Creating a Template from a Layout

Before I get into today's tutorial I wanted to mention that April is Autism Awareness Month. I have to confess I know very little about Autism. However, over the past year I've had the pleasure of getting to know Rina Kroes and her beautiful family, including her precious son Conlon. While Rina is usually a very private person (her blog is appropriately titled the Reluctant Recluse), she has recently taken the time to share on her blog many of her experiences with her son. To all of those out there who's lives have been touched by Autism and related conditions, I send prayers and blessings to you all.

While at the retreat Holli Dunn shared a few tips on black and white conversions and ways to achieve various color effects in photos. The photo in the layout below is one of the results of experimenting with her tips. The layout is loosely based on Laura K's, "Dream with your Heart".


Credits: Everything from Starting in Style except black notebook paper which is from Intensity both by Misty Cato, Scrapbook-Bytes

CREATING LAYERED TEMPLATES

There are two basic approaches to creating a layered template. One is to start from scratch and use various shapes and tools within your program to create each piece of the template. The other approach is to work backward from a layout to create a template for future use. This tutorial addresses the second approach.

Start with your finished but unflattened layout. Each item must still be in its own layer for this to work. Delete any items that won't translate well into a template shape; items like stitching, journaling, etc. I'll be working with the I Wish You Joy layout I shared above. You can see I've eliminated the journaling, journaling strips, stitching, staples and fiber as they won't translate well into a template shape, or won't be applicable to future layouts. I've also gotten rid of all layer styles, such as drop shadows.



Set your top layer as the active layer by clicking on it once in the layers palette. In PS go to Image->Adjustments->Brightness/Contrast. In PSE go to Enhance->Adjust Lighting->Brightness/Contrast.



Slide the Contrast slider all the way to the left. Click 'OK'.



Click once on the second layer in the layers palette and repeat the above step. After you have moved the contrast slider to the left you can vary the shade of gray using the brightness slider.



Repeat this process for each layer until you have a grayscale version of every layer.



One important note - if you plan to use your template for anything other than personal use (such as selling it or sharing it with others), you will need to remove any shapes that are derived from custom elements created by someone else. For example the swirls and notebook paper in this template were created from items contained in the Starting in Style and Intensity kits. If I were to share this template I would delete the swirls and replace the notebook paper with a rectangle of similar shape and size.