You've learned a lot in Part 2. So now it's time for you to put it all together in a project that I hope you'll personalize. The project is to use a PNG template to create a four by six postcard that you'll print in the next lesson.

Just what is a PNG template? It's a single layered file that has one or more transparent openings for a photo. This checkerboard pattern indicates the transparent section of the template. Often a PNG template is quite ornate with all the elements in place. But I didn't do that for you for two reasons. The most important reason is that I want you to practice moving the files onto the postcard yourself, and resizing and rotating them as needed. You can only get good with Photoshop Elements if you practice.

Secondly, I wanted to give you a choice of topics. I created three photo stamps to use with your postcard, and some other mail-related elements as well. This gives you more options for topics that will work with your photo. And I do recommend you use your own photo for this project. I will provide my travel photo in case you don't have one. But I encourage you to take a photo if you don't have one and use that one instead.

Here are the three postcards I created using the three stamps, Love, This Is Life, and Travel Adventure, which is what I'll demonstrate with this lesson. You'll find all the project files for this lesson in the practice folder for Part 2, lesson nine.

Click on the Open button on the desktop and navigate to the lesson nine project files. Open the PNG template called Postcard Template. And then also open the photo that you want. I'm going to open Venice Gondola and I'm going to do that by pressing the Ctrl key in Windows or the Command key on a Mac to select that extra file and then click Open.

Now I need to move this photo on to my postcard template. here, though, is another quirky feature of the Photo Bin. First, I'll make the postcard template the active file by clicking on its thumbnail in the Photo Bin. If I click and drag my Venice thumbnail, from the Photo Bin to my template, Photoshop Elements resizes my image to fit within the bounds of the document, even if the original photo is larger. If you don't want that, and in this case I don't, you'll need to use a different moving method.

I'll go ahead and select my photo and close the Photo Bin. And then this time, I'm going to click and drag it up to the tab of my postcard template, down into the document, and I'll press Shift and let go of my mouse to center it on my image. See how much larger my photo is? Moving from the Photo Bin is the only time your image will be resized to fit the document. Other moving methods won't do that. So it all depends on what you want.

I'll drag the smaller layer to the trash. And let's work with the larger image. Notice that the photo landed above the template. So in the Layers panel, click and drag the photo layer below the template layer so that the only place you can see it is through the transparent window. If you need to resize the photo, press Ctrl T on Windows or Command T on a Mac to get a transform outline. If you can't see all four corners of the transform outline, use the shortcut Ctrl zero in Windows or Command zero on a Mac to go back to ground zero so the transform outline fits the available desktop.

Use either method to resize clicking and dragging from a corner handle or pressing ALT in Windows or Option on a Mac and clicking and dragging from a corner handle to resize all four corners at once, which is what I'll do. I'm going to bring that down a little bit, click and drag inside. Let's do Ctrl + a couple of times to get that a little bit bigger so we can see what we're doing here. I'm going to move that over slightly. And that's looking good to me, so I'll click on the green checkmark to commit the change. I'll press Ctrl zero on Windows or Command zero on a Mac to make my postcard fit the available desktop. Now that you're done with the photo, click on the little X icon on the tab of your photo to close it.

Open the elements you want to place on your postcard. I opened the Travel Adventure stamp, the White Seal image, there's a black and white version, the Cancellation Mark, and the Air Mail Sticker. I'll start by moving the postage stamp onto my page. These images are smaller than my document so I'll use the Photo Bin to move them and then I'll use the Move tool to click and drag it into place, but I need this on top of my template layer, so I'll need to drag the layer up above my template layer in the Layers panel. Now I can put this up here in the corner, use my arrow keys to put it into place. And if you want to resize it, you can press Ctrl T on Windows or Command T on a Mac, to get transform outline, then click and drag to make it a little bit smaller using a corner handle and click on the checkmark to commit the change. In the same way, add any other elements to the page, I'll add the airmail sticker layer, bring that up here. And I'm going to press Ctrl T in Windows Command T on a Mac, and move my cursor outside the bounding box, click and drag to rotate it slightly. And also let's make it just a wee bit smaller, and click on the checkmark to commit the change. And again, I'm going to need to bring this up above my template layer because I don't want it behind this edge over here. I'll use my arrow keys to move that up a little ways. And now we've got our stamp and our sticker.

Let's do the adventure stamp. Next, I'm going to drag this so that it's over my template so that it will come on top of my template. And then I'll need to resize this, this is quite large. I'll click and drag it from a corner handle, bring it over to the side. Let's close the Photo Bin so we can see that a little bit more. Might have it hanging off the edge a little bit. And then I'll want to rotate it slightly and bring that over like that and click on the green checkmark.

And finally I'll put the cancellation mark above the stamp. So let's do that. Let's drag that up here. I'm going to make sure that I drop it on top of my template so it will be above that. But I also need it above my stamp. So let's move that up in the Layers panel. Remember that when you have something thin, if you have auto select layer checked, you might want to press the Ctrl key in Windows or the Command key on a Mac to temporarily do the opposite of auto select.

And since this is a thin layer, I'm going to do that so I don't accidentally select the object below it. So I'll just click and drag it up here. And I'll need to resize that Ctrl or Command T, click and drag from a corner handle. I'm just going to move that out off the edge right over here and click on the checkmark. Let's make that just a wee bit smaller. Click on the checkmark to commit the change.

Now at the top of the Layers panel you'll see an opacity menu. Click and drag to the left on the word opacity to lower the opacity and I'm going to bring this down to around 40% and then let go of the mouse. When you're finished in the menu bar, choose File, Save As. Give your project name. I'll call mine travel postcard. use Photoshop for the format and check Layers and Embed Color Profile. If you want you can also include this file in the Elements Organizer.

Decide where to save your postcard. I'll save mine to the folder on my desktop, called My Practice Files. Click Save to save the postcard. So that's how easy it is to make a cute postcard. You don't have to design yours like mine. Feel free to be creative. In the next lesson, you'll learn how to print your postcard.