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QUESTION: I keep seeing styles in the boutique and I really want to try them, but I have no idea how they work or what they do. Can someone either enlighten me or point me to a tutorial?
ANSWER 1: Styles are an awesome addition to your digi scrapping arsenal. You need to have Adobe Photoshop Elements or Photoshop CS to use them. You install them into the program and each style that you purchase comes with very good instructions on how to do that. After you have them installed, you can use them on embellishments or text to give the items a special look. In PSE, they are under the Layer Styles palette. With an item as the active layer, click on the style you want and then hit "Apply" or you can just double-click the style and it will automatically apply it. PSE has some built-in styles, so you can practice what they do before you purchase some. The ones that you can buy here are much more varied than the built-in ones.
ANSWER 2: Once you use a style and see how awesome they are, you will become a style junkie!
ANSWER 3: I am totally addicted to styles and brushes. If you have PSE or CS, you have some styles in your program already. Play around and see what happens. They are very addicting!
ANSWER 4: You're going to have so much fun with them. I don't think I've created a layout without styles. I love them.
QUESTION: I am wondering if anyone knows a better way to organize styles in CS4. I'm not sure if there is another option but, currently, my styles appear in the Styles Palette off to the right side of my screen when PS is open. I like being able to view them all at once, but I'm starting to get so many styles that I can't find what I'm looking for. Many of the little preview boxes look so similar (little gray boxes for shadows, textures, etc.) that I find myself having to hover over every little gray box until the filename pops up so I can find what I'm looking for. Does anyone have a better method?
ANSWER 1: I will watch this with interest. I am beginning to share the same problem. I'm sure my husband would say to stop buying so many styles, but that just seems a tad ridiculous! So, I'm no help at all, but just want to thank you for posting the question I've been thinking about myself!
ANSWER 2: I don't keep all of my styles loaded. There are a few that I use a lot that I keep there. It is a good idea to get the gallery images of the styles you have. You can either print them out or keep them in a folder. Go through the ones you have to choose what you'd like to use. You can just drag and drop the style into Photoshop and it will load. I also think the program starts up faster without a lot loaded in it.
ANSWER 3: I do the same thing. I organize them into folders outside of PS and then load the ones I need. (I do the same with brushes and actions, too.) The drag and drop method is so easy in PS, that I don't mind adding and deleting styles/brushes/actions when I need to.
ANSWER 4: I never have my styles loaded. They are in a separate folder called "styles" and each one is in its own folder inside of the big one. I have them alphabetically arranged and I make a jpg and place it on the folder so to know what it does.
ANSWER 5: I sort all of my styles in the Preset Manager and save them as a new style set. For example, I have Glitter Rocks, Glitter Sparkle, Urban glitter, etc., and I save it as "Glitter" in the presets folder in the Adobe software folder in Program Files. I have categories for fabric, paper, glitter, water, stained glass... This way, all of my styles are accessible, but I only have a short list showing. All of the original style sets are saved as a back-up on my hard drive and on DVD. I have done the same with brushes. I have holiday, frames, swirls, calendar... Instead of having only six styles in a list, I have 20 or more (definitely more) in the category I'm searching through.
ANSWER 6: Thanks for all the input. For those of you that only load the styles you need, how do you remove/delete them from the palette when you are done?
ANSWER 7: You can do that from the preset manager. In CS3, there's a little arrow next to the brush tip shape (along the top of the screen). If you click that, another menu will pop-up and there will be a right-pointing arrow along the top of that menu. Click that and about midway down that list is the preset manager. You can select brushes for deletion here and you can also load brushes here. (I usually load via drag and drop.)
ANSWER 8: I choose "Reset Styles," which loads just the default styles that come with PS and removes all others. On the Styles Palette, under the drop-down arrow, is a long menu and one option is to replace styles so you can load a different set - like pearls instead of glitter - and swap out styles.
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