Author: The Digital Press

November 3, 2015

Harmony: Blending Papers in Photoshop

Are you ready for this month’s theme: Harmony? I have a quick tutorial for you about “harmonizing” papers in Photoshop. Don’t you just love all those realistic wood backgrounds in digital kits? Although they look great (and are much easier to scrap on than the real thing), it can sometimes be difficult to make your pages look realistic – especially with journaling and painty elements in the background. I have a quick and easy tip for harmonizing traditional scrapbook papers and journaling with those fabulous wooden backgrounds.

Here is a sample of the problem:

Notice how the paint element, jounaling and masked papers seem to be floating on top of the wooden background? If these elements were applied to this type of background IRL, it would look much more muted and textural. So how do you achieve this effect in Photoshop? It’s as easy as 1, 2, 3 . . .

Layer the paint, journaling or papers on top of the wooden background.
With the paint, journaling or paper layer active, click on the layer style icon at the bottom of the layers panel.
Adjust until the element is blended to your liking.

The Blending layer style is located under the layer styles icon (fx) at the bottom of the layers panel in Photoshop.

Just click the fx icon and then choose Blending Options:

Once you click on Blending Options, the blending menu will appear:

To change the appearance of the paint, journaling or paper just move the black sliders to the right and white sliders to the left until you achieve the desired result. You can also make the effect more muted my splitting either or both of the black and white sliders. As shown above, I split the black slider slightly on my page. I did this by placing the cursor on the right side of the black slider and hitting the Alt key while pulling the right side away from the left side. There is no one perfect recipe for using this blending option, you just have to play with it until you achieve the look you want.

And here is my finished layout, with the blending effect applied to the background papers (I actually applied it to the masks that the papers were clipped to), the journaling and the paint element:

Created with Fright | Bundle by Sahin Designs

Ahhh, that looks so much better! You can also use this tool to blend an entire background page onto another (which I especially like to do with wooden background papers). Have fun with it and be sure to link up your blended creations in the comments.

Until next time ~
Judie

About the Author: Judie is a member of The Digital Press creative team. She spends most of her time engaged in creative endeavors of all sorts. Traveling, Starbucks, football and Harry Potter are just a few of her favorite things.

November 1, 2015

Live in Harmony

Welcome to November, a fun-filled month at The Digital Press! (Wait, it’s November already???) This month, our one little word is HARMONY.

Could this word be more perfect for this month? In the U.S., this is certainly a very busy month as it kickstarts the Holiday season. On top of that, we have DSD AND most importantly, The Digital Press turns 1!!! Can you believe that we are already approaching our first birthday!? Seriously – time flies when you’re having fun. With all of that excitement, we feel that finding harmony is all the more important.

Harmony doesn’t have to only mean finding peace due to holidays – although this would be nice. It could also mean finding harmony, balance, peace with your family, relationships, designs, etc. The list could go on and on.

Here is some inspiration I found on Pinterest:

Sources (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8)

As you can see, the word Harmony can evoke lots of inspiration for your own memory keeping. I myself cannot wait to implement it this month for my own projects (and life).

Each month, we like to encourage you to step out of the box at times with our challenges. Below are the list of upcoming challenges for the month that focus on Harmony. For more information about our challenge system please read this post in our forums.

Here is a handy image you can save to your computer, featuring our lineup for November (made by the ever-talented Alina from the TDP creative team, using the brand new store collab One (in honor of our first birthday) that you can purchase for only $4 for the first 4 days of the month!

Please keep checking back on the blog for more information about all of the fun we have planned this month – it will be a great one!

About the Author: Rachel Alles is on the Creative Team here at The Digital Press. She is fortunate to share her life with her loving husband, Doug, and two blessings: Madeline and Maxwell. The three of them are her main source of inspiration for her pocket and traditional style pages. When she’s not scrapping, she enjoys anything Disney related, learning more about photography (and attempting to turn the dial off Auto) and dabbling in home decor projects.

October 30, 2015

Savor Your Delicious Memories

What is it about food that brings back so many memories? When I think about special moments from my life, so many of them are tied to cooking or eating. Those precious moments are perfect to document in your scrapbooks. While your family might not be able to taste that special recipe again, they will always remember the way they felt in that moment. Baking a special cookie recipe with my grandmother, taking my boys out for their first ice cream cone, and pulling my first Thanksgiving turkey out of the oven are just a few on the memories I have that are tied to food. I can remember my feelings so easily in those moments because all my senses were working at the same time.

Savor Your Delicious Memories

One of my favorite food traditions is our Friday night pizza. I make homemade pizza dough and then my boys and my husband make and bake the pizzas. It’s a little thing, but is a tradition that is so special to our family. I hope that when my boys are grown with families of their own, that they will carry on the same kinds of traditions with their own children.

Savor Your Delicious Memories

Scrapbooking is also a great way to save the special recipes passed down through your family. I have a few recipes written in my grandmother’s handwriting that I have turned into layouts that will become family recipe books to share with my loved ones. Looking over those recipes transports me right back to her kitchen as a little girl, helping her roll out snickerdoodles or make lasagne.

This month, I want to encourage you to savor your delicious memories by scrapbooking a favorite memory tied to food. I am hosting a challenge over on the forums at The Digital Press and would love for you to come play along. All you have to do is scrap about a favorite recipe, food tradition, or simply a layout about food. I can’t wait to see all the delicious layouts you come up with!

Savor Your Delicious Memories

About the Author: Katie is a member of the Creative Team here at The Digital Press. She lives in Central Florida with her husband and their four sweet but crazy boys. When she’s not dodging Nerf bullets or trying to dig out from under the never ending pile of laundry, she enjoys photography, cooking, going to Disney World with her family, and, of course, digital scrapbooking.

October 27, 2015

Putting It All Together for Pocket Scrapping

So up until this point, I have written blog posts about taking daily/weekly photos, jotting memories using various apps, and uploading and organizing your photos with keywords. Today I’d like to talk about using Smart Collections in Lightroom to organize your photos for weekly pages and putting it all together.

At the beginning of the year, in preparation for my weekly documentation of our lives, I set up Smart Collections in Lightroom, which are photo collections based on a set of rules that you define. Photos that meet those criteria you establish are automatically added to that collection. Let’s get started.

Setting Up A Collection Set

The first thing I did was set up a Collection Set called Project Life 2015. A Collection Set is container that houses Collections. Fittingly, it’s icon looks like a photo filing box.

Click on the + symbol on the Collections panel and choose Create Collection Set. Name your collection set and click Create.

Setting Up a Smart Collection

Next, I set up my first Smart Collection. Click on the name of your Collection Set so that it is highlighted and then click on the same + symbol you clicked on before. This time scroll down to Create Smart Collection. The following dialog box will pop up:

The first thing you need to do is create a name for your Smart Collection. I called mine Week 1.

Next, make sure you check off to have it located inside the Collection Set you just created. In my case, I located this Smart Collection inside the Collection Set called Project Life 2015.

Next, you need to establish the rules it will follow when deciding which photos to include in your Smart Collection. I told it to match ALL of the rules (of which there is only one in my case). That rule was that the Capture Date be during the first week of January. To do this, click where it says Rating. It will bring up a drop down menu. Scroll down to Date and then select Capture Date from the fly out menu. Then click where it says, “is” and change it to, “is in the range.” Next, input your dates.

Mac User Tip: In Calendar, under preferences, you can set your calendar up to start the week on any day of your choosing. I set mine up to start on a Monday.

In addition, under the Advanced tab, you can check off to show week numbers. Perfect for weekly documenting!

The last Smart Collection I set up is called, “Weekly Picks.” My rules are to filter out Flagged Photos. You will see why in the next section.

Simple Steps for Pocket Scrapping: Flagging Photos

When I am ready to sit down and scrap a weekly spread, I open up Lightroom and click on the weekly folder of photos that I am up to. I scroll through the photos and flag the photos that I would like to use by pressing “P” on the keyboard to “Pick” the photos I like. A small white flag will appear above your flagged photos.

Once I flag all the photos I like, I go to my “Weekly Picks” folder and look through the photos I picked. I take a look at the number of photos I have chosen and decide whether I have too many, too little, or just right. If I think I have too many, I whittle them down a little bit more by pressing “U” on the keyboard to “Unpick” some photos. If I don’t have enough, I do a search for “Filler” photos. These are photos that can be used in any given week.

During my uploading process, I try to identify photos that are not time specific — meaning they really could be used in any weekly spread because the specific week they were taken in is not relevant. For example, this past week, my photos to choose from were pretty light, so I searched for some filler photos and found a photo of my daughter drinking milk. She drinks several cups of milk every day, so it really didn’t matter what week the photo ended up in. What mattered was that somewhere I told the story of her continued love for milk during this stage in her life.

Exporting Photos

The next step I take is to export the photos to Photoshop. In Lightroom, select all the photos you have flagged and right click on one of the photos. Scroll down to Edit In>Open as Layers in Photoshop.

This will open a new document in Photoshop with all of the photos in that one document on separate layers. All of the layers will be highlighted. Using the move tool, I click and drag all the layers over onto the template I am using. I then move the layers around on my template to the photo spots where I would like them on my template. Then I do the same in my layers palette so I can clip them to the photo spots.

Adding Journal Cards and Embellishments

The next step is to add my Weekly Calendar Card and Journal Cards. Then I add any other embellishments. (Though, honestly, I keep my layouts pretty simple. It’s all about the documenting for me.)

Saving

The final step is to save my layout. I save a .PSD version and a full resolution .JPG version. The .PSD version is in case I need to make any changes and the .JPG version is for printing. I also have to save web versions for uploading to galleries, but once they are uploaded, I delete these versions.

And that’s all there is to it. By following these steps week in and week out, it has really sped up my process and that’s what I need to do in order to keep up with such an ambitious project. Hopefully these tips will help you in your process or inspire you to give it a shot next year. I can say with certainty, my kids LOVE seeing their lives documented with such detail.

Happy scrapping!

About the Author: Jen is a member of the Pocket Team at The Digital Press. Having scrapped digitally for many years, she has come to embrace the simplicity of Pocket Scrapping since it fits more easily into her busy lifestyle of shuttling her three children from field to field. When she is not on the computer, you will find her working out or really doing anything else she can besides cooking, cleaning and doing laundry.

October 23, 2015

Savor The Outdoor Beauty Of Fall

savortheoutdoorbeauty-blogheader

This is my favorite time of the year, as the temperatures cool, the air feels crisp and clean, the birds are plentiful at our suet feeder, and the leaves start to change color. What a wonderful time of the year it is to get outdoors, go for a walk and even better, bring your camera to take some photos of the local scenery. I will often park my car on the side of the road when passing a particular eye-catching view and snap a pic of it with my phone or my small mirrorless camera which I often keep in my purse. For the photo in this layout, I knew the quality of the photo wouldn’t be exceptional but the memory it evokes is what I was after. This was in Northern BC, while driving by on a tour bus. I snapped this shot through the window.

seasonschange_aktrip copy-800

Fall is such a sensory experience, with the smells, the taste, and the visual impact of the changing environment. Take a photo as you stroll through your neightborhood or visit a local park. Just get outdoors and experience the changing season. Fall makes me think of hot chocolate, orange, yellow and red colors, pumpkin spice latte’s, morning fog, swirling leaves in the wind, and one of the best things, for me, is that it becomes sweater weather! I love to wear my sweaters (I have a lot LOL)! In fact, I think I need to get a photo of myself outside, wearing one of my sweaters, with the fall colors around me. I’m glad I have a selfie stick. I think I’ll do this later today and then create a page about my love of sweaters.

For the photo of this layout, I was at the corner of our street, walking up the walkway to the bridge. (I’m lucky enough to live across from a river.)

naturewalks copy-800

Fall might look and feel different for you, depending on what region you live in. Why not scrap a layout about what fall is like in your neighborhood, sharing what you see in your neck of the woods.

Head on over to the challenge forum and check out this months’ challenges including my challenge! Hope you participate and I look forward to to seeing what fall looks like in your neighborhood.

Rae Rae is part of the design team at The Digital Press and has been a scrapbooker and photographer for many years, living on the west coast, with her hubby and labradoodle, Taz. She’s addicted to chocolate, TV shows and books!

October 20, 2015

Simple Trick for Digital Vellum

When I scrapbooked on paper, I often used vellum as an accent or as the paper for my journaling. The look is easy to achieve digitally!

I like to type out my journaling for the page first.

Using the Shape tool, draw a white box behind your journaling.

Change the fill of the shape layer until it looks right to you – I usually use between 50 and 60 percent fill.

Using the shape tool allows you to put a drop shadow on the journaling block without having the shadow make the digital vellum look darker – so throw on the drop shadow of your choice, position your text and vellum on your layout, and you are done!

Happy scrapping! 🙂

Supplies Used: Project Twenty Fifteen | October Collection by Laura Passage

About the Author: Kacy is a member of The Digital Press Creative Team. She’s an Environmental Engineer living in Arizona with a cranky, pudgy, but insanely cute calico kitty. She enjoys scrapbooking, crocheting, dancing awkwardly to electronic dance music, Grumpy Cat, cupcakes, Stephen King books, and men in kilts.