Cassel

Once a week, there is a radio show that has been on for many years. It is called Vinyl Tap. It is 2 hours of songs that are picked around a particular theme. Sometimes, it has to do with a word, sometimes, a topic, sometimes it is another particularity (like "unlikely duets"). Now that we are in the fall months, use a title or lyrics of a song that has FALL or AUTUMN (or a fall MONTH) in the title. Examples of songs include "Don't Let the Fall" - Norah Jones & Danger Mouse, "Autumn Leaves" - Nat King Cole, or "Wake Me Up When September Ends" - Green Day. Are you up to the challenge?

@Susan Ewart If you added some googly eyes on those sunflowers, it would be quite funny! Do you know that you can tweak the path even after the text is on it? @Carolyn Rye Cute layout with Daniel and Bundy. @Daniel Hess That red and gold combination in the title really makes it stand out. @kasany Glad that the information was enough for you to be able to use outline only on your text. @Jannette Nieuwboer The technicien does not know what he is talking about. I have 14 versions installed on my computer and I often have 2 or 3 versions open at the same time. @Jacques Did you do the composition with those "double" photos? It is very cute! @fiona cook If you add a shadow on the title will make it stand out more since the colors are a bit light. But it is a lovely page. @Emerald Jay You added a white shadow to the title, but a black shadow on the photo. Do you see how the title looks like it is imprinted in the paper? I don't know if it is the effect you wanted but it is an interesting one. On the other hand, if you want the title to look like papers cut and pasted on the paper, then the shadow would need to be consistent with the photo. @gwen jewitt This effect can be great when adding "movement" to a project. And you see that it is easy to do! @Ann Seeber Is this the first snow this year? I am way more north and I have not seen any snow yet (I was told there was a little one night but it was gone when I got up). @Mary Solaas Sometimes, those "bad" photos mean more than "good" ones. I had a zoom call with my mom and my brother that I happened to record (but it didn't record the sound 😞 ) and she passed just a couple of weeks later. @Dan Greenwood Lovely layout (cute photo of the manatees). May I suggest that your text not overlap the two papers? Just size it down a little so it stays on one paper only. Just a suggestion.

In the Materials palette, the top swatch is the stroke and the bottom one is the fill. Click on the little square on the bottom right of the the swatch to make it transparent. Note that you can only do that when a vector tool is active (shape, text, pen).

@Jeni Simpson You can play with shadows to get different effects. A large shadow like you have makes the text "float" above the surface, while a smaller but less blurred shadow will give the effect of the piece laying on the surface. It all depends on the effect you want. As for compatibility, jpgs will always work in all versions. It is the .pspimage files that need to have the correct compatibility setting. @Jannette Nieuwboer NexusFont is another option. I personally don't like that it seems to need to load fonts and for me, it takes longer to use. I cross my fingers that TFT will still work for me for a while. Looking at the shadow you put on the text and the one around the project, it gives the impression that the white text is "engraved". That is an interesting effect. @Daniel Hess That is a great use of text on path. @Ann Seeber That is quite an interesting font, and with the bevel, the holes stand out! Jackie must love to see all the attention she and her animals get from your layouts! @gwen jewitt Great use of the text on path. It goes well with the theme of children playing. @Corrie Kinkel Nice Christmas card. Will you print it? @Cristina Mochetti It makes a difference when you add shadows. Don't you think? @fiona cook I think that the text in the water works well too. If you keep it in the continent, maybe you can just make it a bit larger (in a larger selection starting a bit higher)? Just a thought. @Anne Lamp Since you added some bevel on the text, you might want to add shadows to the photos to match the 3D effect. @Jacques I think that a little shadow on the title would make it stand out a bit, since it is crumbled! And while at it, maybe something on the photos too. Delightful photos! @Donna Sillia We got some milkweed plants a couple of years ago, and even though we planted them in our garden and they seem to have propagated, we have not seen a single mornarch. 😞 @Dan Greenwood Will you print this card for Christmas? @Susan Ewart It is funny how those sunflowers look like they are peeking over the garage, as if they were spying! Looking forward to your upcoming projects!

Once you have the Text tool, you can either double-click directly on the text OR you can double-click on the text object inside the vector layer (you have to click the little arrow on the left to "open" it). At that point, you should see the cursor blink. Beware that when you highlight the text, sometimes, the highlight is hard to see if the background is grey.

Wow!!! That is a lot of projects posted. I am so happy to see that many participants! @Jacques That perspective distortion on the Sleigh Ride is quite ingenious! That story of the old fashion cribs is lovely! @Anita Wyatt That Storytime title is so appropriate with that photo! A big smile on my face. @Cindy Sheets With practice, most of this should become more automatic for you. @Dan Greenwood Whatever you used to fill the cruise title worked very well (photo or gradient!). Yes, the wrapping is not always 100% perfect. It sometimes, also changes line when there is an apostrophe or a punctuation mark. I think it is less obvious with the spaces when the text is smaller compared to the area. @Susan Ewart The Texture effect is an interesting one that is not used very often. I just wish we could rotate the pattern in that command! @Jeni Simpson I love that steampunk title. I think that it would give more 3D effect on the title if you added some shadows which would be consistent with a thickness of metal. @Carolyn Rye Great Amsterdam project. @kasany Lovely colors on the Tatry layout. @Jannette Nieuwboer Interesting selection of fonts on your flower. Have you tried without an outline? With such variety of fonts, adding a stroke around makes it a bit harder to read (at least in the resized version). @Emerald Jay Did you also have a chance to see the Northern Lights? Those are such great colors. @Cristina That is smart to just complete an older project! @fiona cook With the resized version, the poem is hard to read so we won't be able to say it is "awful"! And to answer your question about covering faces, there is an article HERE for other ideas if you want/need to conceal someone's identity in photos. @Anne Lamp Great way to use that shape. Even though it was initially created for making gemstones, there are obviously other creative ways to use it! @gwen jewitt Great use of the wrapped text. @Krystyna Nicholls Welcome to the workshop. We are here to help you get re-acquainted with PSP. @Teri Cleaveland You will have time to catch up, I am sure. @Cristina Mochetti Since you added some "volume" in the title, you might want to add also shadows on the elements and papers on the page to be consistent. @Daniel Hess That hen/cat layout made me laugh! It is interesting that you shaped your text around the "lights". Very clever! @Corrie Kinkel The problem with the text wrapping in 2023 is not really that it disappears (unless you use a compatibility mode to save your pspimage file lower than X7), but that it does not resize. I think it is the same with other versions. Could it be the compatibility mode that is different between your versions? @Mary Solaas It is ok to just do projects as a practice. You might just use the same technique later, in a different project. @Linda J Walker Yes, the baseline can differ from font to font, especially for the less "basic" ones. This is a great thread to get inspired by all the projects posted and ideas shared. Keep them coming. And if you are ever stuck on one tutorial or if something does not seem to work, don't hesitate to post, so we can help you over those hurdles!

@Jacques Do you have specific plans to use those titles yet? For babies photos, are they photos of the mom and the son when they each were babies? @Dan Greenwood Great start with your project. Do you plan to add shadows to the elements or treat the page like a printed magazine? @Susan Ewart That is a great font to add the daisies to: it is fat and lets you see the details well. @Carolyn Rye Now that you have some practice, you can always go back to your layout and change it if you are not 100% happy with it. Inspiration might strike another day. @Jeni Simpson That translucent text is fun to see the rocks. And the gradient matches well the water theme. @Anita Wyatt When you reduce the opacity of a color, it will be affected by the color below. If you see, on white, it looks lighter, but it is normal that it will look darker on the yellow paper. If you add some shadows to your papers and photo, it will match the shadows on the little leaves. @Ann Seeber If you ever want to get color-specific confetti, there is always a script in the store to make them. Click here for it. For the Jumping Spider layout, normally, I would say that the title has too much shadow making it float, but with the theme of JUMPING spider, it is very fitting! @fiona cook You certainly managed to get something done with the technique. I really thought that issue with the spacing was only in 2023. @Daniel Hess Did the moon photo include the silhouette or did you add it afterward? @Mary Solaas Great work on the title. You are good at manipulating the tools in PSP to get the result you want. @Anne Lamp Nice way to combine two tutorials in one project! @gwen jewitt You created a really nice background! @Corrie Kinkel That is a nice card. What size it is? Is it too large for a normal envelope to send it in the mail? @Linda J Walker It looks like you are affected by the same issue as others with one layer not matching the size of the other. @Donna Sillia It is fun to have those different letters on banners! Keep them coming!

In dealinig with contractors or repair persons, we always hope to get great services, but at time, we get something different. Did you ever get "bad" service? or maybe something just "out of the ordinary"? What kind of service was that? Share it. We might get a good laugh (or cry).

Welcome everyone, especially our newcomers. @fiona cook Are you using PSP2023? One bug that I had brought up was the fact that some fonts (too many to my liking) will have a different "width" if you have a stroke or not. If that happens and you still want no stroke, you can create one with the same color/pattern as the fill but with a width of 0.1. It will not be visible, but will override that bug. The standard Windows fonts are safe. Others are a hit or miss. @Patty Swinimer Welcome to the Workshop! Although we recommend to resize down to 600 pixels, you should not have to change the resolution. Did you adjust the Compression? @Donna Sillia That is a fun fill that you used. A lot of work to fill the different letters differently. @Cristina Mochetti Glad to see you here. Looking forward to your projects. @Jannette Nieuwboer If you want to post just the text part, crop to its size and you can resize to 1000 pixels (because it won't be very high). It will show better your work. @gwen jewitt That looks like a lovely card! Isn't it nice to be able to reuse projects when working with PSP? @Corrie Kinkel It is a great idea to combine this workshop with the cards you need to do! Looking forward to everyone else's projects @Ann Seeber, @Susan Ewart, @Cristina, @Cindy Sheets, @Jacques, @Julie Magerka, @Mary Solaas, @Dan Greenwood, @Dee Morris, @Jeni Simpson, @Anita Wyatt, @Linda J Walker, @kasany, @Elaine Banks. And the other 100 who have not posted yet, I would encourage you to post. If you encounter any issue with a tutorial, or a tool in your PSP, come and post in here. I read every single post and we are all here to help you succeed.

I think it might be an interesting twist to choose another month of the year (even if it is a "boring" month) to do something similar. It could be a personal challenge, in a way.

Vison FX was promoted after 2023 was released. I wonder if it would work with 2023 but has some limitations with 2022?

This challenge has had great success in the past so we can continue to have it on a regular basis, don’t you think? Just like those “some assembly required” kits that you can buy for a shelf, a chair, or a picnic table, I am including a 3600×3600 pixels canvas with some shapes. You HAVE to use the shapes in the size and proportions they are. You can move them, rotate them, flip them, and rearrange the layering if you want but you cannot resize them or replace them. You need to use ALL the pieces but you can add more if you want. So it is like all the pieces to build a DIY shelf: you cannot change the size of the pieces but you can use them creatively. Obviously, you will want to recolor them or replace them with papers, photos, etc. We just need to be able to recognize the initial shapes. Here is a preview of the shapes involved. The leaves should stay as is (you can only rotate and color them). Remember that you CANNOT replace them. They are NOT placeholders. Click here to download the layered template. Post your projects in the gallery.

You can download the files anywhere you want. I keep my original files on separate drives to save space.

I know that some of you will NOT use the copy of PSP2023 from the bundle because you already had it. That means that you can GIVE AWAY the license to someone else to use. However, if you don't plan to use it, or don't know anyone to give it to, you can send it to me, and I can then use it as a prize, during bootcamps or other events. If that is what you want to do, just send me the license you get from Humble Bundle and I'll keep it preciously.

Yeah, that is something I have considered. Typically, it is not really bad but there are some leaves accumulating on the back side of the house. On the front side, the trees are further away from the house so very little gathers in the gutter.

What do you do to prepare for winter? Do you place holiday decorations ahead of the cold weather? Do you have to put away different things before the snow (if you get snow)? Do you have to rearrange anything? Let's share and if you have photos, why not?

One thing to remember is that PSP2023 is only 64-bit, so all the older plugins that were 32-bits and never updated likely won't work. There are two ways "around" this. you can use the Plugin Bridge mentioned in this post. It will work for some plugins, but not for all you can find an older version of PSP to install on your computer to run those older plugins. Maybe you already have an older version that you can install. They should still work fine with Windows 10 or 11. You can also try to download from this page if you have the license key but not the installation files. I THINK those are trial versions, but it is worth double-checking (and let me know)

I think you might want to try the script Rene mentioned: https://creationcassel.com/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=7_10&products_id=311 This has the advantage of merging only the ones you want, in case there might be one group you DON'T want merged. It is coded to work with one click. And you can bind that script and put it on the Layers palette so it will require minimal cursor movement.

I can probably do something like that. I wonder if anyone else, reading this thread might use this script?

A script is possible, but you have to know that it would merge ALL the groups, not just a few.

There is a command to do that directly. Do you have many groups to want a script?

That is strange because I use it myself, on Windows 10 and although it takes a while to load, it never gave me any error message.

@Anne Lamp You have the correct files but your system is not showing the extensions, which is why you don't see any .exe file. For the extensions to appear, you have to do the following: - in your windows Explorer, click the View tab on top - find (toward the right) a checkbox that says "File Name extension" and check it That will make the .exe appear and will help you find the correct file to use.

Let's continue this new challenge. We might be the ones taking pictures but we are not the feature of our layouts, so let's change that since we ARE important and have lots to say. Every month or so, the layout will be about YOU, and a prompt will be given. If you have taken the Story Week Challenge, you will find some similarities but it won't be the same. For the November layout, tell us something about a hobby you had as a child. What was it? Did you collect rocks? Already doing crafts? Building doll houses? It might be a trip down memory lane for most of us! Remember that if you want to create pages for previous prompts, those threads will stay open. There is no right or wrong order to share about YOU.

Check out this blog post. It might have the specific answers for you. However, if you have a chance to install your X5, in addition to the 2023, it would give you the most flexibility for plugin use.