Hello! I just spent the last two hours looking around here and in my "hearts" section, trying to find that perfect kit to use on my next layout. The problem is I found one and pulled up my photos and I'm second guessing it. Now I'm wondering how everyone else starts their projects...
Do you sit down and decide the template first? Do you select the photos first? Do you choose a color/element instead and build around it? Or some other way...
What works best for you?
I am so not consistent in this. Sometimes I will create a whole layout because I want to use a kit (or template) and leave the photo spots blank until I am finished. Other times I really want to work with certain photos so I will find what I want to go with them. I usually just do whatever I am feeling like when I want to make some pages. I do my best to keep it a fun thing to do and not a chore or something "I have to do."
Oh I really like that idea-- creating the page and waiting for the right photos. I think I will try that! This will come in handy, when I want to work on the "present" layouts but still need to finish the old ones. And the best part, it's all digital, so I can swap things out once I do find the right photos! Thanks so much for the tip!!
I usually have the photos I want to scrap. Decide how many I want on what pages etc Do I want this one as a big photo etc. Then pick a template. Pop the photos in the way I want and then choose a kit to either go with the theme of the photos or one which the colour scheme will highlight the photos.
I guess that I create my layouts similar to the way Kaleena described, although, I don't often use templates nor quick pages; I prefer to build as I go with constant exchanging of papers and elements and shifting them around the canvas until I am happy with the arrangement. To be honest, I have never set out to search for a specific kit or theme. All kits that I've purchased are because I either liked the colors or the variety and uniqueness of it's contents. I think I developed this method of page building before selecting photos as a result of being on Creative Teams, where members are required to make 1 or 2 page layouts per new kit of the designer; also, most of my photos are vintage and I think they go pretty much with any color combo.
I agree with you, Rose. I don't use templates or quick pages very often. I like to build something and move the items around until I am happy with the results.
The first thing I do is see which pics I want to use, and discard the ones I don't in the reject folder. Usually this entails opening a bazillion pics in Preview and arrow keying through them back and forth to see which ones are best in focus.
The second thing I do is edit my photos because if I want to use that pic again for something else I'll have it ready and edited at full size (especially now that I have a DSLR that I can do raw format on! my photoshop background is what made me so adamant about this. I know, granted, my photoshop experience started in the late 90's putting together a BSB fan page using photoshop 3 on an old mac. But since then I've had a ton of experience being handed severely damaged and busted photos that people want me to restore. That's kinda how I got the hang of photoshop with version 7). And considering how many times I've been asked to recover things that got eaten by busted hard drives, crappy CDs, and finicky media, that's the point I start backing everything up. You never know if photoshop is going to catastrophically hang halfway through a LO or a power outage might corrupt things so always have extras of your pics!
After I edit the pics, re-order them the way I want them sequentially by number. I then select which ones I want on a page together (For physical scrapbooking, that involves flipping around pages and scribbling on sticky notes how I want the pics arranged after printing. I'm one of those people who processes things very kinesthetically by physically manipulating things. In digital scrapbooking I usually tally down how many pics will be on which page, and which type of pics I am looking for (Do I have 3 landscape/horizontal pics? A square, a horizontal and two vertical? and so on). Usually I keep track of the pics with color labels and folders for every page.
I start thinking about what kind of templates I want to use. Are these pics busy (like my sister's kids at a bounce house that has bright patterned colors busy?) or are they a detail shot of something I took on a tripod with my nikon in a very controlled environment on a blank table? Were they taken by me, or by someone else, and on what camera? What capabilities does the camera have? (aka how much can I blow up the pic to be big). I have ON1's Resize app for some of that, but some things obviously can't be pushed too far (like if it's an old digital pic taken 15 years ago with a 1MP camera, a webcam photo, a screen cap on a dvd that was given to me of pics, or an old cell phone pic from 5-10 years ago). With that in mind, I start thinking about template selection style-wise. Would poor quality pics be helped by a grungier template? Do busy pics need a template with very clean lines? (I especially love how there are a ton of those templates here by the way-- I love templates like that.). Sometimes I will find a template that almost works and I can't shorten dimensions on the photo clippings, so I sometimes use a feature in the ON1 software called "gallery wrap" to give it a fade-out dimmed border look that looks kind of like a modified cover flow effect to account for size disparities. Sometimes I do something similar by duplicating the pic layer and flipping horizontal or vertical and lining it up with the pic if most of the mirrored part of the pic is hidden aside from one noticeable corner. One tilt-shift later and nobody has to ever know. Just throw an element on top of it later and nobody ever has to ever know.
Most of the time though I just count pics and orientations think of what designer's templates I want to use and open the preview files to narrow down which one will be best and go from there though. I have designer templates organized by author and labeled in purple on my external SSD.
Then once I size the pics and clip them to the template, I figure out what pack I'm going to use. I find the scrappy packs labeled by author and title and they are separated by the green label. Usually I select the color palate around what colors are in the pics. Primarily photos are my focus.
I then open all of the papers in that pack in separate documents. I open a 12x12 blank document and I crafted an action where I just have to hit F4 and it will duplicate the paper or elements into a PSD called "untitled-1" and close out the original documents at the same time. I select all the papers, put them in a group. and duplicate the group onto the template file. at this point I have to usually save it as a PSB (large document format) file instead of a PSD. I then tweak visibility through all of the papers from the bottom layer on up (except grungy templates I do the most visible layer first and on down). If I can't decide I tweak opacity and blending mode to use paper together.
Then I do the same things with journal cards. Then elements, and so on. I basically build my LOs from the bottom up most of the time.
Then, when I got it how I want it, I go into typeface and select my font and head back to photoshop to do journalling.
The last thing I do is tweaking my shadows. I have a bunch of shadow styles from various designers. After my shadows get tweaked, I save one last time, then flatten the image and save a separate version (you'd be surprised at the things I've found to be a problem AFTER I flatten the image. I know I'm paranoid and probably wasting gigabytes but I don't care.) I then have the saved version in prints to be made, and take the previous versions in psd form and zip them into a backup file and stow them away on a backup volume.
I know my process isn't for everyone but it's my process and I'm happy with the results of it.