What Is A Grayscale Template?

In this lesson I’ll introduce you to pre-designed layered templates, often called grayscale templates. You’ll learn to use the color coding in the Layers panel to help you identify the purpose of each clipping mask layer.

Video 05-01: What Is A Grayscale Template? (3:14)

Welcome to Part 5 of a QwikLearn Photoshop Elements. Our topic for this series of videos is using greyscale templates. Here's an example of a simple grayscale template. You'll find this template in your class downloads for QwikLearn Photoshop Elements Part 5, Using Grayscale Templates. Open the Practice Files folder and look in the folder called Lesson 1-3 Grayscale Templates. The name of this file is ql-grayscaletemplate-01.psd.

So just what is a grayscale template? It's a layered document designed by someone else, someone with more experience, maybe even a professional designer. You simply replace the layers in the template with your own photos, papers and elements. That way you can quickly create a well designed document. This is especially helpful for beginners but even if you're more advanced a template can save you a lot of time. So if you need to design something quickly, and you want to be sure it looks good, try using a grayscale template.

The templates are called grayscale because the color used for the template pieces is often gray. The color doesn't really matter though. I could change the color of this template and it would still be considered a grayscale template. But we'll stick with the more neutral and common color of gray.

If you look at the Layers panel, you'll see that some of the layers have the color yellow on the left side of the layer. It's easy to add color coding to a layer. Select one or more layers and right click on the left strip that contains the Visibility icon. Choose a color, and I'll choose blue, and I get blue over here on the left. But I'll press Ctrl Z on Windows or Command Z on a Mac to undo that. I've added the color yellow to any layer that's intended to be a photo clipping mask. It's just a quick way for you to identify which layers are for clipping photos.

Older versions of Photoshop Elements don't support color coding on layers. So if you have an older version, you may not be able to see the color and if you can't, don't worry about it. I also named the layer Photo Clipping Mask, so either way you can identify it.

This is a very simple graphic style template of a five by seven card. I didn't add drop shadows to any of the photo clipping masks, and I didn't add any 3-D elements that would require a drop shadow, but it contains everything you need for a great card. Grayscale templates often have one or more type layers with generic words like this one that says "title title" to show you a good place to put a title. But you are expected to change the font and wording the font I used here his career. It makes a good placeholder but it isn't the best font to use for either a title or journaling.

So that's a quick tour of a grayscale template. And this is just one example there are many different kinds. As we work through the lessons in Part 5 you'll learn how to work with templates and modify them to create a beautiful project.

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