Hello my fellow artsy peeps! How is MOC 5 coming along for you? Are you caught up, not so caught up (^raises hand^) or in panic mode? First of all, definitely DON’T panic. There is still plenty of time left for you to catch up, I promise. I’m going to help you out today with a few quick tips for creating layered backgrounds on your digital creations. These tips have helped me speed up my creative process and build layered backgrounds in no time at all.
Here is a page that I created with some goodness from this week’s SOSN sale – 50% through today. (Click on the layout to get the full credits). I used the three tricks I’m going to talk about to create the layered background:
Tip #1: Quickly resize and perfectly center background pages with this simple shortcut . . .
I resized the top and middle background pages by putting them in transform mode (Ctrl/Cmd T) and then holding both the Alt/Opt and Shift keys simultaneously while resizing from one of the corners. To resize and maintain proportion, you must hold the Shift key in Photoshop and then resize by grabbing one of the corners. However, this method will only adjust from the side that you are dragging. If you hold both the Shift and the Alt/Opt keys simultaneously, it will pull all four sides of the paper in at the same time. Not only does this save you time when resizing background papers, it will also perfectly center them on your page.
Tip #2: Working with Striped Papers
Using a horizontally or vertically striped paper on a layered background can be tricky, because there are always two sizes left solid (the left and right side with vertical stripes or the top and bottom with horizontal stripes). If you want the striped effect to show up on all sides, you have two options.
1. You can rotate the paper so that the stripes appear diagonal (which is what I did with the very bottom black and white striped layer on my page). If you want a perfect diagonal stripe, there is a quick and easy way to do this. First, reduce the size of the layout so that you have lots of space to work with on the screen. You will need to enlarge the paper once it is shifted, so you will want to have enough room to drag out the corners. Second, activate the transform function (Ctrl/Cmd T) and look for the Rotate tool on the top menu bar and type 45 into the box (see screen shot below). This will automatically rotate the page 45 degrees. You can also rotate by placing your cursor just outside one of the corners until you see a curved double arrow and then rotating the page to the left or the right. Third, once you have the stripes at the angle you want, enlarge the paper until it covers the entire background (this is where the first step comes in handy).
2. The second method puts vertical and horizontal stripes on each side like the layout below. To achieve this look, First make a copy of the striped paper (Ctrl/Cmd J) and place it on the layer directly above the first paper and rotate it so that the stripes are going in the opposite direction of the first layer (one layer should have horizontal stripes and the other vertical stripes). Second, add a mask to the top layer (Click the mask button at the bottom of the layers palette. It looks like a rectangle with a circle in the center.) Make sure the mask portion of the layer is activated by clicking on it. Third, mask out the two solid sides of the top paper to reveal the stripes on the paper below. Set the foreground color to Black (“D” is the shortcut to reset the foreground and background colors to black and white, respectively), activate the rectangular marquee tool and draw a rectangle that covers the solid area on one side, press Alt/Backspace to fill the mask with black and hide that area on the page. Repeat this step with the other solid side. Now you should see horizontal stripes on the sides and vertical stripes on the top/bottom of the page.
Tip #3: Shadowing a Background Page
The last technique is a quick shadowing tip. Regular drop shadows do not always look realistic with flat background papers because they leave two side essentially unshadowed. You can add multiple drop shadows at different angles or you can add an outer glow to the paper that will lift the paper on all four sides. Outer Glow is located in the Layer Styles menu (the fx button at the bottom of the layers palette). Here are the settings I used on my page:
I hope these tips help you build your layered background pages more quickly (both for MOC and in the future)!
Until next time ~ Judie (HeyJude)
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