .ttf formats starts with where they originated. Microsoft/Adobe created OpenType – .otf, Apple created Truetype – .ttf. I always choose .otf format because the fonts are somewhat more complex, with all the glyphs and library options right in the file. TrueType has better screen quality so is more suited for electronic documentation while OpenType is better for print. The difference in file size is negligible. So it basically comes down to planned use and personal preference.

Now, how does this X-Fonter work? If you’ve used MainType you’ll see the interface is pretty similar, but the features are quite different.

I went through each tab and button one at a time to get a good look at what’s under the hood. Under View, the first two choices are pretty self-explanatory. Other than moving the boundaries of the windows, these are the only interface adjustments. First big advantage to X-Fonter is this! Font Compare lets you look at 2 fonts at the same time so you can choose the one that works best for your purpose.

The display windows are your access to the comparison. The first font you choose will automatically go in the top window. Click on the bottom window and choose your second font.

Options… hmm. There are Options? Browse Folders just takes you to your operating system’s directory.

Default Settings look reasonable to me. Check for Update on Startup keeps you running the most recent model.

Installing gives you control over what your computer does when you install fonts, either from a download or from a storage device. It might be worthwhile to Copy Files to an dedicated X-Fonter folder.

And then if you decide you’re never going to use a specific font again, you can Uninstall! By having a copy in your X-Fonter folder, you can load and unload without installing if you choose to later.

Under View Fonts there are several options, including what you want for your Preview Text. It’s handy having system fonts colour-coded so they can be skipped over easily.

Unless you’re a real IT maven, the Database tab is purely ornamentation.

This Settings tab is where you can customize what you see on your screen. You can change the Text Colour, Background Colour or leave it black on white.

Have a look at the Text menu. Another advantage to X-F! I use French text all the time and have memorized the most common ASCII codes I use, and others I look up on a table, but having this ability is huge!

This is what I mean.

But how do I get the ASCII character onto my project? Choose the character – let’s use a GBPound symbol – and right-click, then choose Copy to Clipboard.

Then with your Text Tool active, click on your project where you want your Pound symbol then Paste (CTRL/CMD>V). Easy peasy!

On to Pangrams. You can choose from 4 different sentences containing every letter of the alphabet.

Don’t you love Filters? You can winnow 1000 items down to a few dozen. Just be aware that when you end your X-F session by closing the app, all your filters will go too unless you Save Filter…

Aha! System fonts can be filtered out!

 

Are you familiar with Font Families? X-F uses Roman (Serif), Swiss (Sans Serif), Modern (Monospace), Script (Cursive), Decorative (Fantasy) and Unknown (Other) and will filter for either of those terms.

Font Type has already been covered above, somewhat. Raster Fonts and Vector Fonts are used by a range of text-based applications such as Photoshop and Cricut.

Then there are Font Styles… how handy is this?

These Tools aren’t typically applicable to digital scrapbooking, except maybe Duplicate Font Search…

I’m not sure why someone would want to rename a font, since the creator chose its name, but maybe changing it to something that makes sense to the user?

For the people who like to have hard copies, under the Print button you can print out all the fonts on your system, or only certain ones. You can choose just a sample of the font, or the entire character map. Hey… school supplies are on sale – grab a binder and some page protectors!

Next to the Print button is the Create Font Book button. Yes, you can group all your fonts into categories and create an online library of your Font Books.

Third from left is an Options button, and it’s identical to the Options tab.

In the middle are a Filters button and a Clear Filters button. Self-explanatory.

Now to Collections, as Kathi was asking about. Here, YOU decide what your descriptors are. I’m going to create 2 Collections, Creepy and Fairytale, as part of my test drive.

I scrolled down my font list until I found my first Creepy font. I right-clicked on the font’s name then chose Add to Collection>Creepy. Then I continued scrolling until I found another font that met the criteria, adding it, and so on. I ran into a snag with some of the fonts I have, because X-F wasn’t able to “locate the path*” to those fonts, which meant it couldn’t add to a Collection. I’m not sure how it found the fonts in the first place without a path, but what do I know?

That’s where Tags* come in. Font Tags lets me search for the type of font I’m looking for by yet another method. Edit Font Tags doesn’t mean the font already has a tag; it’s how you access the Tag process.

I chose this cute font called Beyond Wonderland to Tag with Fairytale by right-clicking on the font name and choosing Edit Font Tags then typed in Fairytale.

To use Tags to find my desired group, I had to push the boundary of the font preview box over until I could see the Tag heading, then click on it.

Now for the critique. I wasn’t able to get X-F to run on my laptop simply by opening it once I had it installed. I had to Run as Administrator. I shut it down when I was done with my screenshots, but wasn’t able to get it to run again. I got a message that I had 29 days left on my free trial, it read my font files then disappeared. Multiple times. Even after I added it to my Taskbar. I tried all the tricks I know to make it work, without success. Windows Troubleshooter declared it incompatible with my operating system (Windows 10) and tried running it in Windows 8. Again without success. So I’m doubtful I’ll pay $35 ($50 in Canadian currency) for it. It’s impressive when it works, but…

Filed Under: Be Inspired, Behind the Scrapbook, Creative Style, Digital Scrapbooking, Fantastic Fonts, Theres An App For That, Tutorials Tagged With:

Tutorial Tuesday (PS Elements 2020>)

August 29, 2023 by

Quick Trick: Guided Edit – Pattern Brush

PDF Version : https://bit.ly/3OXkpUV

Hey, GingerScrappers! Thanks for all the kind thoughts and support for those of us in the fire zone. For me, the crisis is over, at least for the time being. Fire season won’t end until we get some snow, so we can’t really relax. But we didn’t have to evacuate, like so many of our community did. The tally on structures lost is ongoing and most of the people who have lost everything have been notified. They’ll need so much in the coming weeks; I can’t even imagine.

But enough of that. Today I’m building on our paper-making lesson from a couple months back. I’m using a Guided Edit only available to those using Elements 2020 through 2023, so if that’s not you, I apologize.

I’ve created a solid black 12×12 paper on my workspace. Black is a good background for this tutorial since it makes the patterns much more visible in the tiny screenshots I’ve been forced to use.

Click on Guided up at the top of your screen and Elements will take you to this interface.

Click on Fun Edits, then on Pattern Brush as shown.

There are 15 Patterns to choose from in Elements 2020-2022. There were a few more added for Elements 2023. Here, you can see 9 of the Patterns. There are 2 ways to use this Edit and I’ll show you samples of both. If at any time you’re not happy with what you’ve done, you can Undo (CTRL/CMD>Z) back to your background paper, or click the Cancel button at the bottom right. Cancel takes you back to the Guided menu and you can start again.

First, I’m using the Fill edit. I chose the random hearts and clicked Fill. The Pattern is at 100% Opacity against the black. I like it!

In the Fill option, the Opacity slider is active. So here I’ve decreased to 85% just to show you what you can do. I’d probably leave it at full bore.

Oh, and… you can Erase some of the Pattern!! Using the Pattern Eraser Tool, I removed some of the bigger hearts from my sample. There’s also a Blur option that I didn’t play with. You can try it and see what it does. I think it would be perfect with the bokeh Pattern.

I Undid my way back to my plain black and this time I chose Paint using the default settings to Paint a diagonal from the lower right to upper left. See how the positions of the hearts randomly shifts?

I played with the settings, decreasing the Size from 150 pixels to 75, increasing the Scatter from 25% to 50% and dropping the Opacity to 85%. Then I Painted all over the black to create a tiny, overall pattern. There are so many ways this can be customized!

For this sample I used the random stars and Fill. If you don’t like the colour of the Pattern as Elements provided, you can definitely change it once you’re back in Expert mode.

Here’s a glimpse at the other 6 Patterns. I love this confetti cannon look!

Yet another Pattern… but really, who wants red, gold and brown snowflakes? Let’s click Next down at the lower right and move out of Guided mode.

Here, I chose Continue Editing In Expert and clicked Done. If I was happy with my paper at this stage, I could choose to Save it As a .jpeg and use it again and again.

 

In Expert mode, you can see the new layers Elements has added to the paper. The top and bottom layers are the only ones that matter. You can activate that pattern layer at the top and add a Layer>New Fill Layer>Solid>Clip to change colour, or you can play with the Blend Mode for that layer to see what works best for you.

 

 

Here’s a close-up of the pattern so you’ll easily see the Blend Mode change.

Switching to Luminosity took all the colour out of the snowflakes, but not the shadowing! I could increase the Opacity of the pattern layer to 100% to brighten the white. And that’s all there is to it!

Sorry for the formatting glitches. When I mix up my screenshots and have to move them around, WordPress plays with me, hard!

This is a bit of a milestone for me. My very first Tutorial Tuesday Blog post appeared August 30, 2016 – SEVEN years ago!! Today’s Tutorial is #315… that’s a lot of words! No wonder I’m hoarse. (Although that could be the smoke…)

It just started raining here for only the second time since July 24th. Rejoicing!!

Filed Under: Be Inspired, Behind the Scrapbook, Creative Style, Digital Scrapbooking, Tutorials Tagged With:

Tutorial Tuesday (Individual Style)

August 15, 2023 by

Challenge Spotlight: Inspiration

How is it already the third Tuesday of August? Of course, this month has FIVE Tuesdays, so we’re actually smack-dab in the middle of the month. The Okanagan valley in BC, where I live, is having a heat wave and we’re blanketed with wildfire smoke again. I feel very bad for the movers who are emptying a truck across the street in this heat and cruddy air. Our Level 4 drought is quickly moving to Level 5. Seems like it’s bad news everywhere. To all the GingerScrappers in Hawaii, you have all our love.

I chose the Inspiration Challenge for this month’s Challenge Spotlight because the Challenge Joy (Memory Mosaic) has tossed our way is something I love to do: take a photo from an “odd” perspective and scrap it. The alternate Challenge is to scrap a photoless layout from someone else’s perspective. When I looked at the Challenge Gallery, I was a little surprised to see only one person chose the photoless option. But what a great choice it was! Let’s have a look at the entries. As usual, they’re in the order they were uploaded to the Gallery and they’re linked to the Gallery so you can take a closer look, leave some praise or whatever. Just click on the scrapper’s user name and you’ll be right there. (I have participated in this Challenge, but decided not to include my own layout, because the focus of these Individual Style posts is on YOU!)

Here, greenfiend27 has two photos and perspective is a feature in both of them. These stainless steel balls see, to be everywhere these days and offer endless potential for interesting photos. They can be a lot like funhouse mirrors, right?

GrannyNKy has a really carefully-framed photo for her layout. There are millions of photos of Christ the Redeemer near Rio de Janeiro, but not many like this one!

Look at TBear‘s layout… the lone outlier! Here’s what she said about it: “DGD, who thinks outside the box as second nature, asked me what I thought an alien birthday cake would look like. I tried to create something from her perspective…outside the cake mix box.” I LOVE it! Kids are so clever.

I had to look very closely at this layout by MeleahG to decide where the “perspective” was… and then it hit me: the depth and breadth of variety! Shakespeare, Narnia, The Count of Monte Christo, The Witch of Blackbird Pond… I read that one when I was about 10 and had completely forgotten it.

For her layout, bumblebeee chose a photo taken from HER perspective of her family canoeing in an idyllic spot. Sometimes looking at the back of someone’s head can be magical. (This PICU nurse’s heart is happy to see life jackets on those precious babies.)

One of the cardinal rules of obtaining great photographs of kids and animals is to get down on their level. And Karen Diamond learned that one well! She also has an aerial view of the farm and a downhill shot of cows in a pasture, so she’s used many perspectives. Good job!

JAMSquared80 has skillfully used up-shots for her layout. That perspective gives a sense of just how tall those buildings are.

Here’s another good example of getting down on their level from photocrazy. Not only do we get better images this way, but they’re more natural and uninhibited.

I’ve NEVER seen a real peacock with its tail fanned out, never mind from the BACK! Props to gmae for this unusual perspective!

This makes it look like the subject of the photo is either walking on water or walking up a glass wall. It’s a bit disappointing to know it’s a glass balcony wall and gadawg83‘s subject is seated, don’t you think?

If you’re new to digi-scrapping, GingerScraps’ Challenges are a perfect way to find inspiration, learn new things and build up your stash. Several of our designer-hosts include freebies with their Challenges and there’s a Challenge Reward kit for completing 10 Challenges. (Missi keeps track of everybody’s totals. When you reach 10 completed you’ll automatically receive the download link for that month’s Reward via Private Message. However, the counter stops there until a new month starts, so if you hit your 10 layouts on, say, today – August 15th, but you keep going and complete 5 more layouts, those ones don’t carry over to September when the counter starts again. Clear as mud?) Here’s a look at the August Reward kit.

See you all next Tuesday!

Filed Under: Be Inspired, Behind the Scrapbook, Challenge Spotlight, Creative Style, Digital Scrapbooking, Digital Scrapbooking Freebies, GingerBread Ladies, Tutorials Tagged With:
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