Alright everyone, are you ready for a quick and easy Photoshop project? We are going to make a scrapbook page for the cost of a single sheet of photo paper. You don’t need mad Photoshop skills or all afternoon, all you need are three photos.
This is a barebones example of a super easy, super fast method of producing a scrapbook page. I’m using Adobe Photoshop CS3 on a Mac, but this tutorial is good with past versions of the software and is PC friendly as well. You can make it from scratch in no time, or you can upload my template, complete with “beach” font and background photo.
For this page you will create five elements: a background, photos, title, captions and simple embellishments.
I like to make these quick pages to be printed on borderless 8×10 photo paper. Then I can just slip them into albums, mail them to Grandma or pin them to my bulletin board. But, if your printer doesn’t do this format, just use a regular letter size and give it a trim when you are finished. So, your first step is…
1. Open a new document: Make your dimensions 8 inches by 10 inches and your resolution 300 (this is for print so we want a good resolution).
2. Add your background: Simple photos work best (like my photo of the beach), but you can also use another copy of one of your three main photos. Open your background photo and click and drag it into your new document. Using the Free Transform Command (detailed below) enlarge your photo until it fills the document. You may need to zoom out to do this. Then with your background photo layer selected in your layer pallet (usually in the bottom right) change the opacity from 100% to between 15 and 30. Very nice.
3. Add your three photos. I used three we recently took at the beach. Open each photo and then using your move tool (the dark arrow) drag them to your new document. I recommend cropping them first using the crop tool, but make sure you leave a tiny bit of space for us to turn into our photo effect border later on.
Select each one in turn and using the Free Transform Command (see below for details) resize each one so that you have one large and two small. Keep your large photo centered and straight, and move your smaller ones to the top and bottom and rotate them slightly.
- The Free Transform Command: This is one of my most used commands in Photoshop. If you have mastered this skill, skip down to the next step. If not, read on and become a Free Transform Master!
Select the layer in your layer pallet containing the first photo you want to resize. Make sure your Move Tool (the black arrow at the top of your tool bar) is active. Then go to Edit–>Free Transform. Or if you want to be really cool, just hit Command T on a Mac or Control T on a PC. You now have a box around your photo! Hold down the shift key and drag a corner of that box in or out. Holding down the shift key insures that your proportions will be constant. You don’t want to squish your baby’s head or make your husband look like a reflection in a silly mirror. You can also rotate the image by hovering your move tool near a corner and dragging when you see the circular rotate arrow appear. You do not need to hold down the shift key when rotating to constrain proportions. When your image is the way you like it, don’t forget to hit Return/Enter to exit the Free Transform mode. You can always hit escape to exit the Free Transform Mode.
4. Arrange your photos. I recommend placing your big photo right in the center so that is is your main focal point. Leaving some room for a title and some text place the two smaller photos above and below your big one.
Now for the nifty photo effect with drop shadow! (I know this is what you were waiting for.) In the layers menu select your large photo and open up the layer style menu by double clicking to the right of the layer title. On the left of this menu box check the boxes for Drop Shadow and Stroke. Let’s start with stroke.
Photo border effect: Click the word Stroke on the left column of your layer style menu. Increase the size to between 20 and 50, whatever you like best with your photo. Set your Position to Inside from the drop down menu. This makes your corners square instead of round. Then skip down to the bottom and select a nice white color for your stroke. I like to use an off white, but bright white works great too for extra pop.
Drop Shadow effect: Click the Drop Shadow on the left column of your layer style menu. Set your opacity to around 75%. I like an angle of around 120 degrees. For distance, size and spread you can experiment with these for a shadow that you like (make sure your Preview box is selected so you can see what you are doing.) I like a distance of around 15, a spread of 5 and a size of 40.
Now you can go in to your other photos and do the same thing, or you can use this short cut. Hold down your ALT key then click and drag the little fx symbol in the layer of the photo you just altered. Drag it up or down to one of your other photo layers to copy the effect to that layer as well.
5. Make your title: Choose a good bold font. (I chose, appropriately enough, the Beach font). For the color I used a color from one of my photos, an ocean blue. Experiment with different sizes and placements to find something you like. Don’t forget you can use the Free Transform Command on text as well.
If you downloaded my template and you don’t have the “Beach” font you can simply choose another from what you have, or you can put the included font file into your font folder.
6. Fill in your text: Give your page a little content in a simple and smaller font. I like handwriting fonts like Handwriting-Dakota. You can place a couple simple paragraphs or you can place captions near each photo. I wasn’t able to include the font I used in my template file, but any font of that style will work.
7. Embellishments: I like to have a little something extra. For this page I added two “ribbons”. Select your Rectangle tool and draw your two ribbons. Fill it with the color you used for your title (double click the little square of color on your shape layer you just made to change the color). Now draw the two inner rectangles and fill them with a complementary color, I chose a sand color to go with my ocean blue. Move your ribbon layers up or down your list of layers to have them overlap your photos or go underneath them.
And voila! You have a pretty cute scrapbook page. You can go on from here and do so many more things, but this tutorial is just to get you started. I hope it helped. Let me know if you followed it and how it turned out!
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