[Melissa13]

Hello all,

I recently installed PSE 9, and when I used the move tool, and held down "shift", to move a 12x12 paper onto my blank document, it showed up very small on my doc. I was surprised, because in my older version of PSE, when I held down shift, it would match the size of the background and my paper. Is there another shortcut to do that in PSE 9?

Thanks!

[tiza126]

When you first create the blank document, make sure you are starting with a 12x12 page at 300dpi. All of the papers from Scrap Girls are designed to fit that size/resolution. I'm not sure about papers from other websites.

Holding SHIFT when you pull a paper onto a document will place it directly into the center, but not automatically resize it.

[Melissa13]

Yup,I'm using that size and resolution, and I tried a Scrapgirl paper, which still shows up small in the middle of the doc. Using shift and move used to be such a nice shortcut so you didn't have to fool around with sizing yourself- so there's no way to do this in PSE 9?

[Smiles]

PSE9 is tricky - I'm still figuring its little whammys out. Try closing and reopening PSE. Sometimes I have to do that to get it to behave. I have had the same problem you are having and don't know what I did to make it go away.

[Becster]

I use PSE9 and I just open the paper, then drag it onto the new doc with my mouse. No need for a special key combo. Or you can use "file - place" from the menu.

[lorac]

I always use File>Place and the paper fills up the blank page. Then just hit the green check, and it's set.

[Belle]

I usually just drag and drop, but thanks for that tip Carol.

[Melissa13]

Those of you who drag and drop- does it fill the page? Or just place it in the middle and you need to resize it to make it fit?

Thanks.

[Belle]

It should fill the page. Papers from Scrap Girls will. You can resize it but something that I would love to know is, if I resize a paper to fit, what would the quality be when printed? Thanks for asking the question Melissa.

[Melissa13]

Oh ladies, I am so frustrated! My PSE 9 does NOT behave the way you all say it will! I start with a 300 dpi, 12" x 12" blank document. I use the move tool to move a 12" x 12" paper to the document, but it just shows up in the middle of the document as a small box. I've already closed and re-opened the program, and tried re-installing it.

I'm having the same problem with photos. I take large photos on high quality. In my old PSE, when I moved a photo to a blank doc, it would be so huge that it that only a small part of it would show on the doc. Now when I move a photo, it also shows up as a tiny little box on my doc. I haven't changed the size or quality of photos I'm taking.

For me, it's essential to see how large something will actually show up on my doc, because as Belle said, if I have to enlarge, how do I know what it will look like printed?

What's going on with my PSE? I've been fighting with this all weekend and I'm THIS CLOSE to chucking PSE 9 and going back to an older version. To me, it looks as though Adobe got rid of some of the functionality of the older versions and took a step in the wrong direction.

Did anyone else have this problem? Is there a setting or something I'm missing?

[tinkerbell11]

Are you dragging the paper down from the workspace into the blank document that is in the palette bin? If you are doing the opposite dragging the paper up into the blank document it will make it a smart object.

[Melissa13]

Tinkerbell, maybe that's my problem! I'm not on my computer with PSE so I'll have to try that later. But others seem to be able to drag a paper in a floating window to a blank document in a floating window and not have this problem. Did you have the same problem when you did it that way?

And what's a smart object?

[tinkerbell11]

A smart object is : What is a smart object? A smart object is an embedded file that appears in its own layer in Photoshop (or PSE). The difference from other layers is that a smart object is linked to the source file. Basically it is a file within a file and keeps the maximum resolution of that file intact when resizing. This is great because you can resize the file as many times as you want without degrading the image!

The downside to a smart object is that you cannot edit it directly! You can’t retouch it directly or run any filters on it directly. In both programs the way you tell that you have a smart object is to look at the layer thumbnail. It will show a small box down in the lower right hand corner of the thumbnail.


I found the defintion on the Adobe site!


I have had issues if I drag up! I dont use a floating window.

[teecee]

Melissa, have you tried this? First, be sure your rulers are turned on. Then go to Edit>Preferences>General and check the box next to Zoom with Scroll Wheel. Then you can use your mouse scroll wheel to make page fit the window. If you check your rulers, you should be able to see that your document is 12x12. Does that help?

[Melissa13]

IT'S FIXED!!!

Ladies, thank you all so much for all your advice. I still couldn't get it to work even with all your great suggestions, so I tried re-installing once mpre. And hallelujah, it worked! Although after I re-installed, I noticed a setting that I'm not sure I had correct before- so this may or may not have been the problem. When I opened a new blank document, I set it at 12 x 12 inches, but there's a 300 pixels per cm option instead of per inch- I may have had that set before. I made sure it was correct this time, and voila!

I'm sorry to have wasted all your time. But you are all so wonderful for trying to help! What a fantastic community this is.

But I actually have a question because I never really have understood the dpi thing very well. I currently have a loaner camera because mine's in for warranty work. I just noticed this one is taking huge pictures (like 45 x 35 inches), but only at 72 pixels per inch. I do have the camera set at the highest quality setting, so there's nothing else I could do to improve that. But when I shrink one of these pics down to a much smaller size (like 4x6 inches), the pixels should squish enough that my photos will be high quality enough to print (like at 300 dpi), right? (I hope because otherwise my photos from the last month are useless!) Does anyone know?

[Smiles]

yes - in a nutshell. I don't know if it's the download procedure or what, but that happens with my camera and PSE also. If you put the photo into a 300 dpi document, it should automatically resize it to 300 dpi.

[Belle]

Melissa, I am so glad that you fixed the problem. I had this once before when I worked on PSE7. It was set to 300pcm and not per inch. It really throws things out. I'm sorry, I just did not remember. I will now. There are so many little things that can go wrong with the settings. I once could not reduce the size of my layouts for posting because the shadows all stayed big instead of reducing in size as well. It was one tick in one box that was missing. Once I could not select my photos directly but had to do it via the layers palette. Also a tick missing from a box. Just goes to show. Gremlins are at work at all times. Good luck with the layouts.

[tinkerbell11]

Glad you got it all figured out! I think Gayle summed it up on the dpi question too!

[Becster]

Melissa13, on 06 September 2011 - 10:02 PM, said:

I'm sorry to have wasted all your time. But you are all so wonderful for trying to help! What a fantastic community this is.

Answering questions and trying to figure out problems is never a waste of time! You never know, this could help someone else in the future! So glad it's fixed. :-)

[PBarnes]

I just wanted to echo what Becky said. We LOVE answering questions and helping newbies get into digi-scrapping. We never consider ANY question a waste of time. We want everybody to share our addiction, you know?

[teecee]

Becster, on 07 September 2011 - 11:03 AM, said:

Answering questions and trying to figure out problems is never a waste of time! You never know, this could help someone else in the future! So glad it's fixed. :-)

PBarnes, on 07 September 2011 - 08:08 PM, said:

I just wanted to echo what Becky said. We LOVE answering questions and helping newbies get into digi-scrapping. We never consider ANY question a waste of time. We want everybody to share our addiction, you know?

[lorac]

Belle, on 07 September 2011 - 12:42 AM, said:

Melissa, I am so glad that you fixed the problem. I had this once before when I worked on PSE7. It was set to 300pcm and not per inch. It really throws things out. I'm sorry, I just did not remember. I will now. There are so many little things that can go wrong with the settings. I once could not reduce the size of my layouts for posting because the shadows all stayed big instead of reducing in size as well. It was one tick in one box that was missing. Once I could not select my photos directly but had to do it via the layers palette. Also a tick missing from a box. Just goes to show. Gremlins are at work at all times. Good luck with the layouts.

Belle, do you remember what the box was that needed a 'tick' for the drop shadows? That happens to me when I try to add a drop shadow to an element that has been reduced in size. The shadow just overtakes the element. Even if I add the shadow before reducing, it still is overwhelming. Thanks for any help you can give me.

[Belle]

Carol when you resize a box pops up. That where you reduce to 72 ppi. At the bottom the is a box that reads Scale Styles; Constrain Proportions; Resample Image. All 3 these boxes are checked. Try that, maybe that's your problem. HTH.