Tutorial: Altering Papers with Gradient Tool

Here's a fun technique you can use to create new digital papers.

Open two papers and layer one on top of the other. It would be a good idea to rename your document using File>Save As at this point to make sure you don't copy over your original paper.

Click on the bottom layer in the Layers Palette to make it active, then click on the New Layer icon at the bottom of that palette, circled in red in the image below.

Now you will have an empty layer between your two papers.

Click on the Gradient Tool, fourth one up from the color chips, circled in the image below.

In the Gradient Tool Options Bar at the top of the workspace, click on the first down arrow to access the gradient choices. Choose the second one, titled "Foreground to Transparent." The square images indicate various types of gradients you can choose. I'm using the first, Linear Gradient. You can adjust the Opacity and experiment with a few other options too.

Making sure your blank layer is still the active (highlighted layer), click anywhere on your document, hold, and drag straight or at an angle. The length and angle you drag determine the appearance of your gradient. You can also drag multiple times.

Here is how my Layers Palette looks after I've drawn several gradients from points around the edge toward the focal point where I plan to place my photo. The color of your gradient will be that of your foreground color chip, but it isn't important because of the next step.

Now clip the top paper to the gradient layer. I use the keyboard shortcut: making sure the top paper is active, type Control/Command-G. A small arrow appears to the left of the top paper indicating it is clipped to the gradient layer below, and the effect is visible in my document.

Here is my finished layout using my new paper that blends two papers from A+ Designs' kit, Heaven Scent.

Tutorial: Copying Layer Styles

One of my favorite tricks in Photoshop Elements makes applying layer styles easier.  For a long time I shadowed each layer one at a time.  Then I learned that you can copy and paste layer styles!  Here's how to do it.

1.  Apply a Layer Style to one of the layers.  I started with one of my paper strips.  If you are not sure where to find the Layer Styles, they are in the Effects Palette.  You can see here I am about to apply the Low Shadow style.  There are many other styles, such as bevels, accessible via that drop down box.

To apply your chosen Layer Style double click on it, or click the Apply button near the bottom of the Effects Palette.

2.  Default layer styles are rarely good for digi-scrapping.  To edit a layer style, double click on the fx that follows the layer name in the Layers palette, circled in the screen shot below. 

When you double click on the fx, you will get the Styles Settings dialogue box, where you can edit not only shadow, but also lighting angle, glow, bevel, and stroke. This is how you customize your layer styles.  Shadowing is a big topic, for other tutorials, but basically the closer the object is to the background, the lower the shadow.  For paper I often make the size and distance both 9 px and I like to reduce the opacity to 65%. In the screen shot, you can see the paper to which I'm applying the shadow.

3.  Now it's time for the trick.  Instead of repeating the above process for each layer of my layout, just copy the layer style from the layer just shadowed, and paste it on all the other layers you want to have the same settings.  To do this, right click on the layer with the style you want to copy and choose Copy Layer Style from the pop out menu.  Make sure to click on the layer, not the fx icon.

Then select all the layers which should have the same layer style.  To select multiple layers, hold down the Control/Command key while clicking. Right click on one of the selected layers and click Paste Layer Style.

Here is my finished layout using the collab Heaven Sent, which reminded me of mint chip ice cream. 

Heaven Sent is available at Scrapbookbytes and Gotta Pixel

I hope you find this as useful as I have.  It's not just for shadowing either.  Sometimes I apply bevels or other layer styles to objects, such as alphas, and then copy and paste the style to another element on my page.  Sometimes I even do this if the elements will just have slightly different shadow styles, because it's easier to edit slightly than start from the default shadow.