Hi, Kate here with Theory Thursday for this week.  I thought today I would summarise what I think are the essential tutorials out there for making a great page!

Constraining proportions

In my opinion there is nothing that ruins a page faster than stretched or warped photos and embellishments.  What may not look obvious whilst creating the page, is immediately obvious once it’s up in a gallery.  What do I mean?  Take a look at one of my earliest pages here:

I think it had potential, but I had no clue about how to not get my photos stretching like that!  I think I gave up this page in a huff because my husband said “Um love, the photos are really stretched”.  Haha! Here is a great tutorial to learn how NOT to do this, from Teresa.

Shadowing

Shadowing, or realistic shadowing is something I am still learning, but thanks to the tutorials on the ScrapMatters blog, I’ve learnt that it REALLY makes a difference to your pages. I quite like this page, but I think it could have been much better with some good shadowing.  As it is, the only shadows are the ones that were already on the embellishments (i.e. the frame).

Here is a great tutorial by Britt, which shows you how to get some really realistic shadows happening on your pages, I quite often check back to this blog post to get some more tips.  It’s one of those things that gets easier with practice.. and it’s quite nice when people start asking “is that a paper page or digital page?” - I think that’s the aim.. to make your pages look less flat!

Overlapping elements

Here is an example of a layout I used this kind of tutorial for (although now I look at it, it could have done with some realistic shadowing, LOL)

Here is a great SM tutorial about this.

Creating lines

Britt has another excellent tutorial about creating a line in your layout for your eye to follow.. it’s fantastic for making you think about the overall effect of your layout.  There are some great examples in her post, but here’s one I did this week that I think is a good example of making your eye follow a line.

There are so many great tutorials out there for almost any trick you can think of for scrapping.  I really encourage you to pick a few and give them a go.  I’m always surprised when I do a tutorial, even if I only use that specific skill once or twice, the little tips along the way really help me to keep learning more about Photoshop, and expanding my scrapping skills.