Good Morning scrappers! WOW!! I don’t know about you, but I have been B.U.S.Y. this weekend! National Scrapbooking Day was a HUGE success this year!  I got all my shopping, scrapping, and game playing done, and I am now ready to get back to my regular routine. With all the great stuff Mye had going on, I took a couple of weeks off to help her, so I am really happy to be getting back  to writing tutorials again!  I’ve really missed it!

From the time I started digital scrapbooking, up until last year when I stumbled upon the align feature in Photoshop, I TRIED to get my alpha or photos aligned by using the ruler feature in PS and PSE. It required me to zoom in and move my items around to try and get them lined up correctly. It was really a hassle! Then one day, while trying to find a certain feature in Photoshop, I stumbled upon the align tool..and my life has never been the same…Seriously! It is one of my most favorite tools and I know it is one that I use in almost every layout!

If you are not familiar with the align too, you use it to get your  paper and elements lined up evenly and straight. This can be done either horizontally or vertically and Photoshop will even let you align them using the center, left or right sides of the elements!! Oh how I love this tool!

To get your elements aligned, open the elements in your editing program and add them to your layout.  Select the MOVE tool from your tool palette on the left hand side of  your workstation.

I have three photo masks that I added to my layout that I want to be lined up evenly.

You can see that the three white photo masks are just thrown on the page. I want to line them all up using the top edges, so I need to select all three layers in my layers palette by clicking on the first layer, holding the CTRL+shift key, and then clicking on the last element you want to align. IF your elements are not together in your layers palette, you can hold just the CTRL key and the click on each of the elements you are choosing to align together. This will allow you to choose each element individually instead of as a group.

Next, locate the align tools at the top of your workstation. When you scroll your mouse over the icons, Photoshop will tell you what each icon does, however, if you look at the solid line and where it is located, that will help you determine quickly how each icon will work. If the solid line is at the top..it is top aligned; bottom is bottom aligned and center is center aligned. Then you can choose left aligned , right aligned  and so on.

I chose to align mine using the top edges, so I chose the first icon listed.

Now that the photo masks are aligned properly, you can see, on the photo above, that they are not evenly distributed. There is too much space on one side of the photo mask and not enough on the other side. In this case, I want them to be the same distance apart.

With the layers still highlighted, locate the set of icons at the end of the alignment toolbar. The last three will allow you to distribute your elements and papers evenly. I chose to center mine. Click the icon of the choice you prefer.

Now all three of  the photo masks are aligned evenly and it took you only seconds! No measuring required!!!

You can use the align function with any element or paper you desire! I use it A LOT for buttons and alphas and well..just about everything I can think of!

I hope you will find this tool as useful as I do! It really is one of the best arsenals a scrapper can have and it is available in both Photoshop CS and PSE versions!! Thank you for stopping by today and I am SO happy to be back!   Happy scrapping!