MomShots

Before I get too far into this, I wanted to let you know that GUIDES are not available in Photoshop Elements.

This week I decided to tell you about GRIDS & GUIDES, plus as an added bonus I am including a tutorial on how to make cute little GHOSTS to add to your scrapbook layouts. I couldn’t help myself being so close to Halloween. After-all, Halloween is my all time favorite holiday!

First off, we need to talk about the serious stuff GRIDS & GUIDES. Did you know that there are GRIDS & GUIDES available in Photoshop? NO? Well then, you are in luck! You can find and “turn on” the GRID by going up to the MENU BAR then Click VIEW > SHOW > GRID. The GRID is great to have on when you are trying to align different things into a layout and want things to be straight.

So now you know where to find that hidden GRID, but what about the GUIDES? Where are they and how on earth do I turn them on? ALSO, if I have the GRID, what do I need GUIDES for? (AGAIN, GUIDES are NOT available in Photoshop Elements)

I personally prefer the guides (although when I have a ton of things to align I do use the GRID), and this is because the GUIDES are very, very, very customizable. The GRID is set with a specific space between the lines, where GUIDES can be set at any distance from each other. For example, say you wanted a 1” margin, but you wanted horizontal spacing to be 3/8” and vertical spacing to be ½”. On the GRID, the 1” and ½” would be easy to place, but the 3/8” would be guess work, unless you place a GUIDE at the 3/8” mark.

To get a GUIDE, you move your cursor over the RULER, (the top ruler will give you a horizontal guide, the side ruler will give you a vertical guide), Click and hold the mouse button on the RULER, then drag the GUIDE to the position you want it and let go of the mouse button. You can have as many GUIDES as you need on the workspace. If you need to move a GUIDE, make sure you have the MOVE TOOL (shortcut key is V), then hover over the GUIDE. When you get the double lines with arrows pointing away from it, click and drag it to where you need it. When you are finished with a GUIDE you can get rid of it by dragging it back to the RULER. If you want to get rid of ALL of the GUIDES, go up to the MENU BAR, and click on VIEW > CLEAR GUIDES. If you just want to turn the GUIDES off to view changes without getting rid of the GUIDES, go up to the MENU BAR, click on VIEW > SHOW > GUIDES (if there is a check mark next to GUIDES it is turned on and if there is no check mark the GUIDES are turned off).

Another great thing that you can do with your GRID is to go into the PREFRENCES (in the MENU BAR, under EDIT > PREFRENCES) and change the COLOR, STYLE, SUBDIVISIONS and SQUARE SPACING of the GRID.

**NOTICE** In the same PREFRENCES dialogue box, you have options for the COLOR and STYLE of your GUIDES too! I highly suggest becoming great friends with the PREFRENCES box!!

NOW, we can get on with the fun stuff! GHOSTS!

First, we need to start a new file. (FILE > NEW > BLANK). In the dialogue box, I chose 3 inches for both the width and height and TRANSPARENT for the background.

We immediately want to make a new layer (LAYER > NEW LAYER, or click the NEW LAYER ICON that looks like a piece of paper with a folded corner), and fill it with BLACK (make sure the color boxes on your left hand tool panel is the default black and white.  Alt+Backspace fills the layer with the top color). This is a temporary layer that we will be discarding later. We are only using this black layer so we can see the GHOST while we are working on it! You will also want to drag this black layer to the bottom of the layer stack, then click on the black layer just above it.

Next, make sure your foreground color is WHITE (the small squares of color at the bottom of the tools panel), the brush you are going to use is a hard edge brush, and using the mouse, rough out the shape of your GHOST! Don’t forget to erase out the holes for the eyes and mouth.

Once you have a GHOST that you are happy with, go up to the layer opacity box and lower the opacity. I found that any number between 30% and 50% looks pretty good. Now you can delete the black layer by clicking it and then drag it to the trash can.

From here you want to save it, so go up into the MENU BAR and click FILE > SAVE AS and in the dialogue box you will want to name it and this time we will leave it as the default .psd file type (so we can go back and change it later) and click OK.

To go one step further, we can save this again as a .PNG file type so we can use it over and over again in other layouts! Go back up to the MENU BAR and click FILE > SAVE AS and in the dialogue box you will want to name it and this time we will change the file type to PNG.

If you are an advanced user, you can experiment by holding down the CTRL key and clicking on the layer your ghost is on. This creates a selection area in the shape of your ghost. NOW experiment with some of the gradients. When picking your gradients, make sure your FILL option is set foreground to transparent. If you feel really adventurous, you can try out adding layer styles too!

Hope you enjoyed these tips and have a GREAT HALLOWEEN!!

****Note from Jessica:  Tye made a cute little ghost for you to download but I can’t seem to make it available for you to download.  I would love to email you a copy of it.  Send me a quick email at Momshots at yahoo.com or send me a note on our Contact page and I’ll send it to you right away.  Hopefully I can figure out how make files available for you to download soon!!!