Write. Click. Scrapbook.

Digi Scrap 102: Day Three - Actions

Hey there! I'm back and today we are going to take action! Well, okay we are really only going to talk a bit about Photoshop Actions. Photoshop Actions are basically just a recorded set of steps that you can run when you want to perform a task. (Don't you wish there was a action that would do the laundry?) Most scrappers use Photoshop Actions on their photos to convert to black and white or add a cool effect. There are other actions as well though. For instance, there are actions that resize and sharpen pages to put on the web. Text actions can change text into cool looking epoxies or chipboard. There are even actions that will literally scrap a page for you step by step!

Do you have a task that you perform repetitively in Photoshop CS? You can record custom actions. For instance, I recorded an Unsharp Mask action that uses Scott Kelby's recommended settings (Amount: 85% Radius: 1 Threshold: 4) and I use it on almost every photo I edit, quite a time saver. Unfortunately, Photoshop Elements does not have the custom actions feature.

However, you can run actions in either Photoshop CS or Elements. You just have to be sure that the action you are downloading is compatible with the program you have. I'm going to share a few of my favorite free actions here with you. Give them a whirl!

 

Actions for Photography

Pioneer Woman Actions (PS & PSE) - we've mentioned these actions time and time again here because they are truly amazing!

TIP: When the action is finished running, you can select the layer the action is on and use the drop down next to the word Opacity to lessen the effect. I find I run the Pioneer Woman's Boost at about 60% when I use it. The same with Seventies - one of my favorite actions in her sets!

 

Coffee Shop (PS & PSE) - Rita at the Coffee Shop offers a wide array of actions in both PSE and PS formats. I simply adore her Butterscotch Vintage action. It's just stunning! Be sure to check out her black and whites too!

Texas Chicks (PSE) - this site offers a few great Photoshop tools in action form. I use the Defog action and the Noise Reduced all the time. Worth signing up for the newsletter to get access!

Instagram (PS) -  I live in the dark ages and don't have an iPhone or even a smart phone. I have this really old flip phone with no keyboard or anything. So I can't take photos with my phone and use the app Instagram. Well now I can simulate that! This set of actions will take your photo and create similar effects to Instagram! Fun!

Rob Carr's Black & White Action (PS) - This was hard to find. I downloaded this action years ago and it is my favorite black and white conversion method. It really creates crisp, stunning black and white conversions. The action stops you in places and let's you tweak the conversion. Really cool!


Digital Scrapbooking Tools

Resize & Sharpen for Web - when posting layouts or photographs online it's important to sharpen them correctly. As well, using this action will easily resize your image to the size you wish.

Polaroid Frames - Polaroid frames are so retro and add interest too. This action set easily converts your image to have a Polaroid frame!

Installing Actions

Now you are probably wondering, I've downloaded all these actions now what do I do? You'll need to install them. I could go on and on for pages and pages here, but it's probably better to send you over to Wendy Zines' tutorial to get you started! Once you have the action loaded. You can open the Actions palette and click on it to run it.

I'll be back on Friday with some random tips and tricks. Be sure to stop by tomorrow for an awesome giveaway!

 

Welcome to the Factory!

Did you have fun shopping? I hope so. Today is our biggest day. We need to sketch our book and then begin building the base pages. So much to do. But we have two days to do it as tomorrow is give.away.day. Hmm. Someone brilliant must have put this schedule together!

Before we get started, though, I wanted to assure everyone that everything we are going to digitally do this week can also be created with paper and trinkets. Instead of Cntrl-C you will cut with scissors, and instead of Cntrl-V you will paste with adhesive. But the scrapbooking basics remain true for everyone. So if you want to make a mini-album (or four) please play along. Everyone is invited. Everyone.

Marnie's Homework Completed

SKETCHES
Before I went shopping, I sketched out my albums so that I would know what sort of products I was seeking. Here is the plan for my four books. (I really will do just one this week, but thought that if you hadn't found a sketch for your ideas, maybe your photos/theme could fit into one of these.)

Me & My Cousins
This album is a rotation of four pages. Here they are.

My Address
This album will be one repeating page. Here it is.

I Love This
This album will also be one repeating page. Here is Sara's sketch from long ago.

The Pool: my paradise
This album will be a repeating 2 page spread. Here it is.

CHOOSING THE PRODUCT
Me & My Cousins
We have 7 cousins so I need a kit with at least 7 options for cardstock/patterned pairing. Because I used a Paislee Press kit on the first book, I think I will stick with another for this next one. Not only are her papers lovely, but I hope it will feel more like a unified collection when all of them (how hopeful does that sound?? all of them. Guess I will be busy...) are together on the shelf.

Here are the three I am selecting: Correspondence, Lemonade Stand, and The Fancy Collection. (I am two years behind, and so I thought maybe I would make all three at a time. Nothing better than assembly line efficiency!)

My Address
This one just needs one set of cardstock/patterned paper and a fun embellishment. I am going to use Libby's A Very Very Very Fine House. I like the elements and think they will be sweet additions.

I Love This
Why stray from perfection? Sara was spot on with her use of Cosmo Cricket's Girl Friday line. If my digi version is half as cute as her paper one, I will be thrilled! Sara rocks my world.

The Pool: my paradise
This one needs a handful of patterned papers and a couple of basic elements. In some fun summertime colors. Things that will go well with aqua water blues, hot pink swimsuits, lavender goggles, and red swim shorts. That's quite a list so I have selected Crystal's Sweet Summertime collection. I am positive it will be just the right fit.

Today's Assignment

It is Wednesday and I promised you that today we would be assembling our page backgrounds. Reading through your comments, I know that we are all at different levels of expertise. I am going to try to walk you through each step. If you know how to do that step, do it and move to the next one.If you don't know how, click over to the tutorial page and hopefully you will be able to walk through the step by steps. If you have questions or get stuck, please leave me a comment and I will see if I can clear it up. Also, I am no photoshop genius. I am not going to rock anyone's world with great new tricks. Instead, I hope to teach you to use a few streamlined methods to help you make it through a whole photobook without petering out or getting discouraged or running short of time.

Ready, set, let's go team!

SIZE MATTERS
When I create paper minis, oft times I start with the album size and work from there. More often than not, that which I had in my mind was not available to purchase, so I would just go ahead and create my own.

My renegade ways had to be tempered with digi minis. Now I am limited to the sizes that the publisher chooses. And there are many differences between the different publishers. So you can choose your album on the basis of the publisher, or you can choose your publisher on the basis of your album. (That is how I found VioVio. I wanted to put my 8.5x11 pages into a book, but Shutterfly doesn't print that size, or that orientation. So I went looking and found this comparison. I thought VioVio was a good quality bang for your buck. (I am more willing to shell out a couple of extra dollars than I am to accept a poor quality paper or printing.) So I tried it. And it worked well!)

Here is a list of what sizes they each print:

Square
If you make a square album, any adjustments for the full bleed (that's the term for when the publisher puts the printing right to the edge of the paper) can be made at the end. I would suggest this if you are a first time book maker.
Shutterfly: 8x8 12x12
VioVio: 3.5x3.5  5x5  8.5x8.5  10x10  12x12

Landscape
Shutterfly:  5x7  7x9  8x11
VioVio:  3.75x2.5 Mini-Book  5.25x3.5 Mini-Book  7x5 Mini-Book  9x7 Photo Book  12.5 x 10 Hardcover Portfolio Book  11x8.5

Portrait
Shutterfly - doesn't print portraits
VioVio: 6x9  comic size (6 5/8x10.25)  A4 size (8.3 x11.7)  8.5x11

We have now completed our sketch, selected our product, chosen our size and publisher. Congratulations! Let the assembly line begin.

BUILD YOUR PAGES
1. Install the digital kit - First, we must download the new products from the store to our computers. Step by step instructions may be found here.

2. Opening a new document - Once you have photoshop open, please create a new document. Select the size according to the size of your book pages.

If you are creating a book for Shutterfly, please refer to this page for the proper working measurements. The "in bleed" size is the size that your page document needs to be. The "in trim" is the size that your page will be in your printed book. Please note that the difference will be cut off. DO NOT PLACE ANYTHING OF VISUAL INTEREST IN THIS SPACE. Similarly, try to keep your page design such that there are not any round the page borders or elements on the edge.

If you are creating a book for VioVio, please create a document that is 1/8 inch more per side. For instance, if you wanted to create an 8.5x11 album, your working pages should measure 8.75x11.25. Again, DO NOT PLACE ANYTHING OF VISUAL INTEREST OR NECESSITY IN THIS SPACE. It will be cut off.

3. Open the patterned/cardstock papers you will be using for the background - If your computer is as old and tired as mine, you may want to shut down every other open window to give your computer the best chance for success.

4. Resize your papers- This is the biggest place to save time. Rather than build page by page, build as many like parts as you can.

For instance, in my Cousins album, the first page is cardstock, the fourth patterned paper, and the third is the same patterned paper with a 1.5 inch vertical strip of cardstock (the same as on page one) on the left. Here were the steps I followed. (I did one round the long way, cutting piece by piece and assembling page by page and it took me hours longer. It really is worth it to be an assembly line.)

1. open 7 cardstock and 7 patterned papers - Once they were all opened, I tiled them and then move them around until I liked their pairings.

2. using the crop tool, resize each of the 14 one by one to 8 inch squares.

3. save the cardstocks as nigel1, lavender1, poppy1, etc.

4. save the patterneds as nigel 4, lavender4, poppy4, etc.

5. crop the cardstock to 1.5x8. do this seven times.

6. click and drag the cardstock to its patterned pair. do this seven times.

6. position the cardstock on the the patterned paper in the proper spot. do this seven times.

7. close the cardstock. do not save changes. do this seven times.

8. close and save the patterned paper (which now has a strip of cardstock) as nigel3, lavender 3, poppy 3, etc. do this seven times.

9. congratulate yourself as all seven sets of papers are now done. In record time.

The idea is to streamline as much as you can. If you need to crop each page a particular way, do all that cropping first. I follow this same rhythm with paper albums. I rarely build a mini-album page by page. If your album is variations on a theme, do as many of the repeating elements as you can at the same time.

Another huge time saver is batch processing. It makes use of actions so I am not sure if you can do this with Photoshop Elements. If you can, try it. I batch processed step 2, step 5, and step 9. Love that.

Now that your pinkie finger is cold, your hand cramped round the mouse, and your house has exploded around you, take a minute off! You did great!

Today's Eyecandy

Sometimes, digital photobooks can be just photos. When I first designed this book, I had journaling on each page. And then I realized that the photos sort of told their own story and I wanted to leave it at that. No words. Big step for me! hahaha.

Sometimes digital photobooks are actually just digital books as they are wholly lacking in photos. Let's face it. Your skills are too good to limit yourself to regular photobooks. Try something fun. And out of the box. It might just become your favorite new book!

Today's Freebie

Aren't four mini-album sketches sufficient? Seriously! What do you people want from me? I am just teasing....

Some Halloween treat toppers.Follow Candice's instructions for printing, trimming and use.

Download Boo eek

Good luck today. I will be adding more detailed tutorials throughout the day and checking comments for confused faces for the next two days. Please don't be afraid to ask, or correct, or chime in if you know a bigger better faster way.

A demain!

My random week ends with favorites.

We all have our favorites - food, shows, book, all-things-scrapbook-related, Dr Pepper and Bon Jovi. And that's what today's post is about. All my current favorite scrapbook goodness. Here we go!

Scrapbookers

I'm sure you all have your go-to scrapbookers when looking for inspiration. You know the ones, whose layouts are like eye candy. Two of mine are Susan Weinroth and Stephanie Howell.

I love how Susan designs her pages: the colors, the pattern paper, the embellishments. She makes me want to scrapbook 12x12. Which I totally would do if my pages would look like this:

 

Added bonus - she quilts. Fantastic quilts. And not only are the front of the quilts beautiful, the backs super fun, too. I need to learn to quilt.  A couple other favorites are this ruffle card and this pillow. I also really need to sew more. For more of Susan's work, check out her blog.

Two things Stephanie does on her pages I love? Her handwriting and the way she can just sprinkle embellishments (love the butterflies) over her page and it just flows and looks so good.  I tried it once. It didn't turn out nearly as cute.

You can see more of Stephanie's projects on her blog.

Actions

For Mother's Day, I upgraded from Photoshop Elements 4, to Photoshop Elements 8. Which means I can now use Actions, and that is very exciting. Well, at least to me, it is.  I immediately downloaded Pioneer Woman's Actions for Elements. And I immediately had a favorite - the Seventies action. Which I used on this photo of Mackenzie.

And then this one, of Emma and her friend Bree.

 

Seriously fun, and it makes me want to make every photo look like it came from the seventies.

Products

Have you seen the new Jillibean Soup line, Summer Squash Soup?  Oh how I want it. Love the colors and patterns - I already have pictures in mind to scrap with it.

Colors

I tend to use the same colors when I scrap - bright  shades of blue, green, yellow and pink. Kind of like these dresses I found at Target for Emma and Mackenzie.

I need scrapbook paper that looks just like that. In fact, how about an entire summer line built around it? Yes, please!

Border Punches

I love border punches. I use them on almost ever page I create. Two of my favorite punches are these:

Binding Edge

 

Scallop Edge by Stampin' Up

There are quite a few on my to-get list, including:

Bubbles by EK Success

Round Binding Edge by Ek Success 

Open Scallop by EK Success

Bumpy Road by EK Success 

Layouts in our Flickr group

I am loving these pages recently posted in the WCS Flickr group:

My Truck Story by TaraMcK 

I love how the colors just pop off the page, and the stacked Polaroids are so fun.

Target by sherrystamps

Because who doesn't love Target? I love that Sherry turned the tape that gives toilet paper a handle in to a scrapbook accent. Hee hee.

Layout 24 by A.N.D.R.E.A. (Just a link, couldn't get the photo to post - sorry!)

Beautiful page. Love how the photos are linked together.

And with that, my week is over. Thanks so much for stopping by this week. I've got one last question for you before I go - What are your favorites? Share some blogs, tools, Actions, layouts, products and more - let us know what you are currently loving in this oh-so-addicting hobby of ours.

"You're turning violet, Violet..."

"It's all there, black and white, clear as crystal!" Two references to the original Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, possibly one of the greatest movies ever!

Okay so indigo is technically a really really dark blue, but to my eye it reads almost black so I’m going to talk about black today. Black is the color of authority and power. It is popular in fashion because it makes people appear thinner. It is also stylish and timeless. Black also implies submission. Priests wear black to signify submission to God. Some fashion experts say a woman wearing black implies submission to men. Black outfits can also be overpowering, or make the wearer seem aloof or evil.

Black and white conversions really help me put a layout together sometimes. If I need to use a specific color or patterned paper on a project and the photo doesn’t match, I convert it to black and white. A free b/w conversion action that I love is from the Pioneer Woman. She offers the actions in both Photoshop Elements and Photoshop CS versions. So head on over and download them today!

I love how these ladies embraced black and used the color as the main color on their layouts. Some scrapbookers use black backgrounds a lot, it really makes the color elements on the page pop. Give it a try sometime!

Jody Wenke used primarily black on this Halloween layout - I love how her black alphabet letters look so bold against the white background.

Tina Cockburn created a large black matte for her photo and title. The black makes the colors in the photo really pop!

I love this digital layout by Micki Devries from the Flickr gallery. Just some black lettering was all she needed to make her photo shine!

Next up violet! The color of royalty, purple connotes luxury, wealth, and sophistication. It is also feminine and romantic. However, because it is rare in nature, purple can appear artificial.

Today I’m sharing this printable purple faux bois (wood grain) paper from Paper Crave with you. How cute would that look on a page?

When asked which color they use least, most scrapbookers will say purple. However, this past season purple has been creeping into products and designs everywhere. Here are a few layouts from the Flickr gallery and the fabulous ladies in the collective.

Erin Sweeney used a pretty lavender as a background for this fun birthday page!

Karen Glenn used this oh-so-creative color palette - bright yellow green with purple - in the first Write.Click.Scrapbook gallery - Why We Scrapbook.

Lisa Kisch embraced the wonky colors in her childhood photos and pulled the out for this great Halloween page!

I’ll be going through the Flickr gallery tonight and choosing some layouts to showcase. Tomorrow I’ll pick a name for a little RAK. So if you want to play, show us a rainbow page today!

Sayonara Saturday

Well now, that was an adventure! Thanks for all of the fun comments and for participating in the makeover challenge!

Because I am shamelessly proud of His Royal Cuteness, I'll leave you with my favorite photo from our photo session this week-which didn't make it onto yesterday's scrapbook page. I'm guessing it will earn of page of its own.

This shot features the Urban Acid action I linked to yesterday and an edge burn action from my fellow Oklahoman (incredibly talented in every way), The Pioneer Woman. Her photography is stunning and her Photoshop actions are top-notch and free. You can download them HERE.

Hope to see you again here at Write.Click.Scrapbook!

Freebie Friday

Would you like to do a layout for FREEE???

Okay, maybe it's only my kids who watch Bedtime Stories over and over. 

:)

Well, there are tons of freebie scrapbooking and photo goodies online. So many so, that I have to admit, I have to really love something to purchase it. Don't believe me? With the exception of Photoshop, everything I used to create the digital layout above was FREE!

the title font

the dingbat font

the journaling font

the photoshop action I used on my photograph (at Action Central, scroll down and click on "Urban Acid")

and the notebook paper.

Easy peasy. Yay for freebies!

What Are You Grateful For?

Hello! Welcome! I'll be your guide for the week. My name is Carolyn Jolley and I'm grateful to be the proud momma of three sons, one daughter and one angel son.

To kick off the week I'm going to focus on gratitude. After all, this is the month traditionally known for celebrating gratitude. According to Dictionary.com, gratitude is "the quality or feeling of being grateful or thankful," and being grateful is to be "warmly or deeply appreciative of kindness or benefits received."

To begin, let me give you a few ideas of ways you can scrapbook your gratitude.

I have a friend who is determined to find something to be grateful for every single day during November and she is following through by updating her Facebook status with a statement of gratitude every single time she updates. When she's finished, she'll have a whole month's worth of gratitude statements that she can put in a scrapbook. Our own Elizabeth Dillow did something similar for Simple Scrapbooks magazine last year where she listed her FB status updates for a whole week on one 12 x 12 page.

A year ago, a friend (thanks, Wendy!) gave me this sweet journal with room to write one thing I was grateful for every single day of the year. She used cute little tags, beautiful scraps of paper and chipboard or cardstock and bound these altogether. It was fun and easy to write one sentence each day.

 See how cute this is? She layered each piece and used a Zutter Bind It All to keep it together. Wouldn't this make a nice Christmas gift this year? I bet most of you have spare tags, paper and other odds n' ends laying around that would work very nicely for this project. A lot of scrapbook stores allow you to use their tools if you go to a crop. Or you might find a store near you that allows you to use their crop room and tools free during certain hours. I did this a lot at the beginning of the year. It's a great way to figure out which tools you like and if you might be willing to spend money on pricier items.

Another scrapbooker (I'm pretty sure it was one of our WCS Collective members - sorry, I don't remember which one) asked each family member at Thanksgiving dinner to write down what they were thankful for and then she took their picture. She paired these next to each other in a small album. Now every year, they can look back and see what they were thankful for at that time in their life. (This is still one of my favorites. Maybe she'll read this and leave a comment telling us where this idea was published and who she is. ;)

This year, I'm grateful that I'm able to stay home with our brand new daughter. What a HUGE blessing in my life.

What are you grateful for? I asked my fellow WCS members to share a few things that they are grateful for. Here is what they said:

I am thankful for community...the people in my life! ~Sara Winnick

I am thankful for the easy transition to our new home in Boston. All the kids are in schools they love, sports they love, and church youth groups they love. Life is good! ~Lain Ehmann

I’m so thankful for my husband’s steady job in this unsteady economy, that he is able to adequately supply for myself and my little family. ~Elisha Snow

I'm thankful for my health. I had a biopsy a couple weeks ago and it came back normal. ~Celeste Smith

Last year at this time my daughter Ryan was battling cancer, so this year I am very thankful she is healthy and cancer-free! ~Jody Wenke

I'm so grateful our baby arrived safe and sound! ~Aly Dosdall

I am grateful that I have the chance to spend one on one time with my kids this year. It’s been a sweet thing, getting to know them as they enter their teen years. I'm also grateful for my siblings. ~Emily Pitts

I am grateful for dedicated people with a vision to build something as cool as the Paul Smith Children's Village (like a big outdoor children's museum) to Cheyenne. This is just one little corner of it, the brick puppet theater. ~Elizabeth Dillow

I am grateful for happy little girls who think jumping in leaf piles is fun, and even more grateful that I am here to watch them do it. ~Elizabeth Dillow

I'm thankful to be a mother. ~Rebecca Cooper

This is a photo of my grandmother, who recently celebrated her 84th birthday.  She is mother of 6, grandmother to 13, and great-grandma to 5.  There are not enough words to describe all the ways in which she has blessed our entire family or that could possibly convey just how amazing she is.  I am so thankful for her strong family values and unwavering faith, and I am so grateful for her selflessness and generosity.  She is and always has been the glue that has held this family together. ~Tina Cockburn

What are you thankful for? If you've created something that shows your gratitude for something or someone, share it with us on our Flickr gallery. Just click the link at the top of the page. Or, if you haven't created anything yet, why not take this opportunity before the holidays get into full swing and capture something that will remind you what you are grateful for right now? In time, you'll be "grateful" you did!

photos on friday

It's hard to believe the week is already winding down and I just couldn't leave ya'll without at least one photography post. I thought I'd share with you one quick thing I do during my post editing process which will add depth to your photos as well as really make your subject stand out. I'm talking about adding a vignette. Don't know what a vignette is? Let me show you:

 

Definition of vignette: A vignette is often added to an image to draw interest to the center and, in effect, frame the center portion of the photo. In this case it was done by darkening the edges of the photo.

 

The difference in these two photos is subtle - just a slight darkening of the edges of the second photo to draw your eye in toward the center - but I sure do love my vignettes and depending on how they're applied you can increase the effect to your liking. There are a few different ways you can get this look on your own photos.

1. You can add a vignette within Adobe Camera RAW if you are shooting your images in RAW as I do. This is commonly how I apply my vignette. When you open your RAW image simply click on the LENS CORRECTIONS TAB (seen here)

Now under POST CROP VIGNETTING pull the AMOUNT slider to the left. You can play around with the other sliders if you like but for the most part I'm happy with just pulling the slider to the left until I get the effect I want and then opening my RAW file in Adobe Photoshop.

 

2. Another way to create a vignette around the edges of your photos is by using the burn tool (I do believe Elements users have this tool too...stop me if I'm wrong?). This involves doing things by hand but I still love the technique. Open your photo and first create a duplicate layer (LAYER -> DUPLICATE LAYER) now select your burn tool (seen here)

 

 

I like to using a fairly large size soft brush to apply my burn and at a lower opacity because it's easy to get too much. Also play around with the RANGE (you'll see this at the top of your screen when you have selected your burn tool) and whether you prefer to adjust midtones/shadows. It's all about how you want it to look. Once you've got your settings figured out then go to your photo and start 'burning' around the edges left cliking the mouse and holding until you get the effect you want. If you've made it too dark don't worry, simply click on your layers window and adjust the opacity of the layer. When you're done flatten your image and voila:

 

3. The last way you can add a vignette to your photos is the simplest of all and that is to use your favorite vignette action. A lot of action sets you purchase will contain a vignette action already so have a look through your stash but here are a few of my favs:

I really like Brenda's vignette action - I applied the vignette to this photo using it along with a couple of her fabulous actions/textures.

 

Here's an awesome free one and it's available for Elements as well as Photoshop.

 

and here's another one  worth checking out (it's the burnt edges action) along with a handful of other great free actions

 

By the way here is another great resource for  photoshop tutorials/FAQs  about photo editing. Definately worth bookmarking I think!  

For more simple photography tips I'm excited to be telling ya'll first about a new ebook that I have put together entitled 40 Tips For Better Photos: simple suggestions for stunning photos which will be released at the beginning of September by a brand new (and super cool) company called Ella Publishing!

Here's a little peak just for you at what's in store:

 

Well, that's all the photo talk for today but stay tuned tommorow when I'll be sharing a quick mini album featuring some more gorgeous SEI  products (did I not say it was going to be fabulous give away yesterday! Don't ya just love SEI!!)  along with a few images that ya'll have been sharing in the flikr group!

:)

Rebecca

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Hi everyone—Elizabeth here, breaking into Rebecca's week (with permission!) to share a quick tip for anyone who uses iPhoto or Aperture instead of Photoshop and daydreams about vignetting. Or, at the very least, is curious about how to do it if you haven't figured it out yet!

It is possible to add a vignette to your photo using iPhoto, but as far as the effects go it's probably the most rudimentary of what you can do in that program—you don't have very much control over how much vignetting is placed on your photo. You can increase the amount, but the first degree is already awfully dark. But for certain photos, it is a nice addition (i.e. heritage photos, photos with already slightly dark edges, etc.) 

To find the vignette function, first click on the edit button at the bottom of your iPhoto window:

 

Then look for the "effects" button:

 

Incidentally, you can do a whole lot with the effects and adjustments in iPhoto to make your photos brighter, sharper, and full of contrast. Just play around with those controls and see what happens!

Aside: aren't those two adorable? That's my Maddie and her good friend Molly— they only get to see each other once a year or so but they've been good friends since birth, just like their mamas!

(You can click the example to make it larger).

If you're using Aperture, you have a lot more control over how much vignetting you want applied to your photo—see the example above? The second photo definitely pops more as Rebecca explained above. There are two choices: gamma and exposure vignettes, and there are sliders for the amount and the size of each. It's a matter of playing around until you get the effect you like—easy!

To find the vignette control, click on the adjustments tab; the little plus sign just underneath it is where the vignette control exists, at the bottom of the menu. When you select it, the vignette control will be added to your adjustment screen at the bottom. Then, play around with it!

 

Hope this helps some Apple photo girls out there somewhere : )

Tutorials and Actions

Good Tuesday morning!

As scrapbookers, photos and photography are an integral part of our craft, and, if you're like me, you want the photos on your pages to be as good as they can be. So today’s post will be about photography, Photoshop and actions - just a few of the things near and dear to my heart and my scrapbooking.  

Photography today is so much different than it was even five years ago. Five years ago I was still shooting with one of Canon’s first DSLR cameras (a puny 6.3 MP), and the cameras of today (21.1 MP and HD video) make my first DSLR look like an ancient relic. The basics of photography - the elements of exposure (shutter speed, aperture and ISO) and the theory behind composition (the rule of thirds) - are unchanged, but today's camera and lens technology is light years away from what it was even just those few years ago. 

I am a completely self-taught photographer. I’ve always taken pictures (I describe myself as a Life Tourist), but scrapbooking changed my attitude and increased my passion for photography in ways I had not expected. I taught myself how to use my camera (I read the manual and practice A LOT) and how to edit my photos in Photoshop (PSE 3, CS2 and now CS4) through loads of trial and error.  Much of what I learned was found either in books like this one and this one, or found on the internet. Ahhhhh...the glorious, wondrous internet.

Below are links to some tutorials about photography and Photoshop that I think both the novice and the experienced photographers will appreciate:

 

The Digital Photography School

 

ISO, Aperture and Shutter Speed

Photography Tutorials and Tips

The Pioneer Woman - Photography

Bernie’s Better Beginner’s Guide to Photography

Digicam Help

Adobe - Photoshop Elements Tutorials

Digital Photography for Moms

In the last few years I’ve gotten quite a few questions about the use of actions. Actions are a series of photo editing steps in Photoshop (and sometimes in PSE) that have been recorded into a one-click function. You click play and all the steps necessary to achieve the result are done for you. Actions are usually created by photographers who then sell them (or give them away in some cases) so that others can achieve the same quick and nifty results.  

Actions can help with many of the things you might want to do to a photo, like lighten, darken, brighten, saturate, convert to black-and-white, sharpen, resize, create collages and ad texture. And the effects of most actions can be adjusted if the result is too strong, giving you great control over the final result. You can apply multiple actions to one photo, too.  Some actions cost more than others but the improved workflow and the great results might just be worth the price.

Here are some action sets I found for Photoshop Elements (PSE) users:

The Coffee Shop - Free 

Digital Photography for Moms - Free

And then some Photoshop actions resources:

The Pioneer Woman - Free

Totally Rad Actions

MCP Actions

Kubota Image Tools

LilyBlue Actions

Childs Play by Peta Mazey

Itty Bitty Actions

Some of these sites have previews and samples so you can see their actions in action (ha!), and some even have recipes for using several different actions in one photo.  The before-and-afters are really amazing!

I have an older version of Itty Bitty actions, Totally Rad, a set of actions from Kubota, and the freebies from The Pioneer Woman. I use them all now and then but I have my favorites that I use on the majority of my photos. Here are some of my photos that have at least one action applied. I like my photos to look more natural, so the effects of the actions I use are not too obvious:

And that's it from me until Saturday. Tomorrow and Friday will feature my co-hostess, Melissa Kaiserman, and Thursday is give away day!  YAY!

Have a lovely day!