What is Cross Processing you ask? Cross processing is a technique traditionally used in film processing to produce interesting and unpredictable colour effects.
Different chemicals are used to process Negative film from Slide film, and when using the chemicals for Slide Film on Negative film, wild and unusual colour variations occur. You can also achieve similar results by processing Slide Film in Negative chemicals.
With Photoshop you can achieve similar results with much less mess and much less fuss.. as well as with more predictable results. It is much easier to experiment with your results in Photoshop than it is with chemicals and film!
Lets start with our original photo.
From the bottom of your layers palette choose, New Fill or Adjustment layer
Select Curves from the menu that appears.
This will bring up your Curves Adjustment Layer window.
Within CS3 and possibly earlier versions of Photoshop, there is a Cross Processing Preset. This may work perfectly for your photo depending on the effect you desire, subject and the colors in your photo, but in this case I find it a bit too green for my photo.
For the purpose of this tutorial I am going to adjust RGB colours individually.
Select the Red Channel and adjust the line to form a curve above the diagonal. This will require some experimentation, as each photo will provide different results, but in the photo below the output setting is 192 and input 203 for the top curve (below the diagonal) and Output 64 and Input 98 for the bottom curve showing above the diagonal line.
Next I will adjust the green settings. You will again need to experiment and see what looks good on your photo. My green curves are going in the opposite direction to the red.
The final curve is the blue one.
I have made this one a more exaggerated version of the red curve.
At this point I feel the image needs a little warmth so I am going to add a colour fill. I experimented a little with the colour to see what looked good.
Click on the symbol at the bottom of your layers palette that looks like a half black and white circle to create a new adjustment layer and click on Solid Color.
I used the colour picker to pick a light orange colour and clicked on OK, creating a new colour fill layer.
Again you will need to experiment, but for this photo, I adjusted the blend mode to multiply and Opacity to 53%.
At this point the photo needs a bit more POP as it is a bit dull. Cross Processed images tend to have high contrast often with blown out highlights and dark shadows.
So to achieve this effect I have added a new Levels Adjustment Layer.
At this point, I moved the right hand white adjustment icon, to the left, which gives a bit more punch and contrast to the image. If you wanted to experiment a little more you could adjust each colour channel separately, but doing the RGB channel suited me for this photo.
Much closer now.. but not quite there…I still want the highlights to look a little more blown out.
So another adjustment layer, this time Brightness/Contrast.
I think we might have it now!
This to me, looks like a classic Cross Processed Image.
Don’t be afraid to experiment, and every photo will look different. The key is not to get too hung up on technique, and do what you think looks good. Experimenting with colour curves is a great way to become more familiar with editing your images and can provide some very striking effects!
Smart Guides are a very handy tool for lining up objects on a page layout in Photoshop. They enable you to quickly and easily see if your objects are lined up without having to use rulers, grids or create ruler guides.
First we need to make sure the Smart Guides are turned on.
Go to your View menu, hover over Show and ensure that Smart Guides are checked, if they are not checked, click on Smart Guides to turn them on.
Once your smart guides are turned on, they will automatically show when you are lining up layers on your Photoshop document.
As you can see below, the smart guides show in pink when the top, middle and bottom of objects align.
The smart guides will automatically appear whenever different layers are lined up horizontally or vertically and are a great way to ensure your layout photos and elements are perfectly in line with each other. If your objects are different sizes, you can still line them up with the middle guide.
Whichever way you move your layer objects, the guides will follow and show while you are dragging across your canvas.
Whether it is a row of flowers, a collection of thumbnail photos, or word art, smart guides are a quick and efficient way of laying out your photos and elements with precise accuracy and minimal fuss.
Turn your smart guides on, and have a play, you will be amazed at how handy they are.
I hosted a speed scrap and the inspiration I used was an interesting one.
One of the participants suggested right up that it was graphic style and the inspiration certainly is, but I think you could easily do a paper style layout with this inspiration also. I loved the arty effects on the photos and decided to do a similar effect on my own.
Here is the inspiration image which I found on pinterest. I loved the creative colours on the images! It looks as if the artist has blended colorful textures over the top of each image.
Right off the bat I knew I wouldn’t be able to create the same effect but I did want to try and do something similar in style. I do all my layouts in square format so the shape was going to be different also.
I had some lovely colourful photos of my kids and husband on a merry go round and thought they would be perfect for this kind of project and decided to use them for the speed scrap. When I follow a speed scrap inspiration I often try and capture the general feel of the inspiration rather than copy it perfectly and this is what I have done in my layout. I arranged four different photos on a page with a creamy coloured background underneath from my Childhood Adventures Digital Scrapbook Kit, not necessarily exactly the same layout as in the inspiration.
Prior to placing my photos on the page I edited them in Adobe Camera Raw using a split tone effect to give the photos some slightly unusual or cross processed looking colours. I teach a class on Adobe Camera Raw at Digital Scrapbook Place and one of the things you learn in the class is how to do a split tone effect.
Below is an example of one of the photos with and without the split tone effect applied.
Click on the image to see a bigger view of the example. The split toning immediately gives the photo/s a more surreal and colourful look which is the start of what I wanted to achieve.
After the photos were placed on the page I created gradients over each photo using colours in the inspiration image. I did this to give uneven colour tones to the image. Each gradient was then given an overlay blend mode to allow the colours to overlay the image below but still allow the images to show through. I reduced the opacity of each gradient to suit each photo.
At this point I found that the effect was a bit strong and I wanted to tone it down a bit.
At this point I decided to tone the colours down and to add some texture I would reuse the creamy background (from Childhood Adventures Value Collection) I used in the background, over the top of the photos with a linear light blend mode and reduced opacity. This softened those harsh and bright colours and gave the entire layout varying and interesting texture.
I then used the red paper from the Childhood Adventures Value Collection to create a rectangular journal block near the center of the page, similar to that in the inspiration image. I placed the journalling over the top of this journal paper in white to enable it to stand out clearly against the background which was also blended using the pin light blend mode. Each photo and the journalling paper also had drop shadows added for a little extra depth. (not something usually done in graphic style layouts but I like to, to add definition)
I also added a fill layer over the top of all layers with opacity reduced to zero and an inner shadow with a colour burn blend mode to create some soft and subtle borders to help retain the eye within the layout.
Below is the final layout, which as you can see looks a bit funky and arty and a little bleached out, but is an effect I quite like for something a little different.
A lot of new digital scrapbookers seem hesitant to buy effect overlays because they can’t see themselves using them or are unsure of what to do with them. In this tutorial I thought I would give some quick and simple sample ideas of just how much you can do with overlays. For the purpose of this tutorial I am going to be using my Water Color Arsenal Overlays available in the following stores.
Firstly the important thing to remember with overlays is that in order to get maximum use out of them you need to be experimenting with blend modes. In Photoshop, you will find the various blend modes available to you in the Layers Palette.
For our first example I am going to use a photo. I know I often forget the interesting effects you can produce by using overlays on photos.
Here is the original photo of tulips and the second version, with Water Color Arsenal Overlay number 1 from the set, laid over the top and using the Linear Light Blend Mode.
As you can see, using the Linear Light blend mode, lightens the colours of the photo underneath in conjunction with the lighter colours in the overlays, and darkens the darker colours in the overlay and colours underneath giving an interesting water colour wash effect. In the following sample, I have laid two different water colour overlays on a digital scrapbook paper.
On this sample I used the Colour Burn blend mode on both Overlay layers. Colour burn tends to give a wet saturated look on lighter colours making the paper in this case almost look like wet fabric. Overlay Blend Mode will produce a softer effect to Linear Light. On the Paper below from my P365 Essentials Vol 2 Page Kit I have used the water colour overlay over the top of the paper using an Overlay Blend Mode.
The effect can be adjusted by reducing the opacity of the layer.
You can also experiment with blend modes to age your photos. The photo below is a monochrome image of my daughter taken a few years ago. Adding a water colour overlay with a Hard Light Blend Mode and 61% Opacity gives the photo an aged look. This effect works best on dark monochrome photos. You could get similar effects with different blend modes on lighter photos.
Here is the original photo and the photo with the Hard Light Blend Mode
You can enhance your special effects even further buy recolouring the overlays and using more than one overlay. There are so many possibilities available to you.
One of the most fundamental aspects of working with digital craft, graphic design, and digital scrapbooking files is being able to unzip the files you download. Windows comes with it’s own ability to unzip files and there is no need to purchase any additional software to do so. Read on to find out how to zip and unzip zip files in Windows. Scroll to the end for instructions on unzipping files a Mac Computer.
Creating and Extracting Zip Files In digital craft, graphic design and digital scrapbooking there are many occasions where you might have to deal with creating and extracting (opening) zip files. Most graphics you download, whether you buy them or whether they are freebies come in zipped files. Zip files are normally a way of compressing files to keep down the size of them as well as keeping them together in a single file rather than several separate ones.
With graphic or image files, zips often don’t reduce the file size much, if at all, however they are a very good way of keeping a collection of files together to enable easier downloading and uploading on the web. Windows provides it’s own zipping facilities, but if you do not have Windows there are several zipping programs out there which you may be able to use instead. For the purpose of this tutorial, we will explain how to zip and extract files with Windows Explorer.
Unzipping files on a Windows PC is straightforward. Here’s how to do it:
Locate the ZIP file: Open File Explorer and find the ZIP file you want to unzip.
Right-click and extract: Right-click the ZIP file and select “Extract All.”
Choose destination: Select the destination folder where you want the files to be extracted and click “Extract.”
Alternatively, you can double-click the ZIP file to open it, then drag and drop the files to your desired location. This method works for Windows 11, 10, 8.1, and 7. If you need further assistance, feel free to ask!
Zipping files on a Windows computer is easy. Follow these steps:
Locate the files: Open File Explorer and select the files or folders you want to zip.
Right-click and compress: Right-click the selected items, choose “Send to,” and then select “Compressed (zipped) folder.”
Name the ZIP file: A new ZIP file will appear in the same location. You can rename it as needed.
These steps work for Windows 11, 10, 8.1, and 7. If you need further assistance, feel free to ask!
Unzipping a file on a Mac is straightforward. Follow these steps:
Locate the ZIP file: Open Finder and navigate to the folder containing the ZIP file you want to unzip.
Double-click the ZIP file: Simply double-click on the ZIP file. This action will automatically start the unzipping process.
Access the unzipped content: Once the process is complete, a new folder with the same name as the ZIP file will appear in the same location. Open this folder to access the unzipped files.
Alternatively, you can right-click the ZIP file, select “Open With,” and choose “Archive Utility” to unzip the file. This method is useful if you have multiple unzipping tools installed and want to specify which one to use.
For those of you new to digital scrapbooking communities, galleries and social media sites, you may never have had the need to save images for viewing on the web before. Read on to find out how to save your images for web use to enable fast viewing and to be able to upload to online galleries. Images viewed via the web do not need to be the same resolution as images saved for printing, as the maximum viewing resolution on a monitor is 72dpi. Images should also be compressed to allow for quick displaying of images when viewed via the internet. The image should also be smaller in size than that to be printed out, as viewing size on a monitor is much smaller than that being printed out.
This tutorial explains how to save images for sharing on the web or in online galleries.
When your digital scrapbook layout is complete, the first step is to flatten your layers. Doing this prevents your layer styles from needing to be rescaled when your image sizes is reduced, which can happen on occasion, particularly in Photoshop Elements.
To flatten your layers, go to the layers palette and click on the more button in PSE or in Photoshop, the small button with a triangle pointing to the right of your screen.
From the menu which appears select flatten image.
This will flatten all the layers in your layout to a single layer.
After you have done this it is time to resize your image. In the Digital Scrapbook Place gallery, the maximum size you can upload to our gallery is 125kb. In your image menu, select Resize> Image Size. (or in Photoshop just select Image Size)
In the window that appears, you can select the size you wish to make your image. (600×600 pixels is a fairly standard gallery size)
Firstly ensure that Resample Image is checked so that you are able to access the pixel dimensions portion of the window. (constrain proportions should also be checked) In the Width and height the maximum amount of pixels should be 600. You may make it smaller if you wish however 500-600pixels is a good viewing size for the web. For a square image, you can resize it too 600×600 pixels, and for rectangular images, the maximum Width or Height is 600pixels. Just change the largest Dimension to 600 and providing Constrain Proportions is checked, the other dimension will change automatically. Once you have changed the amount of pixels to 600 or less, click on ok. This reduces the viewing size to a suitable size for viewing on the web.
Next we need to save our image for the web. This allows us to reduce file size as much as possible without reducing viewing quality. (do not use this method for layouts you wish to print)
Go to your file menu and choose Save for Web. (or Save for Web and Devices in newer versions of Photoshop)
A new window will appear with two versions of your image. (in Photoshop you may need to click on the 2 Up tab) On the left is your original image and on the right is the sample of the image as you adjust its compression settings.
In the Preset box, ensure that you have JPEG selected in the box for file types. To the right of this box is a Quality box. This is where you adjust your compression level. Adjusting the level in the Quality box directly effects the file size shown under your sample image. The aim is to get the maximum viewing quality possible, with minimum file size. Play with the levels in the Quality box and see how it affects your sample image in comparison to your original image. Brightly coloured or high contrast images tend to be larger file sizes than lower contrast images.
To be able to upload your image to many digital scrapbook galleries, your image file size must be less than 125k. Check the file size under JPEG shown as above below the sample image. Generally speaking you should be able to keep your images under 100k for most layouts. If you need to zoom in to get a better view of the effect of the compression, you can click on the magnifying glass at the top left and click on your image to zoom in. (hold down the alt key and click to zoom back out). You can also optimise for File Size and choose the Maximum File size of your image.
Once you are happy with your adjustments, click on the Ok button.
Be sure not to overwrite your high resolution images by saving as the same name. You might like to put -web or -lowres at the end of your file name to indicate that the image is a low resolution image for web/email viewing.
Once you have named your file and chosen an easy to remember place on your hard drive to save it, click on Save, to save your new, low resolution version of your image.
Tip: When going back to your image in PS or PSE, remember not to re-save your original as your full printing size will be lost. You may wish to undo your sizing and layer changes before saving again, or in Photoshop you can click on Revert in the File menu to revert to the last saved version.
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