Redirecting Text on your Embellishments

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I’m never sure how complex I should go with tutorials that land on the first of a new month. There’s already so much going on and it’s easy to become overwhelmed with it all. So this month I went simple, but still very useful. Have you ever had an embellishment – think pocket card or fancy word strip – that you really wanted to use but it faces the wrong way to really work with the rest of the layout? You know flipping it won’t help because then the text would be backwards. And others notice that kind of thing… Well, here’s a fix!

My example will use a pocket card from CathyK Designs‘ Back to Nature kit. I want to put the card on the left of my photo and I want the deer looking AT the photo.

First, I’ll make a Copy Layer of the card. There are several ways to do this. You can click on the Layer tab at the top of the work space and select Duplicate Layer>OK. You can right-click on the layer in the Layers Panel and choose Duplicate Layer>OK. Or you can use a keyboard shortcut: CTRL/CMD>J. [Editor’s note: Keyboard shortcuts work with both Windows and Mac; Windows uses CTRL and Mac CMD.]

Now to flip the card so the deer is facing to the right. When using Photoshop CC you can flip single layers. In Photoshop Elements you can’t. So the easiest way to do it is to use the Move Tool, grab one of the “handles” on the side of the Bounding Box and drag it either vertically or horizontally. I get the flip process started this way, then I go to the dimensions box in the Tool Options toolkit and type in -100. For this one, the -100 went in the W(idth) box as shown. I do the same when I want to change the direction a spray of leaves or a ribbon is curving too.

The cards need to be stacked precisely with the backwards one on top of the original. Let your software do the work! Select both card layers (Click>Shift>Click).

Then go to the Align section of the Move Tool Options toolkit. Click on Left (side) and bingo, the top and bottom layers will be perfectly stacked.

Just like this!

Now, with only the top, backwards text layer active, I’ll add a Layer Mask to it by clicking on the icon at the top of the Layers Panel that looks like a blue sheet of paper with a white circle in the middle, as shown.

The Layer Mask sits to the right of the thumbnail on the Layers Panel. It’s simply a white box at this stage. You’ll know you’re working on the Mask and not the actual object when there’s a blue box outlining the Mask. Now I’ll activate my Eraser Tool.

Layer Masks are really useful when you’re removing parts of an object because it only makes the parts you’re removing invisible – they’re still there, just hidden. If you make a mistake – or the touchpad on your laptop is possessed and does its own thing – you can easily “paint” the part removed in error back in by switching foreground colours. Keep this mnemonic in mind: Black conceals, white reveals. What it’s referring to though is the layer UNDERNEATH! Black will hide the layer underneath, white will let it show. You’ll notice that your Color Picker is now set to black and white. While you’re removing parts of your object, you can toggle between removing and replacing by clicking the X key. Okay, on to removing the top line of text. My foreground colour is white and the layer underneath is temporarily turned off. I’ll turn it on and off to check my work a couple of times while I’m removing.

Here you can see that the lower layer is on, and the backwards text on the top line is gone. In its place is a line of text going the right way.

Now I’ve removed both lines of backwards text.

With both card layers you can see I’ve successfully turned the deer and birds around. To incorporate the Layer Mask with the top layer, right-click on the layer and choose Simplify Layer. This step isn’t completely necessary in this instance because when I Merge the two cards in the next step, the Layer Mask will automatically be Simplified. But if I wasn’t Merging layers, I would definitely want to Simplify that object layer.

To make it easy to use the modified card, I’ll select the two card layers (Click>Shift>Click) then right-click and choose Merge Layers. The keyboard shortcut is CTRL/CMD>E. And that’s it! You can’t even see where I’ve made the changes. (If you look closely though, you can see there’s a little nibble taken out of the bottom line of text at the lower swirly part of the N in Nature.)

I think this will give us some more options with our kits. I have some great ideas for upcoming tutorials that will be more complex than this one. Stay tuned!

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Quick Trick: Brighter Photos the Easy Way

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I know this is true. We ALL have photos that we like but would like better if… they were more vivid. But making adjustments to lighting and colour can be time-consuming and takes some practice. I’m going to show you how to take a nice photo to a NICE photo with just a couple of clicks. I’ve tried this trick on a lot of photos and am really impressed, as well as disappointed I didn’t know about it sooner! The photo I’m going to use as my demo is one taken by my friend Sandy and I’m using it with her permission.

Fall is all about colour. These leaves are pretty, but they’re just a little insipid.

I haven’t really shown you too much under the Quick Edit tab, and that’s my bad. There are some pretty useful options in here and I strongly recommend playing with them when you have a few minutes. Today we’ll focus on the Color tab.

Click on that Vibrance option. This menu will open up. Notice the blue box around the “Free” space in the tic-tac-toe array. That’s the unaltered image. You can use the slider to adjust the colour vibrance or just click on one of the boxes. You can see the adjustments without actually committing to one by rolling the cursor over the array. Going up decreases the vibrance, going down increases it.

Each of the presets represents a 25% change in Vibrance. I’ll show you each of them.

With this laptop, I often struggle with getting the screenshots I want with the pop-up boxes open. Sometimes I luck out, sometimes I fail. Most times I fail – screenshots are captured by clicking CTRL>prt sc and as soon as I hit the CTRL key the pop-up disappears. SO frustrating!! Anyway, that’s what captions and text are for. This image is a 50% increase adjustment.

And on to 75%. Are you able to see the changes?

100% looks like this. Not only are the leaves brighter and more vivid, the fallen log under them has greater dimension and the whole image is just better. If you’ve gone to 100% and still think your image needs a boost, Save it with a new name then run the process again on the new version. When you’re happy with the way it looks, click on the Expert tab and you’re done, ready to use your bright, vivid photo on a layout! You can run through this process in the middle of a layout if you decide the photo needs some oomph. Moving between Expert and Quick won’t wreck anything, so give it a whirl!

Here are the original and the new-and-improved version. Impressive, right? And so easy…

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Curvy Lines/Borders Method #2

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Hey ladies! I’m running behind today after being awake half the night, so this might break a bit late. I’ll be trying my darnedest to get it out on time. Today I’m going to show you another method for curved lines/borders using Photoshop Elements. This one is pretty easy, but there are a few steps.

Open up a new canvas on your workspace. Then choose the Custom Shapes Tool. The border I’ll make will have 4 layers, all created with the exact same Shape but looking quite different. [Editor’s note: Jan started out using Arrow 17 but didn’t like how it was turning out. The tutorial uses Arrow 14.]

To make a bit less work for us, I set a Fixed Size for the arrow Shape. I went with 12 in for the Width and 4 in for the Height. The easiest way to make sure the Shape ends up actually ON the canvas is to click along the left edge. Note that heavy outline on the Shape; that signifies that the Shape is a Smart Object. To do any of the following steps with it, it needs to be Simplified. If you’re working with Version 15 or newer, you’ll have a Simplify button right there with the Tool Options.

If you don’t see that button, right-click on the layer in the Layers Panel and choose Simplify Layer from the dropdown menu.

Now to dispense with the pointy part. Drag out a box around it with the Rectangular Marquee Tool.

Now, Edit>Cut or CTRL (Windows)/CMD (Mac)>X.

If you’re making waves and not a side border, you can skip this part.

These steps that follow are all subject to interpretation – they’re examples that show you HOW to make alterations, not orders!! Here I’ve Resized the curvy shape and Constrained Proportions so it looked exactly the same as before, only it extends from top edge to bottom edge.

If you want to make your curvy shape into a Clipping Mask, it may be necessary to fill in one side of the curvy part. Drag out a box with the Rectangular Marquee Tool, making sure the edge on the side you want to keep curvy doesn’t extend too far. Otherwise those nice swoops will get squared off.

Then just dump the Paint Bucket into the space!

To get rid of the box outline, Select>Deselect or CTRL/CMD>D.

This is just housekeeping.

The preceding steps will be repeated for each of the variations to follow. Turn off the finished layer’s Visiblity, change colours and let’s make another curve. I changed the Height to 5 in for this one. the curves come out a little tighter.

Rather than just Resizing it, I’m going to use the Image>Transform>Skew menu. In this option, only the corner ‘handles’ are active. You can move them horizontally or vertically.

Like this…

Then I stretched it top-to-bottom (NOT Constrained) so the left edge runs the full 12 in. This also changes the curve a bit.

Here’s how the first two layers look together.

Same shape, slightly different dimensions, very different look!

After beheading the arrow, I stretched the curve across the canvas. But it’s not different enough from the previous two, so…

I made a Copy layer: right-click>Duplicate Layer>OK or CTRL/CMD>J.

I moved one Copy so that it overlapped and aligned with the other Copy. Then the two layers need to be combined into one by Merging. Either activate both layers by click>SHIFT>clicking on them, right-click>Merge Layers… or CTRL/CMD>E. The Merged curvy shape extends off the canvas, but I’ll show you something that’ll help with that.

To see the whole extended curvy shape, Image>Resize>Reveal All. Boom!

Here you can see that my extended curvy shape is about 18 1/4 inches long.

Now let’s change the way the curves look. This time let’s use Image>Transform>Distort.

Distort has a lot more opportunities for weird. Each of the handles is active and can be moved horizontally, vertically and laterally until you see something you like.

All three shapes are visible now and I can move them around until I have a chartreuse curve I like. Once I’d made my choice, I went to the Crop Tool, set the size to 12×12 and Cropped the canvas.

Last one.

And again, I made a Copy, aligned and Merged.

There! Four curved border Clipping Masks, all ready to go. And they all came from the same source Shape.

In case you wanted to see them in action, I Clipped some papers from this month’s Buffet kits to them and hit them with Drop Shadows.

I’ll be back tomorrow to introduce the October Designer Spotlight superstar…

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Yes! You CAN Create Curved Lines in Elements!

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As we’re all well aware, there are lots of things Photoshop does that Photoshop Elements doesn’t. Sometimes there are work-arounds, sometimes there aren’t. I had given up hope on smoothly curved lines after trying a lot of things I felt should work – but failed spectacularly, and then I found George Peirson, the HowToGuru. He’s got some really interesting techniques that I had to try for myself. THEY WORK! Today I’ll show you the easiest one to master, and create a curved paper multi-layer border with it.

I chose to work on a transparent 12×12 canvas, since it’s my preferred layout size. There’s no reason this can’t be accomplished on a smaller or larger scale, so do what suits you best.

This is the shockingly easy way to curve lines, and it uses the TEXT TOOL!!! Any font will work, and choosing a big character size will make it quicker. Center your Text cursor on your canvas and type out a line of “underscores” – SHIFT>- to extend across the page. Using the underscore gives a longer dash than the hyphen does, and the ends join seamlessly.

For once, we’re not going to Simplify a Text layer before we manipulate it. Instead, click the Text Warp button shown and a new menu will open up. Make sure Anti-Aliasing is also checked.

The Text Warp menu has a drop-down option bar labeled Style. Click on the bar and choose Flag. The only parameter we’ll change is the Horizontal Bend. Push the slider all the way to one side or the other. I’m right-handed, so I went to the right. For this example I’ve only gone to 94%, but 100% is also going to be perfect. If you want to see what the other adjustments do, play with them. They’re not permanent until you make them permanent.

So now we have a very gentle sine wave. If you want something more um… dramatic, we’ll need to Simplify the layer.

This Image>Transform Tool is so useful! For my sample, I chose Image>Transform>Distort. This command tells the Bounding Box that each of the “handles” is moveable in any direction.

So just grab a handle and pull it or push it around until you see a shape you like. Then click the green checkmark.

The usual Resize and Reposition functions are still operational, so you have lots of room to make adjustments. I Rotated it so it’s vertical, then stretched it top to bottom and positioned it where I liked it best.

My goal is to create some Clipping Masks for a curvy border, so I used the Paint Bucket Tool to fill the space between the edge of my canvas and the curvy line.

You can see there’s a faint blank area. That happens sometimes with the Paint Bucket. It’s easy to remedy. Just click the Paint Bucket in the space again and that blank area will fill.

Okay. I have one layer. Let’s make another one. I’ll use a different colour so it’s easier to see what’s what. I’m also going for a shorter baseline.

This screenshot shows how the length of the line and the percentage of Bend influence the curves when I used the same Style through the Warp Text Tool.

Here I’ve Rotated the line already, and I’m ready to Simplify it.

This time when I chose the Image>Transform Tool, I chose Skew.

With Skew, the handles can move in two directions, horizontally or vertically. You can see my Bounding Box in the screenshot.

I’d like to make the curved line longer, and have more curves, so I’ll make a Copy layer.

Then I moved them around so the spot where they intersect provides a smooth curve. I did some Zooming while I was lining them up.

It looks pretty good to me. I won’t worry about the tail on the left side of the line.

Then I Merged the two lines into one long one.

Once I had just one long line, I moved it over so it sat on top of the black shape, which is visible again.

And I dumped the Paint Bucket into the space. Clipping mask #2 is done.

I wanted to try one more thing, using a tilde ~ instead of an underscore. The main difference is that the line of tildes won’t connect up the way the underscores do. Elements 2019 finally included kerning: the ability to adjust the space between characters, only they call it Tracking. Earlier versions don’t have that function, so I’ll show you the “non-kerning” method of creating a wavy line with a tilde. It’ll take a few extra steps.

But before we do that, I decided I wanted to stretch the tilde widthwise by 50%.

The Warp Text Tool isn’t going to work for this curvy line so the tilde layer needs Simplifying.

I made a Copy of the tilde layer.

Using the arrow keys I nudged the two tilde layers so they created a smooth wavy line.

I Merged the two layers and made a Copy of the now-double-tilde layer.

Nudge the two layers to create a smooth wavy line, Merge the two layers and make another Copy, this time with double the bumps. Keep repeating these steps until the line stretches across the whole page.

I think it needs something…

This time, after much trial and error, I chose Image>Transform>Perspective.

Woohoo! It looks like rickrack! I could use it just like that and be quite happy.

Instead, I moved it into position and Filled the space.

I liked what I had, but thought maybe one more layer. Rather than make a whole new one, I instead played with the original shape. I made a Copy of it then hit it with Image>Transform>Distort.

It’s just different enough that it’ll add something to the stacked border. Whenever I have something on my canvas that extends outside the edges, I use the Crop Tool to get rid of those parts so they don’t mess with the final product.

I changed the colour of that last layer to a grayish-green then flipped it horizontally and Rotated it 180° so the widest part was at the top. I think it’s good now.

Here’s a view of the four Clipping Mask layers with papers Clipped, and with a small drop shadow. You could position the layers horizontally, which could give you a nice wave effect, too. Now I can tuck the corners of photos in between the layers, add some elements and have a really unique border when I’m done.

In a coming tutorial I’ll show you a couple of other ways of creating curved lines so you can choose the one you like best.

Whew. It’s still Tuesday where I am. I made it!

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