Tips and Tricks: Learning is a Treasure

Hello Everyone!!!

Today I would like to share with you a few tips and techniques I have recently learned. Carol did something similar last year during the Anniversary sale and I learned so much.  So I thought that it might be fun for us to share some tips and techniques or tricks with each other again.

I believe that in scrapbooking just as in life there will always be something new for us to learn.

Even after using CS4 for over a year, there is so much I do not know about it.  The first thing is probably something some of you already know…It is something I should have guessed, but never did.

THE SHIFT KEY IS YOUR FRIEND

I knew about using the shift key for keeping your photo’s in the right proportions, and for selecting multiple items, but I did not know you could also use it when you drag a paper or elements onto your page and it will automatically center it.  It was one of those a-ha moments.  Then a few weeks later I learned you can also use the shift key when you are rotating an element or paper and it will automatically make it straight.  I did a happy dance.  My husband just laughed at me.   Do you know how much time I have wasted using the guides and trying to manually make a frame or a picture straight when rotating it.  Another thing I learned is that you can use this wonderful button when you want to apply more than one style to something.  I’m sure I still do not know half of this particular buttons tricks….It has so many functions.

LOCK KEYS

If you look at the layers under the drop down menu it says Lock:  then there are 4 little buttons.

The first one locks transparent  pixels.  This one comes in handy when you want to change the color of something… Like Gina’s Every{day} Life – Expressions Once you click this button just pick your color and use the paint brush to color over the words you want to change.  This makes it very easy to match the color to what ever kit you are using.  I forget where I saw this it was in a video tutorial somewhere.

The second one I have not explored very much but it locks the image pixels.  When you click this one it will not allow you to alter that layer in any way.

The third one locks position.  This one is pretty obvious I guess.  When you click this one what ever is on that layer cannot be moved.

The last one locks all combining all of the buttons.  This is actually a button I learned about last year when Carol shared that she uses it to lock the bottom/background layer.  She said “This simple step will keep you from accidentally moving the layer while scrapping. It will also make it easier to select items because the selection tool will not try to choose your background.” I have used this so much.  When you are working with word art and other thin elements this will save you a lot of headaches when you are trying to get them into position so you do not pick up the background instead of what you are actually trying to move.

Another great thing about these buttons is that they toggle on and off.  So if you click it accidentally or need to make another change just click it again and the lock turns off.

THIN FRAMES

I am not sure how many of you are familiar with using the Stroke tool in Photoshop but when I learned how to use it I was told that when you used this it was a fairly permanent thing.  I have used this to create frames around pictures and more recently to create a thin frame on a picture on my Every{Day} Life pages.  I did not like the fact that it was so permanent… so I started to play around with it one day and found that if you create a new layer either before or after using the marquee tool to select the area you want to use stroke on it becomes its own layer instead of painting the line directly on the picture.  Then that frame is on its own layer can be adjusted easily.

Well I hope that you might have learned something.  I would love to hear from you.  What tips and tricks do you use that makes your life easier as you scrapbook?  I have opened up a thread here in the forums to keep everything together.   Make sure you tell us the program you use.    I cannot wait to learn from you guys.  Everyone does things in their own way and it is fun to see if there is an easier way to do things.

Learning is a treasure that will follow its owner everywhere.

~Chinese Proverb