Quickpages take the hard work out of scrapping – and quickpage albums make it even easier to scrap all your photos from a certain event, such as birthdays, vacations, and more. My Baby’s First Year quickpage album gives you everything you need to scrap your precious little girl’s first year; each spread (set of facing pages) features room for 4 photos, as well as plenty of journaling space to record likes, dislikes, and all those firsts that come along with a first year.
The best thing about quickpages is how simple they are to use – just drop your photos in, add some journaling, flatten the page, and voila! Your album is complete!
If you’ve never used a quickpage, it’s a really simple process. To help you along, I’ve created an easy tutorial. I’m using Photoshop Elements (PSE) version 5.0, but the other versions will be very similar. Let’s get started!
- Open your files. In this instance, I’ll be opening three photographs and pages 12 and 13 of my quickpage album.
- Drag your first photo onto your album page. There are several ways to do this, but I select and copy, then paste – all by using keyboard shortcuts. Here’s my process: With the photo active that I want to use, I select Ctrl+A to select the photo, then Ctrl+C to copy it. Then I click over onto my album page (to make it active) and select Ctrl+V to paste the photo onto that page.
- Now you’ll want to reverse the order of the layers in your layer palette (located in the bottom right corner of your screen). To do this, simply click on the top layer (which should be your photograph layer) and, holding down your mouse button, drag it below the album page layer. Release the mouse button once you have your layers switched.
- You’ll want to resize your photo, which you can do easily at this stage. Make sure your photo layer is the active layer (it will be blue in the layers palette to indicate it is active), then use the corner handles to resize (you may need to hold the shift button while resizing to maintain the correct proportions, but that will vary according to the version of PS or PSE that you are using).
- To add your journaling, click on the type tool (it looks like a capital T) on your tools palette, located along the left side of your screen. Make sure your top layer is active, because you’ll want your type to be located on top of your album layer. Select your font, size, color, and other settings from the drop down menu along the top of your screen, then place your cursor in the desired location and begin typing. Click the green arrow (located on your top menu bar, close to the right side) when you are finished.
Note: I added little flowers from my Organic Elements pack to act as bullets for my journaling.
- Once you’ve finished your page, you’ve got just a couple of small steps left. Flatten your layers by selecting Layer>Flatten layers from your menu bar. Then save your file, making sure to rename it so that you don’t save over the original file.
A quick note: You may find that you need to trim some of your photos so that they don’t overlap. Just use the rectangular marquee tool to select the portion of the photo you want to delete and then click the delete button. Select Ctrl+D to deselect the area.
Once you’ve saved all of your album pages, you have several options for getting your album printed. You can choose to have the pages printed individually and then slide them into 8×8 page protectors in the album of your choice (I love the American Crafts line of albums, personally). You can also use a print company such as Shutterfly to print a bound version of your album. My kit comes with pre-designed album covers and a spine if this is the option you choose.
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Tags: Audrey Neal, Tutorials
