Saving for Gallery and Actions/Scripts

One of the awesome things about making digital scrapbook pages is the ability to post them into galleries and share your pages with others. It's possible with paper pages, but that involves scanning or trying to take a picture of it without losing quality. So we digiscrappers have a huge advantage!

Most galleries require 150kb maximum size, though there are a couple with larger (or smaller) limits. 500x500 is the typical dimension requirement. If you're posting on a site that allows larger dimensions, I recommend leaving it at 500x500 because otherwise people (myself included) can't see the layout all at once; it's larger than my window!

I got directions for saving for web for PSP from a friend at thedigichick.com (thank you, Val!).

PSP has the option of making a "script," and Photoshop has the option of making "actions," both of which are basically the same thing. They're very easy to set up, and once you make one, you don't have to go through all these steps again. I use little actions for anything I don't want to keep doing...resizing paper when I'm making a card, brightening up eyes in pictures, and saving for web. So I'll put both the script/action basics in here, as well as the directions for saving for web.


PSP:Make sure your 'scripts' toolbar is open by going to view > toolbars > script.
To start recording a script, click on the button with a circle on it, it says "Start script recording".
Right-click on one of your layers in your layer palette > merge > merge all (flatten).
Go to image > resize. change the pixel dimensions to 'percent' and make it '100 percent'.
Then to resolution, and set the resolution to 72 dpi. then click the button in the scripts toolbar with the the little disk on it, for 'Save Script Recording'. Name your script, and hit save.

Anytime you want to save something for the web you just select that saved script and hit the play button.


Photoshop (I believe Elements can do actions too, so hopefully these instructions are pretty close for you as well):

With your layout open and ready to be resized, make sure your actions palette is open (it's listed in the "windows" dropdown list, if you need to find it). Click on this button:
And then select "new action." Name it something you'll remember ("save for web", maybe)

That's the hard part. (seriously!)

Now to resize. Remember, everything you do will not only affect the layout on your screen, but also show up in your new action.
Here's what mine does.

Flatten image. This is important, otherwise when you resize it, your shadows will be all screwed up, and it will look like everything's floating on your page. Don't believe me? Go look at my first few layouts in the gallery. They really didn't look that bad at full-size! (not exactly magazine-worthy, but not that bad)

Now go to "Image>Image Size." Make sure the "resample image" is unchecked, and then change the resolution to 72 pixels per inch. Hit "OK."
You have one of two choices. (read both before you decide) You can go back to "Image>Image Size," click "resample image" again so it's checked, and change the width from 3600 to 500 (make sure it's constrained though so it does both the width and height). This is easy, but it apparently doesn't do as good a job at keeping the look of your layout (though it's shrunk enough I don't usually notice much difference).
The other option is to transform it (Edit>Transform>Scale) to 13.9% of the original size. (make sure you hold down shift while you resize so it keeps the proportions the same). Hit enter. Crop (Image>Crop) and it's the right size!

Just a note again about the action:
If you make a mistake when you're recording an action, don't just back up a step or two. Make sure you delete that step in the action too.

Okay. Now turn off the action. (click the square, the stop button, on the bottom of the action window.)

Ready for the coolest part???

Time to save for web. Click on "save for web" (or "shift, control, alt-S," if you like to use keyboard shortcuts like I do.) You'll see a preview of the layout. Click on the small arrow here:

You'll then see a few options. Click "Optimize to File Size." Type in 150 (or 125 or 100, if the gallery you're posting to only allows file sizes of 125 or 100 kb). Then click "OK." Photoshop sets it at as close to 150kb as possible without going over. Click "save" and give it a title you want (and make sure you remember where you put it).

You're done! Go post it to a gallery now!

I'd love to see if you've posted a layout using the things I've written about here...please come give links! It will definitely motivate me to keep writing this.



What would you like to learn next? I have a few things I've thought of covering, but if people suggest something specific, I'll cover those first.

Tutorial 1.5

Sinead kindly pointed out something important (thank you!) to making your very first layout.

You find a kit you want, and either buy it or (if it's a freebie, which you can find at almost any scrapping site), and download it. Now what?

If you haven't told it otherwise, you've probably saved it to your desktop. (if you can't find it, go back as if you're going to download it again, but before you actually do, you should see in the little window where it is set up to download. Windows has the desktop as default, so that's the best place to look for it). It should look like a little zipped folder unless you have a different zip program in place (in which case either you know what you're doing or the person who installed that can help you!)

So assuming you're using the standard zip format to windows, now what?

Double-clicking on the icon should bring up a window that looks something like this.

See the "extract all files" in the top left? Click on that, and it should open up something like this.

Follow the directions (click next, then next again for it to save it in the same place as the zipped file, i.e. your desktop). It will then look like this:


If you click "finish," you will then see a new window open with all the files of the kit you have just opened.

At this point, I would recommend starting a new folder in your "my documents" folder for your scrapbooking stuff. I have a folder with all my kits, and one for all my layouts (and one for pictures I've played with....) but those two are a good start. You can then copy your new folder of "stuff" into your kit folder. As I briefly mentioned in the first tutorial, I would strongly recommend against making separate folders for the different colors/elements, because many times designers don't give each individual piece a very descriptive name, and seeing "blue-cardstock.jpg" doesn't help tell you who made it or what kit it's from. If you are interested in sorting things in this way, you can try a program like ACDSee, that organizes things without actually moving them from their folders.

*****

I would love to hear concerns/questions/comments. Are you able to follow my directions? Some of these things I've done so long I don't have to think about them anymore, so I forget to explain some of the steps. Help me make this more clear :)

Happy Memorial Day!

Welcome!

I am always seeing questions about how to start scrapbooking digitally. I know I'm hardly the first person to offer instructions/help, but that never seems to stop people from doing their own thing anyways!

I am hoping that this will be a place full of resources and assistance (and maybe some fun? That's mostly up to you), and that experienced scrappers can find some tips and links they might not have known about. As I have time, I'll be adding a list on the side for tutorial sites, since I am only experienced in Photoshop (I had PS7 and now have PS CS3, so I can't help with specific questions about PSP, DIP, PSE, or any other programs out there. But I'm trying to find people/sites that can answer those!)

So if you're reading this and are experienced in one of those programs, let me know if you're willing to jump in with answers!

Your First Layout

I'm on a roll (make hay while the sun shines, or at least while the girls sleep!)

Whether you're a seasoned paper scrapper thinking of trying digital for the first time, or you've never made a layout in any form, digital scrapbooking (I'll usually call it digiscrapping) is a great way to go. I'll give you my little bio at some point down the road, but for now, I'll just say this. There are plenty of scrappers who do more polished layouts than I do, but I have enough experience that I should be able to at least steer you in the right direction toward this addictive, awesome hobby!

Ready???

How to start
1. Find a kit you want to work with. (for this tutorial I'll be using Tamra Burwick's Hippy Hippy Shake kit.

2. Find picture(s) that you’d like to use. (these first two steps are interchangable).
3. Once you’ve bought and downloaded your kit, unzip it and put it somewhere you’ll find it again. We’ll talk about organizing your kits later, but for now: I wouldn’t recommend breaking up kits by the components (i.e. having a “ribbons” folder) because not all designers include their names/the names of the kits for every single element, making it very difficult to figure out where something came from, when you go to write the credits. I don’t know how many kits (thankfully freebies) I deleted because I had lost their information!

4. Open a new document. This should be 300 dpi, and you can do it any size you want (8x8, 12x12, 11x8.5 are the standards) Virtually all papers are made at 12x12, but can be resized to 8x8 if you want to work with that size. (I'll discuss this at a later date)

5. Open up the papers and pictures. At this point, I usually put all the papers and pictures into the new document, making one large file, and SAVE it. It may take awhile with all those layers, but at least it’s all together!
6. Here’s where the fun starts. From here, you can cut shapes out of your paper* , move layers around, and eventually find a look you like. (*important note: if you want to resize something (in photoshop you can do this with Edit>Free Transform or Control-T), make sure you hold down your shift key when you resize, so it doesn't distort your picture. Unless you like the distorted look ;)

7. Add a title (either typing or using alphas), type in some journaling (as desired) and add embellishments (as desired).

8. Add shadows** to paper, embellishments and pictures. Don't add them to text! It makes it hard to read and doesn't look realistic. (alphas are fine if they look like they would have shadows in real life)

9. Next is to show it to everyone...next tutorial I'll show you how to resize for galleries without losing too much quality!
*to cut rectangles, squares, circles or ellipses, use the marquee tool
and make a rectangle (hold shift while you do this to make a perfect square) and let go when it's the size you want. Do the same thing with the circle marquee (click and hold the square marquee for a second and you'll see other options, including the circle) to make an ellipse or circle. Once you have your shape (you'll see "marching ants") you can delete the paper around it (in photoshop, right-click on the shape in your page, select "select reverse" and then hit the delete button on your keyboard.)
It sounds complicated, but really happens very quickly when you actually do it.

**shadows will be covered in the next tutorial. For now, you can use them if you know how, but at least you'll have a page you can look at!


One last thing. I'd love to see what you do with this. If nothing else, know that if no-one shows me their layouts or tells me they're doing it, I'm not very likely to keep updating this. So if you know how to post to galleries, please do so, and then come here with a link so I can see! If you don't know how to post to a gallery, I'll show you next tutorial, so for now, tell me how it's going so I know what I need to spend time on in future tutorials. Sound good?