Pre-made Elements that you have
purchased or downloaded from the internet are a quick and easy way to put
scrapbook pages together. PhotoImpact makes adding them to your layout easy,
you drag the element right out of windows explorer, or copy/paste it from your
work area onto the page and automatically a new layer will be created for it.
But what if the color of an element doesn’t quite match your background, your
photos, or if it clashes with the other elements on your page? In this case,
you want to use some of the color changing options, this tutorial will show you
a few of the easiest ways to do this.
If I just want to change the hue a
bit, I use the Format/Color Balance Tool as shown below.
A window will open up with samples of
your current color with a small amount of each of these colors added, green,
yellow, orange, cyan, red, teal, blue, and magenta, in the boxes surrounding
it. I’m going to make this tag a bit more purplish in color, and as you can see
by the graphic below, clicking on the teal option will add purple to my tag.
After you choose the color, the new color will now be in the center, and you can
continue to choose to add more colors until you get the shade you are looking
for. If you want to return to your original color to start over with your
choices, just hit the reset button.
If you select teal several times, you
start to approach the blues. When you get the hue that you want, select OK.
This is a quick and easy way to
change the color, but there are other ways as well. Next I’m going to show you
how to do this with the Hue and Saturation option. Go to Format/Hue &
Saturation.
The following window will open. You
can move the sliders in the top slider bar to select the hue, it’s a little more
of a guess as you can’t see the samples, but you can change the color more
dramatically this way. Sliding the bar to the –55 position gives me a blue.
Make sure the Preview box is checked
so you can see what the new color looks like. When you find the shade you want,
you can use the Saturation slider to either brighten the color or make it more
subdued, and the Lightness slider to darker or lighten the color.
The Color Adjustment as shown above,
is another option. In this choice you have a little more control of the colors
you are adding to change the shade of your element.
Finally, you may have the hue that
you want, but just want a lighter or darker shade. The easiest way to do this,
is to use the Brightness & Contrast option.
The following window will open.
This one also has thumbnails so that
you can quickly view the results. Click on the shade you want until you are
satisfied, then press OK.
So you aren’t limited to the color
you have, whether you need to change it just slightly, or quite a bit, it’s
quite easy to do with PhotoImpact. This way, one set of elements is even more
versatile, and can be used on a much larger variety of layouts.
