Tutorial: Using an Alpha Sheet in PAINT.NET

Hi everyone,
I am going to try to share with you a few things I learned during all those years scrapbooking.
This one is to help a friend back at Pixel Scrapper.

For this tutorial I am using my Cofee Love kit. If you want to use it, you can grab it here: (It is free! Click image to go to blog post with the link to download)

I am also using this alpha sheet I made for this tutorial. Go ahead and download it here (click image):

Ok, here is how you are going to put all those alpha sheets to good use when you are making a scrapbook LO in PAINT.NET: (Please click on images to see a larger version of them)

1) Open the paper you are going to use as your background paper:

2) Now, this is a very important step. Save your scrapbook as a .pdn file. (This will be super useful because you won’t be saving on top of your original paper AND you will be able to access all the layers if you have to come back later. Also, if for any reason, you program crashes you will be able to access your last saved document easily. Save constantly!!

I also renamed my file as Tutorial.pdn

Here is my pdn file, renamed and ready to go:

3) Now open the alpha sheet: (Go to File --> Open and choose your alpha sheet. It will open a new document in PDN. (You don't have to open PDN again, it will by default, open a new document and the thumbnails of your two documents will be shown on the top)

4) Now you are going to select the letter you want first. (Make sure you have the alpha sheet document selected.The second opened document here):

5) Now hit Ctrl + C in your keyboard (That’s the shortcut for “copy”). Make sure you press Ctrl button and C button at the same time.

6) Select the first opened document ( The Tutorial.pdn file in my case)

7) Make a new empty layer:

8) Now hit Ctrl + V ( That’s the shortcut for Paste) Again make sure you hit both at the same time:

 9) Now, let’s deselect the area: Click edit → Deselect: ( Or just click Ctrl + D)

 10) Now you are going to repeat steps 4- 9 until you formed the word you want: Don’t worry about size or placement, we are going to do that next:

 11) Now you are going to go to each layer and select with the move selected pixels tool the first letter you want to position and bring it to where you want:

Again, hit Ctrl- D to deselect and go to the next layer.

Do the same with all the letters until you are happy with the result. Now merge the letter layers until your word is in one layer:

 Now you can resize your word:

Click select your layer and the marching ants will show up again.

 Bring your mouse cursor to one corner. (Your mouse will become a tiny hand. Now while you hold the shift key in your keyboard, Click on that corner with the left button of your mouse and reduce the size of your word until it is the size you want.

Obs.: When you hold the shift key in your keyboard, what it does is this: It keeps the proportions of whatever object you are resizing proportioned. This is a function you will use all the time so your photos, objects, etc are not distorted.

  

Now just place it wherever you want in your LO.

Here is my finished LO: (If you also want to add drop shadow in your LO, download BoltBait’s awesome plugin pack here (click image):

Than all you have to do is go to Effects → Object → Object shadow. Play with the levers until you are happy with the result. You’ll have to shadow each layer, one by one. Than just save you project as a JPG file ( Click File → Save as… → project name.jpg and you are good to share anywhere you want!

I hope you liked this tutorial and have lots of fun!

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