Adoramapix.com

I made our daughter's baby book using adoramapix.com because they offered a promotional free book. I absolutely love it and will definitely use them again. I just used one of the templates that the site offered and dropped in my photos. The double page spread option is fantastic. The site is easy to use, the customer service is great and the quality of the book is exceptional. I really love that the pages are so heavy and that the book lays flat when you have it open. We got the 8x10 size but then ordered the 5x7 size as well to keep in the diaper bag.

2009 Blog Book Done

I finally finished our 2009 blog book. It took me 8 hours to assemble it. Last year it took me 10 hours so I'm improving. It's a chore to do and I don't really like it, but I really love the finished product. I designed the front and back covers and then just drag and dropped pictures from Picasa into different layout designs provided by BookSmart, the blurb.com book software. Last year I got the hard cover with the dust jacket. This year I got the cover picture printed on the book. My mom got the soft cover version. I don't think the matte cover printing looks as good as the other options (the soft cover and the dust jacket are more vibrant) but it is more realistic for our family because of how often we handle the books.




My sister Kristi was having some anxiety over spending any amount of time on her blog book. She is a super busy mother of five and doesn't love being on her computer like I do. Her SIL told her that she could do a quick blog to book on thecutestblogontheblock.com. I thought I'd try it out too (see above). It certainly was fast and easy. It took me 15 minutes from the time I slurped the blog into the site until I ordered it. There are some advantages and disadvantages. First of all, it made me choose my blog postings to add, by date. I chose Jan. 1 2009 to Dec. 31,2009. I had some postings in early January that told about our 2008 holidays, but I didn't realize it until it slurped those unwanted entries into my book. It wouldn't let me remove them from the book later. I should have re-slurped it and been more specific on my dates but I didn't want to take the time, so I have some 2008 items in my 2009 book. It also didn't give me any options for layout or size of book or text and titling. No options for resizing the pictures either. They are a lot smaller than I would have liked.

Here are the positives. I like the table of contents they put at the beginning. I also think the printing is exceptional and the paper is thick and nice. The book is thinner and lighter than my other blog books (111 pages, vs my 240 page book), which is a nice space saver. This company also doesn't charge tax or shipping (unless you live in New York) and I got it in about 10 days, a week earlier than they said I would get it (you could pay shipping if you wanted to get it faster). Over all it was $33 cheaper than my hard cover book from blurb.com. If you want super easy and fast and a little bit cheaper and you're not overly concerned with how it looks and flows together, then this might be the site for you!

Changing the Color

Last year when our daughter Ryann was in the fourth grade and studying all about California in her 4th grade class, extra credit was offered if the students visited one or more California missions.

Ryann was disappointed when I told her it would be impossible to do any traveling to see the missions. The closest one was four hours away and I was 8 months pregnant at the time.

Instead, we took a picture of her and extracted her from the photo. We then changed the color of her shirt to about 8 different colors. Then we downloaded various pictures of missions from the internet and moved her over onto the different pictures and added a title.

She took the finished photos into her class the next day and showed her teacher. Her teacher thought they were real and was amazed that she had been to so many missions in just one weekend! Ryann told her they were photoshopped and she was amazed. She didn't give her any extra credit though, darn it!

How to change color:
Use your magnetic lasso tool and select the area you want to change. Pressing control+u will bring up the hue/saturation option. Go under the master drop down menu at the top and choose the color closest to the color you want to change. Use the Hue slider to find a color that will work for you. Wa la! Amazing!

Extracting

Extracting something from a photo using Elements is so easy and super fun! I just completed this little project for my boys' "castle" room this last week. I took their pictures dressed in a knight's costume in front of our garage so there would be some contrast in coloring and it would be easier to extract. Then I changed the colors of the tunics and dragged the extracted boys over to a picture of a castle I found on the internet. I added some text and split the pictures into thirds and mod podged them on to 8"x24" canvases.

Take your photo into Elements and choose image>magic extractor. Click on the pen with the + sign on the left side. Color the area you want to keep (red). Click on the pen with the - sign and color the area you want to take away (blue). Choose 2 on the feathering option on the right. Click ok. You may have to use the eraser to clean some areas up a bit. Make sure you save your extraction as a png so the background will be transparent.

Some Cool Stuff About Picasa

This is the stuff I love about Picasa for digital scrapbooking. If you don't use it already, you should!

Find any picture

A picture can be identified by Picasa five ways. (1) Its file name (2) Name of the folder it's in (3) Any words in its caption (4) Any words in its folder description (5) A keyword which has been attached to it (Ctrl+K). Type in a word you think will bring up the picture, and most of the time, it will!

Drag and drop

Minimize Picasa and place it over Photoshop. Drag the picture from Picasa to the Photoshop workspace. You can press and hold the Ctrl key to select more than one, then move all at the same time.

Look at brush JPEGS

It's easy to see what brushes you have and what folder they are in.

Enlarge paper to see exactly what it's like

Press Ctrl+Alt while hovering on pix to see the details and if you really want to use it. Great for scrapbook papers, as well as your photographs.

Identifying digital art are for a particular use

When you purchase a kit, put key words in your paragraph description. For example, if you like to do wedding books, write "wedding" in your description even if the paper wasn't meant for weddings. When you type in "wedding" it will bring up all the papers you have identified.

Make a collection for one project

Say for example that you're making a family proclamation book using pictures that are scattered all over your computer. When you see a picture you'd like to use, but it in a "virtual folder." (little blue folder at the bottom of Picasa and to the right of the photo tray) Then export that folder to your picture folder and name the folder for your project. Then you can upload all the pictures at once to the book publisher and save yourself a lot of grief uploading a picture here and a picture there.


Make an instant collage

This is great for your blogs, but could also make a quickie scrapbook page. Select several pictures and click on the collage icon near the top and to the left of the folder the pictures are in. Choose the type of collage you want from the pull down menu at the top, and choose your page format, then click "create collage." There are options for space between the pictures, as well as color of the space. If you don't like the way the pictures are laid out, click "shuffle pictures" below the collage and try again.


Designer gallery

A virtual folder of ideas. When you see a page you really like on the Internet, save it to a scrapbook folder called "Designer Gallery." Then when your mind goes blank, you can look there for ideas, and "scraplift" it for your own use.

Digital thumbnails

A virtual folder of your art kits. Each time you buy a digital kit, most likely it will have a picture arrangement that includes most of the papers and elements in the kit. Put that picture in a virtual folder called "Digital Thumbnails." Then you can browse through there to get an idea of which kit you may want to use for your scrapbook page.

Share with screensaver

Picasa must be open, then when you are anywhere else on your computer and you want to do a screen capture, just press your "Print Screen" key and it will be saved to a folder in Picasa. Then you can quickly email it, or do whatever you want. It's nice for sharing a page in progress.

Print photo book pages in wallet size for sorting

Example: say you have made enough pages for a photo book, but you want to play around with arranging them, etc. Select them all, and click on the print icon in Picasa. Choose "Wallet." Mark "shrink to fit" in print dialogue on the left of the page. Print and cut out.