Friday 19 February 2010

How to make background paper out of a Wordle.

Firstly open photoshop and prepare a new document. I have for this tutorial made a background page of 12 x 12 inches with a 300 pixels/inch res. This seems to be the most common for scrapbooking digitally on courses I've taken.

This will bring up a document page like the one in this above picture.
wNext open your background paper sheet ready tp layer onto the background.
Click and use the move tool to move the paper onto the background layer in Photoshop. Your layers palette will now look like this.
Next open your Wordle from it's file and it will come into Photoshop, click and drag it down onto the prepared background layer. You will probably, like me have had to manipulate this file by taking a screenshot of it on the Wordle site. Click and move this layer onto the background.
You should now have a layer palette which looks like this.
My wordle came out small so on the main page it appears like this.
Next click and move the wordle layer down to the righthand corner of the layer, this is so you can enlarge it to the size you want.
Pull from the top lefthand corner, as you face ur screen until the wordle layer covers the background paper completely.
Click OK on the arrow to commit and the page focuses, neat!
Now ur layers palette looks like this
At the top of the layers palette click on the box marked ''normal'', scroll down the list until ''screen'' appears and click on this.
Your page will now look like this as any black is drained from the wordle layer and allows the background paper to shine through. You can also alter the opacity of the layer by using the slider on the opacity tool in the layers palette to make your wordle fade more.
The clever bit is the wordle looks the same in the layers palette. Click ''save as'' and then you can layer up your background paper with photos and embellishments etc. This is a cool way to make your own papers. And a g8 way for Mel to use all her amazing wordles.


I learnt this clever trick on Jessica Sprague's class Type and Writer 2. She is a fab tutor and uses alot of video teaching broken down into easy tasks. Give it a go.

6 comments:

  1. Oh, wow..I really need to learn how to use photoshop! This is a very cool idea indeed.

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  2. Thanks Jo - very clearly explained :-)
    Would you recommend the class? She always has great ideas and tips - from the other classes I've taken.

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  3. awesome tutorial Jo! I love photoshop, once u get used to it, it's such fun to play around with layers! Congrats on sending the cv's off. Cross fingers now! xxxx

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  4. Super, thank you :-) The instructions you left on my blog were great but these pics really help too xx

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  5. Thanks Jo! I've added this link to my "How To's" list at the side of my blog (hope that's ok with you?)

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Hello and thank you so much for stopping by. It is always a pleasure to read the comments I receive and to meet new friends. I try and reply to comments on friend's blogs as much as possible. I hope you have enjoyed reading my blog and look forward to seeing you here again soon. Love Jo xxx