Creating Digital Scrapbooking Layouts - Resizing Your Photos

If you are new to creating digital scrapbooking layouts, there are a few skills you will want to master early on. One of these is: How Do I Resize a Digital Photograph to fit the digital template I've chosen?

Let's look at a typical scenario:

A new mom has taken tons of pictures of her child (what new mother doesn't?)
She loves scrapbooking, and wants to create a mini-album with digital layouts featuring several small photos, or just part-photos, on each page.
She plans to use mostly head shots, and the standard 6x4s are too large for use on her page.
She wants to be able to print the multi-photo page(s) as a part of her mini-album.
She already has Photoshop Elements, but you'd follow the same overall process for most photo-editing software.

First, Open a Blank Canvas, then

Define the size and resolution of the page (250-300 dpi should give a good result when printing the page)
Choose RGB color mode, unless you want a monochrome grayscale finish
Set background color to transparent
You now have a canvas and are ready to start scrapbooking

Side Note: I find the checkered background you see (when color is set to transparent) makes it very easy to align photos and embellishments.

In PhotoShop each part of your design will be placed on a separate layer and you can adjust how far forward an item is by moving it up and down the layers.

Next, Open the Photo File to be resized.

There are now several options to resize your photo:

Simply make the whole photo larger or smaller.
Crop to a section of the photograph, thereby removing all that extra sky or foreground, then sizing the cropped image to what you need.
Use a mask which is an easy way to create identically sized photographs in a multi-photo layout.
1. Resize your whole Photograph:

Go to Image, resize, image size
in the 'Document size' section select your units (inches, mm, cm, pixels, etc) and enter the width or height you want
you will want a resolution of 250-300 dpi to get good printing results
2. Crop a Section of the Photo:

Select the crop tool and define the area to be kept
Drag the crop 'window' around your photo to make the best selection
Side Note: if you want several photos exactly the same size in a layout I recommend using one of the fixed options instead of the freehand ones.

3. Use a Mask to Reveal only the Part of your Photos You Want to Display:

This is a technique I wish I'd learned about much earlier in my journey into Digital Scrapbooking...

Create a new layer and select the Marquee Tool

Select the size you want (choose from freehand, fixed ratio, or fixed size options)
if you chose either the fixed ratio or freehand option:

Draw your mask shape on the new layer while holding down the left button on your mouse;
If you chose the fixed size option: (good when you want multiple images the same size)

Click on your new layer, and the fixed size you've chosen will appear in outline with the 'marching ants'
Whichever style you used, the next stage is to

Select the Paint Bucket Tool and fill the shape with color (just so that its easier to see while you are working)
Now you have a photo mask layer ready for use in your current project. You can also duplicate the layer for as many photos as you plan to use.

Place your photo on the layer above the photo mask, and clip the two layers together.

You can still move your photo to select the best part, and you can grab a corner to adjust the size.

Do this for each photo until you have all you need for your digital scrapbooking layouts.

Digital Scrapbooking Basics - Setting Up Your Document

From understanding resolution to what color mode to use, this tutorial walks you step-by-step on how to set up a document to start a new digital scrapbook layout.

The most common sizes for a digital scrapbook page are 12" x 12", 8" x 8" or 6" x 6". I like starting with a 12" x 12" page because I can always decrease the document to a smaller size later if I want. Remember that you never want to increase a document size after it's created because it will not look good and you'll be disappointed with the results.

I am using Photoshop Elements to describe the steps in this article but the instructions given here will apply to just about any digital imaging software. So to start, navigate the mouse cursor to select File => New => Blank file to open the dialog box for creating a new digital scrapbooking page.

The first thing we want to do is fairly intuitive and that is giving it a name. So enter whatever you'll remember easily into the name field.

Setting the Resolution

Now let's talk about resolution a bit. To set the resolution correctly, we need to know if we are going to print this digital page. The minimal resolution for good print quality is 200 and most people choose 300 as a standard resolution. A higher resolution contains more color information thus producing a better quality print.

Notice that increasing the resolution also increases the size of the image. So if I set the resolution to 72 pixels per inch, which is sufficient quality for images viewed on display screens, the image size is 2.14 MB. By upping the resolution to 200 PPI, the image size is now 16.5 MB. And taking the resolution up to 300 PPI makes the image size jump to 37.1 MB. (MB stands for megabytes and each megabyte is just over a thousand bytes of information.) And this is still a blank image file! Adding photos, embellishments, textures, backgrounds, brushes and text will swell the image size even more so don't be surprised at how large your document becomes as you add more and more digital scrapbook elements.

Setting the Color Mode

The next thing we want to set is the color mode. The three selections to choose from are Bitmap, Grayscale and RGB Color. Bitmap is not the greatest color mode to select and I never use it. Grayscale describes an image where black, white and all the gray tones in between comprise the entire color palette of the image. You can experiment with these two as you wish, but for now RGB Color is the selection we want to make.

RGB is an acronym for Red, Green and Blue and refers to the method in which these three primary colors are combined to create a broad array of colors. The RGB method is the primary basis on how your digital camera takes photos and it's also the way most of your scanners, televisions, computer monitors and LED screens work. I recommend you work in RGB Color most of the time.

Setting the Background Contents

The last item to select is the Background Contents and the choices are White, Background Color, and Transparent. Some people get confused by what background color is. Looking at your color selection palette, you will see two small colored squares representing the current settings of the foreground and background colors. The background color is the little square that sits slightly behind and slightly overlapped by the square representing the foreground color. If you have already selected the color that you want to be your background color, then you should select Background Color as your background contents. I personally prefer working on a transparent background myself.

Now click okay and your new blank page is ready for you to start adding photos and whatever other elements you choose to design your digital scrapbook page layout.