From the Digital Side of PaperWhimsy

After an extended break from the PaperWhimsy Design Team, to play and learn new art and digital techniques, I’m thrilled to be back to do a little digital design.  I still consider myself a beginner, learning new things every day, and hoping to share my love of the digital world with all of you.

Being a beginner, I will focus on collages and techniques a beginner can create, and maybe someone who has wanted to start playing in the digital media, will find a starting point.  I will be using Photoshop Elements for all of my examples.

So lets get started.

For the three digital collages, I am using 3 or 4 PaperWhimsy hybrid files with the same two texture files.

Here are the hybrid files used:

Royalty 13

Steampunkery 02

Artichokes & Fleurs 01

Text Background 01

I start by opening the Royalty image, and cropping the image to remove the bottom title.

Open the Steampunk hybrid image, and create a PNG file format.  You can find instructions here.  You might want to save this file, with extension png for later use.  You don’t want to save it over the original file. I then cropped the top most image to work with.

I opened a new 5×7 inch, 300 dpi file.  This is nice size if you later want to print.  Also the hybrid images will come as 300dpi.  You can resize it smaller with a lower dpi for posting on the web.

Click on your opened Royalty image, and drag it to the new file.  Resize and/or position with the move tool.  Open the Artichoke png file, select one image with marquee tool, and copy and paste to a new layer.  It should be place above the royalty image. Resize and/or reposition.  Next click on the open Steampunk image and drag it to the new file.  It should be place above the artichoke image in the layers panel.  Resize and position the steampunk image.  For this collage I duplicated this layer.  On the duplicated layer, I used the move tool to flip the image vertically, and positioned it so it line up with the original image.  I also duplicated the original steampunk layer two more times, and resized and repositioned them in the corners of the collage.

On the steampunk layer that covers her face, I used the eraser tool, to remove the unwanted lines.

In the layers panel, I reduced the opacity of the artichoke and steampunk images, to give them a softer feel.  I also added a drop shadow to the the steampunk images from the effects panel.

Tip: A great way to use the same image multiple times, is to flip, rotate, resize, and reposition.  Remember you do not have to use the entire image in your composition.

This is what your collage should look like at this point.  I also added two of my favorite texture layers for color, changing the blending modes, hues, brightness, and saturation from the Enhance Menu.  I also colorized her crown and cheeks in separate layers, and varied the opaque setting, and blending mode.

The following two digital collages were done using the same basic steps.

Hybrid files used:

Royalty 16

Artichokes & Fleurs 01

Architecture 01

Hybrid files used:

Royalty 15

Botanique 02

Botanique 01

Architecture 02

Hope you will try these.

YOu can download a PDF of this tutorial here.

Rande