donnahde Loc: Newark, DE

Hi all,

I'm brand new with the full photoshop program although I've been using PSE for a while. I'm trying to create a 12x12 album page which I've cropped to that size but the ruler is showing me more like 18x18.

Also, when I bring an image in from LR6 as a PSD it comes in huge. Is there a way to bring that in smaller?

I've been watching PS and LR videos for about a week now and have gone back to look for answers to these questions to no avail.

Hoping someone out there can help.

Thanks,
Donna

Bill Houghton Loc: New York area

PSD is the native format for Adobe, It saves all your layers and saved selections It can become a very huge file.

TIF is another format you can try. Generally if you are going back to work on it. PSD is the right format to use. 50 MEG and Up is the general size you can expect. Esp if you have layers.

donnahde Loc: Newark, DE

Hi Bill! Nice to hear from you again. (-:

It shouldn't be that size just coming from LR should it? I know after creating a lot of layers in PS that it would be huge. Maybe I should export as jpegs before creating album pages with them since I've already edited those in LR. It just seems that they're not THAT huge when I view the video trainings so wondered what I was doing wrong. Thanks for jumping in.

Bill Houghton Loc: New York area

You probably not doing anything wrong. JPEG is a most likely one of the better ways. You can also try JPEG 2000 if you worried about loss. But if you Done with it JPEG should work fine.

donnahde Loc: Newark, DE

Ok, will try that. Thanks!

Picdude Loc: Ohio

Hi Donna. Not sure what your steps are in creating your album page in conjunction with Lightroom but...

You can create a new page with the proper size canvas by clicking on the 'File' then 'New' menus at the top left of your screen. When you click on 'New', you should open a window that allows you to set the height, width, resolution, color mode, etc. of the canvas you want to work with. Note that there are two widows settings beside width and height. The first is the numerical value you want to set the size to, the other defines the unit-of-measurement of the numerical value. In your case, you may want to set the unit-of measure to inches, and the numerical values to 12. This will give you a blank 12" by 12" canvas.

Once your images are on the new canvas I presume they are each a different layer. You can adjust the size of the image by clicking first on the layer (image) you want to adjust. Then click on 'Edit' at the top-left of page. Move your mouse down to 'Transform' in the new window, then click on 'Scale' in the next window. The picture should be surrounded by a white line with squares at each corner and centered on each side. Look up at the toolbar below File, Edit, Etc. You should see shaded boxes defining X:, Y:, W: and so on with a lock icon beside the box for W:. If you click on the lock icon (so that it is shaded) it will 'lock' your width and height rations for the picture. You can now click on the adjustment 'squares' on your selected image and resize it without having to worry about changing the perspective of the image.

Bill H. was right about the memory size of PSD. They will probably be quite large. Tiff can actually be even bigger. His suggestion of saving the files as .jpg before importing to Photoshop for this project is a good one and will probably save you a few headaches and definitely a lot of memory space.

donnahde Loc: Newark, DE

Thanks, picdude, for typing this all out. Helpful info there. The album is now semi-complete - waiting for approval by couple before I add finishing touches. I did use jpeg saves in LR prior to exporting to PS but still huge files that required 7-8 resizes before fitting my 12x12 canvas. Very strange because they're never that big in the training videos I've been watching. Again, thanks!

CajonPhotog Loc: Shreveport, LA

Ctrl + zero will fit the photo to the screen, but it sounds like you have 2 different resolutions going on. Make sure the resolutions of the photo and the new background are the same.

Morning Star Loc: West coast, North of the 49th N.

I don't use LR so can't help you with that.
But what is the resolution of the new page you're making?
I have made many, many scrapbook pages, in different sizes, all of them in PSE, although that should not be different than using PS.
All of them start out as the size in inches that I need, with a resolution of 300 ppi, so that for a 12 x 12 inch page, the total resolution would be 3600 x 3600 pixels.
I then put all the photos, text-art, decorations, background, etc. in the photo bin and drag and drop them to the page.
Each item makes its own layer, which is great for moving them around afterwards. Another benefit of the layers is that if you don't like the effect of the background, you can easily replace it without starting over again.
When I'm happy with the page, I save it as a .psd file first (that will allow me to "mess" with it again later), then save it as a .jpg as that is what the printers will accept.

Just another thought: When you say "Album page" - are you referring to a digital album? Fine, no further comment needed.
Are you referring to an album you will have printed (and bound)? If so, check with the company to see if a full-bleed page needs to be larger than the actual 12 x 12". Also make sure your photos and decorations stay away from the edges, or else you run the risk that the guillotine at the printer's shop will chop them off.

donnahde Loc: Newark, DE

Thanks for your help, Morningstar. The album is now finished except for the cover. I figured it out somehow but your explanation here is very helpful for future endeavors.