One of the (many) things that I like about digital scrapbooking is how easy it is to change the size of the photos to fit my layout. When I used to scrap with printed pictures, I’d often plan out my layout ahead of time and resize the pictures before I printed them so they would fit on my layout the way I wanted. Now, I just open up my photo into my layout-in-progress and resize it right in Photoshop. For example, take a look at this layout I’m doing about my son’s first motorcycle ride. I snapped a few pictures before he left with my husband then (once I had calmed down because he was out on the highway on the back of a motorcycle – yikes!) I sat down to scrapbook the event. This is what I have so far -
You can see that I have the placement of my last picture on the layout already. I’ll often make myself a template before I start if I know how I want the layout to look, which is what I did in this case. Now all I have to do is bring my last photo onto the layout and clip it onto it’s spot. To do this, select the layer with the photo spot, then open up your photo and drag it onto your layout, which will place it one layer above the layer you had selected. Next, right click on the photo and select “create clipping mask” which will ‘clip’ the photo onto the layer under it. (I just adore using clipping masks!) This is what it looks like now. Since the photo layer is selected and the “show transform controls” box is checked, you can see the bounding box that shows where the edges of the photo are.
I use one of two ways to change the size of the photo while maintaining its aspect ratio (keep it from getting squished vertically or horizontally). Both ways work equally well, the method I choose simply depends on my mood at the time. The simpler way is to hold down the shift key, click on one of the corners and drag the mouse to resize the photo. If I don’t feel like using both hands, I’ll click on one of the corners to bring up the transformation bar thingy (I have no clue what it’s real name is), then click the little chain icon in between the horizontal and vertical percentages and click on one of the corners and drag the mouse. Once you’re done resizing your photo (or element), click on the check mark in the upper right corner to commit the transformation. I have a couple of notes at this point. The first is a caution to make sure you’re resizing to make the photo smaller. If you re-size the picture to make it larger, it can start to look pixelated when it’s printed. The other thing you should know is that every time you resize a rasterized layer, you lose quality. Since I tend to make lots of changes before I’m satisfied, I generally work with my photo layers as smart objects. The way you can tell if your layer is a smart object, is to look at its thumbnail in the layers palette. If there’s a little symbol in the lower right corner of the thumbnail, then it’s a smart object. To convert a rasterized image to a smart object, right click on the layer and choose “convert to smart object”.
And here’s the finished layout which I made with ‘Family Man’ Penny’s new collab with Shawna Clingerman.
Enjoy the rest of your week, take lots of pictures, and have fun scrapping your memories 
