Tutorial: Using Sounds in Your Photoshop 7 Layouts
by Jamie Rousselle

You've just created the perfect layout about your precious two year old and the limited but priceless vocabulary that grows larger every day. The page seems complete, but don't you wish there was some way you could actually capture those adorable phrases and incorporate them into your layout? Well, Photoshop has a feature that will allow you to capture small sound bytes and record them forever as part of your digital scrapbooking layout. Although the sound isn't transferred (of course!) to the layout once you print it, you'll always have a digital copy that you can burn to a CD and forever remember the joy of a two year old saying "I wuv u, mommy." You must have a microphone in order to use this feature, but they are pretty inexpensive and can be found for around $10.00.

This feature is also great for making notes about fonts or elements used while creating your layouts.

1. Once your layout is complete, right click on the Annotation icon found on your Photoshop toolbar and choose "Audio Annotation Tool".

2. Using the toolbar at the top, you can enter the author or child's name and set the color for the icon that will be placed on your layout. You can choose a coordinating color so its less visable.

3. Click somewhere on your layout (a small icon will be placed there upon completion)

3. Click the start button and begin your recording. You can record as long as you want, but remember this will increase the size of your finished layout.

4. Once you are finished, you can save your layout. One more drawback is that you must save as a Photoshop file in order to have the annotation stay with the file. This also means that you must listen to it using Photoshop.

5. To listen to your file, use the arrow icon to right click on the speaker icon and click Play.