Today’s trick is one that I actually get asked about alot! When teaching my digital scrapbook classes I often am teaching a group of current or previous paper scrappers. Being a former paper scrapper myself I would mat many of my photos. I found that many times putting a stock paper that’s just a bit larger than my picture would make my pictures stand out a bit more on the page. Matting a picture digitally is really very easy, so let’s take a look!
Here is a recent example of digital matting that I have done:
This particular LO started as a template by Kaye, and as I was working on it I realized that because of the coloring of the LO and the close coloring of the two photos they just needed to be matted to set them apart and give a clear distinction between each photo. Matting a photo in Photoshop CS or Photoshop Elements is really easy! Here are the instructions:
*Be sure you are on the move tool and select the photo layer that you want to mat in the layers palette.
*Ctrl click (Mac: Cmd click) the thumbnail of the photo in the layers palette. This will create a selection around the photo.
*Next, click the {create a new layer icon} in the layers palette (it looks like a little paper with a folded tab on bottom) to create a new transparent layer above the photo layer. The other way to do this is to go to >Layer on the top tool bar, and then >New>Layer. Making sure that this new layer is selected, choose Edit > Stroke Selection to activate the Stroke dialog.
*Choose a width and color. If you click on the color box it will open up your color picker tool and I like to choose a color in my layout. You can play with the width a little bit, I generaly do between 15-20 pixels. For the location I like to choose {inside}, because it will give the stroke nice crisp corners!
*Click OK to confirm the outline.
Your mat will be created on its own layer, so if you decide later that you want it removed, just drag the layer to the Garbage can in the Layers Panel.
A quick way of doing it is just to choose the photo layer you would like to stroke and go to >Edit>Stroke and follow the above instruction in the stroke menu box. This will mat the photo without being able to delete the stroke itself layer.
I have found that the versions of Elements that I have worked with have the same basic instructions, so you should be able to do the same things!
I hope I have given you a new little trick to add pizazz to your layouts!
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