Newbies to Digital Scrapbooking

I learned using photoshop on my own, with a little help from a former officemate. I am no expert but I will share with you what I know and how I do things. I'm pretty sure that there are other ways to do things and perhaps they are the correct ways or the ways that make more sense, but until I discover them or until someone shows me the better, easier way, I will stick to what I currently know.

A couple of friends, an officemate, and three people who found me in the tangled web of the internet have asked, "how do I make a layout? Where and how do I start? How do I put things together? Shall I pick the picture and build around it, or shall I pick the supplies then pick the picture?

There really is not just one correct way to start an LO, whether it is traditional or digital. You might find beautiful papers and embellishments and want to use them right away then find the perfect picture/s to post; or you might have a beautiful picture and scrounge through your scrapbooking supplies for the perfect papers and embellishments. Either way works. It is easier if you have a theme. If you have a photograph on or of the beach, look for supplies pertaining to the beach; if your supplies are bright and happy colors fit for a birthday or summer celebration, then look for a photograph that would go with those colors and emotions.

Check your resolutions - if you are like me, armed with an old computer, I suggest changing your pictures' [that doesn't just pertain to photos] resolutions and make them all the same - see here. I found out that if I do not use elements of the same resolution, one would be bigger than another when it's not supposed to [for example, a bling shouldn't be bigger than a flower]. True, I can re-size the flower, but by doing so, re-sizing might make the flower fuzzy or blurred - because remember, you are increasing the size of the element but the resolution of, say 72 dpi is not enough for such size.

Putting your elements together - It is easy to put elements together in one LO. Start with a simple LO first until you master the art of finding things around your digital work area (^.^) Scraplift a simple traditional or digital LO. As with crediting digital suppliers, please don't forget to give credit to the person you scraplifted from.

I'm a Digital Freebie User

Among the MANY things I collect are digital supplies that are free. It's like having a feast if I find them one after the other! I'm like an anteater not knowing which ant to eat first before they all run away. Sometimes I spend more time downloading the freebies than making digital layouts. At the end of the downloads, I am always guilty I wasted my time downloading than creating.

But I can't help it! I can't afford to buy digital supplies all the time. And the designers... they are so talented and generous! I love them all. I thank them all for sharing their hard-work with me. Their work is so beautiful, I just got to have 'em! I will have nightmares if I miss anything that is sooooo awesome! and the freebies...some of them don't last long - the link expires. So I got to get them while they are free!

Why do they give out freebies? Just because. They are kind-hearted. They are proud of their work. They want to be known. They want to make friends. They want to make a living. And all they want in return is a "little loving" and respect for the TOU.

I know what a little comment can do for someone. When I get one it makes me happy. I admit that sometimes I don't leave comments, especially when I'm downloading [on the sly] from the office. But I do leave comments most of the time. Sometimes it's just "x-x-x-x-x-x". No, it's not a border or an end to my comment. It means, "thank you so much for sharing, I love you!!!!"

Most of the designers have an on-line store and give out freebies to attract customers. Sometimes I feel guilty downloading all or most of the freebies I see in a store. To ease my guilt a little I'd purchase a kit here and there.

I have so much I don't even know where to begin, which one to use first, in which disc I've saved a particular one, blah-blah-blah, blah-blah.

The question now is what shall I do with all the freebies I collected? I can't give them away. I can't share them. I can't sell them. I can't claim anything I've altered. And if you look closely at those TOUs, some say you can't alter them in a way that it changes the original art, and that if you do, you have to mention you altered something [like re-coloring, adding another swirl to a swirl, for examples). Which makes sense, because what if you messed up a beautiful design by altering it? Don't want to blame the designer for an ugly design ;-)

Most of the layouts I make are that of my family, especially that of my daughter because there's always something happening with her and her friends and she takes lots of pictures. She's beginning to get interested in digital scrapbooking and has revised a few layouts I made, especially the journaling part. If she continues this interest and I let her use the supplies I have to decorate her album, or if someday, among other things, the discs were handed down to her, I would be SHARING. Would this scenario be against the TOU?

Family members land friends love my digital scrapbook pages and want copies for themselves, especially if they are on the pictures also. Would it be against some rule GIVING away copies of layouts made from freebies? And if they post copies of these on their own galleries, how can they give credit to the designer when they don't have that information? Will that be breaking the TOU?

Some say they'd pay me if I made a baby or Christmas or first school year album. Would that be against the rule? Can I say that they're paying me for the time I spent and the layout design I made by putting all the elements together, not the freebie? Would this be considered SELLING the freebie?

I really have to pay close attention to the TOUs. I swear I saw this statement in each freebie: PERSONAL USE ONLY.

Even the supplies I bought, the TOU states "for personal use only", and something like, "commercial use available, contact designer". OK now, I thought that if I paid for it, it's "mine", like a dress, or a purse, or a pair of shoes...

Why Do We

We spend money we don't have
On things we don't need
To impress people we don't like.

Now You See It, Now You Don't

Ever had the experience of taking a photo of something, like a view of a garden, the horizon, or the beach but there are people walking across in front of you thus blocking the view or adding unnecessary noise to your photograph?


You wait patiently for people to get out of your way to take that perfect picture. Some see you and move away with an apologetic smile. Others.... they see you but just take their time and won't budge at all!



Well, this happened to me during my yearly Mother's Day visit to the Chicago Botanic Gardens. We didn't really get to go on Mother's Day because it rained. We went the following weekend. I wanted to take lots of pictures and practice using the Nikon D80. DH has been nagging me about learning how to use it. I was content with my Olympus but learning how to use a different one is OK.



In this picture there was this woman and a child who blocked my view. They were not aware I was behind them so I waited patiently. The little boy went to the side and the mother followed suit. HA! My chance, I thought. But alas! not quite out of my view. I took the shot anyway as DH said there are more people coming our way. Wouldn't this have been a perfect shot?

I didn't fret. I knew with the use of Photoshop I can re-touch this picture... so here you see it, now you don't....
I used PS8 for this tutorial. What I did: I cloned the areas to the right side of the woman to erase her from my picture. In my picture, I copied a portion of the tree to replace the woman's head and torso, the ground underneath the tree to replace her hips, and the grass to replace her legs. Then I carefully copied the edge of the walkway to replace her shoes.Zoom in to the area you want to re-touch. In the Tool Box, choose the CLONE STAMP tool, it is the 5th box down in the first column. Make the diameter/size of the stamp tool manageable [small or big enough to copy the pixels next to the area you want to clone]. Press ALT key [notice that the cursor changed shape- like a target or bull's eye]. Bring the cursor to the area you want to clone. Left click while depressing the ALT key. Then release ALT key and bring the cursor to the area you want to erase or replace. Left click and move your mouse around to clone the area you selected [notice that the cursor changed into a small circle and a plus sign. The plus sign is where you are copying, the circle is where you are replacing.]



Here are other pictures where I used the Clone Stamp Tool. Original picture below, the ball was cut-off the camera's view. I looked for another picture with a complete view of the ball, merged the picture side by side so I could clone the ball.
In so doing, I also cloned some areas of the backdrop.


I didn't stop there. I cloned another ball so N. will have her own. Take note that the brand name of the ball is on top - that's because I rotated the clone so it will look like it's a different ball!


The possibilities are endless! So go ahead, clone yourself a twin!

My New Hero

This is old news. And you probably have seen the video many times over and over again. Did you laugh? Does it still make you laugh? Every time you play it, does it still make you roll over in laughter?

I admit that the first time I viewed it with the caption/trailer, I laughed. I played it again and I laughed again, this time, the second time, I laughed at the facial expression of the lady judge. She was just staring at the contestant in disbelief! Everytime I watched the video clip, it is this judge's expresion I laugh at.

I played it several times more. The song caught on - the singer's version, that is. Without you, sang by Harry Nilsson a long time ago was one of my many favorite songs. I still know the lyrics, to the surprise of my teenage daughter, who thinks it is a brand new song! But I like Valentina's version better.

I have high respect for Valentina. She is my new hero. She stood there in front of the judges and thousands of people [knowing that there will be millions more who would be watching her] with utmost confidence! CONFIDENCE! something I lack. When the judge asked her if she meant to sing "Without You", she confidently replied "No." She gave her heart and soul singing that song.

I admire her sweet innocence of the English language. Why should I laugh at her again? She did the best she could, the way she understood how words were pronounced, the best she could in her Bulgarian accent.

Way to go, Valentina! My hero!!! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RgL2MKfWTo

Changing Your Resolutions

Today's tutorial is changing resolutions.I'm not talking about your personal resolutions, like your new year's resolutions. I'm talking about the resolutions of your pictures and digital elements. As defined by PhotoFinish, "Resolution is the interpreter between the physical world of inches and the digital world of pixels." Pixels is short for picture elements. A pixel is the smallest unit in a computer image or display. Every image on your computer is made up of a colored grid of pixels. So when you work with digital pictures [photographs, embellishments used in digital scrapbooking, etc.] you work with pixels.

Usually the digital papers and embellishments are made with a resolution of 300 pixels. The more pixels in a picture, the higher the resolution. The higher the resolution and the more files you have open super slows down your computer! If you have 5 pictures of 300 pixels each that would slow down your work time tremendously.

So here's what I do... I always change the resolution of each element I use to 150 ppi (pixels per inch) or dpi [dots per inch]. Go to IMAGE, then IMAGE SIZE, then DOCUMENT SIZE. Under RESOLUTION, change the size to 150 pixels per inch. Remember to use the same resolution for all elements you are going to use on a layout. Otherwise, you'll find that some elements [like a flower] might be larger than your background paper.



When closing the files you used, remember to not use "SAVE" otherwise you will be changing the resolutions of your originals.

Once you have completed a layout, then you can merge all your layers into one layer and save the entire layout using .jpg instead of .png. You can also change the jpeg resolution to 72. This is the resolution I use when uploading pictures into my websites.

If you have questions about this simple tutorial, please leave me a comment. Thank you.

TODAY!

Two excited teens. Can't wait till we get to the sky-diving place. We left the house at 6:45am to rendezvous at Kelly's. We left Kelly's around 8:00 am and drove north to East Troy, WI.
Map Quest was wrong [again!]. Instead of instructing us to go straight ahead [a slight right and straight] it said to turn left on R83. We turned around and missed the turn again! after 16 miles of driving we found the place!

It was raining when we got there. The skies were dark and I thought perhaps this is a sign? I was nervous about this plan, you know. Perhaps the dive will be cancelled. Perhaps we
can turn around now. Perhaps this will give the kids a time to think this over and change their minds?

Well, not really. They madeup their minds and stuck to the plan: sky-diving TODAY! May 3rd. Because today is Prom Day!

The staff showed us pictures and video of other sky divers; friendly young people. They talked about how many times they have jumped and how exciting it is. They even tried to persuade Terry [Kelly's mom] and I to join the dive. I said, no way, Jose. The reason I quit my other job was because I don't want to fly anymore.

The kids were excited. They couldn't wait to sign up. I read the contract... it's more for the benefit of the place and the staff; not ours. Oh, boy! The kids kept signing and
initialing each item. Did they even read what they were signing? Perhaps. But even if they won't agree with everything that's written, they've set their mind. TODAY!

One has to be at least 18 to dive. Parents can't even consent for anyone under 18. Parents have no say for kids who are 18. They are a separate individual entity! After signing we watched a video about the process, what to expect, the legalities... scary...

Like I said: SCARY!

We waited at the clubhouse. It was still raining and very windy. The staff said that they did fly and dive even in the rain but no one wants to do it again. The rain hurts terribly. They're worried about the raindrops hurting?





It rained and stopped and rained again. We tried to tell the kids to perhaps return the next day. Sunday's forecast was 60 degrees and sunny. The response? "It's not gonna happen!" it has to be TODAY!