Digital Scrapbooking with PaintShop Pro - Beginner project | Carole Asselin | Skillshare
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Digital Scrapbooking with PaintShop Pro - Beginner project

teacher avatar Carole Asselin, PaintShop Professional

Watch this class and thousands more

Get unlimited access to every class
Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Watch this class and thousands more

Get unlimited access to every class
Taught by industry leaders & working professionals
Topics include illustration, design, photography, and more

Lessons in This Class

    • 1.

      Welcome

      2:55

    • 2.

      Opening and customizing your PSP

      4:03

    • 3.

      Basic edits for your photos

      4:06

    • 4.

      Setting your project canvas

      2:30

    • 5.

      Layering papers on your layout

      4:09

    • 6.

      Adding photos to your layout

      3:04

    • 7.

      Add elements to your layout

      4:51

    • 8.

      Using Alpha

      4:45

    • 9.

      Add text to your layout

      2:42

    • 10.

      Fine-tuning the display

      1:19

    • 11.

      Add shadows to your layout

      5:15

    • 12.

      Save your layout

      4:48

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About This Class

Get started today with your first digital scrapbook page using Paintshop Pro.

Right from the start, you will set up your program for convenient use, adjust your photos as needed and display them along with a few digital papers and elements. Finally, you will be able to save it for future reference and for sharing with your friends and family.

If you don't have Paintshop Pro yet, you can always download the free 30-day trial and easily complete your project during that period.

Meet Your Teacher

Teacher Profile Image

Carole Asselin

PaintShop Professional

Teacher

Hello, I'm Carole.

I have been an active PaintShop Pro user for over 15 years, specializing in digital scrapbooking. I am now recognized as a PaintShop Professional by Corel.

I have been teaching digital scrapbooking using PSP for over 10 years and I have built a teaching site called Scrapbook Campus in 2011. Whether you are brand new to scrapbooking, or you are transitioning from paper to digital, you can do it, and I will be there to guide you all the steps of the way, You can make your memories more beautiful with PaintShop Pro and share them with your loved ones. 

See full profile

Level: All Levels

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Transcripts

1. Welcome: Hi. My name is Cavallo s. Like I'm also known online as gets out. I have been an active paint shop pro user for over 15 years, and I'm also a painter, a professional selected by Carell Digital scrapbooking is a way to show pays your photos document events four. Tell a story, but all way using your computer insect off paper supplies. That is a very compact wait to store all your supplies and also a flexible way to work. Since you can create your scrapbook anywhere at home, Living room on the deck, Panyu. Even while you're on vacation in this class, you will learn how to set up your paint shop pro for efficient use, Apply some basic edits to your photos to improve them and complete your very first layout is you don't have paint shop pro yet you can download the trial version in the description below. The trial version is good for 30 days, so that's plenty of time for you to complete your first layout and probably a few more. This class is suitable for anyone starting digital struggle, pain using a chump, whether you are transitioning from judicial papers, Scrabble or policing new to the hobby, even if you are completely new to using paint shop pro, this class will guide you step by step from the very beginning. And if you're already usedto program, you'll learn a few tips and tricks and techniques to apply your knowledge to digital scrapbooking projects. I'm going to be using a sharp hope. 29. However, if you're using a different version, most of the steps will still apply. Right shop 2018 and 2019 are very center for the older ones. Only interfaces changed a bit, but overall you'll be able to follow you matter what version at any point. If you have some questions related to the tools, sittings or supplies, you doing a project. Just pose the question in discussion, you know, and I will make sure to answer all the questions to help you as you need. Are you ready to say 2. Opening and customizing your PSP: When you first install an open paint shop pro, you will see this screen. If you're using version 2018 or above off course, you're welcome. Screen will be slightly different because you will not have any recent files and you will not have a custom work space. You will have only essentials and complete as options by default. It will be said to essentials, but you'll have more tools and options and more flexibility if you use the complete workspace. Once you check it, you click on the edit tab on top toe. Open the actual work space. Now, depending on the resolution and the size of your monitor the area, the workspace might be smaller or larger. Since I do have a fairly small monitor and low resolution, I find I don't I don't have enough room, so I will make some space. The organizer palette at the bottom might be great to select photos, especially if they are in a single folder, but I find it it tends to take a lot of space so I can click on the X to get rid of it. For now. If I ever needed, I can always reopen it under view palette organizer. The same thing happens with the Learning Center, which always great to have tips is taking a lot of space so you can close it. Now you're left with the tools toolbar. This standard tool bars the settings toolbar. You have the materials palette and the layers palette. Now, for the overall look, you can see that the interface is pretty dark. If you like this, that's great. If not, you have options. So under user interface workspace color, you can change to medium great for light grip. Personally, I prefer to light great, but that is up to you. In addition, you have the option to change icon size the small, medium or large, which will again depend on your preference but also your screen size and resolution. Same thing for the text size, which can be small or large. Now, once you open your images, when you open your images by default, you will have them. This played in a tab format so you have tabs here to change photos one by one. If you're doing digital scrapbooking, you might actually want to have more of your images visible so you can change that under window tab document. It is checked by default, so you simply uncheck it, and that allows you to move your photos around on your workspace, place them side by side by side, a justice sizing and compare them. This is going to be more convenient. In addition, you will probably want tohave a ruler to compare the size of your images and elements, especially when you're doing scrapbooking because you don't want to have a button that is too big or photo that is too small. You can go to view and check the rulers, and now you have the ruler added to all your images, and that's about it. Now you are ready to start your post project. 3. Basic edits for your photos: now that we have our paint shop, said it is time to do some edits on the photos, or at least choose the photos we want to use and decide if they need some fixing. So so you can click on file open or control. Oh, or you click on the open icon in your toolbar. And here is the photo I'm gonna be using. It's a fairly old photo, so the resolution is not necessarily the best. It's a little bit blurt, but I like it because it is meaningful. So in this photo it's somewhat dull so I can look into adding some colors or some contrast . The first thing to remember is whenever you edit a photo, never work on your actual original, just in case something happens, and you want to go back to your original photo so you will duplicated so you can go to window duplicate or a shift deep. Now your original you can simply close it. Then wait is no risk. In order to improve the colors and increase a bit of the contrast, you can go under a just brightness and contrast, and you have levels. Here you have three handles or nose, and what you do is go from the white one, and if you move it toward the center, it will brighten the light colors you can see on the picture. The same thing for the dark will dark in the dark colors, so overall it will increase the contract. You can see how the colors look better. This is one way you can use to improve the colors of your photos. Even the regular photos can get a little pop of color that way. Now, in this picture, I have two elements that are really not putting up pretty or not wanted. I have this person here. I have no idea who it is, and I don't really want her in the picture. So what I can do is using the selection tool. There's a free hand selection tool here and the selection type. You can go to FREEHAND, and now you select around the person or the object. It could be an object to and click on the Magic Phil. And just like magic, the person is gone. Now you de select, you can go to selection said, like none and use the keyboard shortcut controlled deep I tend to use this one very much and that's it. And I can do the same thing with this sign and again hit the magic feel and it's gone and I do control de to de select. That's not then, right? So this is how you can start by fixing a bit off the colors and removing unwanted elements . 4. Setting your project canvas: now that I have edited the two photos I want to use for this project, it is time toe open the base for that project, so I will just minimize my photos. No need to close them, and I will go to file new control em or click on a new icon. This will open this dialog box. When you want to create a layout for scrapbooking, you might be planning on printing it. If that's the case, you have to change the resolution to 300 if it's not already changed, because that will give better printing results. The with is typically 12 inches by 12 inches, which will mean 3600 by 3600. So at 300 pixels per inch, that makes 12 inches. I want to start as a raster background and transparent, so if you have a color here, you click on transparent. If you plan on creating many scrapbook pages, you can create a preset so all those values will be ready for the next time. If that's the case, you click on plus to add preset and you can put 12 by 12 layout and click OK, so now in the user's user preset, you'll have 12 by 12 layout, meaning that the next time, if you want open, you can see how my values are back to default or whatever I used last. Simply click on the 12 by 12 layout and all the settings are ready, so this will save you time. If you are creating several pages off course, I'm using 12 by 12. But if you are scrapbooking in a different format, for whatever reason, which is okay, you can create a preset for a different size. So now I have my base layout, which is going to be the complete size of my page. 5. Layering papers on your layout: Now let's start layering papers to create our layout. I'm going to be using a digital kit from Heather Teeth called Love Spoken here, and you can actually have a mini version off this kids by clicking in the description below . The full kit is no longer available, but Heather graciously allowed me to distribute this. Minnick it for your use for your first project, so I'm going to click on Open and in the kids I have in Alfa. I have a folder with papers and the rest are various elements. I'm going to go in the papers folder, an open D black paper. You can see that the paper is 3600 by 3600 pixels. That is the standard size for scrapbooking kits, since the designers assumed that you will be creating also a 12 by 12 page. Now, in order to get this paper onto my project, I go in the layers palette, click and drug on my work, and that's it. That's all I need to do. Now. Let's close this paper now. The second paper, I'll do the same thing and I will open this peach color paper and I would click and drag it onto my work, and I click the X to close it. Although I like that peach color, I would like to emphasize the color a little bit more. I would like to have more contrast. What I can do is exactly the same thing I did for my photos, which is going to adjust brightness and contrast levels. And in this case you can see how most of the colors are toward the light color. I'm going to just move that dark dot more handle, and you can see how the color is now more pronounced. I like it, too. Now I have that orangey color on top of the black color paper, but I don't see that black color paper. So what can I do if I was to use scissors and papers I would use to cut it around, But with a digital, even though I could cut around, I can simply resize it. So that's what I'll do. Go to image resize and I'm going to resize by percentage. I want to lock the aspect ratio. If you don't see those bottom settings, it's probably because this is unchecked, so you check it. You want to lock, and you don't want to resize all the layers. In fact, you only want to resize that one layer and you can resize by 95%. It says here it will bring it down to 3400 pixels. Let's see if it's enough. That's good. If you prefer to have it smaller, that is your choice. You simply have to change the setting for the percentage. 6. Adding photos to your layout: And now that we have the base of the two papers needed, I will place my photos onto my project. So I opened my photo and go going in the layers palette. I click and drag. I can minimize it. Go for the 2nd 1 again. You have to make sure that you are able to see your projects. We can slide it there and there. So I have 22 papers and two photos. Now that we have are two papers and two photos, let's arrange the photos on our project. I will use the pick tool, which is this white arrow. If you don't see it, it's probably because it's hidden by the move tool. So here is the pick tool you notice with the pick tool. You have handles all around your photo and one in the center with another handle. You have different modes. You have to make sure that you keep the mode to scale. Occasionally it changes, so you keep it at scale and holding the center. You can move your photo where you want. The handles will be used if you need to enlarge or reduce your photo as long as it's step to scale. It will not distort your photo. You have to be very careful not to use a side handle because that will distort your photo. If you want to resize, always use the corner. It is important not to enlarge the photo if you can. Enlarging a tiny bit might be fine, but if you're enlarge a lot, it will just add some blurriness to your photo and won't give a very good result. You can size down if you're photo is two bit, and with this handle you can actually rotate it. So that's what I'm going to do here is rotate my photo. Now I'll just click on the other photo to activate it, and I'll move it out year, and I will rotate it a little bit. That seems to be okay. However, I noticed that this photo is covering here apart. It is important in the photo, so I can simply go in the layers palette. Click on the top photo on the top layer and simply drag it under the other one. So not wait. I can layer them in a way that it won't distract or cover important details. 7. Add elements to your layout: now, I would like to add some accents on this layout, namely some frames. So I couldn't go again in the kit. I have, and I will go now in this set of elements and there is one frame rectangular frame, so I will quick and drag onto my layout. I see that it came in between the two photos. Problem could just slide it on top, and I would like to frame. I could frame the whole picture, but just for the fun of it, I decided I want to just frame the important part and leave the photo around. So what I can do now is simply rotate to match my photo. And here I am, framing kids. I'd like to do the same thing at the bottom, so I couldn't go again and drag. But I can also simply go in the layers palette, right click and duplicate. So now I have two copies of this frame. I can move this frame and rotated to match my other foretell. Now I have elements to really focus on the important parts of my photo. Let's add another accent. Let's close this one and often it is interesting to odd arrows or other elements that will just move your eye toward the element. So I'm gonna open thes arrows again. I'll go and drag them onto my layout and I'll put them here. It's angled them a little bit now. My arrows are on top of my frame. If that's what I like, that is great. If not, I can change the layer ring and place them underneath. Different. I'll leave them here. For now. Let's add Mawr elements to decorate my photo. Just some elements that are simple. I'll add some buttons. Those are pretty common elements. I have those two buttons. I'll move them. I moved quote the blue one and the beige one. My and I close my originals. I can please them where I want sometimes on the corners, kind of nice. Instead of having them just randomly, you place them at intersections or focus points. That's good. I also noticed in this kid that Heather has added some paint splashes and those are pretty neat. I do have a few hair couple, so I'm going to use this one and place it on my layout off course. I don't want that on top of everything. In fact, I will want tohave it under my photos, so I'll move them below the photos, but on top off the paper and I can arrange it so you can see it. One side. You decide. I can turn it around if I want. Maybe I want the pain to show up a little bit here. Yeah, that could do it. And since it's a little opaque, I can reduce the opacity here on top so that the paint is Onley. More subtle. Let's imagine that the paint was not completely cleaned up. 8. Using Alpha: Now we have added the basic papers, photos, some accents. It's timeto add a title. In this kid, you can have an alphabet already made, so you don't necessarily need to create your own. I will open here The folder called also and you have all the letters and numbers and even some symbols that you can use to create your text. What I will do now is I will open the letters I need to write a title here we were So I'll start with age and I will hold the control key so I can open e I'll go with the are for here. I don't need to get the e twice, so I'm gonna go with those three as a default, it will be placed just above the active layer. So my last layer was those paint splashes and my letter is kind of hiding here, so I'll just move it on the very, very top. So I will at least see it and I'll copy the age and I will copy the eat. So let's place them just roughly here. I need another e so very simply I can act. I can right click on this layer and duplicated. And now I have to ease. In fact, I'll need more because I'll need one for weeks. So here we and were I'm gonna need to, so w e r e. So I have the are so by moving it around it automatically activates your layer. So you have to correct layer right click, duplicate it. We're let's close the e and now we only need to double you because it's gonna be duplicated . That's open and find that w Here we will, moving here way and duplicated, and we have it here. Okay, so here the tax seems to be a little bit big. It does overlap my frame, which would not make sense. So I will need to resize it. So one simple way to do is using the same technique I used for the orange paper. So I will go to image resize again. I don't want to resize all the layers and maybe this time I'll goto 80%. Let's see what it will do. You can see how might e hiss smaller. That seems to be a good size. So I'll just repeat the command for all the letter, so I will activate the next layer. And although I could go again under imagery size, I can also go to edit, repeat the resize or control wide next, and I'll do it on my keyboard control. Why control wife and I'm done Here is the button. So all the letters have been resized Exactly the same weight very proportionate. And I can now align my letters without overlapping my frame. This is how I add a title using an alphabet. 9. Add text to your layout: very often. When you create a layout, you might remember exactly all the details, the dates, the location, the people around in the photo A general. But if you share your layout with somebody else, they might not know. Or if you look at your layout in two years or 10 years, you might not remember. So it is a good idea if you can add the stories on your layout so you can reference it later. For that, we will use the text tool. If you were to look at this picture, you might be wondering what this structure is, so I will add it as a text. I want to add the text here, so maybe I will have to move my arrow. Who knows? I can always tweak later, so I will choose a simple fault. I tend to like Ariel simply because it's very easy to read and the size often on the layout . I can go around 48 or 72. I go with pixels. If you are using points, it's going to be a different setting. But let's go with Pixels 72 and default color. Here is the same thing as the background so I can click on it and go with the block. Black text is easy to read on this color. If the color was really dark, I could write in white and for the foreground or the stroke. I don't want anything, so I just click on the transparent I call in here. I want my text, a line to the left, and for the rest, you just leave it as default. So I'll just click and you can see the cursor and you can type in your text. Once you're happy with your text, you can apply. If you want to change something overall, you can select it all and odd, bold change the size whichever. I think I will keep it with the bold here and when I'm happy, I click d check mark toe, apply to changes and now I have my text 10. Fine-tuning the display: Now that I have all my elements, it is time to tweak the arrangement in please the elements, photos, papers where I want. If I want to make any change so I can reactivate my pick tool. And maybe here I find that the photo spit big. So I'm gonna size it down a bit, which will give a bit more room for my text. I can move my frame also. That means I will move my button. And if you get close to a note here and the era was don't seem to want to change for you. You can always change tool, Go to the move tool, in which case you don't have any node and you can move your button. I'm going to move this area a little bit lower. So my text is in the right spots and visible, and that's about it. That's what I'm going to do. And this is going to be the arrangement for my elements. 11. Add shadows to your layout: When you're doing digital scrapbooking, everything will look flat, and that is normal. It doesn't have any thickness, so you have to play with shadows to give it the thickness. So it has that three D look. Every element on your layout is supposed to have a thickness except things that would be written, for example, text or something that is completely flat on the paper, like the paint. In this case, I have my Alfa. I can decide that they were drawn on the paper, in which case I have no shadow. Or it can decide that they were made from papers and would have a shadow. But let's look at them closely. There looks like scribbles, so if they are scribbles, it means they would be drawn or painted on paper, which means they would not having a shadow. This is a common mistake toe. Add a shadow toe every element. Things that are flat shouldn't have a shadow, or if it has shadow, it should only be for emphasis and not for three d effect. In our Leon, we will not add any shadow to the tech or the title, so let's start at the bottom with our papers off course, that black paper, even though we wanted toe add shadows, you would not see the shadow because it goes up to the edge. We can add a shadow through the orange paper again. In this case, the shadow will be on the block paper, so it might not be very visible. But let's add one. Anyways, we go to effects three D effects drop shadow. And for this kind of size, you can go with a good 10 pixels. Would a 10 blur, and you can add the shadow on a new layer. This is a good habit to take because it allows you to tweak the shadow later or even remove it without having to undo many steps. And the color is always block was. I said, we might not see very much, but you'll see better photos. Okay, so our next element here is the paint. Paint will not have shadow now. Under the photo, the photo should be about the same thickness as your paper so you can go again under effects. Three D effects job shadow and use the same settings. You can see how it adds that edge now to the second photo. Let's just repeat so we can go with control. Why it will have the same effect now onto the frame. If we consider the frames made out of paper with thick paper, then they will have the same thickness as the photos. Therefore, the same shadows. Let's add them with control. Why and the next frame control. Why, As you can see, it already gives a better, much better a definition about the arrows, while the arrow they do look like them are made of paper. So let's have the same shadow control white Perfect. You can see how now they really stand out now. The buttons well, buttons are thicker than paper, so they will need a bigger shadow. Mr. Do It manually. Yeah effects three D effects. Drop shadow and let's go toe at least twice, if not more. We can even go with 25 vertical and we want 25 horizontal Want our shadow to be even on both sides. The opacity is going to go down because it's going to be more blurred, were fainter and we increased the blur. Typically, I like to have to blur about the same amount as the offset it. Just It's just a rule of thumb to give you an idea, and you can see how. Now that button looks thicker, then frame perfect. Let's go to the next button. Well, the same button, same shadow. So let's go with control. Why? To repeat the exact same thing and now year layout is complete. 12. Save your layout: Now that you're finished, your layout aren't you're proud of it. It is time to save it because that's what you want. You want to save it either uploaded to a gallery off loaded to Facebook, send it to a friend or uploaded to a site where you can get it printed. The first thing you want to do is save it with all the layers. So you will go to file, save Oz, and you choose where you want it, and you want to save it as a type here PSP image and you can give it the name you want My layout 01 by saving in PSP image format, everything you have here will still be in separate layers. So if you want to come back tomorrow or next week and you find a typo, you can correct it. If you want to change a photo or you want toe, add another detail. Everything will still be around. Exactly. Has you finished it? However, if you want to send it to a printer, then you will have to change a format so you will go to again file save eyes and you will change it to J. peg. So what? J peg format. And you save it now, although on your workspace you still have all the layers. If you were to open your page tomorrow using the J peg, you will find something very different. Let's see, Let's close this one and let's reopen it. So I'm gonna open. Did J Peg and what do I have here? Only a single layer, Which means this one version cannot be edited. If I find a typo, I can't change it. I want to move the button or change the color. I can't do it. This is a flat image. But if I wanted to do some edits I can open that PSP image format And here I have all my layers exactly as they were when I closed it. If you want to upload to a gallery or Facebook or send by email, this Leo is very large is 12 inches wide, so typically you leapt on Lee, a smaller version. To do that, you go to image resize. Now you want to go buy pixels and you want to resize all the layers and you can goto about 600 pixels. Some people prefer 800 it will depend. Some places do have a limitation. So it is up to you to decide what size you want and you click. OK, now everything stays unchanged except the overall size. Now, if you want to post it on Facebook, you will need a J peg former, so you'll save it again as a J peg here. But you have to make sure you don't overwrite that full size one. So the trick is toe ad 600. So you will know that this one is the original and this one will be the size down format. And now you are ready to showcase your layout. How about now posting your J peg format layout in the projects below? I would love to see it. And if you have any questions about it, you can also ask in the discussion. Maybe you have some doubts about the format. Maybe you want to use a different kids may be different types of photos. Maybe you have only one photo. Whatever the challenge, you have posted a discussion below, and I will make sure to answer it. Now it's your turn to create your first layout if you haven't started yet. Okay, I'm waiting