Paola

I adore this! Very elegant!

Hello everyone…it’s me, Chantal, to bring you this week’s GSO picks. So many beautiful entries this week, it was so hard to choose just a couple.

Here are this week’s picks:

Tomboy by Paula Francovig
I just love the photos, and how they match with the Kit, just wow!

Backyard Adventures by Olga, the same Kit, such an amazing page, love all the photos, the extraction, the clustering…

Congratulations, you have been entered into final drawing for this month’s prize: a $10 GC to the After Five shoppe. I am looking forward to seeing all the beautiful layouts at A5D this coming week. Don’t forget to put your favorites in the GSO thread in our forum. And don’t forget to post your designs to the After Five Gallery. You might be the next GSO!

Hello everyone.. I hope you’re all enjoying the beautiful weather we are having at the moment.. It is soo hot here in the uk this past week, it is such a lovely change from our usual miserable grey days!
I am here today to present you with my first ever pick for the designer spotlight and I have chosen…. Catherine Designs!!
This lady is an amazing designer and sweetest person I have had the pleasure of ‘meeting’! I couldn’t wait to highlight her but… picking my most favourite kits of hers was super HARD!!!!
All her kits are out of this world but the ones I have picked always spring to the forefront of my mind when I think of Catherine!!
Here are my top kit picks (in no particular order, hehe) and some layouts to showcase these kits from our uber talented CT!!
Enjoy!

Here is the amazing kit..
MON AMIE LA ROSE

by me

One from Shayenne

Stunning collab from Catherine and Create wings
Re-creation23

One from Domad..

One from Diana32

By Jule..

Perfect boy kit..
BOYS RETREAT

Here’s one by Cherryberry

and another from me..

and last but by no means least..
PLAYING HOOKY

Heres one from our very own CherryBerry..

and the lovely Shades of Bliss!..

Thanks for looking everyone!!
Ellie

Hiya everyone, here in the UK we have beautiful weather which is unusual for us so I’m enjoying it while it is here and hope you have gorgeous weather too.  I’m going to interrupting my sun worship to say how beautiful all the layouts were this week from the GSO thread and you have made it extremely difficult for me to narrow it down to just 3!  But it must be done so i will not keep you in suspense any longer.

Fun By Ferdy

I think this page is so gorgeous especially for the weather coming up now.  I love the sequence of photos. Isnt she just adorable?

Carpe Carpe By Yshko

I just adore the extraction and the splashes of blue and the expression on his face is just amazing.

Sweet Pete By Traumelfe

I just love the photos.  He is such a sweetie and I love the colour scheme and how there’s definately no mistaking its a little boys page.

Congratulations, you have been entered into final drawing for this month’s prize: a $10 GC to the After Five shoppe. I am looking forward to seeing all the beautiful layouts at A5D this coming week. Don’t forget to put your favorites in the GSO thread in our forum. And don’t forget to post your designs to the After Five Gallery. You might be the next GSO!

Hello everyone..it’s me, Joyce, again to bring you this week’s GSO picks. So many beautiful entries this week, it was so hard to choose just a couple. But it must be done hehehe and we thank you for always being an inspiration to all of us.

Without further ado here are this week’s picks:

Lovin Nature by Meryem. The clustering, the composition, the perfectly matched colors, and that adorable photo…who can’t resist this layout? This is just plain amazing. I love how she laid out everything.

The second pick is Storytime by Paola. I love the deep rich colors here. Everything popped out because of it. I love that even though the pictures are on the edge, the page still looks even out because of the background. This is so beautiful!

Congratulations, you have been entered into final drawing for this month’s prize: a $10 GC to the After Five shoppe. I am looking forward to seeing all the beautiful layouts in the A5D this coming week. Don’t forget to put your favorites in the GSO thread in our forum.  And don’t forget to post your designs to the After Five Gallery.  You might be the next GSO!

Hi everyone, Joyce here to bring you the GSO picks for last week. Hope you had a fabulous Mother’s Day celebration with all the people you love.

There were a lot of gorgeous pages in the gallery this week. Here are the choices:

Dream Garden by Lindatjuhhh. Just the extraction of that adorable photo speaks for itself. This page is amazing! I love how the baby is lying down on the flower. It reminds me of Anne Geddes.

The second pick is Little Mommy by josette31. I just adore this page. The photo is just precious and sweet. And the composition is just so soft and pretty. The colors matched perfectly. This is just beautifully done!

Congratulations, you have been entered into the final drawing for this month’s prize: a $10 GC to the After Five shoppe.
I am looking forward to seeing all the beautiful layouts in the A5D gallery this coming week. Don’t forget to put your favorites in the GSO thread in our forum.

Hey everyone.. Ellie here again with this weeks GSO picks!
I hope everyone is well and gearing up ready for some exciting iNSD activities and goodies!!! I know I am!
Be sure to check in here at After 5 for some fabulous challenges games and goodies!!
So our gallery has been filled with some stunning layouts again and here are our picks!
Congratulations to ..
OliO .. here is her page ‘Joy’..
This LO simply jumped out at me.. and you all know Im a sucker for the jumpers hehe!

Congrats also goes to.. Scrappy smile for her LO.. Tea time!
I think her clustering is fab.. her photo is perfect and generally its just a beautiful layout!
Everything fits perfectly!

Congratulations, you have been entered into the final drawing for this month’s prize: a $10 GC to the After Five shoppe.
I am looking forward to seeing all the beautiful layouts in the A5D gallery this coming week. Don’t forget to put your favorites in the GSO thread in our forum.

Hello ladies, Sheri here with a couple tips and tricks for adding a little pizazz to your pages!  I use PSCS3, but the general concepts can be applied from almost any program.

First I’d like to start out with a quick refresh on maintaining the aspect ratio of either photos or elements.  The aspect ratio is the proportion of the horizontal and vertical components of your image.  When you change the size of something, but do not maintain the aspect ratio, you run the risk of creating an image that looks distorted, which detracts from your overall page design.

Here are some samples:

Here is a workspace screenshot of PSCS3:

Now on to creative cropping!  You can easily add another element of interest to your page, by creatively cropping your photos.  Here is a quick tutorial that will show you a few easy steps.

1. Click on the layer below your photo so that the custom shape will be placed under it.
2. Select your custom shape too.
3. Select a custom shape from your options tool bar.
4. Draw your custom shape, an outline will be visible even though the shape is below your photo.  Don’t worry too much, you can always change the location and size of the shape later.

5. Create a clipping mask by selecting “ctrl+alt+g” or by right clicking on the photo and selecting “create clipping mask”.
6. Apply your desired layer style (drop shadows, etc) to the custom shape.

Clipping masks are ideal, as they allow you the flexibility to change the orientation of the photo or the size of the crop without compromising the integrity of the image.

Happy scrapping!

Hallo, heute darf ich (Tanja, aka Samanta0505) Euch ein kleines Tutorial schreiben, in dem es um das Erstellen von Blends in Adobe Photoshop CS4 geht.
Kürzlich habe ich dieses Layout erstellt und diesem möchte ich nun noch ein Blend hinzufügen. Zunächst einmal ziehe ich mir das Foto auf meine Layout-Leinwand und lege diese Ebene direkt über den Hintergrund. Dann wähle ich unten im Ebenenmanager die Maske aus. (Zwar könnte man das Ganze auch mit dem Radiergummi machen, doch im Maskenmodus kann man auch später noch Korrekturen vornehmen, was beim Radiergummi nur beim letzten Schritt Möglich ist.)

Als Nächstes wähle ich das Pinselwerkzeug, stelle die Vorder- und Hintergrundfarbe auf Standard und wähle im Ebenenmanager die Maske aus. Den Pinsel stelle ich möglichst groß ein, damit die Ränder des Fotos möglichst weich gezeichnet werden können.

Dann “male” ich mit schwarzer Farbe über die Stellen, welche weichgezeichnet werden sollen. Im Ebenenmanager schaut das dann so aus.

Wenn Ihr Euch vermalt, ist das halb so wild. Wechselt einfach zu weiß und korrigiert den Fehler.
Nun könnt Ihr Euch die Maskeneinstellungen einblenden lassen (Fenster->Masken) und dort ein wenig rumspielen. Je nach Geschmack und Vorlieben. Ich habe diese Einstellungen gewählt.

Zu guter Letzt habe ich das Foto noch in S/W umgewandelt und eine kleine Tonwertkorrektur vorgenommen. So sieht mein fertiges Layout nun aus:

Ich hoffe Ihr könnt mit diesem Tutorial etwas anfangen.
Eine schöne Woche noch!

Tanja

Happy Saturday everyone! Trina here.

More and more people are looking to add watermark to their online photography images due to the sheer volume of (unfortunately) people abusing the internet and your images as their own work.

I have decided to teach a quick and easy way to create a watermark to add to your photography to help prevent your work being used by the abusers.

1^st. You need to open the image you wish to watermark and select the text/font, size and colour you want. See Pic 1 below

Now choose where you want your text/watermark to appear on your picture and type it and then hit enter and the text will appear on your image as shown on pic 2:

Now, this is far too bold so we need to softened it or blend it in your photo. With your text tool still highlighted, click in front of the first letter and drag along until all is highlighted, and then go to the top menu;

Layer/Layer Style/Blending Options and Click

As shown on pic 3:

You can now be as creative as you would like but the more creative the more you take away from your photo. So in general you simply want a basic watermark that will just do the job. All you need to do is click and drag either of the opacity bars to the left. As you do so, you will see the text start to fade as shown on pic 4:

Once you have reached the level of opacity that you think will suffice, just click of and you are left with a watermark on your image as shown in pic 5:

Now you have created a watermark. You can as well create a action if you regularly add a watermark to your image. I hope this has been helpful. Enjoy your weekend!