Making a Tag in Photoshop Elements

Tutorial by: Becky Soto

This tutorial shows you one of the available ways to make a custom tag, and can be adapted to make other custom shapes as well.

Create a new document by clicking File>New, and filling in the dimensions you want. Here we are using a 4x6 inch, 200ppi document.

From the tool bar, select your Rectangular Marquee tool, as shown below.

Draw out a rectangle shape in your document. Next we want to add a rounded top to our tag. In your tool box, select the Elliptical Marquee tool, which is located in the same spot as the rectangle. You can right click on the fly-out arrow on the Rectangular Marquee and select the Elliptical. Now because we want to add this to what we just did, we need to click on the Add to Selection icon, as shown below.

Click and draw out the top of your tag. (Here's a tip - if you hold down the spacebar and move your mouse, you can realign the shape so that it sits where you want it. Release the spacebar to continue drawing out your shape.) You should now have something that looks similar to this.

The next thing you'll want to do is cut the hole in the tag. For this you'll need to click on the Subtract from Selection icon, as shown below.

Draw out a small circle, however large you want your hole to be. (Another tip, if you hold down the shift key as you are drawing out your shape, it will constrain the proportions to a true circle.) You should now have something that looks similar to this.

The next step is to add the paper that you want to use for your tag. Open up the background paper of your choice, and copy this (Ctrl-A, Ctrl-C). On your tag document, Edit>Paste Into Selection. You'll notice that you have a large selection box now, which would be the excess paper, and to get rid of you can Ctrl-A to select the document, and then click Image>Crop. You will now have what looks similar to the tag below!

Have fun with this, and remember that you can make many different shapes using just these two tools!

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