Note: These tips work with most Adobe products.

Scrap Girls has many great tools for making better scrapbooking pages. Our collections are wonderful! But our ScrapSimple line can help you personalize your pages even further by choosing your own colors, papers, embellishments, and other additions which collections may not provide all the time.

Many of our embellishment templates are designed so that you can drag and drop layers, creating a masterpiece with just a few steps. However, all the layers can be confusing, and manipulating them the way you like isn’t always so straight-forward.

Here are three great tips to speed up your digital scrapbooking techniques even further. Once you learn these tips, you’ll never go back to your old way of doing things!

Tip 1: Moving hard to grab layers

It is nearly impossible to grab and drag some layers, including shadow and gradient layers from their document windows. Instead of changing settings, grab them directly from the Layers Palette and drop them onto your new document. BE SURE TO HOLD DOWN THE SHIFT KEY AT THE SAME TIME. This will ensure proper placement of the layer. This is an important step, because if you DON’T hold down the Shift key, your layer will be placed in the center of your document and you will be forced to move it to its proper position on your own. So hold down that SHIFT key and save yourself a lot of trouble.

Tip 2: Resave your Embellishment Template file into one you can manipulate

Some of our Embellishment Templates have many separate PNG layers. Sometimes it can be confusing to see so many in one file. I find it best to take all my layers, put them into one PSD or PSE document, and save that AS IS. This way, I have an established file that is all ready to work with.

To do this, open your ScrapGirls Embellishment Template or Layer Your Own files. For this example, I used my Fancy Folds 1 Template.

There are nine separate PNG files in this folder.

Open a new 12x12 document (or 8x11, depending on your preference).

Drag over each layer, one by one. Rename each layer in accordance to what is contained within the layer, i.e.: "TKA_SS_EmbTmp_FancyFolds1_FldMdT_BG" could be renamed "Background."

Many layers already are in numerical order as to which is first, and which is last. If they are not in numerical order, you can easily look at the final JPG that is included in all the files.

Continue this process using all the layers.

Save this file as "TKA_SS_EmbTmp_FancyFolds1_ALL.psd" (or .pse). Now you have all your pertinent information in one file, including the designer name, the product, etc. You can reuse this PSD file again and again, and not have to worry about dragging and dropping layers in the future!

Tip 3: Make a layer from previous layers without flattening

There is a great tool in Photoshop and in Photoshop Elements that allows you to take a few layers, merge them, and put the new layer in its own separate layer right in your original document! Select all the layers you want to merge using the Ctrl key. Hit Ctrl+Alt+Shift+E.

This will take all those layers, merge them, and put it in its own separate layer. Rename this layer "My New Background."

Now, you can scrap on THIS layer, leaving all your working layers untouched. If necessary, you now have the ability to change them later. If you do change them, however, remember to do this command AGAIN, and Delete your old merged layer, as Photoshop will not automatically do it for you.

Here’s hoping these tips speed up your digital scrapbooking up to the next level. Have fun and happy scrapping!

Products used in this tutorial:

	Note: Commercial license versions of ScrapSimple Embellishment Templates: Fancy Folds 1 are also available.

Tutorial written by Theresa Kavouras