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1. You need to have your clip art open simultaneously with the image you want to add it to. This means you are going to have two separate images in two separate windows open in Elements. See Illustration 1.
2. Before you do anything else, go to the Image menu and Resize and check that both your image you want to add the clip art to and the clip art itself are the same resolution. If they aren't, when you add the clip art it will either be too big or too small proportionally. Generally, clip art will be 72 dpi, make sure that's what your other image is.
3. What you need to do is move the clip art onto the other image; in effect you are creating a new layer with your clip art. You don't want to copy and paste it, you want to capture and move it over to the other window. Here's how! Usually, clip art has a solid background, often it is white. This makes it easy to select the background with the magic wand tool. We could select the entire clip art image with a rectangular marquee, but then you're going to have a square or rectangular piece of clip art on top of your other image. It is up to you and what you want to put on the picture.
Let's say you find a piece of clip art with a solid color background and you just want to add the picture onto your other image. I next go to the toolbar and select the magic wand tool. See Illustration 2. I then look up at the top of Elements just below the Enhance menu and see Tolerance. This determines how much or how little my magic wand will select. The smaller the number, the less tolerant the selection. If I want to select a uniform, solid background color, I don't need a very high tolerance so I will set it at 20 (you can experiment).
Try to pick a piece of clip art that has an image that doesn't touch the outside of the window it is in for your first try. This way, it won't stop the magic wand selection from completely surrounding your picture on the first click. (Later on, if you need to select a background that is not contiguous, hold the shift key down and keep clicking until all of it is selected.)
Once the background is surrounded, it will vibrate with what is known as "marching ants." See Illustration 3. If you tried to move this onto your other image now, only the background would come. Therefore, we need to reverse the selection so it grabs the image, not the background. Here's how: Go up to the Select menu and choose Inverse. Now your image is selected and you are ready to move it. See Illustration 4.
4. Go back to the toolbar and pick the Move tool. The cross in the upper right part of the tool bar. See Illustration 5. Select it and move out onto your vibrating clip art image. The Move tool will turn into a pair of scissors. Click and drag the clip art image over onto your other image window. It will turn dark around the edge when you have it there. You can drag the clip art anywhere you want to put it. That's it! You have now placed just the selected clip art image on your other picture.
See Illustration 6.
5. The only other thing you might want to do is resize your clip art or move it backward or forward in the new picture. If you want to move it backward or forward, go to Layer>Arrange and make your choice. If you want to scale your clip art, go to Image>Transform and try the different choices. See what they do. Good Luck and Feel The Force!
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