(WEEK 2 HERE)
Sometimes you don't want to just "plug and chug" photos into quick pages. Sometimes you want to edit those photos or the quick pages first. This week we'll look at a *little* of the cool stuff that PAINT.net can do (without installing any plug-ins), and NEXT week (our final week) we'll focus on creating our own scrapbook pages--combining everything you've learned this last month--using kits.
Note: There is SO MUCH you can do with PAINT.net, and I'm hardly a pro. I'm going to sort of point you in the right direction, and then you can play around with it. :) If you ever get stuck, you can always google "how to _____ in paint.net"...that's how I learned a lot of this stuff. :) It is NOT expected that you'd use every one of these tools every time--I just want you to know they're available, because I've found them helpful at one time or another. :)
DAY 1: Basic/automatic image edits
Today may seem overwhelming, but I'm going to literally show you where to find all these fun things and let you just have at it. Experiment. Play. Be brave. You can undo everything later. :) Just take like 15-20 minutes and try it ALL, to see what you like/don't and what you might actually use in your own scrapbooking or photo editing.
Sometimes you just want to make a photo stand out in some way, whether it's to add a texture, to make it black-and-white, or make it artistic. PAINT.net isn't as awesome as photoshop in all the things you can do, but they DO have a few options, both for basic edits and for artistic enhancements. Let's check some of them out.
I think the auto-level, black-and-white, and brightness-contrast are pretty straightforward. So I'll let you just play with those. I WILL say that if you don't like the way your black-and-white image looks, do it anyway and then use CURVES as sort of a filter--to make some areas lighter/darker, etc.
CURVES. This is how you adjust lighting/coloring in a more controlled, fine-tune way. I haven't used it much, but sometimes it's nice when changing the brightness/contrast just seems to mess it all up. There's a GREAT instructional page HERE that explains things better than I ever could. But here is the before & after of a grainy photo of me using the Curves...you'll notice that the middle tones blend together better, a little of the redness is out of my face, and the darks are richer (not so grayish). It's subtle, but I would much rather have the second picture published if I had a choice. :)
HUE, SATURATION, LIGHTNESS: Pretty straightforward..."HUE" makes the image tones more along some spectrum or other. So if your photo is super red, you could reduce the red by moving it along the spectrum more towards green/blue. And vice versa. Saturation changes the amount of color in the photo overall--so if you want something sepia/antiqued, you could reduce the saturation. Lightness changes the lightness for EVERYTHING. I wouldn't use it much if I were you, because it tends to wash everything out. JMHO.
INVERT COLORS. This makes an image a negative. Kinda fun and silly. :)
LEVELS. I honestly never use it, and playing around with it just made me want to NOT use it that much more...so...play with it and decide for yourself.
POSTERIZE. I've only used this for more artsy-giftsy things than scrapbooking so far (like a calendar a few years ago, where I used familiar pictures and made them more "special"), but it's a fun little tool. Un-"link" the RGB colors and move them around--the closer to "0" they are, the more those different shades are blended together.
There are some fun things in the "Effects" tab, too. (But not as useful, overall.) Play around with them. Here are some fun things you might get out of it (if not for digiscrapping, then maybe for other artsy projects. :) I could definitely see me using these for a layer of text to make it a unique title for a page, though. :)
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| BULGE. It does the fish-eye or fun-house thing. :) |
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| Dents--kinda makes it ripply or swirly, depending on how you adjust the toolbars. |
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| Ink sketch--it can be completely black & white or have as much color as you want. You can also adjust the pen's width. |
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| This is "adding noise" which makes it grainy in an old-TV kinda way--you know, the bright, colorful dots that you see when you sit too close to the screen? Oh, wait, you didn't do that? No wonder I wear glasses and you don't. :) |
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| Oil painting. Another favorite for more artsy projects. |
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| Pencil--adjusting this is ALSO how you would make photos into coloring pages using PAINT.net. FYI. :) I did that one year as Christmas presents/stocking stuffers and they were a big hit! |
DAY 2: Recoloring
Sometimes you get started on something (in layers) and decide you want to change the color of text, or an embellishment, etc. The basic concept is actually very easy to do.
Let's pretend I imported an alpha that I thought was too dark for my page--instead of brick red tinged with blue, I want to make it WHITE tinged with blue.
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| First, obviously, open everything up. Make sure what you're recoloring is in a different layer (so you don't recolor the background, too)--and make sure you've got that layer highlighted in your "layers" toolbox on the bottom right. |
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| When you want to recolor something, first you have to pick the color to replace. Using the color picker tool (looks like an eyedropper almost), RIGHT CLICK on the color you want to change--this should make it the secondary color. In this example, I right-clicked in the pinkish red area inside that alpha, and if you look at the color wheel it shows you it's the secondary color. |
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| Then select your PRIMARY color by left-clicking on the color you want in the color wheel (to be safe, you could select "primary" from the drop-down menu in the color toolbox first, but you don't always have to). Then select the "recolor" tool from your toolbox. |
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| Select the size brush you want (usually, if you're recoloring a whole layer, I'll go big). Also, select the tolerance you want for the desired effect. You may have to try out a few different tolerance levels...but I usually stay kinda low (around 20). Then, "brush" over the layer with your recoloring tool, and you're good to go! |
DAY 3: The CLONE stamp
Sometimes, an element, quick page, or even one of your photos has something there you don't want--a slip showing, words you want to erase, a nasty pimple, etc. This is where the clone stamp comes in handy. You literally clone one area into another. It's not too complicated, either. :) I will say that I'm not an expert when it comes to using this on faces, because the shading/coloration is much more complex than in scrapbook elements. But I've made it work with a little patience. ;)
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| Open up whatever image you want. In this quick page, I don't want to have the word "sliding" on that blue rectangle, because maybe my "day of play" doesn't include a park. Select the "clone stamp" tool. |
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| Zoom in a little to see your work. Depending on the size of the area you want to clone, determine your brush size at the top. What you WANT to have cloned (in this case, the blue area), PUSH CTRL+left click. Release. You'll see a little dot appearing and disappearing--that's good. Now, just left-click (without control) and drag (in little spurts, usually) over the words. Continue doing this, repositioning the CTRL+click dot as needed. (So this is where your artistic eye comes in--try to blend the shade and color so it looks natural.) |
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| When you're finished, you should have something awesome like this! Now you can add your own text to it! Yay for the clone stamp! |
DAY 4: Gradients
Gradients are one of the easiest things to use in scrapbooking, and I use them a lot when I want a picture to sort of blend into the paper background. This works well on paper of all colors and shades, too!
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| Open your paper(s) and your photo as a layer on top of it. Select the gradient tool. |
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| Make sure it is set to transparency mode--or else it will blend into another color instead of into your background! There are a few shapes up at the top left--linear, linear reflected, conical, radial (my favorite). These give you an idea of what sort of gradient you'll have--the white being the picture, the black being your background. You can try each of these today and see how they work, but I'm showing you the circle/radial one. |
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| Click in the center (or focal point) of your photo and DRAG towards the outside as far as you want 'til you have the desired effect. |
DAY 5: The Magic Wand
The Magic Wand is a fun tool I've really only begun to explore. I use it when I want to remove an all-white background from a picture I've found online (when I can't find scrapping elements specific enough for my page, I MAKE them!), or sometimes to make a silhouette. I'll show you those two methods now, and let you play around with it more later. :)
REMOVING A WHITE BACKGROUND: This is actually really easy (usually).
1. Open your image in PAINT.net
2. Select the magic wand tool, then set your tolerance to around 25 (depending on the image's quality, you might have to play around with that number a little).
3. Click on the white background and delete! (You can just click the "delete" button, or go to Edit>>Cut.) The white-and-gray checkerboard background means that that part of the image is transparent.
4. File>>Save as (make sure you save as a .png! This keeps the background transparent). You can then use the image as an element for scrapbooking! (If you have a really good, white background in your photos, you could do this to your photos, too.)
MAKING A SILHOUETTE:
If you have a white background in your image, it's pretty easy to make a silhouette--
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| Use the magic wand tool to erase that white background (as described above). |
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| Go to the "Adjustments" tab at the top and click on brightness/contrast. Put the brightness as low as you can go, then put contrast up as high as you can go. |
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| If that left you with some white spots in the middle, you can use your paintbrush tool (make sure it's black) to fill in the spaces. TA DA! |
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| Open your image, and then select "Layer>>Add New Layer" |
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| You can use the line tool (or just the paintbrush tool, I think it depends on your image but I usually use a paintbrush) and zoom in to carefully and painstakingly outline your image with a small brush size. (Mine is bigger than I'd usually use so you can see it in the tutorial.) |
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| It should look something like this--make sure all the lines connect, even at the edges of the image. |
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| Click on the paint bucket icon in your tools toolbar, make sure it's black (or whatever color you want your silhouette), and then click inside your outline. |
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| On your "Layers" toolbar at the bottom right, delete the layer with the actual photo (highlight the layer and then click the red "x"). Now you have a .png silhouette! You can fill the back in with white or some other color, or leave it blank to use in your scrapbooking/crafting. |
DAY 6: Adding a shadow to objects
There are a few different ways to do this, but I'm going to show you the way I like best--because of how natural the shadow looks on a scrapbook page (that IS the point of these tutorials, after all, right?). :) You don't HAVE to use this, but sometimes you want things to stand out or have a more textured look for your page, and shadows can make that happen.
In this case, my red bird is blending too much into my red paper background. A shadow should help it "pop out."
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| Import your element/photo/text/whatever you want to add a shadow to in a separate layer. |
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| Copy and paste that layer--you'll want TWO layers. |
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| Go to "Adjustments," then "Brightness & Contrast." Make the brightness as low as you can go and make the contrast high--should be pretty much a black copy of your original element/photo/text. |
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| Move it so it's a little off-kilter (just a little to the right and down, for instance) and move that whole LAYER down, too. Now you'll have a really ROUGH and unnatural-looking shadow. |
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| To make it smooth and more natural-looking, click on "Effects," then "Blurs," then select the Gaussian blur. Make this number somewhere between 35 and 75 for best results. |
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| If the shadow is STILL too strong for you, click on "Layers," "Layer Properties," and change the opacity to something around 200 (or whatever looks best to you). This makes that dark shadow even more transparent, so between that and the blur you can see under your original object/text just fine--like a real shadow! |
DAY 7: Some shortcuts
I figured you might like a few keyboard shortcuts for the most-used and basic things.
Obviously, since this is a Windows-based program, CTRL + S is save, CTRL + X is cut, CTRL+C is copy, and CTRL+V is paste.
CTRL+SHIFT+V is paste into a new layer.
CTRL+I "inverts" your selection (so it selects everything else BUT what you have selected)--I use this when I want to delete the rest of an image (like behind a frame)...
CTRL + D is "deselect." Do this before your gradients and shadows for best effects. :)
Go back and practice anything you didn't quite get this week. :) Tomorrow, we start to put it all together into your very own scrapbook page! Woohoo! Almost there!
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