Creating Your First Page in PSE

SUBJECT: Creating Your First Digital Scrapbook Page in PSE

PROGRAM: PSE8 (can be adapted for PS and/or other versions of PSE)

PREREQUISITES: None

RELATED DOWNLOAD: Shabby Orchard Quick Page

This tutorial is written to help the beginning digital scrapper create their first page in Photoshop Elements. This tutorial will use a quick page as a starting point. If you’ve opened up Photoshop Elements gotten frustrated or felt overwhelmed, I invite you try one more time with this tutorial.

Before you begin, download, unzip and save the following file to your computer; Shabby Orchard Quick Page. All you need is Photoshop Elements, the quick page from the download file and one photograph.

Start by opening Photoshop Elements. The screenshots are from Photoshop Elements 8, but you should be able to follow along in other versions.

On the left side of the screen you’ll see a set of icons. Each of these represents a tool available to you in PSE. This section is referred to as the Tools Palette. On the right side of the screen is the Layers Palette. At the top of the screen is your main menu (File, Edit, etc.) and just below it is the Options Toolbar.

We’ll start by opening the quick page. In the Main Menu Bar go to Edit>Open.

Navigate to the quick page you’ve saved on your computer and click Open.

Now open the photo you want to use on your page, File>Open (keystroke Ctrl+O).

Navigate to the photo and click Open.

Click on the Move Tool in the Tools Palette.

Click on your photo and drag it onto the quick page.

Look in the layers palette and you’ll see you now have two layers in the quick page document. The top one is your photo and the bottom is your quick page. Think of layers much like a paper scrapping page. A traditional paper scrap page is comprised of many layers; a background paper, photos, embellishments, lettering, etc. Digital scrapping is much the same and you will track each layer via the layers palette. In this case you only have two layers – the quick page and the photo. We will be adding a title layer as we move through the tutorial. In order to manipulate a specific layer, it must be ‘active’. You can set any layer as the active layer by clicking on it in the layers palette.

Now we need to switch the order of the layers so the photograph is sitting under the quick page. To do this click on the photo layer in the layers palette and drag it to below the quick page layer.

Note that even though my photo is bigger than the hole there is a dashed line indicating where the edges of the photo are. This is called the bounding box. To resize your photo select the move tool from the Tools Palette and click and drag any corner of the bounding box. If you are working in Photoshop (as opposed to PSE) hold down the shift key to assure your photograph stays in proportion.

You can also rotate you photograph using the move tool. To do so, move your cursor just outside a corner of the bounding box until the cursor becomes a bent two-headed arrow. Now click and drag your cursor to rotate the photo.

Continue to experiment with the move tool to move, rotate and resize your photo until you are satisfied with its position. When you are satisfied with the size and position of your photo, click the green check mark that appears at the lower right of the bounding box.

Now click on the text tool in the tools palette. The text tool looks like a capital ‘T’.

Click once on your canvas near the title strip at the top left of the photo and type a title for your page. For now, don’t worry about exact placement, size or font. Chances are you won’t be able to see what you just typed. If so, take a look at the layers palette. There is now a text layer, but it is likely under the quick page layer. To fix this click on the text layer in the layers palette and drag to the top spot, just above the quick page layer.

Click and drag across your text to highlight it. Now look at the options bar near the top of your workspace. You’ll see drop down menus for selecting your font style and size. Use these to choose a font for your title and select a size. If you don’t like any of the sizes in the drop down menu, you can type in a number of your choice.

With your text still highlighted click on the colored box in the Options Toolbar to open the color picker. You can use the color picker to select a color for your text. If you want to match a color on the quick page click once on the quick page on the color your want to use and the color picker will select that color for you. When you are satisfied with your color choice, click ‘OK’ to close the color picker and change the color of your text.

You can adjust the placement of your text as needed by clicking on the move tool in the tools palette and moving, rotating or resizing the text just as you did the photograph.

Optional: Use the text tool to add a subtitle, information or date just below the photo.

When you are happy with the final results of your layouts, save your page (File-> Save).

Prior to printing your page, you’ll want to save a flattened version. Go to Layer-> Flatten Image. Flattening the image combines all your layers into one.

Congratulations! You’ve completed your page.

Credits: Shabby Orchard by Misty Cato, Fonts – Cookies and 1942 Report.