How to get Freebies

The hobbie of digital scrapbooking really doesn't have to be that expensive. After the purchase of a good How-To book and good software, you could really just download a bunch of freebies if you wanted. A lot of sites offer freebies, some good , some bad. Over on the right sidebar I have a list of digital scrapbooking sites. Click on each one, then look for the word free, freebies, downloads, and you are bound to find something for free.

At 'digital scrapbook pages' they are giving away this digi-kit for free. click on the link.

At free digital scrapbooking, look on the left where it says freebies and there are tons to pick from.

At 'Shabby Princess" click on the word downloads and you will find several kits, including this one.

At "PepperMintCreative "they release a new free digi-kit from time to time, so check back every other month or so and click on FREE. This is the free kit for this month. Download it from their site.

At 'ScrapGirls' they offer a monthly membership in which you get tons of freebies all the time for a very low cost membership fee. They offer this kit for free download

At 'Shabby Miss Jenn Designs' they offer a few freebies like this one below. Just click on the Shoppe and browse for the word GOODIES.

Now there are many other things for free. Google to find Free Brushes, Free Fonts, Free Shapes, Free Textures, etc.

Grundge Borders, Frames, Clipping Masks,etc.

People are always asking me how I distress the borders of my photos. Well, there are several ways to do it, some easier than others. I will explain 4 different ways.

with a Brush

scroll down to my post about "Brushes". It explains it better. But a brush is essentially just like if you had a rubber stamp. I downloaded some 'grundge' and 'cracked-edges' brushes and just easily stamped it right onto the photo. In this picture I stamped in white.

Paint or Pencil tool

You could also select your paint or pencil tool and just draw or paint right onto the photo. In the picture above I just drew a bunch of diagonal black lines over the edges of the photo.

Actions

You can purchase or find free "ACTIONS" that do the work for you. You just click on the action and hit 'apply to photo'. See my post titled 'actions into actions' if you are not quite sure what they are. In this photo I applied a free action from the "COFFEE SHOP" in her borders collection. The link to the coffee shop is on my sidebar.

Digital Scrapbook Supplies

Very easy. A lot of digital scrapbook sites sell frames or you can find some free frames for download. I found this cute poloroid frame made by Andrea Rascaglia here....IT IS A FREE DOWNLOAD and she has several. Just click on this link. You just open your photo into photoshop, then click on file-place, and it will search your computer for where you saved the frame you downloaded. Once found, click on place and it will be placed onto your photo and you can then free transform it to fit.

Clipping Masks

ok, this is the hardest one to do, but I love the effect it gives. First off you have to download a clipping mask. Once in photoshop, open up a blank document. Then open up your clipping mask and drag it onto your blank document. Then drag your photo on top of the clipping mask layer. (at this point you can't see the clipping mask anymore, because the photo on top of it is hiding it). Now you just have to group the photo to the clipping mask. First: right click on your photo layer and simplify it (or else it won't group). Second: use the shortcut CTRL+G which is the shorcut for 'group with previous'. Now the two layers are merged as one.

I got these two clipping masks seen in the two pictures below also at the coffee shop. From her site, click on goodies, scroll down and click on frames, then scrool down until you find the place to download her clipping mask collection. She gives a more detailed, step-by-step tutorial on how to download and use all of her products.

Powder Room

The first thing I will say about this is DO NOT GO CRAZY WITH IT. Powder Room is to enhance a photo, but not to make someonw look totally alien. The first picture is the before. If you look at the AFTER you can see the subtle changes to make a good portrait. I whitened the white part of their eyes and added eye definition. I smoothed their skin and used the clone stamp to remove blemishes like zits. I slightly whitened their teeth as well. It just cleans it up so people look their best. Obviously you could go to extremes and remove wrinkles, even cellulite, but I don't believe in making it look too unnatural

"You don't nee no stinkin' FULL VERSION photoshop"

I so badly wanted to copy and paste pics from this site, but you can just click on it for the whole article.
Sure CS has more options, but it is also SOOOO expensive in comparison to $50-$100 that photoshop elements is.
You can see from this site, that you can definitly achieve great results from elements, especially if you download a layer mask (which is not offered in elements)(SEE MY POST ON LAYER MASKS).