Designer Technique - Amy Wolff (Color Popping & Triangles)

Today I introduce to you Amy Wolff as our designer for the Designer Technique this week. I invited Amy to participate when I spotted her wonderful kits and elements in ads. They really caught my eye! I knew I had to have them.

I used the coupon below to pick up some stuff which was on my wish list and I was right! They are as fantastic as they look in the ads! I am sure ready to have some fun scrapping now! Check out this post for two layouts I did and watch for a post in the near future of my young sons in front of flowers. I hope they are not too upset when they see me scrapping them with flowers! Who would have known someone would create such great "guy" flowers! [giggle]

I was also very impressed with Amy as you sent to me her writing below a week early! This is only an indication to me that she is organized, responsible, and very responsive to her customers.

I have played with blending modes to make photos pop with color (or correct photos) before, but I have learned some new combinations of modes in her writing below and I am anxious to go play! It is always fun to see how someone else does something.

You can find her shop here and her blog here.

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I'm going to share two of my favorite techniques. One for making your photos pop, and one that is a basic design technique that I try to use on each and every scrapbook page I make.

First, my color pop technique-

Duplicate your photo so you have two layers of the same photo. You do this in photoshop by dragging the photo in the layers palette to the icon that looks like a piece of paper with a corner folded. Adjust the blend mode on the top photo to screen.











Duplicate this layer and adjust the new layer to overlay.

Play with the opacity of both of the these layers to get the look you want.







Now we can add a couple of adjustment layers. Go to the icon at the bottom of your layers palette that looks like a half black half white circle. Choose "hue/saturation" and play with the saturation sliders. Although we are making the colors pop by increasing the saturation, you can also get a nice color wash effect by decreasing the saturation.

Once you get a look you like, go back to the adjustment layer icon and choose "contrast". Slide the sliders to the right, probably no more than 10, but it's up to you!

The final step I use in processing my photos is to add an unsharp mask. Merge all your layers together first then go to the top of your screen Filter-Sharpen-Unsharp Mask. A good all purpose setting is: Amount: %85 Radius: 1 Threshold: 4

You can apply this more than once if you need more sharpening.

Here is a before and after to give you an idea!

The best part of this technique is that it is totally customizable...you have complete control on how your photo turns out!







My favorite layout design trick...using triangles.

One thing I always try to apply in my layout is a visual triangle. The eye tends to follow like objects and colors throughout a page. By placing 3 similar things in a visual triangle around your focal point you will accent it and the page will feel more balanced. Here are a few examples.





















My favorite item I have designed is my Did It For Ya line of tags. I wanted something that would be super easy for beginning digiscrappers and timesaving for advanced scrappers. This new set is really fun and colorful!












As a special offer to your blog readers I'd like to offer a coupon. Use code hummiesworld for %20 off my designs at the-lilypad, expires April, 30th 2007.