A super fast tip this week. Ever have a lot of windows open in Photoshop or Elements and wanted to close them all? Read the rest of this entry »

Stan White the DaddyKitty here with a quick tip showing the use of layer blending modes. A Layer What mode?

Yes, a Layer Blending Mode. Read the rest of this entry »

Bet you didn’t know this but Jenn, the ScrapKitty herself, was one of the key alpha testers of Adobe Photoshop. The team at Adobe was so grateful they actually included her in the credits:

Here’s a close up: (and no, it’s not Photoshopped):

Read the rest of this entry »

Do you know about the Custom Shape Tool in Adobe Photoshop and Photoshop Elements? Lots of digiscrappers and hybrid scrappers do. But did you know you are not stuck with Read the rest of this entry »

Spring is here, summer is near and I’m TRYING to get some kind of order in this house! I need to get my ‘digital home’ in order too, so I thought I’d share a tip for keeping all those credits with your layouts.

This week’s Tip is a workflow tip – something to make your life a little easier while you’re scrapping.

Have you ever posted a layout somewhere and had to open up the layered file to get the names of the fonts? THEN you have to choose your type tool, choose the layer, and see which font you used.

Wanna do it more quickly?
Here’s what I do (WHEN I’m being organized!) **This works for PS and PSE!**

When you make a type layer, double click on the layer name and change it to the name of the font! You can do this for paper and element layers, put the designer/kit in there. NOW when you need to make your credits list, it’s all right there in front of you! Here’s one of mine:

BUT WAIT, there’s MORE!!

Have you ever opened up an old jpg layout and not known the credits? Can’t find or didn’t save the layered file? Have NO IDEA what kit all that stuff came from?

TRY THIS:
While you’re working on your layout, why not attach the credit information to your file, so when you resize and save as a .jpg you can still see all your credits!

While you’re still in the layered file, go to File>File Info and you will see lots of fields to fill in. I put my info in the ‘Description’ or ‘Caption’ field. Fortunately you HAVE all that info on your layers palette, because you renamed the layers with your credits!

Now when you resize and save as a jpg for posting, all that info will be there. Saved my butt more than once! I don’t always save my layered files, and can’t BEGIN to remember where I got some stuff!

XTRA TIP: Fill out the copyright info! This is especially true for you designers! Hit ALT+0169 to get the little © symbol, and when you reopen the file, it will show up like this:

Every time you save, even in a different format, the file info will be saved! Just open the file and look under File Info to get all your credits.

If this saves even one layout from the indignity of anonymity my work here will be done! LOL!

Happy Scrapping! - Jenn

As you advance in digiscrapping, you get a lot of kits. And elements, and papers. It’s hard to keep them all organized. Last week I showed everyone how to do a contact sheet using Adobe Photoshop (See post here). This week we’ll look at how to do the same using Photoshop Elements. It’s similar but with a few key differences. Read the rest of this entry »

We’ve been away from straight Photoshop and Elements tips recently so here’s a great one.

Some fonts in both Photoshop and Elements come with a full range of styles: changes to the typeface like bold or italic that provide emphasis for the type. But a lot of digiscrappers use specialty fonts that don’t have styles. But sometimes in our layouts you want that emphasis. Photoshop and Elements can generate Faux styles that look close enough to the actual styles.

Here’s how: In Photoshop or Elements type your words, highlight them to select, and then right-click (Mac users hold down your Ctrl Key and click) on the line of type.

You’ll see a contextual menu pop up that gives you the choice of Faux Bold or Faux Italic.

Photoshop users get a more extensive pop up:

To see even more in Photoshop open your character and paragraph pallete (click this icon on your top toolbar when you have the type tool selected).

Right click the arrow in the upper right of the pallete and you get all of this!

If you have any questions leave a comment or contact me here.

Until next time - Keep Scrappin’!

Stan White - The DaddyKitty

Ok, FINALLY, I got all my tutorials together in one place for you!  I’ve written some of these for classes, some for my Tricks of the Trade Challenge at SOTB   - but I put them all on one page HERE for you!  You might want to bookmark this, as I’ll update it when I have new tuts.  I’m working on tuts for the Patch and Healing Brush tools right now!

The newest one has several good things in it - all the neat shortcuts I used to make this page:

If you’ve already done a lot of my challenges, skip the whole list and get my newest tut HERE

And just to make things a little easier - CLICK HERE to download the grid and a layered file that were used for this layout!

Do let me know what tutorials you would like to see me add to the list - I’m always looking for good tut ideas!

Happy Scrapping!

We delayed this tip a week so Jenn could post her great 2 for 1 Daily Download series!

One of the most satisfying aspects of writing for this blog is remembering all the cool Photoshop or Elements stuff tucked somewhere way back in my little old head. Here’s one that is a HUGE timesaver and uses a feature that I, yet again, need to do daily but always forget. Digiscrappers will use this one a lot:

You have a picture or kit open and want to add something to it - another picture or an element from another kit. What I do is go File-Open, Open the new kit. Find the layer with the element, hit Ctrl-A to select all, Ctrl-C to copy, click the original document window so it’s active again, and hit Ctrl-V to paste.

Whew… way too much work.

What I should do is use the Place command. Look under your File menu in Photoshop or Elements. The Place command opens a picture or element and immediately puts it into the document you are working on - no more select, copy and paste. Cool and fast!

An added benefit is that in Photoshop CS2/CS3 (sorry Element’s users!) when you Place an element it makes it into a Smart Object that you can resize larger or smaller multiple times and not lose quality. A smart object “remembers” it’s original size. Here’s a link to an article by Dave Cross in Peach Pit Press “Work Smart with Photoshop CS2’s Smart Objects” that gives a great explanation.

Until next week - Keep Scrappin!

Stan, the DaddyKitty

I’m a great believer in using keyboard shortcuts in Photoshop CS/CS2/CS3 or Elements to work more efficiently and quickly. Here’s two great ones:

• Ever wanted to quickly duplicate a layer and make a new one? Instead of selecting the layer, copying it, creating a new layer, and pasting, just hit Ctrl-J (Command-J on a Mac) and it happens like magic. Neat trick huh?
• Ever wanted to fill a layer fast with the foreground or background color? I used to go to Edit-Fill, select Foreground or Background from the pull-down menu, and click Okay. Instead hit Atl-Backspace to fill with the foreground color or Ctrl-Backspace to fill with the background color. (And use Shift-Backspace to bring up the fill dialog box quickly)

Hope you enjoy these tips - till next week Keep Scrappin’!

Stan - The DaddyKitty