Resizing 12x12 Scrapsimple Templates To 8.5x11 Or 4x6

Some of us enjoy scrapping in 8.5 x 11 or 4x6 formats, and still love the wonderful 12x12 products here. Some templates can be resized without much damage of the design, but many cannot be resized more than a tiny bit without destroying the artistic effect created by the designer. Per a discussion on the message board, I've written a tutorial on how to resize border templates with little or no distortion of the original design. I hope you find this helpful. (It's not short, but I've attempted to include all the steps. My apologies if I've missed a step.)

Note: this tutorial is written for PC users; examples are in PS CS4. MAC users will need to change CTRL to Command symbol for the commands.
Start a new document and drag in the square template of interest, here SNU_Fragmented_1_SSPaperTemplate. Name the document something different, so you don't overwrite your original, and save it as a PSD file.

Resizing1.png (72.26K)
Number of downloads: 5
Select the layer in your layers palette, and Press CTRL + J to duplicate the layer.

Click the eye symbol to make the top layer invisible. Click View, New Guide… Select Horizontal, enter 2400 and press OK. Select the entire bottom layer, and slide it up to snap to the guide at 2400 pixels:

Resizing2.png (30.8K)
Number of downloads: 5
Click the eye symbol on the layers palette, and turn the top layer on. Use the rectangular marquee tool to select the bottom third of the image area and press Delete to crop it away. Then press Ctrl + D to deselect the area.

Resizing3.png (63.91K)
Number of downloads: 3
Since the layers overlap on the sides, they will look very messy; the top & bottom should look fine.

Resizing4.png (48.87K)
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At the bottom of the layers palette, click the gray square with a white circle in the center to add a layer mask.

Resizing5.png (3.2K)
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Select the other layer, and add a layer mask to it, also. Your layers palette will look like this:

Resizing6.png (8.47K)
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Click the white box (the clipping mask) next to your template thumbnail in the layers palette. The foreground/background colors on your toolbox will be black and white. Click on the gradient tool, represented by the shaded rectangle. If the Bucket tool is visible, click the flyout to select the gradient tool instead.

Resizing7.png (9.27K)
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Zoom in on your image as large as your screen permits. Now we get to estimation and a bit of guesswork. Make the top layer invisible again.

Click the Mask square in the layers palette for the bottom layer. Click near the horizontal center of the image, about 45% of the way down from the top of the image area, press the shift key and drag downwards about 5-10% of the height. This masks the top area with a reasonably abrupt transition.

Resizing8.png (19.32K)
Number of downloads: 4
Make the top layer visible. Click the layer mask symbol for the top layer, press the shift key, and drag from about 55% down vertically, centered horizontally, up about 5-10% of the height.

Now look carefully at the overlap areas. There will be some grayish areas, or the design won't overlap gracefully. Sometimes you can solve it by re-applying the masks; experiment with the vertical starting point and the length of the drag. You may also find you get better results adjusting the transition to somewhere vertically higher or lower overall.

At other times you may need to select the layer thumbnail rather than the mask, and erase a little bit of the overlap. You can also resize the template layers just a bit, or you can use a small brush on the layer mask, with black or white to tweak the edges of the mask, too. In this case, just a little positioning and dragging adjustment with the layer masks produced a very good result, with only a little "gray" at the transition area. You can stop here, unless you think it will be noticeable. Sometimes it's easier to erase tiny remaining light gray areas after the template is merged and completed. On a grungier template, it may be fine without cleanup.

Merge the layers by selecting the top layer and pressing CTRL + E. Allow PS to apply the mask before merging when it prompts you.
With the rectangular marquee, select the top two-thirds of the image. Select Image, Crop, to Selection. Resize the image to 1200 pixels by 1800 pixels, save the template as a PNG file to preserve its transparency, and your 4x6 border template is ready to go!

Resizing9.png (77.23K)
Number of downloads: 7
You may find this slow the first time, but you'll find you can get it done pretty quickly after you've practiced a little bit. I hope you find this technique as helpful and interesting as I do. Enjoy!