Driven to Distraction

Depth of field. It’s that fabulous effect of a soft, slightly blurry background (and sometimes foreground too) that brings the subject of our shot into sharp focus and minimizes distractions. It’s easily achievable with manual settings on our DSLRs and with some settings on our phones. We all know how it makes our photos look better, but we don’t always have control over it. I snapped this photo of the CN Tower in Toronto with my cellphone. Because of the distance involved even with “portrait” settings, which should have given me a preferential focal point, the whole shot is in the same focal plane. I’m going to show you haw to fake depth of field quickly and easily using another Guided Edit.

You guessed it! Select the Guided tab, then Special Edits>Depth of Field.

There are two options for this Edit, a Simple one and a Custom one. Today we’re only going to look at the Simple method.

So just click on that Simple bar.

The menu looks like this and your next step is to add a blur to the whole photo.

You can increase the amount of blur by using the slider at the bottom of the panel, both before and at any point during the process.

Then you’re going to select the areas you want to have back in focus. I experimented quite a bit so that I could give you the best information and save you some time and frustration.

The secret to the Simple version, especially if you’re working on a photo with a lot of detail, is to make small changes. Click your mouse inside the area you’re focused on, hold down the left mouse button then drag the mouse a short distance and release. (Please ignore the typo on this screenshot. I’ve tried to fix it and WordPress won’t let me!)

If you make your drags too long, the “spillover” focus will bring areas of the photo you want blurry into focus. You can take the drags in any direction that will work for your image.

If you’re not sure how much of the image has been altered by your last drag, you can zoom in on the image. But you can’t go back in and make more drags on the zoomed in image; the software will revert back to the full image when you click on the Add Focus Area bar again.

So with my photo of the CN Tower, I worked my way down the centre of the tower in short drags until I hit a point where the edges were still being left blurry. Always watch what’s happening as you work. Then if you notice areas you don’t want in focus are suddenly popping, you can quickly and easily Undo (CTRL/CMD>Z) those last couple of changes.

Once I got to the point where the edges were still visibly blurry, I adjusted the angle of my drags, but still keeping the start and end points inside the edges of the tower.

As I got closer to the bottom of the tower, I started seeing the buildings to the sides were starting to pop. Oh no you don’t! I changed my strategy again and used some horizontal drags again.

This is particularly important in images with more detail, both in the focal area and the background. Go slowly.

It was at this point that I started to notice that the software created more focus at the beginning of a drag than at the end. So again, I shifted my strategy from going left-right to going right-left. Problem solved!

But before I shut Elements down, I wanted to try it again to see if I could reduce the number of drags needed to get the focus where I wanted it without messing with the blur too much. So I started again, this time taking longer vertical and slightly angled drags.

Here’s a zoom view of the observation deck.

The angled drags were longer than in my first effort, but not running top to bottom as I had done when I was first figuring out how to make this Edit really work.

I cut the number of clicks down by at least 50% and still had a result I was pleased with. So give it a try, Undo as needed and see how you like it!

I have some more photos I want to play with, and you just might see some of them in the Gallery one of these days!

Clusters… Have Them Your Way, the Easy Way!

I’m a big fan of templates. They’re an amazing time-saving tool for getting layouts done, while still allowing for individual style. But once in a while I go rogue and design a layout without using any time-saving devices. And sometimes I shock myself by creating a perfect cluster that looks fantastic… only to find that when I try to recreate it later, I can’t get it quite right. Of course there has to be a WSNH hack for that! And I’m going to show it to you. I’m using a cluster I created for Katie, Ooh La La Scraps‘ genius designer, with her Freezing collection.

If you save your layouts as a PSD file, this part will be super-easy. If not, you’ll be starting from scratch and might want to wait until you have that AHA! cluster creation at a later date.

Let’s assume you’ve got the layout in PSD form. Open up the file in PSE. Then select all the layers of that perfect cluster. To select multiple layers, hold down the CTRL/CMD key as you click on them. Once you have all the layers selected, right-click in the Layers panel and click on Duplicate Layers. (We’ve done this part before.) In the submenu that opens up, select New Document and click OK. A completely new work space will now be there for you to work on separate from your original layout.

Once you’ve got all those layers on your new work space. turn the visibility to all the layers off, except for the one on the very bottom. (Or you can work from the top down, your choice. I work from the background out.)

Now you’ll select a colour to make the place marker for that first layer. Whatever floats your boat… gray, pastel, dark, light, whatever makes sense to you. You’re going to make a New Fill Layer on top of that first layer to create your place marker.

If you’ve never used the Fill Layer function, you’ll be in for a treat. It makes a lot of things much easier! Click on Layer>New Fill Layer>Solid Color.

Make sure you click the box to the left of Use Previous Layer to Create Clipping Mask.

See what happened? All those little beads are blaaaah yellow, but they’re now a place marker for a scatter. You’ll notice that the shadow style is preserved, which is another time saver. But… that shadow style will disappear with the step after this one, unless you copy it. Right-click on the original layer and choose Copy Layer Style.

Then select both the original layer and the clipping mask layer to Merge them. Right-click on the layers, then choose Merge Layers, or CTRL/CMD>E. Once the layers are merged, right click on the new merged layer and Paste Layer Style to it. Voilà… the layer has a shadow again.

Continue on with all the layers in your cluster, using the same process. Change up either the colour or the intensity of each different layer so you can easily see the different components of your template later. When I was putting together the screenshots for this tutorial the whole thing took me about 11 minutes, bottom to top.

This is what my finished cluster template looks like.

When I had all the layers converted to place markers, I renamed each layer. You can right-click and select Rename Layer, or simply double-click on the label within the layer’s box in the Layers panel then just type in whatever works for you.

Now you want to save the fruits of your labour! File>Save As (Shift>CTRL/CMD>S), tell the software where you want to save it, then give your cluster a name.

Tell the software you’re saving the file as a PSD and you’ll have your very own, personally-designed cluster template to use again and again!

I think next week we’ll do another Guided Edit. See you then!

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!