Turning stamps into Digi's using Picasa

Turning stamp into Digi using Picasa or Photoshop
BUT FIRST - please be aware that you must receive permission first from the entity that holds the copyright on the stamp you are making into a digital image. Please check their Angel Policy first. This tutorial in no way endorses changing stamps to digitial images without appropriate permission.

OK, here goes.....

For this tutorial I am using GKD’s Dogwood and Butterfly set by Theresa Momber (with permission from GKD)
• I chose the oval frame from this set and stamped image
• then scanned image to my computer
• On my computer, scanned images land in my file My Documents so I have to open and save in Picasa. Here are steps… locate scanned image and highlight the file as shown below

 the above pic shows my file highlighted. I click on it and on my computer it will open in Windows Photo Gallery
As you can see below, I chose File then Open With and then Picasa Viewer

It will open and then go to bottom as seen below...and chose edit in Picasa (see my arrow)

Now you will be in Picasa. Using their crop tool, crop the image removing as much of the white area as possible. Your image will be huge in Picasa but you will be resizing it in Silhouette Cameo (instructions will be in tutorial to follow)
Now Save it so you can find it LOL I save by Designer.  Here is my saved image...now digital !

This way its automatically saved as a jpeg….which is important when we go to the Cameo tutorial to follow

Next, let me show the steps if you chose File...Open With...Photoshop Elements ( I have PE 8)
Once you've scanned and gone to your scanned file - Chose File, Open With and then chose Photoshop Elements, give PE a chance to open on its own and then you will be in PE and it will look like this

 now you need to remove all that white space.  Go to Image, chose Crop

 Your entire image will have a dash border around it. See the arrows in the corners..click on either the top or the bottom ...see where I put my cursor in the top corner...now hold your mouse down and move the cursor closer to your image....it may be easier to use the corner bottom and drag your corner up...DO NOT USE SIDES (that will change the image)...dragging your cursor (mouse) takes practice (at least it did for me)

 this next picture show the image with the white "cropped" out as close as I could get

 when done, see where my arrow is at the bottom, click on the checkmark to save your "crop"

With crop now saved  it will look like this...but now you need to SAVE it with a file name

 Chose File....then Save As...and you will get this box below

 Enter what you want to title your image, it will automatically be a jpeg file as shown
I save by designer name but you decide that...(can always change it later) Once you enter that info, you will get the box below....see where my arrow is...just click ok (the rest of the options are for really advanced users, sorry - that's not me!)

 Now you will have your named image saved ...for my computer it goes back to My Documents. If you highlight your file with your mouse and continue to  hold down your mouse while "dragging" your document over to the file you want to save...it will go to that file (takes practice)

.You can see my arrow. I kept my mouse on my file and moved it over to my GKD folder.

PHEW! hope this helps...going to start next tutorial by showing how I printed and cut this same image with the Cameo...stay tuned (-:

I truly hope this helped...
Linda