I was putting together my photos from last week for my Project 365 and I wanted something simple, fast and easy. I started to use my template but it just wasn’t coming together for me. Then a light came on and I thought of these templates that I’ve used before over on scrapbooksetc.com. They are called Quick Collages and there are lots of different styles and 3 series, card, rectangle and square. Here’s what the one that I used looks like in its original form…
I have a bunch of them downloaded so I just pulled one up and plugged in the photos, did a little journaling, some embellishments and voila!!!! Here’s what I came up with…
Scrapbooks Etc Quick Collage 103
Anna Aspnes Weathered Neutrals (Black paper)
Shabby Princess Seasonal Sampler Amore (Paper, Ribbon)
Michelle Coleman Vintage Dreams Retro Diva (Brads)
Studio Diane Scrapbookgraphics Made in the Shade mini kit (heart)
Shazbutt’s Digi-Scrapz Fall Splendor Collab (flower)
Jen Maddocks Designs 2009 brush, Valentine Pack tag brush
Ali Edwards Designs 31 Days Circle Accents, Title + Journal Photo Overlays No1
Font KarabinE
I went looking for the links for the Quick Collages and found some people on there with questions on how to do certain things with these collages. I was just going to post where to find them and what I did but was thinking if more than one person had a question I would post how I did things…cause I had some of the very same questions…and found answers…just by mucking around. That’s usually how I discover things…I figure there’s always the delete key! ;D
If you watch the tutorial it will give you a basic idea of how to use the template. I’m not going to reinvent the wheel so watch that first. Then…one question I saw was how do you get a different color background around the photos other than white? What I did was duplicate the template layer so I had two layers of that then I stuck the layer of paper I wanted in between these two layers. That was how I was able to move from a white background to a different colored background.
Step 1…(After opening the collage in Photoshop) is to duplicate the layer. Oh and I also enlarged my collage to 12″x12″ because the original size was 8″x8″ and I wanted it to be a full 12″x12″. You can do this by just going to Image>Image Size and then change it there. You can see I have ‘duplicate layer’ circled in the photo below. Right click on the layer you want duplicated and in the fly out menu there is a choice of duplicate layer.
Step2…find the paper you want to have as the background and bring that in to your collage and put it in between the collage layers…As you can see in the photo below the borders around the blue photo squares is now black…the color of the paper I want to use. And that layer is in between the collage layers as indicated by the arrow in the photo…
Step 3…start pulling in the photos you want to use in your collage…To get this photo into position and underneath the (now) black frames but above the blue photo frame you must position the photo above the template copy and then use the clipping mask talked about in the tutorial…see I told you it was important to watch it ;D…what I did to get it in the right place was put the photo over the template layer and then mouse over the two layers holding down the ‘alt’ key and the left mouse button until you see two bubbles appear. It will look something like this…
When you do release the left mouse button (but still holding the ‘alt’ key) and then the photo will fall in behind the frames and in the layers palette you will then see it has an arrow pointing down to the collage layer as it does in the photo below in the section circled…
Then position and size your photo to where you want it and then…as it showed in the tutorial…you are going to delete the areas of your photo that you don’t want…make sure you are on your photo layer or else you will delete things you don’t want…but remember there is always the undo button…I use that A LOT!!! ;D
And then here’s my photo after I’ve ‘cleaned up’ the extra edges I didn’t want…
Then just bring in your other photos and finish it up like the tutorial talked about. Again here’s my finished product…
The best advice I can give you is what I did. And this was last summer when I was first getting into digital scrapbooking. The more you do it the easier it gets…trust me! I watched the tutorial over and over till I got it. I watched it and then stopped it…did what it said and then kept going. I tried it and it didn’t work and I got frustrated and I walked away and then I went back to it. I did online searches for Photoshop tutorials and found things that helped (and some that didn’t l0l). Not trying to be a saleswoman…but I took Jessica Sprague’s class Now We’re Rockin With Photoshop last fall…when I’d gotten to a point where self teaching just wasn’t cutting it. That class taught me so much!!! So ask questions, do searches, keep trying, and don’t worry. There is always a delete key and an undo key. Believe me I still use both ALL THE TIME!!!
Questions or Comments are welcome!!!
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3.5.09 This particular post seems to be popular. I just found another link on the scrapbooksetc.com website today with some answers to other questions. I thought this might help some people too…specifically those who have other versions of Photoshop.
