Sugarplum Paperie

The more I digi-scrap, the more I love to use frames with my photos. But a lot of times, I’m not sure how to get my photos to fit in them without cutting, cropping and resizing… and finding the right dimensions can be time consuming! I wish everyone would be so nice as to include clipping masks with their goodies.

But I’ve found a way around this little annoyance, and I thought I’d share it with you!

How to Make Your Own Clipping Mask

1) Open your file with your tag or frame element.

2) Create a new layer and drag it behind your frame (Note: you may have to turn your tag or frame into a layer before you can move anything behind it).

3) Fill this new layer with black.

4) Select the Magic Wand tool (W). Be sure to check the box that says “Contiguous” and set the tolerance to zero. Select the area within the frame, like so:

5) Go to Select > Modify > Expand. Expand the selection by about 20 pixels.

6) Invert the selection (CTRL+Shift+I) and hit the delete key. This will delete the rest of the black area of this layer!

Now you are left with a clipping mask that’s just slightly larger than your frame or tag! Drag your photo or paper in between the two objects and clip it to the black layer. Now you can move your picture around until it’s in the perfect spot. This will also help you when you go to resize your pictures with the Transform tool. You can see how everything is aligned before you commit to the changes.

I hope you find this tip to be helpful! Let me know if you have any questions and I’ll be happy to send you an e-mail with an answer. One thing I can already tell you: I have CS2 and I don’t know a thing about Photoshop Elements. If anyone would like to leave a comment with the keyboard shortcuts for Elements, that would be much appreciated, I’m sure. Thanks!

You might be wondering just how you would go about playing around with a clipping mask (like the one that’s included in my Little Circle Tag freebie). Well, I’ve gone to the trouble of taking a few screen shots to show you just how I used these elements to make my sample tag. Here are my instructions. I hope you find them to be helpful!

How to Use a Clipping Mask:

1) First, begin by opening the .png file. Select the Magic Wand Tool (W) with the tolerance set to “0″ and the box mark “Contiguous” checked. Click on the black circle (called the mask) to select it.

2) Next, we are going to move this mask to a new “Layer via Cut” which is quickly done with a keyboard command: CTRL+Shift+J.

3) Now, be sure to drag the mask layer down so that it is behind the metal tag. Align the two layers and open your patterned paper:

4) Using the Move Tool (V), drag your paper straight from it’s window into your tag file (nifty little trick, eh?). Position the paper layer to be between mask layer and the metal tag layer.

5) Now all you need to do is create a Clipping Mask (either by right clicking on the layer and selecting “Create Clipping Mask” or using the command CTRL+ALT+G). Once you’ve done this, you’ll have a tag that looks like this:

That’s all there is to it! And it’s a handy trick to have in your tool box. Let me know if you have any questions! I’d be happy to help.