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May 7, 2011
The 2009 Gold Mega-Kit Archive Discs are finally ready! It has definitely been worth the wait – I mean, twelve (12) Mega-Kits (and by Mega-Kit I mean HUGE), and twelve (12) coordinating Add-Ons. Can I say scrapbook heaven?! Best of all each set costs less than $3!
But you don’t have to take my word for it… Check it out for yourself at:
http://www.digitalscrapbookexperts.com/megaKitArchive/
Just don’t wait too long because we’ll discontinue the 2009 Gold Mega-Kit Archive Disc offer at midnight MST on May 31, 2011. And, like Disney* movies, the disc will be placed in the vault for at least 7 years. My point is, of course – even if you’re not planning to scrapbook for a few weeks… don’t let this opportunity to purchase the 2009 Gold Mega-Kits for almost nothing pass you by.
Warmly,
Kirsten Sparks
Digital Scrapbook Experts LLC
PS: Oh, ya! I almost forgot! For past DSE customers, we’ve activated a COUPON CODE in our checkout system for 10% OFF! That means, if you’ve ever bought anything from us before, just type in 2009MEGAKITARCHIVE at Checkout and click ‘Apply’ to receive our Customer Appreciation Discount.
This Coupon Code is only good for 3 days, though. (The disc is only going to be available for 3 weeks, after all.) So don’t wait. Get your copy of the 2009 Gold Mega-Kit Disc NOW!
*Disney is a trademark of Disney, and we are not associated with Disney.
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March 29, 2011
In Tip of the Week #3, we talked about using Color Schemer to get a set of colors to base your layout on. But then what?
My trouble is that I usually pick 7-8 colors (sometimes more)… and even if I make use of the Foreground and Background Color Chips, the toolbox only stores 2 colors. I end up spending a lot of time using the Color Picker to sample the other colors from my color scheme whenever I want to change colors.
The Solution: Color Swatches!
So, here’s how it works… First, click on the Foreground Color Chip to access the Color Picker. Then use the Color Picker to sample one of the colors you’ve chosen for your color scheme.
Once you’ve got a color from your color scheme selected as the Foreground Color Chip Color, head over to the Palette Bin and find the Color Swatches Palette. (If you can’t find it there, click on Windows in the Menu Bar at the top of the screen and select Color Swatches from the drop-down menu.)
At the bottom of the Color Swatches Palette, there’s a “Create New Color Swatch” button… which will insert a new color swatch that happens to be the very same color as the Foreground Color Chip in the Toolbox.
You’ll want to sample each of your color scheme colors, set them as the foreground color chip color, and create a new color swatch in the Color Swatches Palette. Pretty soon, you’ll have you’re whole color scheme loaded into the Color Swatches Palette.
The advantage is that now your Foreground Color Chip becomes whatever color you click on in the Color Swatches Palette. No more sampling in order to switch colors! And you can practically store an unlimited number of colors in the Palette. (Well, not technically… but more than you’ll need.)
So, here’s what I do…
When I’ve got my palette all loaded up with the colors from my color scheme, I save the swatch selection. That way, if I decide to work on something else for a while, I can go back to the color scheme I was using without resampling, which would pose a risk of finding a variation on the colors I originally chose.
Before saving the color swatch, make sure that only the colors you want to save are present in the Color Swatch Palette. (You may have to “throw away” some of the default colors that came with PS or PSE. But don’t worry, we can reset the Color Swatch Palette later.)
Click on the Menu Button in the upper right corner of the Color Swatches Palette. Choose Save Swatches. Name your Color Scheme and choose a place to save your swatches on your computer.
Now, whenever you want to use that set of swatches, all you have to do is click on the same Menu Button in the upper right corner of the Color Swatches Palette and select Load Swatches or Replace Swatches from the fly-out menu. You’ll be prompted to find the swatch set you saved earlier… and as long as you can remember where you saved it, you should be in business.
March 2, 2011
When John and I were first married, we had a film camera – you know, the kind that you actually had to load with a roll of film, and then, after a dozen shots, physically take the film to a developer…
Well, we were gifted a hand-me-down color scanner, which was pretty high-tech back then. And I got the genius idea to scan my photos into a file on the computer so that I had a digital copy AND I was going to create a searchable database that included names, dates and locations for each photo.
It was a good plan, and I kept up with my photos… until we got a digital camera AND A KID (at about the same time). I didn’t have to scan my photos into the computer anymore, but the number of photos I was taking multiplied exponentially!
Needless to say, my database became obsolete. Besides that, I discovered that I never really looked pictures up by subject, location, or date anyway…
If I had discovered Photoshop Elements as a young bride, I probably would have been estatic about the Organize portion of the program… and I may have actually tagged and categorized every photo. But I have to confess that I NEVER use PSE Organize – shhhh… don’t tell anyone.
I have a super-simple way of organizing my bazillion digital photos… and it works for me. Here’s what I do…
I have a “Photos” folder on my computer. Some computers come with a My Photos folder, which will work just fine. Within that folder I set up a folder for each year. Obviously, since it’s now 2011, any photos I upload from my camera will go in the 2011 Photos folder.
When I upload photos from my camera, I separate them into sub-folders with more specific dates and events in the title. For example, last week we were in St. George with Cindy and Adam… so the photos from that trip would go in a folder named: 02-27-11_DSE Meeting in SG.
Obviously, the trip wasn’t just one day… but just to avoid creating a lengthy folder name, I only use the last day of the trip as the date in the folder name.
The only reason I include a day in the folder name (instead of just the month) is that usually there’s more than one batch of pictures that I upload for each month. And the actual photos have a Creation Date, which you can look up in the file properties, if you ever need a more specific date for a photo.
The down-side to this method of organizing photos is that it isn’t searchable by keyword or tag. If you’re looking for a specific set of photos, you just have to scan the files. But that isn’t too difficult if you use keywords in the folder name.
For me, the efficiency of this system way outweighs the value of tagging photos with keywords!
Stay tuned for more information on embedding photo files with vital information such as subject names and location.
February 25, 2011
I’ve been sort-of MIA for a bit… but it’s not all for naught. I’m at Cindy’s house, collaborating on DSE plans for the 2nd quarter. And it seems that when I’m focused on making plans with Cindy, everything else seems to come to a screeching halt… including the blog. But it’s all good cuz we’ve got some great things planned up for our members over the next few months.
And I do have a Tip of the Week. But it’s not necessarily a scrapbooking tip… well, I guess it could be – but since it isn’t directly related to scrapbooking, I’m not going to assign it a number and officially categorize it as a “Tip of the Week”. I’m just going to tell you what it is because it’s the biggest tip I’ve discovered in a while.
Tip of the Week: Get yourself an iPod (or 2… or 3… or 4)
You may already know that Cindy and I don’t work in the same office. We don’t even work in the same state. So when we get together, it requires a whole day’s drive. And, as if packing up a family of 6 and a business for a week wasn’t bad enough, there’s 10 hours of kids cooped up in the car to look forward to… both ways.
But we recently acquired an iPod (and a set of headphones) for each child. And the trip is now a blissful oasis of soft happy noises. Really, it’s mostly quiet except for the occasional celebratory proclamation of obliterating a previous score. They’re happy to play game after game, or watch downloaded cartoons. And since I don’t normally allow them to watch much TV, they’re happy to be entertained mile after mile with the electronic gluttony.
We insist that they put the iPods away for meals… mostly because spilled food usually kills electronics, but partly so that we can check to see if they still have a pulse. And we make them take breaks for naps or to talk to us for a little bit… but for the most part, they’re plugged in and quiet… and it’s wonderful.
As for iPods at home – we keep them locked up. We would hate for the novelty to wear off. (Although, I’ll admit that I’ve gotten them out to go to the grocery store a couple of times… and it works amazingly there, too.)
Disclaimer: I am in no way affiliated with Apple… and I don’t receive commission or kick-backs for iPod sales. But seriously… you need to go out and get yourself an iPod TODAY!
February 4, 2011
For the Tip of the Week blog posts, I’ve been making it a point to watch what I’m doing while I scrapbook and report on something that makes me think, “Ah-ha! This is a nifty trick that makes things easier… quicker… better…” – you fill in the blank.
I figure that the tip needs to be something you’ll actually use if it’s going to be of value to you. Otherwise, it’s just trivia. And the only way for me to really know that you’re likely to use my tip is if I, in fact, use it myself.
So here’s the technique I noticed myself doing this week: trimming up the edges of my layout! If you’re like me, then after finishing a layout, your workspace looks like a WAR ZONE. There are open files EVERYWHERE. Not to mention the tutorial video in the background… oh ya!… and Pandora’s running, as well. But I digress…
Needless to say, there’s a bit of clean-up to do – (Albeit a far bit less than in traditional scrapping, I know). But besides the desktop, I usually do a small clean-up project on my digital page. I typically have papers and embellishments hanging off the edge of the layout and I want those trimmed away.
It’s tricky to manually trim elements individually. But there’s a quick and easy way to cut all of them away at once! So, when you’re completely done with the layout… and you feel fairly certain that you will no longer be adjusting the placement of anymore of the layers, go ahead and crop the entire page.
With the Crop Tool selected, make sure that the Height and Width Fields are empty… that way your document won’t be resized in the end.
The key to cropping the page precisely on the edge is to start outside of the edge of the layout. If you have a crop selection already made, you can pull the grab handles past the edge of the layout… but on the initial selection, Photoshop assumes that you want to select only what’s within the document boundaries, so it “snaps” to the edge of the layout.
If you don’t start out far enough, you’ll end up with a crop selection within the document boundaries and you’ll have to resize your selection anyway – in turn, neglecting the benefit of a “snapping” crop.
If you have your window in Tab View, then you’ll probably have no problem finding space outside your document to place the cursor and begin the selection. But if you’re document’s in a floating window, you may have to expand the window a bit to create space outside your document boundary. Just click and drag the lower right corner out until there’s enough room for you to start the selection.
[For more information on Floating Windows, see Tip #2: Floating Windows]
Click and drag the cursor across the page and release the mouse button. At this point, the entire layout should be selected and everything beyond the layout should be grayed out. If this is the case, confirm the selection, completing the crop.
So simple, even a cave man can do it!
What? You want to know why? Well… I guess I usually do tell you to leave everything in a state that can be changed later… that’s one of the advantages of digital scrapbooking, after all. Don’t flatten your document, etc. So I suppose I can see why you want to know why this is an exception…
Well, there are two reasons that I trim up my page.
The first reason is that, even though you can’t see the pixels that lay beyond the edge of the layout, they’re still there. And even though they won’t print, they still exist – they’re just blocked from view – which means that they still take up memory. The computer still has to keep track of those “invisible” pixels, so consequently the file size is bigger.
I guess I’m conscious of my hard drive. Let’s face it, digital scrapbooking takes up a lot of space… and conservation is in my blood.
And reason #2 really comes from the fact that I’m also a designer. Digital embellishments, that are intended to be moved from their original document onto a layout, must be clean. If you moved an element onto your layout that had a bunch of overhanging stuff attached to it, you’d be irritated. So, it’s a habit to trim them up anyway.
So, now it’s your turn. Are there any clean-up tips you’d like to share? Add a comment to this post and let us know what you do to keep your layouts, photos, or files nice and tidy.
January 28, 2011
If you’ve been getting my emails or reading this blog for very long, you probably already know that I don’t print full-size layouts from my home printer. I send them off to a printing company or a commercial developer that will turn out a really nice quality print of my pages.
But the problem is that many printers or developers can’t print 2-page spreads. It’s because 24 inches is bigger than most standard paper sizes. This is also a problem for most people with wide-format home printers – for the very same reason.
So, what to do?
Well, when you get ready to upload a batch of files to the printer, you’ll need to do a little prep work. Open any 2-page spreads in Photoshop or Photoshop Elements and then select the Crop Tool from the Tool Box. Type “12 in” into the Width and Height Fields in the Crop Tool Options Bar. And the Resolution Field should match the resolution of your document (300 dpi).
Now anything you crop will render to 12 x12 in. at 300 dpi. So, we’ll click and drag the cursor from one corner across the document diagonally so that the Crop Selection covers exactly half of the document. And then confirm the selection.
Photoshop will crop the 2-page document down to 1 page. We’ll need to save this page under a different name from the original. I usually just add a suffix to the original file name (ie: originalfilename-left.psd). Now, we should have two files – the one with just the left page – and the original one.
To get back to the 2-page spread, just click the Undo Arrow (or press CTRL [Command] + z) a couple of times. And then repeat the cropping process from the opposite direction. Save this half of the layout under yet a different file name variation (ie: originalfilename-right.psd).
You should have 3 separate files now – a 2-page spread, the left side and the right side. Once both halves of the 2-page spread have been saved, they’re ready to upload to the printer individually. And that way, 12 inches will fit on the standard-sized paper.
*Developers usually have preferred file formats, so you may have to save your layout pages again as .JPEG or .PDF files before uploading them.
Yours in Scrapping,
Kirsten Sparks
January 19, 2011
This one’s a shortie but goodie. It’s a real time-saver!
Make the scroll wheel on your mouse control the zoom in PS or PSE. That way you don’t have to type in any macros or stop what you’re doing to click commands. You can zoom in and out with a spin of the wheel.
You do have to do a little bit of set-up first though… but it’s easy. Head up to Edit in the Menu Bar and click on Preferences. When the Preference Box opens up, find and check “Zoom With Scroll Wheel”.
There you have it. Spin the scroll wheel and watch your document zoom!
January 7, 2011
Cindy introduced me to a FREE website last time I went to visit her that she uses all the time to design digital kits. It takes the guess work out of coming up with a set of colors that perfectly complement each other.
While she was giving me a tour of the site, I couldn’t help but think how great this site would be at helping design scrapbook pages… not just kits. Especially if you haven’t settled on a particular kit for the page yet.
So I tried it out… and it worked! …and any suggestion that makes things easier and saves time definitely belongs in the Tip of the Week section on this blog…
So, without going into Color Theory and Analogous & Triadic Color Schemes… let’s just agree that complimentary colors are important and that there are definite color scheme trends – especially in the scrapbooking world. We can talk about the science behind why certain colors look good together and others don’t later. For now, let me show you how to get chic and stylish sets of colors that will give your scrapbook pages a visual boost in a matter of seconds.
The first thing you do is open the picture(s) that you plan to scrapbook with. Then click on the Foreground Color Chip in the Tool Box to open the Color Picker. Then cursor over the a photo and select a color that seems to be prevalent in all the photos or images.
Once the color is selected, find the Hex Code at the bottom of the color picker box and copy that number to the clipboard [CTRL (Command) + C].
Now open the ColorSchemer Online website. The link is: http://www.colorschemer.com/online.html
Go ahead and paste the Hex Code that you copied from the PSE Color Picker into the ColorSchemer Online # field, and click on the Set Hex button.
Color Schemer pops your color into the Current Color Box in the top corner and generates a whole scheme of colors that compliment the Current Color beautifully.
The Hex Code is listed below each of the colors in the scheme. This is the number you’ll copy back to your clipboard and paste into the PSE Color Picker. Do that with a few of your favorites and away you go!
Now, there are a couple ways to tweak the color scheme. You can use the Lighten Scheme and Darken Scheme buttons underneath the Hex # field. This is how I found the crème color that I used in my Apples To Pears scrapbook layout.
And you can also click on one of the scheme colors, making it the current color, which automatically generates a new scheme built around the new color. Sometimes this takes you to a set of colors you don’t want… but sometimes it opens unthought-of possibilities.
Now that you’ve got creativity set to hyper-speed, go try it out. See what you end up with… and let us know if you like the site as much as we do. We’d be interested in hearing about how using a scheme generator helps YOU scrap.
January 1, 2011
We’ve just posted the 2010 CAK Archive CD in the DSE Store! http://www.digitalscrapbookexperts.com/store/index.php
It includes ALL of the Collect-A-Kits from 2010 (with the Bonuses) on one CD. And it’s just $11.88 – less than $1 per kit! You can’t miss this… but if you wait until February, you will.
The 2010 CAK Archive CD is only available today through the 31st of this month. On February 1st, we’re going to take it down and you won’t be able to purchase it in the store ever again.
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December 23, 2010
Can you believe the year is almost gone already? I was at a holiday party last night and I was commenting on this very thing with one of the guest whom I had just met.
She said, “I hate to tell you this… but I asked my great grandmother when it starts slowing down again. You know… I figured that time goes faster and faster because each year I get busier and busier… and someday I’ll retire and have less commitments… And I just wanted to know when I can expect to feel the ‘slow down’. Then my grandmother said – ‘Oh Honey… at my age, Christmas is every other day.’”
I don’t know if I can handle the holidays coming around again every other day… but it sure feels like we’re on that track right now.
But the wonderful thing about this time of year is that after the gifts are all wrapped, sent, and opened, and after all the guests have gone home – I can spend a few moments (hopefully more) reflecting on the past year and planning for a new one. And although I usually find anxiety in the present moment… this time of reflection brings me to a place of satisfaction. It’s comforting to know that I (we) actually have something to show for all the wheel-spinning.
So, I just wanted to take a second to enjoy what we’ve accomplished together this year. If you’re a Collect-A-Kit Member, you may recognize some of these kits. They bring back floods of memories for us at DSE (some better than others). And I was just thinking that they might bring back some memories from the year for you too – especially if you scrapbooked anything with them.
An extra big THANK YOU to Cindy Little for just giving us such unbelievable kits! And here’s to 2010 and to creating a legacy through preserving our photos and memories.
Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas everybody.
PS: If you’re not a Collect-A-Kit Member yet, make sure to stop by our Join Now page and sign up. It’s FREE. And you’ll get to download a piece to a kit everyday… completing a coordinating kit every month.
PPS: We’ll be posting the 2010 CAK Archive CD in the Store on January 1, 2011 for $11.88. But it’ll only be there for one (1) month. So, if you’re excited about getting the 12 full Collect-A-Kits for 99¢ each, make sure to swing by the DSE Store in January.
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