My Legacy: How to Create Your Own Color Swatches From Photos

I can not tell you how long I have wanted to be able to create those pretty swatches from photos that I see lots of folks do out on the web. I don't know why I like them, I just do.

I have asked lots of folks and couldn't get an answer... OH! A friend did recommend a couple of sites that automatically generates them, but one didn't let you save the .jpg and the other chooses the colors for display, you can't do a thing to control it. URGH!

WELL! Today I had a SUDDENLY! You know I get those all the time and each time I go "WELL DUH! Why is that JUST coming to me?!"

All I needed to do is create a PSE template! You know, the kind that people create for sale on Two Peas for Digital Scrapbooking?

And then began the TOTALLY worthless search for "How to Create A Template in PSE"!!! Good luck finding that! Everyone wants to tell you how to use one, but no one teaches how to create one. And I may as well admit here and now that I am NOT a lover of PSE! I have used CorelDraw and CorelPaint for about 20 years and I can pretty much make it do what I want, but PSE is a MAJOR PAIN! Nothing is intuitive! You can do anything as long as you know the 4 keys to hold down and which foot to stand on! I just spent 11 hours yesterday trying to get a friend comfortable enough with it to be able to create Christmas cards from photos and I left there every bit as confused as she was because we worked on TWO of her PCs and PSE works TOTALLY DIFFERENTLY on both of hers and mine...they are all different! HORRIBLE!

OK! OK! Sorry, just had to get that off my chest!

But, I say all that to say, if I try to give any instructions on "How To" here, they may be completely worthless on a different PC! so there is very little point! I will try and show you what I came up with and hopefully you are more PSE savvy and can figure out HOW to do it!

Here is my pitiful shot at it:

1. I put the blocks (or drawn rectangles) where I wanted them, each on a separate layer. (I saved this on my desktop for future use)

GET THE PICTURE YOU WANT TO USE.

2. Open then Drag your picture into the screen (it will be on its own layer)

3. Drag that picture layer above the "Photo" layer

4. While it is still active go to Layer/Create Clipping Mask (this will put your picture "inside the frame" where you can resize it, or move it around to where you want it. You can see in the picture below that the actual picture is much larger than the block I want it in) .... IT TOOK ME ALL DAY to figure this step out!!!

CHOOSING AND ADDING THE COLOR BLOCKS

5. Use your eyedrop tool to select the color you want ....that will put in the "fill" box...bottom left corner. (circled below)
6. Activate the first block you want to fill and using the paint bucket fill that block with color. (repeat for all color blocks)

ADDING THE COLOR NUMBER

If you decide you want to include the number for each color like I did below...

7. Click on the "fill block" in the lower left corner it will pull up this screen and you will see the color's number...select that and copy it

8. Paste the number over the color it represents.

9. DONE!!! HALLELUJAH!!! PRAISE THE LORD!!!

OH! One last step, export it as a .jpg. :-)