CD Album – Using Photoshop CS
For this tutorial, I will be using Laura Deacetis Spring Time in Paris CD Album from Sweet Shoppe Designs.
Supplies I Used
- Your downloaded CD album of choice
- A chipboard circle journal by Bumble Bee Crafts.
Contains 8 pages, two thick, for the front and back and the rest medium chipboard,
circles, tag and chain.
If you can’t get the chipboard circular journal, you can use 8 old cd’s or DVD’s but you
will need a drill to drill holes, to tie it all together
- Power Pritt gel glue (to adhere some embellishments)
- 2 inch Xyron Roll-on Adhesive
- 6mm Xpress IT Double sided tape
- Birch Eyelet kit small, silver (comes with hole cutter, eyelet punch and eyelets, perfect
size from spotlight)
- Small hammer and cutting/setting mat
- Paper cutter and/or scissors
- Assorted ribbons, beads, colored strings, fasteners, rub-ons, 3d stickers, anything that
matches the colors of your CD album that can be glued or stapled (try your local jewelry
making store, $2 shop, bead shop and spotlight for cheaper, sometimes more interesting
items to scrap with.)
- Matte Photo Paper (I prefer to work with this photo paper, as it doesn’t show up finger
prints like glossy paper does)
- Stapler (for string)
- Hole puncher
Lets get started.
STEP 1
The first step to do is to make sure that your printable pages will be the right size for your chipboard/cd album. Measure your chipboard album, then open one of the printable pages in Photoshop and turn on your rulers (CTRL+R) Use your move tool to position your page to the top left to get an accurate measurement. Mine measured 1421pixels by 1421pixels (4.737inches by 4.737inches).
This is too big for my chipboard pages so I resized all of my printable pages to 1200pixels by 1200pixels (4.00inches by 4.00inches). My printable pages will be slightly smaller than my chipboard pages as I want to leave a slight border around the edge.
To double check that my measurements were the right size, this is what I did:
I duplicated the resized printable page, selected the Elliptical Marquee Tool to draw out a circle smaller than the page circle, centered the drawn circle, then cut out the middle (CTRL+X) Your left with just the edge of the circle (we cut it out to save ink for printing).
Print your circle template out on paper, then cut it with scissors then place it over the chipboard or CD to make sure it is the right size. If it isn’t, undo back till your back at the resizing step, then change your sizing and repeat what we did above till it’s the right size.
This is the most important step, as we don’t want the printable pages to be too big or small when they’re finally printed out on photo paper.
STEP 2
Once you have your correct measurements, it’s time to choose what order you would like your pages in from the front cover to the back cover and what photo’s you will be using. Just make a note of what order you will be putting the printable pages in so it makes it easy for saving and after you have printed out your pages. Now is the time to edit any photos that need fixing.
TIP: I made a new folder in ‘My Pictures’ on my computer called ‘My CD Album’ and as I edited my photo’s, I saved them in this folder and numbered them accordingly to the page and picture. E.g. my first photo I edited was saved as ‘pg1p1’ which means ‘page 1, photo 1’. This made it so much easier to find them when it was time to add them to the printable pages.
STEP 3
Open your first printable page. That will be your cover. Resize to the measurements you came up with in step 1. Add your photos behind the page and resize the photos to fit inside the windows. Add any text or extra embellishments if you like. Save
‘cover’ in PSD format, incase you would like to edit it at a later time. Merge visible and minimize for now.
Open your second page. Resize to the measurements you came up with in step 1. This time save this page as ‘inside cover’ in PSD format. Merge visible again, once you have finished the second page, minimize this one as well.
Open a new file 3000X3000pixels
Restore your first two pages, and drag them over to the new 3000X3000 file. Two pages will fit onto an A4 matte photo paper in portrait mode.
Flatten image and save as ‘printpagecover’. This will be the page you print out for your chipboard/cd album.
Open your next two pages, repeat step 3 and save as ‘page1’ and ‘page2’ in PSD format. Open a new file 3000X3000, drag ‘page1’ and ‘page2’ over to the new file, flatten image and save as ‘printpage1’.
Continue with the rest of your pages till you have all your printable pages finished and saved.
STEP 4
Now we will begin to print our pages out. Depending on what sort of printer you are using, make sure that these three settings are used:
Media Type = Matte Photo Paper (or the type of paper you will be using)
Print Quality = High
Set To = Portrait Mode
These settings are pretty much universal to most printers.
After you have printed out each page, use a pencil to write the number of the page on the back of the circles so after you cut them, they won’t get mixed up and you won’t have to keep going back to your computer to see which page comes next.
Make sure you leave your printed pages to dry long enough (usually 24 hours) before moving on to step 5.
TIP 1: If you would like to print out a test page just to double check your finished product and your printer settings, just use normal paper before you load the photo paper.
TIP 2: Before you print out your test page on normal paper, put a little pencil mark on one side of the paper and take note of which side the mark is on when you load the paper into the printer. Once you have printed your test page, you will then know which side to load your photo paper so it prints on the right side. I have made this mistake so many times and waste so much photo paper.
STEP 5
Now that your pages are dry, cut them out and lay them out in front of you. Decide what embellishments (if any) you would like to add to each page before we stick them down to the chipboard/cds. For instance, I added some fasteners to one of my pages and of course I don’t want the back of them to be seen on the other side of my page, so I add them to my printed page before I adhere them to the chipboard.
Once you have finished embellishing your pages, its time to adhere them to your chipboard/cds. I covered the chipboard with the Xyron roll-on adhesive then added some Xpress IT double sided tape to the back of my photo circles just to give it more sticking power. If you are using the chipboard, make sure you line the top of the photo circles up with the hole in the chipboard. If your using cds, make sure you have pre-drilled your holes and line them up the same way also.
When you have glued down the first side, flip it over and use your hole cutter and hammer on your mat, to make a clean hole through the paper. You can also use a hole punch.
Repeat this step for the remainder of your pages.
All that’s left to do is add the chain, some ribbons and the tag!
