How to use a photograph to make a digital element.

I am new to writing tutorials and I am not an expert in Photoshop, but since I am working on this for a challenge I thought, I would challenge myself in writing a tutorial.

You can use your own photographs to create digital elements that you can use in digital creations.

It really helps to expand your options in creating scrapbook pages, cards etc. I use adobe photoshop CS2. there might be some slight variation based on whichever version of Adobe you use.

Step one photograph the object you want, or select an item in a photograph.

Step two, you are going to select the item that you want to use as an element. To start with I use my magic wand selection tool. The tool that looks like a wand. On the setting at the top of the image I select continuous. I do this to make sure that I only get the colors that I want in the object I am selecting, not the same color elsewhere in the picture. I select several sections by holding the shift key as I select places in the object. Don't worry if you have areas that are not selected. Once I have a good portion selected then I use the masking feature. The masking feature is the little boxes with a circle in them. The one with the box around it is the one that is selected. Try clicking on the boxes to see what I mean. Double click the box on the left to see the settings. I prefer that my color indicate the masked area, but you can do it either way. Play with this feature and see what works best for you. I also change my color to be a color that is NOT similar to any colors in my picture. For example I was working on a picture that was primarily red, white and blue. I made my mask color a neon green so that it stood out. Also I play with the opacity to best suit my needs. Then I use the eraser to unmask any areas that need to be selected but are showing up in the mask color. If I get overzealous and select an area outside of the object I wanted selected then I just use the paint brush tool to re mask the area. At any time you can click on the other box with a circle in it to see the selection area.

Step four, once I have the object fully selected and nothing else I copy it. I use the key shortcut ctrl-c.

Step five, now open a new project. Make sure that the background is transparent. When you have your new project open paste your object in the project.

Step six, save our new project.

Congratulations you now have created an element. I am going to try to post some pictures in this thread to help illustrate what I am talking about. In the meant time here are a few items that I have done with this technique.

In this item the frogs were from a piece of fabric that I had bought and not used and was photographing to sale.


In this one, I used a picture I took of my daughter's bag for trick or treating. I was inspired by the fact that the flowers on the bag matched her halloween outfit. (She was a "Slumber Party Girl" for Halloween, so she wore her pajamas.) Well for this picture I just used a portion of the polka dots from the bag as a background paper.