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So, are you wondering how long this class is going to take? I can tell you that I did this entire layout in 38 minutes. I don't say that to be competitive - I'm just saying it to give you hope. My first digital layout took something like 14 hours, but that's because I was doing my usual "learn as you go, be a perfectionist and attempt the impossible" thing. Since you are laid back, calm, and not a perfectionist, you'll probably require more than 38 minutes but considerably less than 14 hours! 
If you have been following along, you will now have a layout with a turquoise background, a white swirly overlay, your photo and a gold flower. If not, you can check back to the previous lesson. We're going to add the remaining digital elements (downloaded in Lesson 2), but these next elements will need some re-sizing and cropping and such, so you'll get exposed to all those skills now.
Rotating Layers
- With our flower in the lower right of the layout, it would be nice to have the large swirl appear in the upper left of the layout, rather than the lower right, as it is now. To rotate it, first type "v" to make your move tool active.
- Make the overlay layer active by clicking on it in the layers palette - it will be near the bottom.
Tip: With the move tool active (type "v"), you can click anywhere on the white overlay to select it. - You will now see a box around the swirl overlay, and at the very bottom (center) you will see a little circle (shown in red, below). If you click that circle and drag to the right or left, the entire layer will rotate. Experiment with this a little.
- Once you have rotated the layer, you will see the commit box (
) - but did you notice how it spun around really fast and was hard to make it line up just right? I didn't like that, so let's just hit the red cancel button. - That method of rotation works well when you just want to rotate something "a little", but when you want to move something exactly, I prefer the following. Making sure the swirl overlay layer is still selected, go to Image: Rotate: Layer 180°.
Now, the large corner of the swirly frame is in the upper left corner, and all is right with the world. You may have also noticed several other handy options on the Image: Rotate menu, such as flip horizontal and rotate 90° left. These are all very handy and it's good to know a couple of ways to rotate things.
Resizing digital elements
It may not seem like it to you, but I think that photo is a little too large for our purposes, so we're going to resize it. Of course, you may well have chosen a smaller photo for your layout. If so, please humor me and make it a little smaller so you can get this next skill down pat.
- Go ahead a save your file again.
- Similar to the rotation steps, above, you will type "v" to activate your move tool, and then click the photo layer to select it.
- You will see the box around your photo - you're familiar with that now. Note that there are tiny boxes at each corner of the photo, plus a box at the midpoint of each side. These are called handles, and to resize something, you just click a handle and drag it. Experiment a little with this now by clicking and dragging any handle.
Rule of Thumb: dragging toward the center makes the selection smaller, dragging away from the center makes it larger.
- Did you notice that when you dragged on the corner handles, everything was hunky-dory, but when you dragged on the 'middle of the line' handles, your picture got all distorted and un-lovely? (If you did not notice this, give it a try now). When you have seen what I mean, go ahead and click the cancel button (lower right of your photo layer) to cancel any changes.
Rule of Thumb: To prevent this distortion, you need to make sure the Constrain Proportions box is checked in the options bar when you are re-sizing (circled in red, below). OR you can just use the corner re-sizing handles.
- Once you have canceled any changes you made while experimenting, type "v" to re-activate your move tool, and then click the photo layer to select it. Drag a corner re-size handle toward the center of your photo until it's a little smaller.
- Before you click the commit button, click on your photo and drag to move the photo down and to the right.
- Now, click the commit button (the green checkmark) to commit your changes. This shows how you can do a couple of things in a row, then commit all the changes at once.
- Go ahead and save your layout - it should look something like this:
Placing remaining digital elements into your layout
We are really cooking now! We're ready to add the remaining digital files.
- First, place all the remaining files into your layout using File: Place. You're now a pro at this, so we won't go into details, but make sure you get all of these files:
KristaEhlers_DP_JoyInTheJourney_blackBow.png
KristaEhlers_DP_JoyInTheJourney_blackCanvas.jpg
KristaEhlers_DP_JoyInTheJourney_whiteGridCrumpled.jpg
KristaEhlers_DP_JoyInTheJourney_whitePaintedFrame.png - If you added these in the same order that they are typed (above), your layout will now look like the image below. In a word: ugly. No worries - go ahead and do a File: Save (CTRL + S), and then we'll set about fixing it.
- The first thing we will do is hide some layers. Hiding layers is easy to do - just click the little eyeball icon (
) next to the layer's name. Hide the black bow, white grid paper, and white painted frame layers. - Now, your layout should be all black (since only the black paper is showing). It would be helpful to be able to see our photo and flower for the next step, so click on the black canvas layer in the layers palette to select it.
- With the black canvas layer in the layers palette, type CTRL + [ on your keyboard to move that layer down. Repeat this until you can see your photo. Your layout should now look like the image below - save your file and continue to the next step.
Deleting unwanted sections of digital elements
- If you remember the sample layout, the black paper didn't fill the entire layout - in fact, it was just a little strip. To create that strip, we will use the rectangular marquee tool - click the button (
) in your toolbox.
Shortcut: Type "m" on your keyboard. - Click the layer containing the black paper in your layers palette to make that layer active.
- Now, we're going to draw a box with the marquee tool that will be the shape you want for your black strip of paper. The way you do this is to click your mouse over the place where the upper left corner of your paper strip will be and then drag the mouse to the lower right corner of your paper strip and let go. You should see a blinking dotted rectangle about the size of the paper strip - this line is often called "marching ants", since it looks like ants marching in a line.
- We now have a selection for what we want to keep, but there is no "I want to keep this" tool in Photoshop, so click Select: Inverse from the menu bar. You will now see marching ants around your paper strip, and another set of marching ants around the outside of your layout - this shows that the inverse of your original selection is now active.
Shortcut: type CTRL + Shift + i (Mac: Command + Shift + i) - Type the Delete key to delete the selection.
- What remains is just the paper strip we wanted - did you see how nothing else was deleted from your photo or background? This is the power of layers in Photoshop - whatever you do only affects the layer you have selected. Speaking of layers, we want that strip to be over our photo, but below the flower. So, type CTRL + ] (Mac: Command + ]) until the black strip is over your photo. Your layout will look like this:
- Next, we will do a similar process with the white grid paper. Find the layer containing the white grid paper in your layers palette and click in the empty box to the left of it to un-hide it.
- Again, your white paper is covering everything, and we need to see the photo in order to figure out how big our strip should be. So, with the white grid layer still active, type CTRL + [ on your keyboard to move that layer down. Repeat this until you can see your photo.
- You are ready to delete the unwanted portions of this layer, leaving a horizontal paper strip for your journaling. To do this repeat steps 1 - 6, above. When this is finished, your layout should look like this:
Using the eraser tool to alter a digital element
- It's time to put the bow on the flower, so un-hide the bow layer in your layers palette.
- That bow is way too big, doncha' think? We could just use the move tool and drag the corner handles to re-size, but we've already done that, so that would be boring, right? Instead, type CTRL + T (Mac: Command + T) on your keyboard to activate the Transform options bar.
- In the options bar, make sure Constrain Proportions is checked so you don't get a distorted bow, and then type "40" in the Height box.
- In your layout, you will see that the bow is now a tiny little thing - click the commit button to accept your changes.
- To make the bow look like it's tied to the flower, we're going to delete the horizontal ribbon behind the bow. First, we'll delete MOST of that ribbon using the marquee tool. Type "m" to activate the marquee tool and drag a box across the bow, leaving just the loops of the bow and a little bit of each 'tail'. (see image below)
- Making sure that the bow layer is still selected in your layers palette, type CTRL + Shift + i (Mac: Command + Shift + i) to invert your selection and then hit the delete it.
- You can type CTRL + d (Mac: Command + d) to deselect and then type "v" to activate your move tool. Now, click and drag your bow so that the knot of the bow is centered over your flower.
- We are ready to erase, but let's zoom in a little so that the bow is as big as possible to work with. Click the zoom tool (
) to activate it.
Shortcut: Type "z" - You mouse will turn into a little magnifying glass and you can click on the knot of your bow to zoom in on the bow. If you go too far, just hold down the ALT key on your keyboard and click again, which will zoom out. You can use your scroll bars to move your bow around so that it's centered.
Shortcut: CTRL + + to zoom in or CTRL + - to zoom out (Mac: Command + + to zoom in or Command + - to zoom out) - Click the eraser button to activate it.
Shortcut: Type "e" - Your mouse will turn into a little circle, which is your eraser tool. Making sure your bow layer is still selected, just click and drag over the background ribbon to erase it.
Tip: You can make your eraser bigger (type "]") or smaller (type "[") as you work, enabling you to get into the little corners. This also works with the brush tool, which we won't be using today.
- As you work, type CTRL + s to save every now and then, since you won't want to lose these changes.
Your bow will now look like this. It may have seemed hard and tedious, but getting familiar with the shortcuts we have just used is very valuable - I would never put you through any hardship unless there was a reason.
Adding a frame to a photo
Savvy users will have noted that there is only one layer we haven't worked with - the painted frame. Go ahead and un-hide that layer now. Well, there are some problems, aren't there? It needs to be re-sized and moved, and then we need to move the layer down so that the painted frame is below the white journal strip, the black strip, and the flower. Guess what? You're a PRO at these things now - you have already done all of these things in this lesson (above), so quiz yourself by tyring this one "on your own." How did it go? Here are some tips if you got stuck:
- Type "m" to activate the move tool, then click on the frame to select it.
- Click and drag the frame until it lines up with the top left corner of the photo.
- Drag a resize handle to make the frame as large as the photo NOTE: it's a little tricky, because you will have to take OFF constrain proportions if your photo is not 4 x 6. You didn't think I was going to make this too easy, did you?
- Commit your changes.
- Click on the layer in your layers palette and drag it down and drop it just above the photo.
...and Voila! You have a pretty nice looking layout. Pat yourself on the back - seriously, you deserve it! In fact, you probably deserve another cup of coffee, so get up and have a stretch. Rest your eyes and pat your puppy on the head. In fact, you could stop here. I won't tell anyone - in fact, I won't even know. But, I will say this: doesn't it seem like your layout is missing something? It's a little... flat, right? Heck, that is THE BIGGEST complaint that paper scrappers have about digital scrapbooking, and I wouldn't want you to go out into the world with your layout all flat and everything. I mean, maybe if you were that mean girl in high school, but not you! 
So, when you're ready, let's move on to the next lesson...
