Christine Borgfeld Designs

Photo masks aren't just for photos

This is the first of several posts on ideas for using brushes in your scrapbooking and designing. 

Photo masks have recently become popular in digital scrapbooking layouts.  Numerous designers are selling them (including me) and they can make some really stunning pages.  Here is an example from my favorites at DST (click to see credits). 

Basically the mask (or combination of brushes) is used to crop the picture.  I use this technique frequently in blended layouts, but I also use brushes and photo masks to crop part of a background paper and use it to highlight an image.  Here is a quick example of what you can do:

1. Start with an extracted image, a photo mask from my Distressed Elegance set, and a background paper from Jofia Devoe (The Smell of Summer kit).

2. Use the photo mask to cop a section of the background paper.

3. Place the cropped design behind the extracted image, rotate or position as you like, and you have the start of a stunning layout. 

 

 

New brushes for October!

 My new set of Photoshop brushes for October is finally here! I really love the way these turned out.  Now I need to go use them and actually do some scrapping instead of designing.  If only I could do both at the same time!  Anyway, check them out at PDP - $6 for them all for a few weeks or buy them individually for $2.50 each. 

September Brushes are here!

My bundle of Photoshop brushes are here for September!  You can get the whole set for $6 - just $1 each.  Just click on the picture to go to the store.

New Photoshop brushs for June

I've just released 8 new sets of high resolution Photoshop brushes!  You can buy them individually or as a full set for a heavy discount.  The set will only be available for the next month, and I will have another set in July.  Look for new releases the first Sunday of each month. 

All of my brushes are made at high resolution (300ppi) with original art, public domain or unrestricted usage material, and commissioned designs. Brushes are provided in abr and png format. Brush files are created in Photoshop CS for maximum backward compatibility.

These are available with two license choices. The default PDP standard license allows personal use, scrap for others, and limited printed uses for profit. The extended license allows use in digital scrapbook products and other graphic uses for profit without credit or quantity requirements.

Here are the previews:

 

Action for creating brushes

Thanks to Carrie Stephens for taking things up a notch by suggesting an action!  Here is the fully automated version...

1. Create an action with two steps a.) define brush preset b.) close the file - here is my version Download Make_brush
2. Put all your png files in one directory
3. go to File>Automate>Batch
4. Select your new action and the source folder. You don't need a destination folder.  Click Ok and watch it go! 
5. Go into preset manager and save your set. 

By the way you can check out Carries site Fish Scraps here. 

Shortcuts for creating brush files in Photoshop

Well I finally have a post that's related to digital scrapbooking!  I've been working on new brush sets recently and realized its gotten so much easier to convert all the individual files into a single brush set ( the .abr photoshop file).  I guess I've finally learned all the cool shortcuts to make it lightening fast.  So maybe this can help someone else save some time. 

First, you need a keyboard shortcut for the "define brush preset" command (under the edit menu).  Go into Edit>Keyboard Shortcuts and create one.  I use Ctrl+P, but pick whatever you can remember and a short cut you don't already use.  Then follow these steps when you want to create your abr file. 

1. Create  your png files - (make sure they are 2500x2500 pixels or smaller)
2. Put all your files in a directory and name them as you want them in the final package.  I use the batch renaming process in Adobe Bridge for this.
3. Open them all in Photoshop in one operation.  When you are selecting the file to open, highlight all the files at once.  This is the first trick.   
4. Go to Window>Arrange>Tile
5. Second trick - you can create the brush without selecting anything.  Just click to select the file you want and then Crtl+P (or your version) and enter.  Your nice file names get pulled in as the brush names.
6. Use Crtl+W to close the file.
7. Click, Crtl+P, Enter, Crtl+W and repeat until done. 
8. Go to Edit>Preset Manager.  Shift click to select all the brushes you just created and save the set. 

Thats it! 

My only complaint is that when you have all the files open in Photoshop, and you close one it automatically selects the last one in the list by default.  This is why you have to click on each one you want at the begining.  If anyone knows how to change the default to the first file please let me know!