Tutorial: How to Resize Graphics, Clipart & Images in Photoshop Elements

Sometimes it is necessary to enlarge an image but when you scale it up in size in Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, Illustrator, etc. it comes up blurry or pixelated. This tutorial is going to show you how to increase the size of your graphic without losing the quality. This works best when you know the exact or a pretty close approximate size you need your graphic to be.

To start, open your clipart in Photoshop Elements. This will also work with Photoshop.

I’m using an arrow from my Arrow Clipart Set.

The starting size I'm working with is just about 4.89 inches wide by 1.89 inches tall at 300 dpi.

Now go to your toolbar and click on “Image”, "Resize" and then “Image Size”.

 

I decided I wanted to make my graphic 10” wide. In the box that pops up I typed in 10” for the width under "document size" and then clicked on the “constrain proportions” and “resample image".

On a side note, make sure your resolution stays at 300 dpi (or whatever you had it set to). I’ve noticed sometimes the graphic defaults to a lower resolution at this point. If this happens you can just change your resolution back.

You’ll see my pixel size has now increased along with the size in inches.

Once everything looked good I clicked on “OK” and as you can see the image is now much larger and the size at the bottom has changed to 10 inches by 3.89 inches. 

 

Now…make sure you save a copy of this new graphic so you don’t override your original file. Once you have the file saved you can insert or place it into whatever document you are working with, print it up, etc.

This also would work if you want to decrease the size quickly & easily instead of manually scaling the graphic down in size in your document. You can just type whatever size is needed in the “document size” box. You could also just change the “pixel dimensions” if you know those (this is usually useful with web graphics). 

If you only need to change the resolution of your file you can still go into image resize and instead of changing any of the dimensions, just change the resolution to your desired size.

One final thing to note - if you try to make the graphic much, much larger you may still run into issues with the image becoming pixilated or blurry. In those situations it may be best to reduce the resolution size so you can increase the image size even more.

 

Tutorial: How to Color Match Outside of Photoshop Elements with Hex Codes

In my last tutorial I showed you how to color match text & shapes in Photoshop Elements, but what if you need to match colors outside of that? That can be done too!

First, if you are unfamiliar with the eyedropper tool please refer to my last tutorial here.

To get started you will want to open your graphic up in Photoshop Elements, click on the eyedropper tool & then click on the color to match. It should show up in a little box at the bottom of your toolbar. Below is an example image from my first color match tutorial:

 

From there click on the little box with your color matched color and you should get a new screen.

The little number at the very bottom is called a hex code. You'll want to write this number down. Whenever you are working in another program that allows you to modify colors or if you want to use the color on your website or blog you (most likely!) will have the opportunity to change the colors by entering a new hex code. Since every application is different I can't say for sure where you will be able to find where to enter the hex code, but chances are as long as you can change colors on something, it will be there. :)

As an example, I went into my blogger template and typed in the hex code to change my post title color to purple.

Here's an example of how I could change the color on my website (FYI - I use Pappashop and you can do this in the "Fonts & Colors" page of your admin screen there).

What if you are drawing up your own graphics, however and need them to match? Here's an example of how I brought the color into Illustrator. I simply drew up a rectangle (yes, I know this is the most boring graphic ever, but I thought it would be OK for an example!). The last color I used in Illustrator was pink, so pink just naturally came up first.

See the little pink box at the bottom of the toolbar (just like the one in Photoshop Elements)? Click on that and the same color picker screen comes up. Simply type your hex color in the hex box:

And now your graphic is purple and has been color matched!

If you will be using the colors in your branding it will also be helpful to keep a copy on hand, especially if you work with any outside designers who may create any branding products for you. That way you can keep your colors as consistent as possible.

I hope this helps some!

 

Tutorial: How to Color Match Text and Shapes in Photoshop Elements

I think it's time for another tutorial, don't you all agree? :) In my last tutorial I promised to show you how to color match. I frequently receive emails asking for color codes to match my graphics. I don't include color codes with any of my sets but there is still an easy way for you to get them!

As with all my tutorials, I'll be showing you how to do this in Photoshop Elements.

To start I started a new file in PSE and "placed" my Kite Clipart in that. If you are new to placing files you can find another tutorial on that here.

From there I clicked on the little eyedropper tool in the upper left hand corner.

And then I clicked on the first color I wanted to color match which was the first purple ribbon on the tail of the kite. Once I clicked on that one of the boxes at the bottom of the toolbar menu (on the left) turned purple. The color was matched!

 From there I decided to add some text to the document so I clicked on the type tool next (the little "T" on the toolbar) and then added text to the right of the kite. Since I had already selected the purple to color match the text automatically came up in that same purple.

I always like a little variety, however, so next I went back to my eyedropper tool and this time I clicked on the green ribbon on the tail to color match that. I then decided to highlight the word "to" and then I clicked on my green box at the bottom of the tool bar (same box where the purple had been). A new screen popped up asking me if I wanted to change the color to green & I clicked on "OK".

I then went back and decided to do the word "Color Match" in alternating colors. Even though this can be a little tedious, I would use the eyedropper tool to click on the color I wanted to use and then I would highlight the letter I wanted to change until I got everything just the way I wanted it. After that I colored matched the dark brown on the graphic and added some more text and broke up the lines a little bit differently (sorry...I didn't do a screenshot for each of these steps).

What if you want to add a shape though? That's pretty easy too. To do that you can go to the shape tool (I choose the heart) and just draw that wherever you want it. Since brown was the last color I had color matched my heart automatically came up in brown, but I really wanted it in purple.

No problem! To change the color I used my eyedropper tool & clicked on purple again and then I clicked on the paint bucket tool on the tool bar. From there a little bucket graphic came up which I placed over the heart & then clicked the heart to fill it with the new color. Easy peasy!

All done! But...what if you want to use the same color outside of Photoshop Elements? That can be done too! Stay tuned for part 2! :)

How to Create an Easy Logo in Photoshop Elements

How about a new tutorial this week? I'm going to show you how to create an easy logo in Photoshop Elements. I first want to note that when possible a logo should be created in a vector based program such as Illustrator, so you can scale it up & down without losing any quality. Not everybody has access to this, however, which is why I'm using Photoshop Elements for this tutorial (as a majority of my customers do use this).

So lets get started! I created this design:

using the following things:

the black polka dotted camera from my Colorful Cameras Clipart Set

Sofia Font (free for commercial use)

Before you get started you'll want to find a graphic that best represents your image/brand as well as a font. When choosing your graphic make sure it is OK for commercial use and for use in logos. I do allow all of my clipart sets to be used for logos but not everyone does. The same goes for fonts. While there are a lot of fonts out there not all can be used for commercial use.

Once you have your graphic/font all set open Photoshop Elements. I didn't really know what size I wanted to make this so I thought I would just start a new file that was 1000 pixels wide by 500 pixels tall and I could adjust it from there. When you create this make sure you make your background transparent. That way you can place the graphic on top of pattered/colored backgrounds without getting a white box around it.

Next I placed my graphic into the file. I went to the toolbar at the top and chose "file, place".

You'll notice that the camera graphic takes up almost the whole document so I decided to scale this down in size. To do this click on the graphic and you'll see little boxes come up in the corners. Just click on these and drag to your desired size. When you do this make sure you have the "constrain proportions" box checked at the top so everything stays in proportion. After I resized the camera I dragged it to the middle of my document. (and p.s. I'm sorry that the text on the screenshots is hard to read...I should have zoomed in a little more when I did this).

Next I added my text. I decided I wanted to just put my text under the graphic and I color matched the charcoal black color for "Erin Bradley" but for designs I put the font in all caps and did different colors (I'll do another tutorial at a later date on color matching!).

From here I saved the file in PSD format. Even though I was pretty set on the design I wanted to keep an original file in case I want to make changes or make this larger or smaller in the future.

There was still a bunch of blank space around the sides of the graphic, however, and I definitely don't want that when I use the file. So I used the crop tool to draw a square around the graphic. I don't like to leave a lot of extra space on these types of files because the blank space will save to the file and sometimes can throw proportions off a little bit. Once I got this cropped to a good place I clicked the green check mark and then saved this as a PNG file. Done!

When you create your own file you can obviously move your graphics/text wherever you would like. Here's another example with the graphic to the left and text to the right.

And your done! I'll do another post on how to use your logo and create more branding products so stay tuned! :)

Tutorial: How to add text & graphics to frames, tags & clipart in Photoshop Elements

Hello everybody! Last year I wanted to write up some tutorials & design tips on how to use my graphics & digital paper packs but...that happened one time. Ugh. So here's to a new year and a fresh start! :)

One of the questions I get frequently is how to add text and/or graphics to my frame & tag clipart sets so I'm going to show you how I made the following design:

To start, I'm using Photoshop Elements as I've found that is a program most of my customers have access to. If you don't have it you can find it on the Adobe website. I'm also using the following:

Yellow chevron circle from my Yellow/Blue/Green Circle Frame Clipart Set

Blue flower from my Monkey Clipart Set

Ostrich Sans Font

Pea Noodles Girlfriends Font

You can start by opening a new file in Photoshop Elements in your desired size, but I started this design by just opening the yellow chevron circle directly in PSE.

From there I added a new layer. You can do this by either clicking on the little box (circled in red, below) in the layers box or by choosing the command of "layers, new, layer" from the toolbar at the top of the screen.

After adding my new layer I choose the text tool from the commands on the left hand side of the page (the little "T" icon) and then typed in the wording I wanted to use and then selected my fonts. After that I clicked on the text so a little box came up around it and I could resize it as needed. Make sure when you resize you "constrain proportions" so nothing gets stretched funny. Then click the little green checkmark when you have your wording all set. 

After this I decided I would like to add a graphic so I went to the "file, place" commands from the top toolbar and chose my graphic.

This automatically will add a new layer. 

I then resized my flower graphic the same way I resized the text. From there I also moved the flower up to the top of the circle and then I moved my text down. You can move these layers by clicking on your graphic(s)/text and using your arrow keys or mouse to move these layers up/down into place.

And here's the final outcome!

I resaved this new file in PSD format so I could make changes at a later date. I also saved it in PNG format so I could upload it to my blog for this tutorial. 

If you want to use these graphics for things like monthly onesie stickers or items you personalize, I would recommend first starting a new file in your desired size and then going to "file, place" to add your circle/frame graphic to the new document and then proceed with the rest of the steps for adding text & other graphics. 

I hope this is helpful!

How to Resize 12" x 12" Paper to Letter Size

Hi everybody! I sometimes receive emails & questions on how to use my clipart & digital paper graphics so I thought I would occasionally blog and answer some of the most commonly asked questions. One of which is how to resize the digital papers to an 8.5" x 11" size.

For the purposes of my tutorials I will probably be showing most of my "how to's" in Photoshop Elements. There are a lot of different programs out there but I've found this seems to be the one that most people have access to (if you don't have it try googling "Photoshop Elements trial" to see if Adobe is offering a free trial version of the latest version).

So this is actually pretty easy to do in PSE. The first thing you'll need to do is open the program and then start a new document in an 8.5" x 11" size.

Since I am using PSE I chose RGB as the color mode and I just made the background white.

Next you will want to open the digital paper file you want to resize. You'll see on the next screen capture I have two thumbnails at the bottom. One is my blank 8.5" x 11" file and the other is my 12" x 12" digital paper file.

Double click on the digital paper thumbnail so it comes up on your screen. You will then simply click need to click on the digital paper file shown in the middle of the screen and then drag it onto the blank thumbnail at the bottom. Now the digital paper will show up as a layer on your new file. If you click to the new document you'll see the digital paper is still bigger than your new document. That's OK. You can either leave it as is or click on the corner to resize the pattern to the desired size. If you scale the pattern down be sure to "constrain proportions" so everything stays proportional.

Once you have everything in place you can click on the little green checkmark and then resave your file in JPG format. I would create a new folder for your resized files, just so you don't accidentally override the original digital papers. 

If you don't have Photoshop Elements you can also just try printing the papers as is from home. Most home printers will automatically scale the design down or you can look for a "fit to page" option in your settings and then just choose letter sized paper.