I know I'm missing something

[chessie]

I have collected a few digital scrapbook kits and have finally decide to try my hand at a scrapbook page. I have photo shop elements 4.0. I know how to work in layers. At least I think I do. I've designed several T shirts. Some have had 10 or 12 layers each. I just can't make it work. I am so frustrated. I know I am missing something, but I can't figure out what. I am just going to put it up for a few days and maybe it will come to me what I am doing wrong. I have a Disney trip to plan for the end of this month. I need to work on that instead of playing around with something new.

Thanks for listening

 

[ngneer98]

why don't you post it here so we can take a look at it? it might not be as bad as you think!!!

 

[chessie]

it's not in the designing, it's in the doing. I'm missing a step. Every time I create a new layer it creates it own bran new document instead of adding it on top. I haven't gotten one single photo on my background. I'm not even caring what the design looks like. I just want to get down the technique. It's usually something so simple that when I figure it out I bang myself on the forehead. ( do we have a forehead banging smilie?)

 

[Fran98765]

I don't use PSE, so I'm kinda guessing here. My program has several different paste options, paste as a new layer and paste as a new document. Make sure you are using the correct paste to your original document.

The site Digital Scrapbook Place has some good tutorials, especially for brand new scrappers, perhaps this starting tut for PSE will help you:

http://www.digitalscrapbookplace.co...s/pse_firstlayout_ag/pse_firstlayout_ag.shtml

The only thing I disagree with them at that site is that they tell you to use 200dpi resolution and the industry "standard" is 300 dpi, which gives the best print quality, so when they say to open a file at 200dpi, I would make it 300.

Feel free to ask more questions as needed.

 

[ngneer98]

it's not in the designing, it's in the doing. I'm missing a step. Every time I create a new layer it creates it own bran new document instead of adding it on top. I haven't gotten one single photo on my background. I'm not even caring what the design looks like. I just want to get down the technique. It's usually something so simple that when I figure it out I bang myself on the forehead. ( do we have a forehead banging smilie?)

i use PSE 5, so lemme see if i can visualize this...... are you doing a 'file-open' kind of thing, or are you dragging and dropping? What I do is i have pictures or scrap supplies open in another folder and just drag and drop them into PSE and they appear in the bottom section of the screen.....so maybe you could just try that???

 

[chessie]

I'm using a PSE 5 tutorial. I'm doing an open file. I'm using the same tutorial that Fran suggested. It says in the tutorial that I should have bounding boxes around my images but I don't . I have separate files across the bottom of my photo bin. It won't let me even drag and drop. Every time I click on anything in the photo bin it makes it a background layer. I have the Missing Manuel for PSE 4 by Barbara Brundage. She has a web site too. I am going to peruse it tonight or tomorrow when I get time. I also checked to see if I had the bound box option checked on my tool bar. I am just a bit frustrated as I know I have done it before, just with clip art.

 

[Nettaboo]

Ok.. you are "missing" one thing.. when you open a file you are just opening it.. that won't put it into the current project. it will do what it is doing now and have them at the bottom..essentially starting a new project. When I am working I always have alot of files open at the bottom so I can just keep going back to them. It is kinda like laying out all your paint before you paint a picture....

if you want to incorportate that file that you just opened into a project you will need to do Ctrl +A(select all) and you will get dotted lines all around the entire thing( sometimes people call them marching ants) and you want to do Ctrl + C (copy)
Now go to the project that you want it on and do a Ctrl + V(pasted) and it will put it in that project as a new layer. It will usually put it above the current layer so you may have to move it around.

Let me know if that helps!!!

 

[chessie]

Nettaboo
I worked a bit last evening and today using your suggestions. I made some headway. It is not exactly what I wanted to do but it is a start. Thank you all for your suggestions. I still can't understand how 2 months ago I zipped right through adding layer upon layer to design a T shirt design yet when it came to a scrapbook page the same steps wouldn't work. The only thing I can think of that was different is photo files verses clip art files. I will keep on trying till I figure this entire thing out.

 

[janette]

Are you releasing the mouse? I use PSE on a laptop and don't use a traditional mouse but I have to hold down the button when I drag a photo in. If I just click it opens the picture; to drag it into the other as a new layer I click then and hold to drag. Hard to explain.