I need permisson from the following posters.....

[pierces]

...And, Dave, how about a design for our Down Under cruises? C'mon, you can do it!!!:D

 

 

First submission...

 

 

Let me know what you think...

 

If you think it's ok, I can post it on the MANIACS thread for group approval.

 

Dave

[kylescoolmom]

kylescoolmom,

 

Hi! Your thread here has been very interesting!! I was wondering how I could do something like that for MIL/FIL's door. We are celebrating their 50th anniversary on the Explorer OTS in May 08.

 

Would you be willing to post your door decoration before you go?

 

Sandy

 

 

Thanks - I never thought there would such an intrest Thanks to zackiedawg and pierce. They are a wealth of information and TALENT.

 

I posted it on webshots. It is just as zackiedawg made it........ I owe him $6.50 and a few drinks lol Now to get it to post is another story. lol

 

 

Pierce - that is a really cool sign. :D

[kylescoolmom]

Ok Justin, Dave & Jbond,

Here's my first attempt at a Collage poster with text. As you can see, it's very raw, very newbie. I couldn't figure out how to make "me" be the top layer and the other photos under so that you wouldn't see such raw/uneven edges of the other photos. It's tricky doing these. This was a couple of hours of work....lol...... The sign ones are pretty easy.... Or so I think as I couldn't figure out how to change the text color.

Me thinks it's time for some computer classes......lol.....

 

 

 

Not bad for your first attempt. Better than mine..... WTG !!!!!:D

[cruzegirl]

Not a bad first try!

 

Practice makes...uh, well, you know!

 

Dave

 

I know, I know.... Practice makes perfect.... Trust me, need to do lot's of practicing.... lol......

 

{quote} zackiedawgNot bad at all!

 

As for the layers...looks like you are getting the idea - just keep using 'copy' and 'paste as new layer' for as many layers as you want to add.

 

Remember, if you want to move a specific layer around, you just have to go to the 'layers' window at the bottom, and click on the layer you want to move. If you hover your mouse over each layer, after a second you should see a thumbnail showing you which layer that is. To make life easier, you can also 'rename' each layer as you drop it in...as soon as you add the layer, just right-click on the layer name in the layer window (usually, just generically named 'raster 1', 'raster 2', etc), go to 'rename', and name the layer anything you want. It makes it easier to go back and find specific layers when you have alot of them. Once a layer is highlighted, any tool you use will apply only to that layer.

 

As far as making the photo of you come out on top of all the layers, it's quite simple. In the layer window which shows all the layer names stacked, you can click on any of the layers and drag them up or down, so they either go beneath or on top of any other layer. Just find the layer of 'you', and left-click-drag it to the top of the list...it will then become the topmost layer!

 

Playing around with the program is alot of fun. You'll learn faster than you can believe. Just wait until you start playing with some of the REALLY cool stuff, like the Clone tool!

 

Ok Justin,

I need a drink on that lesson.....lol....; Still got alot to learn as I didn't copy/paste to do my layers... I just moved them in on the grid where I wanted them... But I'm sure that's why it looks like it does. Trust me, I'm keeping the info. from you and Dave to refer too... Will practice again soon.... right now, something gets in the way.. It's called "work".....:eek: :D

[jbond]

This was made for our upcoming South America/Trans Atlantic cruise in March.

[cruzegirl]

Ok, right now I'm ready to lose it.... I am trying to do another collage poster to practice and nothing is working like before. I'll select my background, but then it moves..... and none of the photos I try to move into place are the right size. Too large. Then if I resize them, it resizes my background too..... lol...... Something is not working right tonight..... and it's probably me........

[cruzegirl]

Ok Dave or Justin,

I need step by step help.....lol....... Can you give instructions to walk me through doing a collage poster? I'm going to try again today after cleaning.... maybe it will clean out my brain too.....lollll

Help

[jbond]

Go to Costco and buy PrintSop for $39.99 You don't have to mess around with layers, just load everything on to the poster. Every item is individual and can be resized, moved independently and arranged "in depth", i.e. one over the other, very easily. It's a way more user friendly program than any of the Adobe programs and the text and headline features are unbelievably simple to use. You can also very easily feather or tear edges of the photos you want to place next to each other so that you don't get the sharp defining lines.

[pierces]

Ok Dave or Justin,

I need step by step help.....lol....... Can you give instructions to walk me through doing a collage poster? I'm going to try again today after cleaning.... maybe it will clean out my brain too.....lollll

Help

 

These are a keyboard shortcuts that may help:

 

In photoshop products, one big shortcut is Ctrl + Left Click. If you hold down the Ctrl key and click on a layer (photo), the layer will automatically be selected. Ctrl +T will activate Free Transform and let you resize a photo (layer) or text. When re-sizing, holding down Shift will lock the aspect ratio so your pictures don't get stretched horizontally or vertically (unless you want the horizontal compressed to take a few pounds off of Aunt Betsy!) Moving a layer to the front is done with Ctrl + Shift + ] and to move it to the back use Ctrl + Shift + [ If you have a lot of layers and just want to move a layer forward or back one step, use Ctrl + [ or ].

 

 

 

Dave

[zackiedawg]

Ok Dave or Justin,

I need step by step help.....lol....... Can you give instructions to walk me through doing a collage poster? I'm going to try again today after cleaning.... maybe it will clean out my brain too.....lollll

Help

 

OK. With PSP, it's really not too complex, once you get the hang of it. First off, the best and easiest way to add photos to your collage is to start with the main photo that you want to use as the background (or a blank canvas if you want to start it on a clean sheet).

 

Then, open one of the photos you want to add to the collage, go to Edit, then Copy, then close this photo. Back on the main canvas or photo, click on Edit, Paste as New Layer. This will drop in the photo as a layer on your original starter photo or canvas. You will usually see the additional layer listed in the layers window in the bottom right.

 

If you want to alter the size of the layer photo without affecting the whole canvas size, go to the 'Deform' tool (mine is on my left-hand icon bar - it's usually lumped together near the Rotate and Perspective tool). When you click on this, you should see the little dotted lines surround the layer photo, with the 8 little adjustment points around it. You can either drag these points in, or you can go to the toolbar and adjust the 'percentage' for horizontal and vertical to shrink the photo. Once done, you can then move the photo to the desired spot, and click any other tool to lock it. (If you need to adjust it again later, either for size, to bring it to the front of another photo, or to edit it, you just have to click on the layer in the layer window).

 

Repeat the process for as many photos as you want to add. The nice thing about doing this in layers is that you have individual control over all aspects of each photo in a layer - adjusting for color, opacity, blend, size, shape, perspective, etc. And you can erase, paint over, or manipulate each one however you want.

 

Note: If your layers are not fully overlapping one another, when you are in 'Move' mode (the move tool is the one that looks like a 4-way arrow), when you click on the photo you wish to move, it automatically 'selects' that layer. This is probably what was happening when you said you would tell it which layer you wanted to manipulate, but it would 'switch'. Once you get used to this, it's quite convenient - I just click on any non-overlapping part of the layer I want to edit or change, and the program automatically selects it for me.

 

Don't worry as much about perfection when you are first dropping the photos in your collage as layers. Just get them all in there, and make sure they are all the right size. Once they're all there, you can arrange them, change them, decide which one should be on top, change the opacity or blend style, erase overlapping bits, or whatever else you want to do to fine tune the collage. And you can add your words and titles over the top of the whole thing (note: when you go to add a new layer, it will always add it just on top of whatever layer you have highlighted. So if you have dropped in 10 layers, then went back and clicked on layer 5 to change something, and went to add your 11th layer - it would be added to your picture betwee layer 5 and 6 since layer 5 was the last one you had highlighted. So remember to always click back on the topmost layer before adding the next one, so the newest layer added is always the top layer. You can always drag them up or down in the order later!).

 

I hope that didn't sound tremendously confusing.

 

Here's a few sites which offer PSP tutorials, which might help you with this and many other functions, when you've got time to play around! (I have no affiliation...these were just some of the user sites I found by Googling...you can likely find a dozen more of them):

 

http://www.grafx-design.com/psp_tut.html

 

http://www.baycongroup.com/paint_shop_pro/tutorials.htm

 

The one on Baycongroup I used myself when I first got my PSP8 program.

 

This one is right on Corel's own site:

 

http://www.corel.com/servlet/Satellite/us/en/Content/1157730510030

 

Note too that the tutorials written for PSP 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 are all applicable to your version XI as well - some buttons might have moved around, but the same stuff they describe in some of the older tutorials are done basically the same way with the newest version of the program.

 

Hope that helps!

[cruzegirl]

Justin,

You are a wealth of info. Some of what you said is helpful. Let me address a couple of things I'm not sure of... By the way, do you do "housecalls"...... lol..... I'm ready to look for a computer teacher to help me learn this program......

If you want to alter the size of the layer photo without affecting the whole canvas size, go to the 'Deform' tool (mine is on my left-hand icon bar - it's usually lumped together near the Rotate and Perspective tool). When you click on this, you should see the little dotted lines surround the layer photo, with the 8 little adjustment points around it. You can either drag these points in, or you can go to the toolbar and adjust the 'percentage' for horizontal and vertical to shrink the photo. Once done, you can then move the photo to the desired spot, and click any other tool to lock it. (If you need to adjust it again later, either for size, to bring it to the front of another photo, or to edit it, you just have to click on the layer in the layer window).

When you said the "deform too", did you mean the crop tool? I don't have any icon that says deform on it. When I click the crop tool, I see the dotted lines you mention. I resize it, then click the move icon to move it on the page. Is that correct? At least now I see my "layers" off to the right whereas this afternoon, they kept disappearing.

Don't worry as much about perfection when you are first dropping the photos in your collage as layers. Just get them all in there, and make sure they are all the right size. Once they're all there, you can arrange them, change them, decide which one should be on top, change the opacity or blend style, erase overlapping bits, or whatever else you want to do to fine tune the collage. And you can add your words and titles over the top of the whole thing (note: when you go to add a new layer, it will always add it just on top of whatever layer you have highlighted. So if you have dropped in 10 layers, then went back and clicked on layer 5 to change something, and went to add your 11th layer - it would be added to your picture betwee layer 5 and 6 since layer 5 was the last one you had highlighted. So remember to always click back on the topmost layer before adding the next one, so the newest layer added is always the top layer. You can always drag them up or down in the order later!).

Ok, this was a little confusing. I have the layers I want. But I can't get the page that lets me see where everything is... Where to rearrange them or move them. I don't know how to see the final product or at least get close to the final page to see it. I've got layers and don't know where to go from there.... Help......lol......

Last week when I did it, not knowing what I was doing of course, I had my base page. Then brought in the smaller photos and arranged them around the center photo. Then did text.... But I could always see the "whole" thing on the page.... Now I can't.......

[zackiedawg]

When you said the "deform too", did you mean the crop tool? I don't have any icon that says deform on it. When I click the crop tool, I see the dotted lines you mention. I resize it, then click the move icon to move it on the page. Is that correct? At least now I see my "layers" off to the right whereas this afternoon, they kept disappearing.

That's a start! Actually, the crop tool and the 'deform' tool are different. The crop tool usually resizes the entire original photo - so while you are correct that you see the same dotted lines, when you resize it, you are resizing all the layers instead of just the one new layer. The way the icons work on my screen is that there is a toolbar running down the left side - some tools have their own icon by themselves, while other tools have little drop-down arrows indicating that there are other functions available. My 'deform' tool shares the same icon space as my 'rotate' tool, 'mesh deform' tool, and 'perspective' tool. You might have one of the other icons in that spot, and need to click on the drop down arrow for more choices. If you don't have that toolbar on the left, you can add it by going to 'view', 'toolbars', and clicking on 'tools'.

Ok, this was a little confusing. I have the layers I want. But I can't get the page that lets me see where everything is... Where to rearrange them or move them. I don't know how to see the final product or at least get close to the final page to see it. I've got layers and don't know where to go from there.... Help......lol......

 

Last week when I did it, not knowing what I was doing of course, I had my base page. Then brought in the smaller photos and arranged them around the center photo. Then did text.... But I could always see the "whole" thing on the page.... Now I can't.......

 

I'm wondering if this is because you used the crop tool, which resized all of your layers together. When you shrink down any of your new pasted layers, you should be able to see your original layer underneath. When you first paste the new layer in, it might be the same dimensions as the original photo, and therefore will be covering it up completely. But when you resize it to a smaller size with the deform tool, you will only be shrinking down the chosen layer, and the original should stay the same size. This will make it visible beneath as the layer gets smaller. You can also shrink down the photos you are pasting in as new layers before copying them, so when you paste them, they will already be smaller than the original and therefore easier to see what you are working with. Check out the tutorials - one of them had a section on layers that might help understand how to manipulate and move each one. It would be easier to follow with visual examples - trying to describe it is making it sound complex even to me! ;)

[cruzegirl]

Jason,

Ah, so close and yet so far........ lol.

I see my tool icon bar off to the left as you mention.... But there is no "deform icon"...... I have the:

Hand icon -which pans

The 4 way arrow-which moves and has the pick tool

The dotted line box-which has the selection tool, free selection and the magic wand

The dropper icon

The crop tool icon

The perspective icon-which includes the perspective correction tool and the straighten tool

Then it all goes into photo fixing icons........Red eye, text, oil brush..

Hmmmm

[cruzegirl]

Justin,

I hope you don't mind that I ask these questions of you? It's much easier to ask someone that uses the program versus asking a tutorial... lol.....Just know I really appreciate it and if we're ever on a cruise together, I owe you a drink........

I'm off to work so I'll be on later........Thanks again........:D

[zackiedawg]

OK! I think I figured it out! They seem to have moved the 'raster deform' tool over to the 'pick tool' function. The pick tool is the white arrow that you would use to select an object. Apparently when in layers mode, you have the option to left-click-and-drag with this tool. Also, the 'raster deform' tool still exists, it's just hidden - you have to either add it back to your toolbar manually, or you can access it with the shortcut key - D (the shortcut keys may require hitting the key along with either the 'Ctrl' button or the 'alt' button).

 

That should get you to the deform tool that will allow you to drag individual layers to different sizes within the frame without affecting your main background.

 

And no...I don't mind at all if you ask here! I can't guarantee I'll always answer right away - I might go a day or two without accessing internet - but if you can wait, I don't mind answering whatever I can to help!

[cruzegirl]

Jason,

Thank you again....... I work these next couple of days and I do 12 hour shifts so I can't work on it until Thursday......But I will and I will get back to you....... Thanks again;)

[cruzegirl]

Ok Justin,

Check it out.... I worked on this, oh for 30 min and here's a rough draft.... I'll see if my group leader wants anything different... You are a godsend.... Thanks so much.... Don't worry, more questions to follow..... lol.... Like, how do you change text color? And how do you make the text curved? he, he.... had to have a few......

[zackiedawg]

Good work, especially for your first experimentations with the program! You will have this thing down to professional levels in a few more weeks.

 

To change the text properties, just choose the Pick tool, and click back on the text you wish to change. Once the text is chosen (the dotted lines), you should be able to double-click on the text to open the text dialog box back up (where you can edit the text). Meanwhile, the lower horizontal toolbar should show a bunch of icons to adjust the font, text size, shadow, spacing, etc.

 

If you highlight the text (left-click-and-drag until all the text is highlighted that you wish to change), all you have to do is click on any of the colors in the color chart in the upper right, and you will change the color of the text to that color. If you left click in the color section, you will change the foreground color (as well as the fill) and if you right click in the color section, you will change the background color (as well as the text outline).

 

To adjust the rotation, squeeze, or stretch the text, use the pick tool to highlight it, then you can click and rotate or resize at will - or click on the deform shortcut as with the pictures.

 

I'll have to go back in and play this weekend to remind myself how to curve the text - I can't remember and don't have the program open just now.

[cruzegirl]

Justin,

This is fun now that I'm starting to get it.... I need to learn more though.... only that I don't want to settle for just plain/simple posters. I know this program has more guts to it.... So I'll keep playing..... Here's another sample......

[kylescoolmom]

OK! Linda,

 

I am sending the e-mail to you in just a few moments. The file is quite large - 4.22MB - and the pixel dimensions of the picture are 2761 x 2134, already cropped to fit on a borderless 8.5"x11" sheet of photo paper. I've set the pixel per inch (PPI) print resolution to 250, which should be near photo quality.

 

You should only have to save the file to your computer, open the file, choose 'print', and then set your print options to make sure it is printing to full page, and highest resolution. You will get much nicer results with actual photo paper, but plain paper can be used too (just not photo quality!).

 

If you have any problems printing at full size, it may be your printer set up or the program's print command defaults that you are using. Sometimes, the easiest results would be to print it straight from Windows Picture Viewer or whatever your default viewer program is.

 

Also - you can always bring the file to a Costco or any photo print center, and they can print photo quality borderless photos of the sheet for you - just specify that you want the 8.5x11 print size, or to fit the photo to the paper as opposed to cropping (otherwise some of the letters might get cut off the ends).

 

If you have any troubles, or need it resized, cropped, turned into an 8x10, etc - just let me know. I've kept the original .psp file which can be edited.

 

Best of luck!

 

 

I just picked up the prints from CVS - they came better than expected. PERFECT!!!!!!!!!!

Thank you so very much. :D

[cruzegirl]

Ok Linda,

We want to see photos of your door signs.....lol..... you must share....

[kylescoolmom]

Wish me luck. Not sure how to post...

 

<a href="<A href="http://travel.webshots.com/photo/2016229750057705085SebZoT"><img">http://travel.webshots.com/photo/2016229750057705085SebZoT"><img src="http://thumb5.webshots.net/t/62/462/2/29/75/2016229750057705085SebZoT_th.jpg" alt="041"></a>

 

http://travel.webshots.com/photo/2050194110057705085VQTYif?vhost=travel

[kylescoolmom]

:mad:

 

 

 

 

 

I have it on webshots.... under kylescoolmom - album Carnival Liberty Sept 15th 2007

[cruzegirl]

Ok, good try.... But it's so little, I can't see it or read it......lol...... I ise Webshots too but sometimes their links to photos don't work so well.... Try www.photobucket.com No cost, it's free and you get good, solid links to your photos........

[roudy1]

Hi Kylescoolmom....I have been following this thread and your poster looks good I think I might venture into something too and will follow these instructions.:p HAVE A WONDERFUL CRUISE. Char