A Beginner's Guide to Digital Scrapbooking

[Courtney Walsh]

A teaser of this post will be featured live on our blog tomorrow, but we're sharing the whole thing with you a day early! Read on and find out how to get started with digital scrapbooking 

{It's not as tricky as you might think!}

So here we go...A Beginner's Guide to Digital Scrapbooking

By Julie Walton

Traditional scrapbooking is all about touching, feeling, getting messy with paint, ink and glue and sometimes that's all that will do. 

Digital scrapbooking is all about manipulating, creating layers and easy do-over's ....over and over again. 

I do both and have for years, and I believe there's a time and place for each.  So if you're a paper scrapper with a curiosity for digi, read on.

I'm going to give you a quick lesson to help you get started digital scrapboking.

I use Adobe Photoshop CS4 but learned on Photoshop Elements and the two are fairly similar. This is the layout we will be creating:

The first rule of digital scrapbooking is, it's all about the layers!

Step One: Open your program and start with a new file.

Step Two: Open the digital papers, elements and photo you would like to use. I used the All About Me collection by Webster's Pages.

Step Three: Once you have all of your files open, start dragging the papers and elements onto your blank file. Begin with the papers first as they will become your background.

With the paper file open next to the blank file, use your move tool (usually the first tool in your toolbar on the left side of the screen, circled above) to drag the paper onto the blank page. 

Then close the paper file. You'll see in your layers palette that you now have the background layer and the paper layers:

Step Four: Once you have all of your files on your background it's time to start playing with sizing, placement and layer order.

In order to resize the items, make sure the layer with the item you want to resize is active. Look at the Layer Palette in the right corner and click on the layer that has the item you want to resize, it will be highlighted. Now you will see little boxes on the corners of the item. Grab one of the boxes with your move tool and move in or out, making it smaller or bigger.

(In this screen shot above, I have the layer with the balloon active.)

To change the layer order of an item, simply go to the layer palette, grab the layer you want to move and move it up or down in the layer stack.

Here you can see that I have resized and moved the elements into a basic design and am now ready to add a photo!

Step Five: Just like you did with the papers, open your photo and drag it onto your layout. Resize as you wish and move it within the layer stack until you get it where you want it. I generally like to tuck it in somewhere with layers over it and under it.

I actually ended up pushing the photo all the way back on top of the blue layer, under the trim and elements.

I like to add a white border around my photos, so let's work on that now:

Using your Rectangular Marquee tool draw a rectangle around the photo, it will leave a dotted line around the path you have created. 

You want the border layer underneath the photo so add a new layer below the photo layer. Next go to your tools palette and click on the Paint bucket tool. I prefer to use a white border so I make sure my color selector is set to white and then click the Paint Bucket inside the rectangular shape I've drawn.

Step Six: Now it's time to add a title and journaling! I love that Webster's Pages has both paper and digital journaling cards. Open one and drag it into your file and place on the desired layer. Resize if necessary.

To add a title choose your Type tool from the tool palette. Choose your font, font size and color from the top bar. Click down on your page where you want the title and type. You can move and resize this title as you wish later so don't worry too much about the initial placement. Journaling is done in the same way.

So our layout is just about finished!!!  Yay You!! 

Next up, let's look at drop shadows. These are what give the layout depth so it looks as if there are real layers.

Step Seven: Choose a layer that you wish to add a drop shadow to and right click on it in the layer palette. It will bring up another smaller screen.

• Choose "Blending Options" 
• On the Layer Style screen check the Drop Shadow Box and highlight that item on the list so the Drop Shadow Menu comes up. (Drop Shadows are strictly the creators choice, play with the sliders until you like what you see. I check the Use Global Light box as this casts the light from the same direction for all of the layers on your layout. I usually place the Opacity around 40-50, the distance around 15 and the size around 10.  
• Once you have the shadow the way you want it, click "OK" and the Layer Style menu goes away.

Now that our layout is done we need to merge the layers and save.

Step Eight: Go to the top of your screen and click on the Layer tab.

• When the menu opens up choose Merge Visible.  
• To save, Click File, Save As, choose where you want to save your layout, give it a name and save in JPEG format.

So there you have it....your first digital layout!!

So, let's see what you've all got! We'd love to see your digital layouts and if you have any questions, feel free to post them right here on this post. Julie will be checking in to answer! 

As always, feel free to peruse the digital products over on our website...you're going to love them! 

Happy {digital} Scrapping!

[Julie Walton]

If anyone has any questions feel free to post them here and I will respond :)

[Courtney Walsh]

Such a great step-by-step for anyone who wants to get started, Julie! You did a fabulous job!!

[Gerry van Gent]

Julie, this tutorial is awesome! Thank you so much for sharing!

[Diana Brodeur]

Great tutorial! I might have to give this a shot myself!

[Kay Rogers]

This is so great! Thanks for sharing your process!

[Michelle Macpherson]

Thanks so much for this helping-hand - I'm just starting to scrap digitally and this really helps!

I've worked out how to add the text to my layout, but  was just wondering how you created the awesome 'eggstra special' heading - it looks like you've 'cut' the font out of a digital paper?