Hi!

I am very new to this and am practicing with the Monkey Business kit. I will probably not be using the correct vocabulary for this, but hope to convey my problem!

I want to make a color-blocked background. There are several background papers in the kit. I want the background to be yellow and then I want to "cut" a piece of striped paper to lay on top. When I copy the striped onto the yellow, it covers completely. When I use the crop tool, the entire lo gets cropped down.

How do I crop something (a layer) without cropping the rest of my work. I foresee this being a problem for everything else I want to change on the lo, including the photos.

Thanks for your help on a very basic problem! I feel like if I can't even figure this out, I should just give up now!

Jen

Jen, be of good cheer and brave heart! It would be really helpful if you told use what program you are using as different programs have different tips. The basic idea, however, is that you want to resize the striped paper. Think of the background as the piece of paper you are using, just as you explained. Cropping, as you have discovered, takes scissors to the whole layout. You just want to cut the striped paper (either before or after you put it on the background). There are several different ways to do this and they all have different advantages. But you say you are new so maybe you just want the fastest and easiest! That would be to cut out your striped paper before you put it on the background. I would resize rather than crop (you will have to learn resizing as it is very hard to crop elements, if not impossible). Your program should have a function that lets you make your open image smaller. In Photoshop that is Image-Resize. So open your striped paper as its own image. Say you resize your striped paper to 4 inches x 4 inches. Then, place it on the background. Usually, you can just "drag" it from where it is to on top of the paper and a new layer will be created so that your background piece now has one layer (the yellow background) and a second layer that just has your striped paper. You will probably want to use your Mover tool on the striped paper layer to move it around to where you want it. Then, on to the dotted paper or patterned paper or whatever you are using! Same thing. Open it as a new image. Resize it first, then place it on your background and move it around. At that point you will have 3 layers. And so on!

As I said, there are many many ways of doing this but this should get you started. Please let us know your program and if you are having any problems with the above. Good luck!

Thanks so much for writing back! I use Paint Shop Pro 9.

I was thinking that I could cut it down before placing it on the background, but I am the type who constantly changes things after I place my items on the page. I'd like to know how to crop things once they are on the page, especially once I get my pictures on.

Should I deform and then drag around until it looks ok rather than crop?

Thanks again!!!
Jen

PS: I tried the resizing, like you suggested. It works great! However, when I tried to re-size again once it was on the page, it wouldn't let me pick the "deform" tool. Any ideas on that?

Thanks again,
Jen

O bummer Jen, it has been ages since I used PSP. I am a PS user. But I still have PSP9 on my system. Let me fire it up and see what happens. If you are using deform, and it is on it's own layer, you should be able to make it go up and down like Alice in Wonderland

Works for me. Are you absolutely sure that when you are trying to deform you are on the striped paper layer and not the background?

I just tried it again, and I still can not get it to work! I re-sized, copied, pasted. I named the layer to make sure it was the one I'm working on. I clicked the move tool and can move it all around. Then, when I go to click deform, it is shadowed out. I can click straighten, but none of the others are bolded for me to pick.

By the way, thank you very much for going out of your way and trying PSP again!

No problem, but it is driving me crazy that you can't deform once it is in the background. There is no reason why you can't. Darn darn darn, wish I was there, lol. I just went and made something, resized it, dragged it over to the background and could deform it again no problem. Okay, what about this--just drop the striped paper on top of the background and deform it there. Will that work for you?