From the Manual

Create a Duplicate

• Open template 01 (File > Open) from the downloads.
• In the Menu Bar, choose File > Duplicate (PS: Choose Image > Duplicate.
• Close the original template without saving.

Add a Photo

• In the Layers panel, click on the shape layer you want to clip a photo to.
• Open an image you want to clip to the shape.
• Get the Move tool.
• Click and drag the photo onto the document and overtop of the clipping mask.
• In the Menu Bar, choose Layer > Create Clipping Mask.
• Press the Ctrl T (Mac: Cmd T) to get the Transform options.
• To reposition the image, click and drag inside the bounding box.
• To resize the image, click and drag on a corner handle of the bounding box.
• Click the checkmark to commit the change. 

From the Transcript

Finally, we are to the point where we are ready to start adding photos to the templates. I mentioned in the last video that the first template in my template set is intended to be the first page of the album. When you open this template you can see that it contains a blank page on the left. That’s intentional and it should be left blank. It’s customary practice in photo books that the very first page be blank.

On the right side of this template, there is only one photo clipping mask. For my photo book, I used this page to house one special photo from the trip. Think of this page as a summary. Do you have one photo that would well represent the meaning of the travel that was taken? If so, place that photo on this page as an introduction of what’s to come.

Here’s how to add a photo to this template and any other template to come. The very first thing you need to do every time you use a new template is to duplicate it and close the original. That way you will not be altering the original set of templates. To do that, in the Menu Bar, choose Image > Duplicate. If you are using Photoshop Elements, choose File > Duplicate. In the dialog box that comes up, click OK, then I will dock this new document and then close the original. 

Next, in the Layers panel, click on the shape that you want to clip a photo to. When there is more than one shape layer on a page, and you’re not quite sure which layer coordinates to which shape, simply toggle the visibility icon on and off and you’ll see the corresponding layer appear and disappear. Then open an image you want to clip to the shape. Get the Move tool, and click on the image and drag it onto the document and over top of the shape you want to clip it to. Then in the Menu Bar, choose Layer > Create Clipping Mask.

Next, get the Transform options by pressing Ctrl T, Cmd T on a Mac. To reposition the image, click and drag inside the bounding box. To resize the image, click and drag on the corner handles. I think I will put that image right here. Then when you are finished, click the checkmark to commit. After that, simply start adding photos in chronological order to the templates of your choice. I’ll talk about tips for pairing photos to templates in a later video.

If you’ve been looking through the templates, you’ll have noticed that the second to last template in my set is totally blank. You can skip this template, or it can be used for a variety of other things, such as creating your own template (which I’ll show you how to do that in a later video), or you can use it for nothing but journaling, or you can use it to compile a bunch of paper memories. The options are literally endless because the template is blank!

And finally, the last template in the collection appears as one large gray image. That’s not a mistake. This template is meant to be the cover of your album. But you could also use it as a template page that just has one large photo.

There is no need to clip an image to the mask in this template. You simply just need to make sure that the image is above the template layer and then transform the image so that it completely fills the background of the template. After your book is printed, this photo will wrap from the front of the album all the way around to the back.

So that's how to add photos to the templates included with this class. After you add photos to a template, make sure to save it as a PSD file with a unique name.