Hi Sarah. Welcome aboard.

When using the backgrounds, I usually start a new document, sizing it at x 300 dpi and the page size of my print out. Then I open my background file and drag or copy it over. If it's not the right size I resize in one of two ways. You can just make it narrower or shorter if you don't mind that the aspect ratio will change. For some backgrounds this doesn' work. It makes things look squished. In that case, I resize by holding SHIFT and dragging one of the corners untill it's the height of my page. Then I move it around until I find a section that looks good on my page. I haven't had any trouble with pixilation when the images are 300 dpi.

Cropping works a little differently once the photo is dragged or copied into your project. To do it there you need to be sure you're working on the layer you want to crop. Then select the area with the marquee tool. You'll see dotted lines surrounding the area you've selected. If you delete here it will remove whatever is inside the selected area. To remove the area outside the selected area, go to select, inverse then delete. And don't forget you can undo if you don't get it just right the first time. I use that A LOT.

I hope this is helpful and not confusing. Just hollar if you need more explanation and I'll try again when I get home. I'm just leaving work for home.

Carole in SLC

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