Tuesday Tutorial with Marie-Pierre

Hi everyone!

Do you print your pictures at home or do you send them out to print?
I print them at home and I love to play with different sizes of pictures to change things up.
When I'm working on my Pocket Life album, I usually go with 4x6, 4x4 and 3x4 photos.
My vertical pictures are usually the ones that end up in the 3x4 pockets and today I would like to show you how I crop my pictures to 3x4 before I print them out.

I'm using Photoshop and clipping masks. Any version of Photoshop will work. I use Photoshop Elements. It's pretty basic and for that, it's all I need.

So, I created a template and any time I'm working on my Project Life album, I'm opening my (edited) photos that I want to print and my template.

The template looks like this and you can download it in the file section of our Facebook Fan page.

Save it to your computer where you can easily access it when working on your pictures. 

Here is how to use it:

1. open the .psd template file in Photoshop as well as 2 photos you would like to print in a 3x4 size.

2. Take one of your photo in the photo bin down there and slide it onto the template.

In the layer palette, on the right, make sure that your photo is above one of the colored layer. Here I have it over the yellow layer.

3. Holding the option key on a Mac or the alt key on a PC, click right between your photo and the yellow layer int he layer bin on the side. This will create a clipping mask. You will see a small arrow appear on the side of your picture in the layer bin.

4. Select your photo (your actual photo, not the one in the layer bin) and press the command/control key and the "T" key at the same time. It's the shortcut to the "transform" action. You will see small squares appear at the corners of your photo. Click on these and pull them to transform your photo and make sure your photo fit into the template.

If you find it hard to work with your photo because it's too big on the screen, decrease the % on the lower side left of the photo. I like to work with my template at 35%. When you're done it should look like this:

5. Do the same thing with your second picture. Bring it over the template. And in the layer bin put it over the second color layer. Clip it together, size it and your are ready to print!

6. Save your photo in form of a .jpg file and either print it from home or send it to your favorite printing company. Once it's printed it's easy to just use your paper trimmer to cut down the middle.

This technique makes it really easy and quick for me to crop pictures. You can use this same template to print journaling cards like the one I designed and put in the file section of the Fan Facebook page last week. Instead of opening a picture, open the template and the journaling file. Do the process twice and you should end up with something that looks like this.

Print it on a 4x6 card or on photo paper. :)

Thanks for stopping by!!