Lions, Tigers, Bears... oh no... Wand, box, photo, invert, delete... oh yes

Huh? Those the steps I take time after time after time when doing layouts. Remember I use Paint Shop Pro (PSP)! Here, let me take you through it... I'm going to use template216 from Andrea Gold. I bring the template up into PSP and select the layer I'm going to be working with. It is the light grey one in the picture below:

From there, I go over and select the magic wand option as shown below:

Next, I select the square on the layout that I had highlighted earlier in the layers:

You can see it with little dashed lines around it. That is the one I'm going to add a picture to for this layout.

Time to drag over the picture so it is a layer on my template216. I open the photo... move it to the side so I can see the template and click on the photo in the layer area. Without letting go of the mouse, I drag it over to the template. This is the important piece! I wait until the arrow comes up with a little plus sign on the bottom right before releasing the mouse button. Ta da! I now have a photo in my layers on the template! (I took out the other boys face because I'm too lazy to ask his mom if he can appear on my blog).

Next I change my cursor over to a pointer and go BACK to the layers. I select the layer that I'm working with that is a grey square and change the opacity. It is set to 100% but I want to see through it, so I'll set it to about 60%.

Here is what it looks like after I change the opacity. Make sure the picture layer is below the grey square layer... take a look:

You can see the size you need to make the photo. Press Cntrl-D and make the little dashed lines go away.  It should look like below with no dashed lines. Select the photo and make sure your cursor is the pick tool. Move and resize until what you want is in that little grey square... like below:

Now the fun part. Change the cursor to the magic wand. Go to the layers selection and select the gray square. Go back to the layout and select somewhere in the middle of the gray square... it should look like this:

Now, go back to the layers and select the photo.

Time to invert it. I have mine set up with a button at the top:

If you don't have the square with black and white triangles on your screen, you can go to the menu:

Almost done! Press delete or go to the menu bar > edit > clear. It should look something like this:

Weird, but to really make it look nice you need to press Cntrl-D to get rid of it being selected. Next go over to the layers and press the eyeball on the gray square layer. It will now look like this:

While I'm not quite done, here is what I have so far:

template: andreagold_template216

Phew. Just a few more steps and I'll be done. Yep, life is good. What I remember or use as a hint is:

Magic Wand, Select Box, Select photo layer, invert, delete

It has only taken me 3 days to get one page done. Did you notice I used my ying/yang element I was creating before? That is why some pages take longer than others. You decide you want something and then have to create it yourself. Fun and looks good. Again, I'm not done. I want to work on the stitching and add text still. I just hope this helps you get those pictures in the templates!