Help on very first layout, Photoshop Elements

[Sleepingbty]

Hey Guys,
I'm brand new here and totally new to Digital Scrapbooking. I found this site and read a bunch of the tips under "New to Digital" and I just decided to jump in. I downloaded a 30 day trial of Photoshop Elements, and have been going through the tutorials here on DSU. I downloaded the DSU welcome gift - the Celebrate Life's Moments page kit, and have been using it to go through the "Completing Your First Paper-style Page (PSE)" tutorial. It was going pretty well until I tried to add some of the cute elements. For some reason, I can't get the background of the elements to be transparent (even though I selected that at startup). When you view the layer that the element (for example, the title that says "Celebrating Life's Moments") is on, everything but the graphic is checkerboard (which I think means it's transparent, right?), but when I pull it up onto my background, it has a white background. I've tried everything to make it transparent, but so far no luck. I'm hoping one of you can tell me what I'm doing wrong! Thanks in Advance!

Rebecca

[JenniferG]

Yup, gray and white means transparent. How do you place the element on your page? Do you go File-Place and select the desired png element? That should work. If there are still problems, that's a head scratcher! did you download pse 5 or 6?

[JenniferG]

Just looked at the tutorial. doing it that way to access the elements works for some, but I found that using file-place works best. Sure, you have to go select each and every element you want to use separately, but you are GUARANTEED to never have white space behind an element if there isn't supposed to be one. I've never tried it the way the tutorial suggests. I've always use file-place.

hope that will solve your issues.

And by the way, Welcome to digital scrapbooking and DSP. You are going to love it here. Just a warning though, digital scrapbooking AND DSP are both very addicting! So is collecting kits/elements. I have almost 6GB of stuff already and still going. And I've only been scrapping for a little over a year! Think of how much stuff other members who've been scrapping for years have! It's enough to make your head spin! LOL!

I suggest developing a saving/organization system now while it's still manageable! I usually back up to CD. Others use an internet file back up site, and others use external drivers. Either way, when you start spending money on kits, it's great to have them backed up! And you'll want to back up your finished pages, as well. Nothing worse than losing your pages after you've worked so hard on them. My backup is both CD and uploading the finished pages to DSP so I always have them in my gallery! LOL. Then I can just resize in PSE if I lose them (which happened. I lost about 20 pages, but luckily they were on dsp.)!

Sorry for all the info. Hope I havent overwhelmed you! Feel free to send me a private message if you need to!

[shazzt]

Are you pulling the elements up from the Photobin? They changed things in PSE6 and that method no longer works the way it used to. Try having the element open on your canvas and dragging it across to your layout. File-Place will work too though.

[Lauren]

Yeah you can file place - or just double click on the item in the photo bin to open it and drag it across to your layout

[Sleepingbty]

Thanks ladies! I did end up getting it to work. I resized and uploaded the page here to DSP, in case anyone wants to check it out. I'm pretty happy with it for my first try, although - it did take me quite a while - probably two hours of trying to figure out the program, and then about an hour to complete the page. I hope I get faster at it than that! Anyway, I have another question. Maybe I should just start a new thread, but I'll ask it now since I'm already here: I saved the page when I was done, then I went back on DSP to see the instructions for resizing and uploading to the gallery. So, I went back into PSE and did the whole 'save for the web' thing. I renamed the file and uploaded it and everything worked fine. Problem is, now when I go back to the file folder that I save it to both times, only the web version is there. Does PSE just automatically replace your original file with the smaller one when you 'save for the web'? I thought by putting a different file name in, I'd be keeping both of them - like 'save as' on MS programs. So now what am I supposed to do if I want to upload it somewhere to have it printed in a photobook? :confused:

[guitargirl]

The "save for web" saves your file as a jpeg. If you had saved a print-quality jpeg first, it may have saved over it if they had the same filename. Do you still have the layered file (it would have .psd after it)? If you do, then just open that, do "save as" and save it as a jpeg. I usually do about 10 quality. I also keep my print versions and web version in different folders so I don't get them mixed up. Or you could just add "print" or "web" at the end of the filename to keep them straight. I can't tell you how many times I tried to upload the print version here at DSP!

[JenniferG]

if you saved the original with a different end such as psd, and saved the web version as jpeg or similar, they should both be there...it shouldnt replace because they are different file formats. if the original is gone, then you can open the web in pse, go to save for web, and enlarge the pixels that way and increase the quality to maximum. Ive lost originals and have done this to replace them. as far as i can tell the qualityis still good and it isnt pixelated. guitargirl's advice about saving is great. I save my original with just the name, then I save the web version with the same name and the words "for web" at the end...it works for me. I only save my print version to cd, though. I figure that I can resize it again if I want to share it, saves space and cds!

Now off to see your first page!

[Sleepingbty]

Thanks again, you guys are great!