Rene Marker

I used the same shadows on most of the elements, only the roller coaster was different. I did a shadow on the football player then copied it to the other elements. The astronaut is the same size as the football player so it has the exact same settings. The other elements were all automatically adjusted because of size difference. And, no there are not bigger shadows in the spots that were over the deep part. I haven't even thought of how to do that yet!

I have been intrigued with doing what is called a "3D/Extreme Shadows" layout ever since it was a challenge in The LilyPad's Month of Challenges in 2021. There is a template designer that has made templates for this type of layout and I've got them and made a layout for my cousin's book using one of them. But I've wanted to figure out how to do it from scratch. The shadowing is the tricky part for these layouts using PSP. I kept trying back in 2021 and have all kinds of notes but I never thought they looked as nice as the samples in the challenge thread because of the shadows. So today I reviewed the tips in the challenge thread about doing this type of layout (copying them to OneNote as well). I decided to try it in Affinity. For my shape, I used a shape of the state of Ohio from a retired template set by Scrapping By Liz. To get the 3 layers, I duplicated the shape 3 times. Then you have to resize 2 of the 3 layers. The top layer has the largest cut out with the bottom layer having the smallest cut out. To resize the next layer under neath it, I used the move tool. I have 2 guides set up that intersect at the middle of the canvas. When resizing the layer, a little dot (don't know what else to call it) showed up that showed the center. Since I had the guides I just lined the dot up with the guides. Then I resized the bottom layer the same way. That way the 3 layers were pretty much centered on the canvas. I brought 3 different papers onto my canvas and rasterized each of them. Using the Flood Select Tool, I selected each of the shape layers and hit delete on the paper layer for each layer. Then came the hard part of doing the shadows. I played around with the settings trying to match them to some settings one of the PhotoShop users had posted in the challenge thread. I didn't like the look of it. But another tip in the thread was from someone that said they had learned in a class they took several years earlier that you can use the outer glow layer style in PhotoShop as it works similarly to the shadow style. Affinity has an outer glow in the FX so I tried it and played with the settings. I like what I got (but I'm sure it could be better). I ended up not even using the outer shadow on the cut out layers. I then added various elements and tucked them in between the layers and shadowed them like normal. The kit used is by Kelly Bangs Creative at Sweet Shoppe Designs called "50 States - Ohio".

It doesn't bother me. Editing to add that those are my pspimage files. My printing jpg files are saved in different folders and my 600x600 size files are in another folder. I keep them separate. I like having that logo on them. I've noticed that on the native file for Affinity (afphoto), I get the Affinity logo. If I start saving both of those types of files in the same working folder, it will be very handy to have the logo on them.

Tracks around my house are mainly squirrels. I have 2 Ring floodlight cameras and quite often they will record squirrels running around. I have captured video of cats/dogs and even an opossum in the middle of the night as well but those are usually not when snow is on the ground. Since my neighbor no longer has their dog, I don't have the dog prints in my backyard. They let their dog roam. Other neighbors that have dogs keep their dogs in their yards with electric fences. If Peyton is outside she is on my fenced in patio so I will have her prints there (but she doesn't like snow so not many prints). Otherwise I might have my prints on my driveway when I go get mail or take the garbage/recycling out when we just have a dusting of snow.

I don't know what to tell you because my pspimage files show just fine in Win11. Always have. I'm using Windows 11 Home, Version 23H2. I'm waiting to install Version 24H2 when my IT friend can do it.

I actually did a layout for this challenge for once! I used Affinity to do it. I did change the 4 photos to 5 on the right side since I couldn't decide which one to leave out. The kit is a long retired kit I got in 2011. I wanted to try a few more features in the program. For the 5 photos, I put them all on the canvas and grouped them. I could then resize them all at the same time since they were all the same size in the beginning. I was able to then move them into their spots while still in the group and tweaked the resizing. I also used the Align Left feature to make sure they were aligned. I also tried making a selection around the large photo and was able to expand the selection using "Grow/Shrink" in the Selection menu to make a mat for the photo. Did the same around the 5 photos on the right for that mat. The title is an alpha from the kit so after dropping them on to the canvas, I grouped them then resized, moved them to their right placement and aligned them using the Align Bottom feature. I left the title and the photos in their groups and added the drop shadows to them as a group. I also played around with the drop shadows since I'm trying to find the settings I need to match what I do within PSP. I do love how easy it is to adjust them in Affinity.

The good thing about her is that she is doing layouts rather than showing stuff that relates to working on photos. Her style of scrapbooking is not how I scrap but I can still learn from her videos.

I don't remember why I started doing that all those years ago in PSP but it has worked out just fine because I don't necessarily use the same values for papers or ribbons or flowers. It all depends on how they are stacked on the layout. I have 32 presets for drop shadows in PSP. There are some that are not used as much but they are there. A few of them have the values with an identifier behind them like for a staple. Also as I go down my list of presets, the smallest are at the top. My first one is "0-0-30-5 Reverse" followed by "0-0-80-10 Reverse".

I spent time today copying all her tutorials into OneNote, photos and all so I don't have to go to the forum all the time. She also has a YouTube channel where she shows herself scrapping a layout. Some of the older tutorials were using Affinity 1.

Tutorials are in the Learning Pad on the forum. I don't like linking to other forums.

Guess I need to practice using the Pen tool. The one time I played with it, I felt it was easier to use than PSP so maybe I'll be able to use it more in Affinity. Although I do like the method PSP uses of a selection for the text wrapping. I once did a layout using a template that had the shape of a dog that was for journaling. I think I used X8 and selected the inside of the shape, and started typing. That shape IMO would be much harder to do in Affinity. You'd need to have lots of nodes!

I've used the Frame Text Tool already. But it wouldn't work as it is for the text wrapping I wanted to do. I would have had to create 2 different areas for the text wrapping. So what I wanted to know was how to do text wrapping where it wasn't in a strict square or rectangle. In PSP, it is done by selections.

I don't even get a straight line! The program crashes while I'm typing the text. Heck, it crashes when I'm typing text and not even trying to do wrapping. About 95% of the time I have to resort to using X8 to get text on my layouts. That is one reason that I get frustrated with PSP. I finished the layout I was working on last night and completed the companion page to it today. The program lagged so much. I got to the point that after saving I would quit scrapping and do something else to ease my frustrations for a few minutes.

@Marie-Claire You didn't post it in the Affinity boot camp thread but the boot camp from last September.

Thanks! I haven't played with the shape tools yet. I very rarely use them in my scrapbooking even in PSP so wasn't concerned about them in Affinity at this time. Edit: Now that I have read this when I'm more awake, I think you are talking about something different than what PSP offers as text wrapping. Text wrapping in PSP is when we make a selection and have the text inside the selection fit into the shape. It seems that you are describing text outside a shape. The frame text tool in Affinity is what I consider text wrapping except you can only use a square or rectangular shape.

I thought the Frame Text would be equivalent to wrapping text and it is as long as you want a square or a rectangle area. I couldn't find a way to make an odd shaped object that I could wrap text in. I was so hoping there would be something for that because every single time I use text wrapping in either 2021 or 2023, it crashes. So I don't use text wrapping in PSP. If you find a way to do it in Affinity, I would definitely like to know!

We had a speaker at a genealogy meeting last year that the focus of her talk was about looking into history at the time of the person you are researching. Her examples were quite interesting and because she had researched history, she actually found out more about the person she was researching that would probably not have been found as easily. And, she found some other interesting stories about other people that actually led to her researching them and they weren't even a part of her genealogy. My cousin is writing a book about our church's history. It began in 1833. Official church records were started in the 1880's. She has decided to include little snippets about what was going on in history at various times. She was telling me about something while we talked on the phone once so I started googling while we were talking and found a book that had a lot of info on the subject. Told her about it so she bought the book (she loves books, she was a librarian). After we hung up, I kept going down the rabbit hole on that subject and actually learned some very interesting info about my town. I never knew that we had what was called an "interurban" which were small electric trains that traveled between small towns in our area in the early 1900's. I learned about the routes and suddenly a piece of the puzzle of my dad's parents fell into place. I always wondered how Grandpa met Grandma when she lived 15 miles away (around 1919/1920). It dawned on me that he took the interurban to get to his job then walked to a small diner for lunch. Turns out Grandma worked as a waitress at the diner. We had heard the diner story but never knew how Grandpa actually got to her town since he didn't have a car.

Agree! The YouTube videos were helpful in their own way and a great supplement to Carole's lessons. I did try to watch videos on specific subjects that I knew would be applicable in ways for scrapbooking and that really helped. I was working on a layout I had started in December in PSP tonight and the program lagged so much. Guess I never realized it until I had worked in Affinity. I'm in the middle of 2 projects right now so I will definitely finish them in PSP. After than I may split my time working with both programs depending on what I'm scrapping.

Yep. Genealogy is so much more than just tracing family lines. History of the times is so integrated into it. For instance, my great-grandfather Marker was from a county over 30 miles from my town where his wife was born and raised. They got married in 1892 and knowing history, you can guess that automobiles were not that popular at that time. At least the average person would not have owned one. She had no family in his area and he had no family in her town (which is the town I still live in). So the question was how did they meet in order to eventually marry and have a family. Once I learned about his job, it made sense especially when I found out more about her mother's life. He worked for the railroad and was stationed at a switching station in my town. My great-great-grandmother was a seamstress and had a shop located in our downtown and some research on the history of the railroad switching station gave me a possible answer to our question. Great-grandma Daisy would walk to her mother's shop (the story is she helped her mom at times). On that walk, she passed the switch house. A handsome young man seeing an attractive young lady walk by every day would surely be interested, right? Daisy and Frank got married, ended up living in the house Daisy grew up in after her parents died and had 8 children of their own. Researching the history at that time enabled me to fill in their story. One of my favorite subjects in school was history but it took me until my late 30's to get interested in the genealogical side of history and that was only after Mom showed me some paperwork her mother had done in the 1950's researching her ancestors.

@Cassel You mentioned that both the Selection Brush Tool and the Flood Select Tool have the same shortcut of "W". Just playing around today, I pressed the "W" key and it did go to the Selection Brush Tool. Then I pressed the "W" key again and it moved to the Flood Select Tool. I just tried something else. I customized the Tools to have the Flood Select Tool above the Selection Brush Tool. Now when I press "W" it goes to the Flood Select Tool first. A second pressing of the "W" then goes to Selection Brush Tool. So apparently the order in which the items are on the tool panel from top to bottom matters. 2 tools with the same shortcut will default to the tool the highest up on the panel. Something else I just discovered. For example, the Erase Brush ("E") has the triangle showing 2 more tools. When you press the "E", the Erase Brush activates. Press "E" again and the Background Erase Brush is activated. A third press of the "E" will take you to the Flood Erase Tool. Same thing happens with "P" for Pen. Press "P" again and it activates the Node tool. You can toggle between Artistic Text and Frame Text the same way with the "T".

I'm reading this thread again looking for tips. So I thank you for mentioning this. I'm a big fan of grouping layers so that is my default especially since you cannot use the pick tool to resize multiple layers at the same time in PSP. I will group adjacent layers to resize titles made from alphas quite often or resize photos so they are all the same size. I just tried "linking" aka selecting several layers not adjacent to each other in a template then using the "move" tool to move them. Then I tried resizing them and it worked! Since I do like using groups, I just tried making a group of several layers that are not adjacent to each other and it worked. However, if you ungroup the items, they are located in a different order in the layers panel. When I do clusters, I will have some items under a paper with others above it. I can't group all those items in order to move them at the same time but I can with linking in PSP. So it appears that if I want to move or resize clusters when working in Affinity, I can just select those layers and use the move tool just like "linking" layers in PSP. It is nice to know I can still do the same things in Affinity but just a little differently. Gonna take some time activating the brain cells to remember these things 🙂

If you still have the ABR file, you can add the brushes to Affinity. Just drag the file to the workspace. It adds them to the Brushes panel in a new category.

Angela Toucan at The LilyPad has tutorials in their forum. She also has a YouTube channel. She actually uses Designer to scrap, not Photo but a lot of the commands are the same. Some steps might be different though.

I stuck to the lesson this time for the most part. The squares gave me a little problem. Ctrl-C and Ctrl-V wouldn't work but using the menu commands did. Didn't take the time to figure out why. The kit is by a retired designer and called Military Day. I felt the muted colors fit the photo quite well. I found this bracelet when I was cleaning out the basement in 2018. I had forgotten where it was or if I even had it. I did a little research to find out what happened to the Captain and was quite happy to find out he had been released and has lived a long life and as far as I can tell, he is still alive and lives in Arizona where he moved to when he retired from the Air Force in 1986.

I then added this flower to my canvas and used the same drop shadow on it. The size of this flower is 692x656 pixels. Note the Radius and Offset settings on this shadow. Affinity automatically adjusts for the pixel size difference. I also tested this by creating a shadow for a journal card and saving it as a style. I then used the style on a photo. It again adjusted the settings due to the pixel difference. I really like this!