I’ve recently discovered a new way to organize the stories and projects that I want to track for my scrapbooking. The tool that I’ve been using to help organize my scrapbooking life is called Trello! This is a free online tool, and it has really been a game-changer for me and how I scrapbook.

Trello is essentially a list full of lists, which are filled with cards that you can use to organize any project. You simply create a board (mine is entitled “Memory Keeping”) to manage your scrapbooking needs. Once you have a board created, you can add as many lists as you’d like & then each list can be filled with cards. Cards can then be used to create checklists, add labels & due dates, upload files, and add comments.

Tracking Stories

In my Trello account, I have a list for each year, which allows me to track specific stories within a particular year. For example, there are still stories in 2009 that I want to capture in our family scrapbook album. Within the yearly list, I have created a card for each month of the year… and then I use a checklist to contain all of the specific stories from that month that I still want to tell. There is also a description section in each card that allows you to add notes to yourself (or other information you’ll want handy as you work through these stories).

Here are a couple of examples of these annual cards and the monthly checklists that I use to ensure I don’t miss any stories…

Then, whenever I have time to scrapbook, I can look into the various years and decide which story I want to tell. This keeps me from having to search all over the place to find the photos and stories that I want to scrapbook! It saves me time and it makes organizing everything so much easier. And… I’m also finding that I’m actually inspired to go in and get these stories told, since I’m not overwhelmed with the idea of finding things to scrapbook. Another tip that I offer is that you can add in the photos, template or kit previews for stories via the file attachment functionality. You can also use Trello’s labeling function to create a variety of labels to help you track things even more easily!

Tracking Projects

Here is a glimpse into my Memory Keeping board, showing you three of the projects that I’m currently working on. I use these project lists to help me track my progress on the specific memory keeping projects I am actively working on. I have a list for each of them and then I’ve added cards under each list that allow me to track the bits and pieces of each project.

Additionally, here is a look at one of the cards in my “Girl Scout Book” list…

I’m working on getting all of the pages for my daughter’s Girl Scout experiences into an album. This particular card outlines all of the pages that I want to create for my daughter’s second year as a Brownie. I created a checklist for each layout (and the date so I can easily find the photos when I’m ready to scrapbook a particular page. As I finish a page, I simply check off that page from the list. Once I’m finished with a particular card, I simply archive that card so my list only shows the cards with active items to work on. You can also add the photos or other files that will help you with the project. They will be right there, ready for you when it’s time to scrapbook.

What I love about Trello is that it allows me to create a visual tracking system for the important things I want to be sure to stay on top of with my memory keeping activities. Tracking stories and projects are the primary ways that I’m currently using Trello but I am in the midst of creating new lists that will help me track other aspects of my creative life such as creative team responsibilities and tracking the scrapbook supplies that I want to use. Another idea is to create a list for scraplifting which allows you to track the layouts you’d like to scraplift at some point. And lastly, you can track the challenges at The Digital Press that you want to participate in each month. As you can see, Trello offers so many different ways for you to manage your memory keeping life! I hope this tool might be able to help you stay on track with your scrapbooking activities!

By the way, you can use Trello to track anything… recipes, job searches, an editorial calendar for your blog, tracking books and reading, planning a wedding, managing a move or vacation, home renovation, etc. It’s very versatile!

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About the Author  Amy lives in Richmond, Virginia, with her husband and their 13-year-old boy/girl twins. Their 22-year-old daughter is finishing up graduate school at Clemson! She has been scrapbooking since the early 1990s, but discovered digital scrapbooking in 2005 when her twins were born… and has primarily scrapped digitally since that time. She is passionate about telling her family’s stories and documenting their life together. She is also a huge reader (mostly literary fiction), a pop culture junkie, and LOVES all things beauty & makeup!

Hello everyone, and welcome to another edition of our Tutorial Tuesday series here on The Digital Press blog! Today, I’m going to teach you how to use smart objects in managing your layers within Photoshop.

Have you ever found yourself needing to sit back and take a break in the middle of a creating a digital masterpiece in order to contemplate the “how do I do that?” question? I have. Of course, with digital techniques, there’s often more than one way to approach something (gotta love digital!). I ran into a dilemma while working on a page recently, and then had an ah-ha moment; the solution to my problem was the use of smart objects.

Smart objects are layers, just like any other layer that you might use in your layers palette in Photoshop… except that they always retain the original data and file properties, no matter how you alter them. Alterations to smart objects (like changes in hue and saturation, addition of filters, warping, or resizing) are non-destructive… as compared to destructive (permanent) edits like flattening, simplifying, or rasterizing. For example, you can shrink a smart object… save it… and enlarge it again — without losing any of the original picture quality.

You can also treat smart objects as mini layouts embedded within a larger file. That’s how I wanted to use them. (I’ll be using Photoshop CC in this tutorial)

Let me start by explaining the look I was trying to achieve. A photo in a horizontal rectangular-shaped frame, with another photo also in that shape, but clipped to a mask. So, clipping a photo… to a mask… to a mask… that has a photo! Confused?

What I was trying to figure out was how to combine two mask-clipped-images into one. In the example above, imagine the red line is my photo frame, and the blue mask/photo combination extends beyond the edges of the frame. The lighter blue portion is what I want to hide or remove.

Remember how I said there are usually multiple ways to tackle problems in digital scrapbooking? Sure, I could have masked off the excess and painted it away, or I could have simply chosen a different mask shape in the first place. But, no. Of course, I couldn’t do that. I have a bad habit of challenging myself — and heaven help anyone who says I can’t do something!

So, let’s jump back to smart objects and the idea of layouts embedded within layouts.

The pink rectangle is the size I needed everything to be, so it would fit within my selected photo frame. However, I really liked the edging on the mask and wanted to include that as a design element. One photo on the pink section, and one on the black mask – but both in the rectangle. Here’s a step-by-step guide on achieving this look. If you’re not using smart objects, this is a lot easier than it looks, trust me! *wink*

Start by clipping the pictures you would like to use to the shapes or masks. At this point, your layers palette will look “normal” by all accounts…

To help delineate the masked images, I converted photo #2 by clicking on that image and running a black and white action (the action I used is called “Ansel,” if you like it). Because the action has been added at the top of the layers palette it turned everything below it – all the way to the background layer – black and white. That’s okay, for now. (Secretly, I kind of like this version, too!)

Enter Smart Objects! Select the action layer, photo #2 and its corresponding mask, then right click (in the layers palette) and select Convert to Smart Object…

Stop for just a minute and look at how the layers now appear. The three layers of photo #2 (the action, the the image, and the mask) have become one. If I had simplified or rasterized the layers, merging them together, I would have a black and white image in my mask shape… and that would be all. It would not be editable any more.

Take a closer look at the thumbnail in the layers palette, though. I encourage you to open up Photoshop and look at your own layouts, too, especially if you drag ‘n’ drop files into your layouts. In the lower right-hand corner of the thumbnail is what appears to be some mini images layered on top of one another. Double-click on them — I dare you.

This is what you’ll see…

Um. #mindblown

Remember at the start, I said to think of smart objects as layouts within layouts? When you open up a smart object, as I did here, all of the original layers are available. You can edit them in any way you wish. I could change out the picture, use a different mask, hide the black and white action – or change it altogether. When I close the tab or file, it will update back to the main file — the one this mini-layout is embedded in…

I can now simply clip the smart object layer to the one beneath it — and both images, the original, color butterfly, and the black-and-white-clipped-to-a-pretty-mask one have blended together and taken on the shape of the rectangle. Because the smart object layer has everything nicely bundled together, I can resize things, move them around, and play without destroying any of the original pieces. I made a few adjustments, including changing the color of the underlying rectangle shape (to help it blend in a bit more in sections where it was bleeding through from the smart object’s mask). Here’s the finished image…

I’ve shown just one way I use smart objects… but there are so many more. Let’s take title work, for example. Say you’ve created an awesome title, with alphas or fonts, paint, masks … anything really … and it’s a lot of layers, just by itself. If you convert that grouping to a smart object you can (1) move it around as a single piece, without having to worry about locking and unlocking layers, (2) resize it without any loss of pixelation, and (3) most importantly, open it up to make non-destructive changes.

I hope you’ll give smart objects a try. They are great tools to add to your digital scrapbooking arsenal!

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About the Author Kat Hansen is a creative team member here at The Digital Press. A Director of Human Resources by day, she loves the opportunity to spend a few hours each evening being creative. Vacation memories feature pretty heavily in Kat’s scrapbooking pages, as well as her health and fitness journey. Kat has quite the sense of humor (she “blames” her father for this), which she incorporates into her journaling and memory-keeping.