Hello! Teresa here… I have been teaching a few of my friends digi-scrapping and thought I would share one of the basics… if you are a newbie to digi this is a GREAT post for you! If you have been playing a while, you probably know this… if not you will use it each time you scrap after this. This is so basic and fantastic when resizing your photos to fit a frame or that perfect spot in your layout… to keep your proportions right for the photograph or element that you are using. Let’s start with sizing a photo… you have your layout started…

now you are ready to add your photo and have both files open, your layout and your photo… when your photo is open and the file you are working on (seeing the layers for on the right) take your mouse over the small image in the layers section on the right of your screen, click and drag that layer over to your layout.

a trick when moving it over to have it center in the new layout is to hold the shift key as you do this. It will automatically drop your dragged layer to the center. This is sometimes really helpful… most of the time not a big deal but it makes it easy to find regardless in the layout. If you photo layer is showing on top then go to your layers section and drag that photo layer beneath your frame layer. Then use edit / transform to resize your photo. On a Mac the shortcut is (apple-T) and then I usually have to do (apple-0) to see the full layout and section to be resized on the screen if it is hanging off the 12×12 space. For windows, if you are reading this and know them, please post a comment sharing them. I am a Mac girl and never used Photoshop on Windows.

then to keep your photo in proportion…. hold the shift key and then click on one of the corners of the photo. As you move in or out, you will see your photo resize and the proportion will stay the same. You have to get the corner and the diagonal arrow to have this work but the shift key is your best friend for this!!!

I had a little photo left over hanging out of the frame after I resized so I just used the rectangle marquee tool and highlighted that section and then cut it off.

then you have your photo all fitted for your frame and no one has a too narrow or too wide face and it is fast and easy!

this fun does not stop with photos… use this same trick for resizing your elements… when you do edit transform, you will get the box around your element… hold the shift key and size it to make your layout just right. TIP: sizing down works great. If you enlarge your element by much at all you are going to lose clarity and quality for printing so you really just want to resize your elements to be smaller or go big at your own risk.

have fun playing and placing your pictures and elements in the oh so perfect spot and size to give your layouts that extra WOW!

Have a great day!