One of the things you told us you wanted in our reader survey we did in November, was for us to tell you the process for layouts and projects. I thought I would share with you my process that I like to use once a year for a ‘year in review album’. I have bolded a few key tips throughout the post so, if doing a whole album like this isn’t something you are interested in, you can glance over those bolded notes and maybe pick up something new from those. 
I started doing a year-in-review album, because I am horrible at scrapping events. I don’t enjoy scrapping them that much at all. I am more of a ‘moments’ scrapper. I know, however, that my family really prefers to look at and enjoy those event layouts. I decided that if I do at least ONE two-page layout that covers the major events of each month, I would be very happy with myself (and my family would be too ). Each year, I say that I am going to do these layouts each month at the end of the month, but I don’t. I usually end up saving them all until the end of the year and then put them together.
Katie has a couple of past posts that would be helpful as well for this kind of an album:
Monthly Roundup – great ideas for gathering information through the year.
Power Scrapping – a great way to get layouts done fast.
I thought I would first show you how I organize my photos. When I first went digital, I started with this system and it has worked out really well. I start each file off with a number that is continuous, I don’t start these over each year. Then, that number is followed by the month and year. I will sometimes do separate folders for big events (you can see a trip to Walt Disney World in there and a couple other vacations), but they follow the number system as well.
The first step, is opening the folder for the month you are going to scrap and then selecting photos from it that you want to use on your layout. I pull all of those photos into Photoshop by selecting them all and then dragging/dropping them. I am doing January 2009 for this layout and chose 10 photos. Once the photos are all loaded in Photoshop, I go to window>arrange>tile horizontally, that way I can see a bit of each photo. (If you are using PSE, then you can just use your bin, the bin is the ONE feature from PSE that I miss).
Next, I look at how many photos I have total. Sometimes, I will also count up how many portrait vs. landscape photos I have, if that makes a difference (alot of times, even though a photo is portrait, it can be cropped into a landscape photo without losing any details). With these photos I know that 3 of them must be portrait.
Now, I go to one of my favorite template designers folders to pick a template. For these year-in-review layouts, I really like Yin’s templates because I can easily change a photo from portrait to landscape without effecting the design. All of Yin’s templates that I own are merged into one folder (except the 365 templates), so I can see all of them at one time without having to go into each collection’s folder.
I really like the look of template 81 for the photos I will be working with for January, so I will pull that into Photoshop and immediately save it under a new name in my layouts folder.
We are now, obviously going to add the photos to the spots that will tell our story best. One tip when adding photos to a template is to make sure that the auto-select box, under the menu, is checked (in elements I think this is the default setting). Click your move tool on the photo spot that you want to add the next photo to. This will select that layer and bring the next photo that you add to the layout (or item) in on the layer just above, which is right where you want it to clip it to shape. DO NOT MERGE THE PHOTO WITH THE LAYER BELOW AFTER CLIPPING (you will see why later).
You can see in this layout I am creating, as I type this post, that I have 4 photos from one event. We went bowling with some friends and have since moved, so I wanted to make sure I got each of my friend’s kids (that were with us) in there as well as my own kids. You can also see that I moved some of the photo’s around to help tell my story better. I also changed one photo from landscape to portrait so I could fit my daughter’s cute princess dress in there.
Original
After my photos are added:
Now comes the really fun part…choosing supplies! A tip I learned early on when choosing supplies for these albums is to go with a neutral background. With so many photos taken during a whole month, there can be a wide variety of of colors, prints, and patters, so simple is best. I usually go with Kraft paper for my background paper, but I LOVE kraft!!! For this layout, I am going to use the Altered 365-January kit by Something Blue Studios and the DJB Leoni font included in January’s THE DIGI FILES I also knew I wanted to use Textura by Fontologie on the date stamps.
Here’s what my layout looks like now after adding the details and drop shadows:
Now, I will save as a Jpeg. But, wait! Don’t close that psd file yet! I am going to use this same template for my February 2009 layout as well! I will save this layout under February2009 and then delete the photo layers that were clipped (leaving the shape that the photo was clipped to). I also leave my text in place and don’t delete it. For now, I will also leave the papers and embellies. Here’s what it looks like:
After pulling all of my photos that I want to use from February into Photoshop, I know I have 13 photos, but I can easily duplicate some of the existing photo/matte layers to create more spots. To duplicate the photo spots and mats, just click on the photo layer, hold the ctrl key and click on the mat layer below it. Then, right click and select, duplicate layers. These layers will show up with copy in italics next to the layer name. Here’s what my new layout for February looks like now:
Now, I am going to go through and add my photos again, just like I did before. After adding all of my photos, I select all of my text layers and drag them to the top in the layers stack, so I can see them all and start editing. By leaving the text layers that were there, I can just drag them to where I need them on the new layer and don’t need to worry about font sizes matching, etc.
You can see that I added one more photo spot, as I finished adding the photos, I decided I needed a photo of the lighthouse we went to see while on our trip to the coast.
By looking at this layout, I can see that I need an orange element of some kind in the upper right side, this will help create a visual triangle between the two bold photos with orange. I also need to create a title. Here’s what I did:
I decided to delete the paper at the bottom of the layout because it interfered with the jouranling. I used Textura and Textura empty fonts to create a dual colored title (black outside and blue inside) and an anchor on that side of the layout. I used the paint strokes in the Altered365 kit and recolored them to orange to create that visual triangle that I spoke of earlier.
Now, in no time at all, I have my first two layouts for my Year-In-Review album done. By just reusing what was already done for the first layout, I not only created a cohesive look between the two layouts, but saved a lot of time!! Here’s a look at the two finished layouts:
Do you have any tips you can share on quickly getting a years worth of events scrapped?
P.S. Congratulations to Tamara whose comment was randomly chosen from the comments in yesterday’s post!! Here’s what she said: “Love Gina’s stuff. Looking through the store, I already have a lot of her kits (LOVE Parker and Penelope kits!), and I love the grab bags she does- Idea Notebooks. Right now I’m wanting the Shabby Shack and Jubilant mega kits. Thanks for the chance to win!”
Tamara won a $10 gift certificate to Digital Design Essentials!
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[...] If you like the idea of a year in review album there’s some free templates from Jessica Sprague here and some ideas at the Daily Digi [...]
So helpful! Love the clever tip
Resolution #2: Learn how to type!!! LOL
Thanks for this post! My scrapping resolution for 2010 is to get more photos scrapped for me and my family/friends.
I so know how you feel about scrapping events, but on the other site those are the most rewarding results for me in the end.
As for additional tips, I have just completed a holiday mini ablum from our summer vacation (endless amount of photos). It was a christmas gift for my sister and BIL. I found itr helpful to design me 4 neutral “quickpages” and then stubbornly use them. Very siomple, but it looked good. You can see it on my blog.
Yin’s templates are a great place to start, since they use so many photos. I love your step-by-step help.
This is a very encouraging tutorial with some great tips that are new to me. Thank you! Maybe I really CAN get those layouts done!
Thank you so much for this!!! I needed some motivation, and this totally gave it to me! Steph, you R O C K!
I love this -thanks for the inspiration – Jessica Sprague has some awesome templates here for a year in review album
http://blog.shutterfly.com/year-in-review-albums/
What a great, inspiring tutorial!! I love templates they make life so much easier!!!!
Great ideas – thank you!
Cute layouts!! I need to do this too… thanks for the ideas!! Love your pictures too!
wonderful post!
I use quick pages that I recieve from free with purchase gifts from various stores (most often Sweet Shoppe Designs). I love these – everything comes together well and I don’t have to do anything but add in some journaling or word art.
I love Yin’s Templates they are so versatile and I’m really much happier scrapping lots of pics on a page!
Thanks for the super informative article! It is really neat to see what works/doesn’t work for you!
Thanks for sharing your pages Steph! And thanks to Gina for the GC I won!!
Great ideas for managing photos. I hope that I can get my pictures folder organized with your method!!
Thank you for all the wonderful details
You have made this look so easy & doable! Thanks for the tips!
[...] Use templates. Today’s post at The Daily Digi shows you how to quickly create a year in review album with a multi-photo template. Some of the [...]
Wow this is a fantastic way of doing things. I typically do a year in review for each of my boys for their birthdays (for family) and the way you organize your photos would be perfect for me too. Gotta do it!
I did my first “project 365″ for 2009 and the book is complete and on its way to me! I started out doing the picture a day and then it got to be a “chore” for me so come June it became a monthly recap instead of a daily. I have decided like you, my book for 2010 will be a montly recap as I found that this works so much better for me. Thank you so much for sharing your tips.
I’m determined to tackle my first “project 365″ this year. This post TRULY helps me figure things out. I love the ideas and I’m off right now to start setting up some folders. Thanks for sharing that Steph!
Great ideas. This has helped me a lot. Right now, I’m just collecting…and haven’t really plunged in! This just might give me the push to get going!
I’ve been scrapping for years and never new about the Windows>Arrange feature. You’ve put a big smile on my face today!
Gosh..that is so inspiring!
I would like to do this for my family.
WOW! Thanks for the tips!!! I am not very good at having so many photos in an LO. I think I should try on your tips soon!
This is fantastic!! Thanks for the insight into your process and for the design tips. I hope to see more posts like this. I’m fascinated by how people choose what to put into a layout.
I think it would be great fun to put together an album like this! Every year in January, I put together a mini album–not digi–that I add pictures to every month. I love having a collection of mini albums that represent a year’s worth of memories. I try to select the picture taken each month that represents our activities, for example, birthday pictures, family Thanksgiving, etc.
How appropriate. Because of the holidays, I’ve gotten way behind with my “event” scrapping. These tips will really help! Thanks!
Thank you so much for this–I LOVE seeing how other people work! And I can’t wait to get started on a year in review book of my own!
Now, this is another helpful post! I want to do this but I get overwhelmed! Thanks for the tips!
I really like this idea in lieu of scrapping every event, because I too far prefer to scrap moments. Thanks for sharing!
The monthly review pages are something I am so wanting to do this year. Thanks so much for the inspiration!
Thanks for sharing! This is sooo helpful. Question: How do you get a snapshot of the template to appear next to the psd file of the template? Are you saving the image separately or is this accomplished through file settings?
Thanks,
Sandy
Great idea and it looks so do-able. Thanks!
Great ideas. I am sooo PSCS3 disabled. I WILL get into it soon. These tipes will be helpful for sure. I am still getting organizing tips and trying to sort out all my digi stuff. Thanks!
Thanks so much for sharing I love this idea and process
THis is sooo helpful! One thing i’ve never gotten the hang of over the years with Digi is being organized. I think this article should help out a lot! Thank you!
Great tutorial! Loved the organizational ideas – Thanks for sharing!