Slide Mounts and Film Strips

There was some conversation in one of my Yahoo! groups lately about slide mounts and trying to find some that were made out of paper instead of the plastic ones, and it made me realize all the things that can be made in Photoshop.

Here is my slide mount:

I found one of my daughter playing in a sand box in 1983 and used it as my model. I made it by using the rounded rectangle to make a large square (I used a document that is 3" x 3" and 300 pixels/inch) with rounded corners.

On the next layer I again used the rounded rectangle tool and made a rectangle across the center. I then used Commant-T to get a bounding box and holding down the option key I moved the side handles in until I had the size I wanted by opening to be.

I then made my cream colored slide layer active and Command-clicked on the thumbnail of the smaller rectangle that I just made, then turned off the visibility of the small rectangle and hit delete. This punched out the center of the slide mount.

I then went to the Blending Options and put a small bevel on the mount.

The last thing I did was to add the words (I used the same look as the one I have at home). Slide mounts have different words on them sometimes.

To use the slide mount digitally, turn off the background layer (click on the eye next to it in the Layers palette) and then choose File > Save As...

Decide where you are going to save it, give it a name and save it as a PNG.

If instead you want to print it out to use in a more traditional way, File > New and choose U.S. Paper.

On the slide mount document Select > All, Edit > Copy (or Command-C)

Go to your new document and Edit > Paste (or Command-V), move it where you want it up near the upper left corner. Command-V, move up next to the first one, Command-V, move it......

Do that until you have a whole page of them. Print them out on card stock and cut them out. Voila!

I also made a film strip:

If you are interested, I can do a full tutorial on either or both of these. Let me know if you are interested by leaving a comment to tell me which one (or both) you'd like to have.

The words accompanying the slide mount may be enough for you to duplicate it - if not let me know and I will do a tutorial with screenshots.

I have a billion things today including packing, and I have the 2 year old this afternoon and then her 6 year old sister until bedtime.

I'd better get a move on.....