I love templates, they take me out of my mojoless hole. I am here to share with you one of my ultimate tips/tricks about templates. How to merge them and transform them, so they are exactly what you need. Have you ever wanted to use a template but it’s not EXACTLY what you need? It’s just missing something. I am here to help YOU fix it. Before we start there are a few tricks to help you merge your templates more easily. TIPs/TRICKs for merging templates. (These are tips/tricks and not RULES, these may be true for some cases but not all, so don’t FORCE them, ok?) Merging templates from the same product or set is easily than merging different products. Merging templates from the same designer tends to be easier. Most designers have a “look/flow” that just can be seen in most of their templates. Open more than 2 templates, even if you are merging 2. That way if the first one doesn’t work you are ready for the next merge. Set up your windows into “float” mode. That means you can see all your opened templates at the same time. Zoom out those templates so you can see opened templates at the same time. LOCK the background layer of the templates. When you merge them you want to grab everything but the background, LOCKING the bottom layer makes it so much easier to grab everything but that layer. If at first you don’t succeed, try again… or flip it! Move things around if they are not working, bring them up or down on the layers order or turn them on and off. Have fun and play! Visit this BLOG POST for credit information. This last capture is the end result and all the changes made. Keep moving stuff around until it “feels” right. You will know when it’s done when you see it. On my final page, you can see that I decided to replace the tags fro those paper flourishes. I still kept the balance of them by making the flourishes about the same size the tags were. FINAL TIP: Remember not because the template has a circle or an X, it means you need to replace it with a circle or an X. Those are just “place holders”, use an element that occupies the same area in your page and you will keep the balance and flow that the template has.
Another way to do this (esp. for those of us with small screens ) that doesn't involve having to see more than one template at a time: You can have them open in tabs or overlapping windows, and instead of dragging to a new window, right-click and choose "Duplicate Layers..." There's a dropdown that will let you duplicate the layers to the other template. Learning this changed my tiny-laptop-screened life. Hope it helps someone else!
I managed a work around for the MOC challenge in my program I just "copy and paste" individual layers and move them where they should be.... But I wondered if anyone knows a way of doing this in Corel PaintShop? So I could use this more in the future xxx
If you create a layer group, will it let you cut and paste the group together? Been ages since I've used PaintShop, but that's what I would try.
Thanks Dalis. This is excellent, but I can never seem to drag the layers into the other window. Is this because I am using PSE not CC? Thanks Lorry. I have to try your idea.
I don't have CC either. You have to be in the "move" or black arrow mode and then drag and drop it in the other place. I can try to make a video showing you.
I have CC 2014, but it's not a new feature. It should be in PSE as well. From Adobe's PSE help That's exactly what I do in CC.
I've been doing this quite a bit with Sara's Arboretum templates and my PL pages. I usually open one of the bare templates first, remove everything but the blocks, add my photos and then pull in one of her dressed templates to see if any of those blocks will work with my open blocks. I highlight and lock the layers, pull them over on my project page and see how it looks, if I don't like it, it takes just a second to delete the selected layers and try something else. It's a much quicker way of doing a PL page for me than hunting down products and ideas for open blocks. Maybe others are already doing this too, but just in case it helps someone.