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Shadows & Behind Your Scrapbook in Adobe® Photoshop®

Lesson 3 from: Shadowing in Adobe Photoshop for Digital Scrapbookers

Traci Reed

Shadows & Behind Your Scrapbook in Adobe® Photoshop®

Lesson 3 from: Shadowing in Adobe Photoshop for Digital Scrapbookers

Traci Reed

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Lesson Info

3. Shadows & Behind Your Scrapbook in Adobe® Photoshop®

Lesson Info

Shadows & Behind Your Scrapbook in Adobe® Photoshop®

Let's talk about shadows why we're here today what are your biggest shadowing problems? Who has shadow problems? Deborah what's your biggest shuttling problem I'm just knowing which direction it supposed to cut come from and then how it's supposed to look and right like in real life lights here and here so cheryl's could be from two different direction yes so they always keep it from one direction in your paper are two different directions also right? When is it ok to break the rules right? And that appropriate shadow for the element it's a flower that this tall yes the shadow has to be like yeah I struggled with shadows for a lot of years so I totally feel you um let's talk about shadow struggles let's look at this layout this is one of the layouts were going to be working with today and this one has zero zero shadows and I see it a lot nobody shadowed anything and it's beautiful but it doesn't look very realistic um there's no depth to the layout and it's boring maybe I don't know th...

e slide show doesn't say it's boring okay let's talk about this one thief shadows are way too intense on this one and there's things that are inappropriately shadowed like the dirt like why would the dirt be floating away from the paper? That doesn't make any sense and the shadow on the extraction is wrong and it's. Funny because I never really thought about extraction shadows ever. And so I would totally do this with the extractions and call it good but it's wrong s o it's unrealistic and it's distracting. Now this one anyone guess what's wrong with this one? It's gonna be hard. The shadows are all the same there's no variation. Everything has what I call a paper shadow nothing floating. Nothing looks like it's coming away from the page. It's close there's shadows at least. And they're not distracting but it's not like real life there's no variation. It makes everything look squashed. And, um, nobody wants that we want realism. Finally, this one has inappropriate shadows, their shadows on the text and the stamps, which makes no sense their shadows on the dirt again. Um, I know that shadows don't make they don't make sense of the object. There could be a problem with that if something has a super high shadow. When it's supposed to be close to the the layout with something as a super low shadow when I'm supposed to be far away. But we are going to have solutions, we are going to fix it all we're going to talk about everything that needs to be done to make our layouts realistic and it's going to feel like a lot of work it's going to feel like why would I spend all my time doing this? But once you get it down once you figure it out um it's fast you're like, ok, I know what to do now let's just move on I have my own shadow styles that I say you don't need to worry about it so coming up we are going to examine how shadows are cast in real life so we're going to get really stuff out on the paper and we're going to look at it and figured out there's a million lights in here but we'll figure it up ah, we're going to translate that into the shadows styles palate and we're going to demystify the shadow styles pallet because there's a lot of options and it can be pretty confusing we're going tio learn how to realistically shadow various floating objects so things that come away from the page it's easy to shadow things they're touching the page but things that come away from the page can be kind of crazy to shadow uh we're going to learn how the shadow tricky objects vellum you ever try to shout avellan before with a stock shadow? Yeah and acrylic and anything that's kind of semi trance very it can be difficult so we're going to learn how to shadow that stuff we're going to learn how to make and save layer styles and actions, so we're not to repeat ourselves over and over again. We don't have to use ones that we buy. We can have ones that are specific to what we really like, and we can use them always, and but shadow styles are always a jumping off point. Even if you have a style, you're gonna have to change it probably lay out by layout, you might have to change the color or the intensity, but it's always good to have somewhere to start, and then we're going to take our shadows to the next level. We are going to warp, and we are going, tio really make things look realistic and fun. Do we have any questions in the audience? Well, it's an interesting and we've got people all different levels or different capabilities, and somehow in brand new, traditional scrapbooking, some of them are someone actually asking questions technically, about photoshopped except doing character if you have questions about photo shop or photo shop elements, put those into the chat rooms because there may be other people there who could help you out directives it's not something very specifically we're going to dive into on this particular course, some of the technical aspects and which computers you need to use, etcetera, so you'll find a fantastic online community in our chat rooms. You might be able to answer all of those questions for you, they're already identifying with our students here in the audience a great to have you here any questions that you have the tracy at this particular point? Yeah, regarding the photo shop, um, software I know there's different versions right now, I have like cs forward, and I know this newer versions is this gonna, you know, be able to apply it to those older versions as well? Some of the more there's capabilities like warping? I'm pretty sure cs four will have it, but older versions of photo shop don't have that kind of like, do the puppet warped tool we're going to be working with? I'm not sure, but the newest I use adobe cc, which is the subscription based one so I haven't used for in a long time I'm pretty sure that puppet works in there we'll see good luck going again yeah if not there's always a workaround if you can't use the public work tool then I'm showing lots of different ways toward so if you don't have that capability then you'll have another one so that will work too recently gone from elements to the creative cloud with photo shop in light room so just because of you tracy I am a dirty, filthy enabled I advocated photo shop and all things I just I really feel like if you're going to go for than go for it like and now that it is totally accessible ninety nine a month a lot of people can afford that it's I just think that there's no other way to go anymore because there's so much more capability I got to know a little bit more about our students passions were scrapping where it all came from my old mothers grandmothers perhaps is that where you started scrapbooking actual your children's stories tell us a little bit about that e and I have a lot of I have I think like eight nine pin rubbermaid box is uh photos from when I was a kid and you know it's it's some of them are in and you know, the old plastic peach protectors and some of them are just loose and you know, you take them out and you look up at them and almost someone wrote on the back of them, you're looking at things like, I don't know who this is. I don't know why this was taken, you know? Someone thought this was a great picture to take, but I don't know why any longer, so what's kind of the use of meeting having this photo. So when my son was born, I was thinking, you know, there's, all of these wonderful things and even, you know, like a couple weeks, and I'm like, I know I'm forgetting all these wonderful moments that I'm having with him, and I want to be able to, you know, write them down somewhere and with the photos and be able to see them so that when I look back and even you know, this last month and I was look back through my first year photo book of him and there was just so much stuff that just made me smile because it's something I'd forgotten in daily life, but it was a really special moment for us. What made you choose digital over paper? I I have very bad natural dexterity, so I think I tried just a little bit when I was probably around nine or ten on dh I wasn't good at it. Yeah with the digital it's it's I can change things around when I leave it one day I can come back the next I can move the elements I can move the cluster right just make it I can make it perfect so you do photo books instead of albums I have ideas both but I really prefer the photo books because look how small this is I mean this is amazing I don't I don't like to dedicate a lot of shelf space tio my scrapbook so having these little tiny photo books that he can take with him when he moves out amazing this is my son's birth story actually I took a photo each week when I was pregnant with him and so we have layouts and layouts and layouts of me being pregnant and then his birth story so yeah it's fun I have lots of these and just getting imprinted you I didn't through shutterfly generally and you think I'm for free like you just pay shipping if you if you find the photo book code so it's really awesome they're always there yeah you only find a photo code so it's really an expensive digital scrapbooking kanye really inexpensive way to do things about you deborah what's your story oh well for digital scrapping way paper scrap booking clay was doing some paper scrap booking but I just found it really hard to get everything out and do it so the digital scrapbooking I was in simple stories magazine and I saw something about it and I just was obsessed it's like I have to learn this so I just kind of a magazine I found funny oh, it was just a crazy I think oh, this is so exciting I told my husband I'm not going to do anything else until I figure this out so I had never been on photo shop I wasn't raised around computers so um but I did it and I learned it and I had so much fine and then taken my boys photos and starting tio you know put memories down and document those it was really great so now with grand babies even more things tio horrible grand baby yes, they are sweet people your story a little bit I worked in for rush of things to cousin are ninety nine maybe so at the same time I started yeah oh yeah and I never knew scrapbooking existed I saw album a friend of home but and they were getting to it because it's just scary to get started because there's so many tools in wall and stamping and aging and in king and it's just so much money like and one day one of a friend of mine shared her album that she made for her usman for father's day which was paper scrap booking and she's shared her obama to peace as like I should be able to do this in photo shop, you know? So I tried it and that was signed off with their product yet that you could find online not really. That was general son oh, yeah, yeah, that was about the time when he started. Yeah, yeah. Um what was that? A sigh script with a bite that's where I started actually, yeah. That's where I my very first foray into designing list they have these things where you would everybody would design a little piece of a kid and then you would share it. Yeah, like every every week there was a late night check on her designer host the chair and they give away the products here doing the challenge within one hour that you script the patient one hour stand ups, grabs his police cramps but don't do that as much anymore. Yeah, but yeah, so I think the very first thing I ever designed was like pink panther theme, which is so weird, but the whole kit was just like hyper pink and it was crazy, but it was fun and it was terrible and awful horrible, but it was so fun and that was where I got started, dahlia well, it all started when I was working at a craft store and I was surrounded by scrapbooking, right eyes and you know I just found all the paper and all the embellishments really fascinating and then once my kids were born I was always that mom with the camera always taking pictures of them and wanted to document their stories and so that's when I started getting toe traditional scrapbooking but then I always loved digital photography so I started learning photo shop as well editing my images I wanted to discuss you know, I wanted to do something more creative whether with my photos right and that's when I discovered digital scrapbooking and this was way back in two thousand six I believe and I remember you know, learning about sweet shop and all these other companies and just learning from all these other digital scrap pickers online right just fueled my brows the calories you just fall in love because you have one of those digital cameras like I had that was like a tweet megapixel like point one on the pictures were this big and your leg what am I supposed to do with this I can just grab like this yeah sony mari cut that you with the floppy disk in the floppy disk going amazing and I thought that was a good picture you know and they were good they were grainy I taking the pictures in the photo you know the film camera let me guess mistake yeah can you when I had carson we were transitioning into digital photography and so I had the big camera that I had had in high school, and then I started using this crappy little digital camera that my mom had bought and I probably stole from her and I'm so sad because the pictures I was talking with my big camera were beautiful, but I hated scanning a mission I was that lazy I was like, no, I'm not gonna scan these, and I'm just going to use the little crappy camera that test the pictures under that big and you can't see him on the layout because it's twelve by twelve and the pictures like one half of an inch, so I'm sad about that too, so I feel you, jane, I actually started scrapbooking because of kind of a tragedy. What? I was married in nineteen ninety six and I had always taking pictures never done anything with them, but I had all these pictures, so I wanted to make a wedding gift for my husband of the pictures I taken over the year since we got engaged till we got married and it was in one of those magnetic albums just written on paper and all this well, he passed away shortly after we got married and I had the book and I was talking to a friend and I showed trenches, yeah, but this is all going to deteriorate, and I'm like what and she's, like, yeah, this magnetic stuff's bad, and you need to go see a creative out creative memories person. So, anyway, reading gave memories, too. I redid the scrapbook in, you know, can't archive safe and everything and shared it and loved it. But I'm a collector and paper just started coming in the house were scrapbook stuff, and then when I found digital, I'm like, you can throw all this stuff away. See, most people still can't part with their papers. Well, I have. I have some still got his gated heard it down. Yeah, I heard it down in his very dated that's. Yeah, well, I'm pulling. I'm in the process right now if I inherited all of my grandmother's photo albums. So I'm in the process of pulling all those pictures out and it's so fragile because they're seeking you like her. Why did you do this to me, teo?

Class Materials

bonus material with purchase

Shadow Actions
Shadow Styles
Shadow Types and Palette
Shadows Layout 1
Shadows Layout 2

Ratings and Reviews

Diane
 

I bought all three of Traci's classes and am very impressed. Even though I consider myself a professional Photoshop user, I learned some great new tips and tricks. Not only that, I found the classes inspiring and it kicked my digital scrapbooking creativity up a few levels. More than worth the money. Easy to watch, inspiring and a great teacher.

L. Phillips
 

This class was fascinating and moved at a good pace. Scrapbookers these days use so many varied Photoshop skills and are some of the most creative thinkers around. I learned so many practical - use it right now! - tricks for shadowing any kind of object and make styles out of them for one-click usability. There's a bit much of the biography section at the front of the class but I felt the usable information was enough to warrant the purchase so I can skip the personal section. Traci is a friendly and clear speaker, and a wealth of knowledge. She should definitely be featured in more advanced scrapbooking classes AND even for creating vector embellishments!

a Creativelive Student
 

Awesome class! WOW, I had no idea about the world of shadowing. I just started digital scrapbooking and knew my layouts were lacking something and now I know what...depth! I definitely feel more confident now in adding shadows to my pages and I have also graduated from Elements to the full version of PS thanks to Traci's suggestion. I am headed now to search for more classes by Traci. Thanks for a great class!

Student Work

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