The Sprague Lab

And now for more catch-up. Whew.

Here’s the pic from yesterday. We decided to make cupcakes, and then realized that we had fresh strawberries AND heavy cream. Oh yeah. Nothing like spontaneous deliciousness to rock your Sunday night, right?

 

 Jared and I sat and watched an episode of Firefly (which I never saw the first time around - his co-worker loaned us the DVDs), and it was awesome. Firefly is good entertainment if you like .. well.. how to describe? A little Star Wars. A little Star Trek. A little John Wayne. A little Clint Eastwood. A little fantasy mixed in, and it’s good! Fun to sit and watch with my honey. :D

And now, rather than try to recap several days’ worth of fascinating drama, including such hits as sneezing like crazy, going through an entire box of kleenex in one evening, and sleeping as much as possible, I’ll just go for a top 10 5. 

Fluevog Loves Me. And I Love Fluevog. 

1. Last Wednesday I received an email titled, “We love you!” And I was like yeah! Someone loves me! Turns out it was from Fluevog. Remember this post about my new shoes? Turns out someone saw the blog, went to the Fluevog store in San Francisco (ah, be still my heart), and told them that they’d seen it, and anyway, they THANKED ME for buying their shoes. And for spreading the love. Have you ever been emailed by a shoe company? Yeah, me neither. And I wrote back and told them so. :) His reply to that email:

 

Fluevog is all about peace, love, unity, fellowship, and more! When you wear our shoes you are spreading good vibes out into the world. We all need to make the world a better place.

 

I really enjoyed your website and loved that you got what our shoes are all about! Not just amazing looking shoes but a vehicle for so much more.

 

Hope you are enjoying your Malibrans!

 

Freaking awesome. And I love this for lots of reasons. I love the spunky, funky attitude that the company has in general. I love the shoes (of course!), and I love that they don’t just say they care - they prove it. And that is so SO cool to me. And now I have extra reasons to buy shoes from them. Hehe. Have you had a great experience with a company lately? Tell me about it!

p.s. For the record, yes, I am enjoying the Malibrans! Next on the list? Perhaps the Pipsqueak,  or the Gloria for summer? Hmmm..

 

Remember the Milk 

Ali posted a bit ago about her new task manager. Ali is a Mac-head, so I decided to go do some searchin’ of my own on the Windows side. Bleh. There is a lot of weird crap out there. All we wanted was a nice to-do list that wasn’t junk. That’s not too much to ask, right? :D But after a lot of searcing, I found Remember the Milk. It’s free! Gotta love free. Cute name, and after about a week of usage, I can highly recommend! It embeds itself into Gmail, and if you get the Pro version ($25.00 a year) it will work with the iPhone. Best of all, you can share lists with other people. Jared and I now have one shared task list and a grocery list, which we can both see and edit. Awesome. We’re using the free version now, and planning to get the pro so we can see it on our phones.

 

La-La-La-Lightroom 

I caved and downloaded the 30-day trial of Lightroom. I love batch-processing (and batch-exporting!) photos. The only pics I print in general are ones that are either already in a layout or about to go on a layout, so I’ve been feeling a serious lack of just general photos that you’d stick in an album. You know, a photo album? It takes me so long to make layouts that I won’t really be scrapping even MOST of the pictures I really want to have out and about, and anyway, now I think I need another program. :P

Favorite favorite part of this though? The web galleries feature. A year or so ago I downloaded a program called Simple Viewer, that was anything but. You had to handmake the thumbnails and hand-edit an XML file to get everything to work together right. In Lightroom (which has either licensed or purchased the technology), you make a few clicks, feed it some FTP information, and you have an entire web gallery of pictures from your kids’ adventures in the mudhole made by the rain in the backyard in about 10 minutes’ time. Heck yeah.

I’m still deciding, though, whether the ability to batch photos is worth the price tag to me. I like working with individual photos in Photoshop (love me some actions!), so I’d only use this to fill the imaginary empty photo albums that only exist in my head. Still worth it? I don’t know. But did I mention the web gallery of pics from the muddy backyard?

I did?

Okay.

New Bedding!

And because of the aforementioned week o’ sickness and my increased need and desire to sleep, I’ve been enjoying the heck out of my new comforter and duvet.  In Minnesota, you buy a comforter based on how many inches thick it is. More than 5 is good. Less than 3 means possibly freezing to death, despite wearing socks, gloves, thermal underwear, and a hat to bed. In NC, you buy a comforter based on whether or not you can see through it. We definitely needed a comforter upgrade. Or.. downgrade? And this down-free one fit the bill perfectly. Cover that guy up with this lovely duvet set. I decided that even though we’ve got a queen bed, why not try the king duvet, and it fits great. Just enough drape across the edges of the bed, and the white on the duvet cover brightens up our room nicely with our white sheets.

I learned during our recent Digi: in Deep class, I learned (because of an assignment to take a photo against a white background) that there are LOTS of people who don’t own white sheets. Crazy. We are all-white-sheet people here, and it actually didn’t even occur to me that people don’t sleep on white sheets! Sure, I know they sell non-white sheets, but people don’t actually buy  those, do they? So for you, white sheets, or no white sheets?

See how much has gone on around here? Moment-to-moment action.

Ah, one more thing:

JS.com Birthday Celebration 

JessicaSprague.com is turning ONE in just a few weeks. We are having a cool birthday celebration, including coupons, contests, prizes, new class announcements, and general merriment. We’ll dance to Vanilla Ice, serve Hot Pockets, and there’ll be a keg of Diet Mt. Dew. We’re also relaunching the web site with a brand new look (I’ve been hard at work on this part, in between the sleeping and the aforementioned action, and the trying to keep up with the other schtuff I have already embroiled myself into), so stay tuned for sneak peeks and more info to come. Oh, and mark your calendar for June 4. That’s when the whole thing starts. :D

 

I’m starting to recover from my headcold. Feeling like I can breathe again, and I don’t need to sleep all the time. Both very good things. :D Here’s May 8, Rowen painting in her new Wall-E painting book. More on him (LOTS more) later. 

 The new playset is installed! Our old one? Busted. Broken rungs on the ladder, broken roof, broken slide, and general ew. We’re redoing the backyard, and got a new playset to go along with it. :) This was the big reveal on Friday afternoon. 2 happy kids. :D

 

 A huge rainstorm. Huge. And in the aforementioned backyard remodel there’s a huge hole that filled with at least a foot of water. Oh man was that fun times for two small ones. Here’s Rowen, happy as a pig in the.. well… the mud. :D

 

 Elliott blowing all the “blowers” in the front yard. This one sent me running for the camera.

 

 Elliott’s favorite movies are YouTube videos of the planets and the solar system. I just love the way he’s got his legs tucked up, mama making dinner, daddy playing outside with Rowen, and there’s Ele, keeping me company at the island, the sounds of Elliott naming all the planets behind me.

 

 Rowen has a new man in her life. Move over, Lightnin’ McQueen. Here comes Wall-E. The movie doesn’t come out for 6 more weeks, but we’ve already got an assortment of books and painting books and coloring books, and we’ve watched the trailers on YouTube and the Disney DVDs many (many) times. She has been pretending to be Wall-E for about 4 days now. Anybody else have a kid who’s Wall-E crazy?

 

 More rain. More mud to play in. Kid paradise. And it’s totally not cold. Jared just comes from that “I grew up in Seattle and therefore if it’s raining I must wear a jacket” school of thought.

 

 More Wall-E. This trailer is on the Aristocats DVD. She thinks the part where Wall-E says his name at the end of the trailer is the funniest thing she’s ever heard. And of course, because we love that laugh, and that smile of pure joy on her face, and because even the trailer is awesome, we go along with the whole thing gladly. :) If this movie turns out to be as good as the trailer is, we’ve got a new fave on our hands at Sprague House. :)

 

 

Meetings.

Mother’s day.

Slammed with assignments.

Sick. 

But I managed to take a photo every day but today. :P More tomorrow! 

First, yesterday’s photo of the day, taken while I waited for Jared to go figure out the issue with the new car. I love my 50mm f/1.8. Love.it. That delicious shallow depth of field. Mmm. :)

 

I got a really apt message from my Daily OM newsletter today, called Energetic Investments (by the way, I totally recommend signing up for this free daily newsletter. I love it) This section especially struck me:

As modern life makes a wealth of information and opportunities available to us, we may find ourselves torn between a wide variety of interests and projects. Our excitement may entice us to try all of them at once, but doing so only diffuses our energy, leaving us unable to fully experience any of them. Like an electrical socket with too many things plugged into it, we may be in danger of overheating and burning out. But if we can choose one thing at a time to focus all of our attention upon, we can make the most of our life-force energy, engaging ourselves fully in the moment so that it can nurture us in return.

 We may never know which of our interests is best suited to our abilities and heart’s desires unless we give it a proper chance. By being fully present with all that we are and all that we have, we can experience each choice fully and make the most fulfilling choices for our energetic investments.

I actually felt a little embarrassed to be reading this message in my email, which was one of 8 Firefox tabs I have open, next to a Word document (in which I’m preparing a talk for Sunday), Itunes (in which I’m searching for some new music), a download (new version of Adobe CS3 suite for the new computer), and I wasn’t even thinking about any of this. *sigh* And how much of this have I actually finished? Okay, so the download can’t be helped, but seriously.

 
But I am definitely taking multitasking to the extreme. And by extreme I mean I really think it’s whittled my attention span away to the point where I have a hard time even focusing on a single task at the computer for more than a few minutes. Some other thought floats to the surface and that little inner butterfly goes, “Hm.. I wonder what that is.. I wonder what would happen if… Oh! I remember, I wanted to…) and off we go again, leaving a trail of open browser tabs and unfinished photo editing, unfinished purchases (not to mention that little ache of sadness at 4p.m. that naptime is over and nothing is done) in our wake. How can I get off this train of thought?

I love this idea of being fully present. It sounds awesome. I really think I do that when I’m looking through the lens of my camera, but here at the computer? No such luck. Looks like I need “focus” as my word of the month again. :P

<Fast-forward 9 hours>

(EDIT: I wrote this at 3:00 p.m. It is now almost midnight and the “download” turned into a 5-hour fiasco complete with 4 uninstalls/reinstalls and a phone call to Adobe *shaking head*). Can’t blame it all on the short attention span, now, right? ;))

How a Splinter Machine Helped Me Focus

But speaking of focus. Rowen has this ability to help me appreciate small things.

First, the backstory, which I heard from Jared at dinnertime:

Apparently, Rowen came in while I was in San Francisco and told Jared that her stuffed kitty had a splinter in his paw. (Sounds like an episode of Mickey Mouse Clubhouse we saw recently). So he said, “Let’s put him in a splinter machine to get the splinter out.” She put the kitty in her pink toy bucket, pushed imaginary buttons on the side (complete with sound effects), replicated the noises that a splinter machine should make when it’s in action, and the kitty came out splinter free. :)

Fast-forward to 7 a.m. this morning. Rowen comes in, as she always does, with an announcement. She has built a BIGGER splinter machine. (This was the first time I had heard of the splinter machine, of course, not knowing the backstory above). I didn’t think much about it until I was tucking her in for her nap this afternoon, and she showed it to me. It’s pretty freaking magical.

 

There you see the original pink splinter machine. Well, she has completely revolutionized the splinter removal process. As she tells it, the water goes down the blue scarf (apparently this model uses water to wash out splinters), and into the bucket where the splintery friend is. The machine does its splinter removal thing (complete with same noises), and all the splinters wash down the white pipes (the hanger there), and are collected in the green cup. Then Rowen can take the splinters and put them in the purple bag (not shown) to throw them away. Splinter free friends forever! And she was SO excited. :)

My first reaction was, “Wow! You are an amazing engineer!” so I said, “Wow! You are an amazing engineer!”

She said, “I want to be a train engineer when I grow up, because I LOOOOOVE trains!”

I pulled the blanket up as she laid down, and she said, “But you know what I love even MORE than trains? DADDY! I love him all the way to the very last solar system’s very last planet!”

And here’s a final thought from the same Daily OM:

Our attention can be pulled in many directions … But when we take the time to listen to our inner guidance and focus our thoughts on the goals that resonate the most strongly within us, the rest of the world will fade away.

Take that, computer issues, determined to keep me down! Thanks to my beautiful child and her infectious excitement, I WILL celebrate my life, and all its wonderful detail. Here’s to a splinter-free evening for all. :)

Nothing like a 3-day trip and a broken memory card to set you back a bit from a photo-a-day goal, eh? :\ I’m getting a new CF card today that will hopefully do its work (it will take photos, but no card reader can read it, so I have to transfer the photos through the camera, and the previews are all black, so I can’t tell what photo it is until I open it. Bleh.)

But I ‘ve been doing my best. Here’s mine so far:

 

Just home from San Francisco. I brought the kids a trolley lolly. After bathtime they sat in the laundry basket and pretended to ride a trolley while they licked their lollipops. Clang clang!

 

 

 

Elliott, hanging out on the porch in his new shirt. Sometimes the only story is the catch I get in my throat when I look at a photo. :)

 

Rowen gathered up leaves to “pay” Jared, pretending it was money. Apparently it does grow on trees now. :D

Supplies:

• Vintage Photo frame by Katie Pertiet (shadowed)
  
• Artistic Photo frame by Gypsy Chick (white)
  

 

There are some incredible pics in the Photo-a-Day gallery at JessicaSprague.com. Have you been keeping up with your Pic-a-day for May? Link me up if you’ve posted on your blog. :)

Also, a little enabling. :)

Songbird Avenue has a GORGEOUS kit for May, a huge collaborative effort from all of their previous guest designers. All the proceeds from the sale of the Take Flight kit go to the Susan G. Komen foundation. I’ve already purchased mine! It’s delish. 

It’s ScrapArtist’s 3rd birthday celebration! Their sale starts tomorrow, but you can head over and pick up a beautiful collaborative kit for $3.33 right now. Okay! Go! :D 

We spent the day at Shutterfly yesterday. It is such a cool place. They have a two-story entrance with a huge staircase going up the middle, and there are photos posted all over the walls. And they aren’t just pro or stock photos - they are real-life pictures, too. Their whole culture is about helping their customers connect with the people who are important to them, and they organized this event to understand more about scrapbooking in general.

Ali spoke first, and talked about why she scrapbooks, what motivates her, and offered some ideas for connecting with scrapbookers. Dave O’Neil (the CEO of CK Media) talked about the business of scrapbooking. They invited me there to talk about digital scrapbooking, and the scrappers who create pages in Photoshop (whether from quickpages, templates, or from scratch). They were very interested in learning more about the digital world, and I hope I represented. ;)

The afternoon finished off with a paper scrapbooking class, where about 15 Shutterfly employees got to try out scrapbooking for the first time. :)

Since I got to fly all the way across the country for this, I got an extra night’s stay here, and I’ll be heading home today.

BUT, I wanted to pass along a great deal - National Scrapbooking Day is Monday, and our friends at DesignerDigitals are holding a huge sale:

30% OFF with coupon code: 148694
Expires Tuesday at 6am EST

 

Hi There! Happy Friday!

I’m in lovely, balmy San Francisco, teaching a class at Shutterfly. At least, since I actually wrote this in Raleigh on Thursday, presumably it’s balmy. And presumably I’m loving it. ;)

Today we’ll be talking about how to create an easy 3-panel storyboard for your favorite photos. This can come in really handy to frame up the photos you’re taking for your Photo-a-day for May. :) You can either print these onto matte photo paper and frame them, or place them on a digital page, or slip a sheet of digital patterned paper behind them - anything goes. :) Here’s what I ended up with:

A traditional photo storyboard has three vertical photos side-by-side on a white background. But you can feel free to switch this up with any number of photos, or a tall storyboard.

We’ll be using my very favorite method for cropping photos - we use clipping masks rather than the crop tool, so that we can change our minds about the size of our photo and what’s showing. I never use my Crop tool anymore. :) 

Create the Storyboard and Masks

 

1. Create a new blank document, and create a document that is a wide rectangle. I chose 10 inches wide x 6 inches tall for mine.

Specs:

10 inches wide

6 inches tall

300 pixels/inch

white background 

2.  Open and edit the three photos you’d like to use.

3. On your new blank document, create a new layer (Ctrl-Shift-N)

4. Select your Rectangular Marquee tool.

5. You can draw a freehand rectangle, or set a fixed size. I want to set a fixed size of 3 x4 for my photos. In the Options Bar, set the Mode to Fixed Size, and type in a  width of 3 and a height of 4, tabbing out between them.

6. Click down in your document to create a 3x4 inch rectangular selection.

7. Type “d” to return your foreground and background to their defaults.

8. Go to Edit > Fill.

9. In the Fill dialog box, choose Use: Foreground. Make sure the Preserve Transparency checkbox is unchecked. Click OK.

 
Click for Larger

10. Select the Move tool and move your first black rectangle to the left side of your document.

11. With your Move tool selected, hold down Alt while you drag on the black rectangle. This copies the rectangle. Drag the rectangle copy next to the first rectangle.

 
Click for Larger

12. Repeat step 11 for the third rectangle.  

Click for Larger 

Align Masks 

Next we’ll align these rectangles.

1. With your Move tool selected, shift-click on each of the rectangles in turn to select them all. You should see all three rectangle layers highlighted in the Layers palette.

2.  In the Options Bar, go to Align > Top Edges.

3. In the Options Bar, go to Distribute > Horizontal Centers. This evens out the space between the rectangles.

Click for Larger 

4. With all the rectangles still selected, you can refine their position on the canvas, either by dragging or by using your arrow keys. Leave more space at the bottom than at the top for visual interest.

Placing and Masking the Photos 

Now we’re ready to place our photos on!

1. Let’s rename the layers in the Layers palette. Double-click on the name of the layer to change it.

I renamed mine (from the top down):

Right Mask

Center Mask

Left Mask

2. Now click on the Left Mask layer in the Layers palette.

3. Switch over to the photo you’d like to have on the left side of your storyboard.

4. With your Move tool selected, click and drag it down onto the thumbnail of your storyboard document in the Photo Bin.

5. Click and drag your photo to position it over the top of the left-hand rectangle. We’ll be using the rectangle as a clipping mask to help us define the shape of our photo. I use this method INSTEAD OF the crop tool pretty much all the time now.

Click for Larger 

6. in the Layers palette, hold down your Alt key while you hover over the line in between the photo layer and the Left Mask layer. You’ll see your cursor turn into a little double-overlapping-circle (my friend Liv calls it a snowman, hehe). When you see the cursor change, click down to create the clipping mask.

7. Now with the Move tool still selected, you’ll simply resize your photo until it fits inside of the mask. (You may need to zoom out of your document to see the edges of your photo and the transform handles for resizing.)

 
Click for Larger

8. When you’re happy with your resize/repositioning of the photo, double-click to commit the change, and we’re ready for the center photo.

9. Click on the center black rectangle with the Move tool.

10. Repeat steps 3-7.

Click for Larger 

11. Click on the right black rectangle with the Move tool.

12. Repeat steps 3-7.

 
Click for Larger

Now you can add some text to the bottom of the storyboard.

Click for Larger 

Print and frame, or use on a simple digital page. :) Here it is a bit larger:

Click for Larger

 Have a super, phabulous Photoshop Phriday and a great weekend!

 

 

I am heading to San Francisco tomorrow (Thursday) to visit our friends at Shutterfly. They’re curious to see how our CKUs are run, and I’m teaching (what else?) a digital scrapbooking class. To their marketing/exec team. I am a little nervous about that one.

It also happily coincides with my intention to take a photo every day in the month of May. And my brand new camera arrived today and I’ve been attempting (on the commercials of CSI: Miami) to read through the 420-page user manual. Okay, so that doesn’t work. But I have re-read page 15 a bunch of times, so that has to count for something, right?) So this weekend, keeping my intention is giong to be interesting. I might have to fall back on my iPhone for a couple days of pics.

If you’d like to play along, feel FREE to post your pic on your blog, and/or the special gallery I’ve set up over at JessicaSprague.com JUST for our photo-a-day challenge! All you have to do is log in (or create a user account - it’s free), and then click on Galleries, and head to the Photo-a-Day gallery and post! You’ll get lots of love for your pics and see the great work of others participating. It’ll be awesome fun!

I’ll be back home late Saturday (ah the joy of living on the East coast, right? A 3-day trip for a one-hour class.)

I think I’ll ask Rowen to come play in the photo challenge as well. She set up a “photo shoot” with her friends on the buffet table today. And rocked it, I must say:

 

 So bust out that cam and come play! :D

If you’ve been wanting to learn how to digi-scrap, or how to better use Photoshop or Photoshop Elements to tell your story, my month-long beginner class starts registration TONIGHT at 9:00 p.m. EST! We’ll leave the doors open for at least 48 hours, so take your time, mosey on in late tonight, or after breakfast tomorrow, and we’ll save ya a seat. :D Be prepared to change your life! Click here for more information!

Here are some reviews of the Up & Running class if you’re on the fence:

To all blog readers…I am taking the class right now and I have to tell you…$40 is a complete steal! I can’t believe the knowledge I have learned and not to mention the great downloads.
I have been scrapbooking since 1996 and have met many of the “celebs”. Jessica is the ONLY one that has impressed me with her talents and man…I am more impressed as the class continues.
I know this sounds like I am a stalker but really…I can’t say enough kind words.

 -Linda

So worth the class if you are on the fence! jessica is an awesome teacher!!!

-Joscelyne

Jessica is a totally inspiring teacher and the class is not to be missed…I have been totally blown away with what I have learnt, and the video makes it so easy

-Scrapinthyme

This U&R class has been the best experience. I was a complete newbie and have learned so much from Jessica. It has gone above and beyond what I ever expected.

-Dawns

Let me just say it will be the best $40 you spend on scrapbooking this year! I am totally inspired and have learned SO much from this class. I was familiar with PSE, but had never done digiscrapping. I now have six completed pages, and a whole new understanding of PSE. The message board for this class has also been tremendously interesting and filled with resources and help. Jessica’s videos are the best and you can watch them over and over. Run to registration! :-)

-Karen

But I am in total agreement that taking Jessica’s class is the best money you can spend towards your scrapping future, esp. if you kind of, sort of know your program, but not really. Now, I KNOW my program and what it does and how EFFORTLESS it becomes once it is explained to you, Jessica-style! Seriously, invest in yourself!!!

-Angi

If you’re on the fence about whether to sign up, take it, take it! Seriously. I had been dinking around on my own trying to piece together knowledge from online tutorials through painful trial and error, and had even spent money on static video courses before, but this class was the ONLY thing that kicked my butt into making real layouts as a digi-scrapper.

Jessica is not only knowledgeable, but an excellent *teacher* (those things don’t always go together). Her tutorials are well paced and clearly outlined (NOT always the case with others, lemme tell ya), and her enthusiasm is infectious. And the class message board, heheh, let’s just say it’s a serious meeting of the minds — people post on there nonstop!

Okay, that’s enough infomercial, I gotta get back to my day job! :P

Up. And. Running. Rocks.

-Jenn

Up and Running is an awesome class. Jessica is a wonderful teacher, and so true that being knowledgable and being a great teacher, don’t often go together especially in teaching tech stuff. The videos are great—can stop and start as needed to work on the lesson. Plus great “field trips”, freebies, discounts, inspiration, and the most helpful classmates on the planet.

-Amy 

I have taken many online PS classes and this is the very best with more than your moneys worth.

-Mer

 See you tonight! :D

What a weekend. Whew!

Rowen went to her very first birthday party on Friday night. She drew her friend Kelly a picture for her card, and it was SO cute I asked her to draw a picture of me. Here it is (warning: proud mama moment ahead):

 

She explained it to me as she was drawing it. I’m the yellow figure there in the middle, and the sun (with rays!) is behind me. I’m holding her Mini Lightning McQueen car, and you can see he has black wheels as well. I have LOTS of tangly brown hair, and black glasses, and I’m standing in the grass. Not just any grass, though, this is the Tall Grass at Red Hat, where they go and play sometimes on Sunday evenings. This is the first picture that she has drawn of me, and it’s a precious thing. :)

We had a church picnic on Saturday - I have just been put on the Activities Committee, so it’ll be my job to plan these things for a bit. Saying bye to the 4-5 year old kid class was kind of tough, but I’m ready for a change in responsibilities. :)

Win one of 5 free copies of Computer Tricks 2! Fill out this survey

If you don’t happen to be on my email newsletter, or if you read it and didn’t click on over to fill out the 20-question survey, here’s your chance! :D I’ll be selecting 5 survey participants to win a free copy of my new book, Computer Tricks for Scrapbooking 2, in exchange for your answers to a few survey questions. The only personal information l I ask for is your first name and your email address, so I can let you know if you win! :D

Click here to take the quick Digital Scrapbooking survey! (and feel free to send this link along to friends) 

I can’t even tell you how valuable your feedback is on these questions - it will help me plan future classes, plan tutorials for CK, and all of my education efforts, so that I can continue to help you learn more about using your computer as a scrapbook tool. :) 

Photo-a-Day-in May: Gearing Up! New Gear!

I’m practicing having my camera out and ready all the time, getting set up for the Photo a Day challenge in May! I’m so excited! I normally get myself a little somethin’ somethin’ to celebrate registration of classes (remember the Fluevogs?) Well, I decided to combine two class ‘rewards’ (see how I can justify this in my head? It’s awesome.), plus throw in Mother’s Day, and a few Just Cause I’m Worth It vibes, and I am getting a new camera! I’ve had my Nikon D50 for just over 2 years now, and it has been a beautiful investment. I would recommend a D40, D50, or D60 to ANYONE. I had been looking to upgrade to the D200, which is sort of the next level of amateur cameras, and went to do some research on it. I hopped over to KenRockwell.com, who I trust for pretty much ALL of my camera/lens purchases, and based on his review, went with the newly released Nikon D300. It arrives tomorrow, and I am super excited to test it out for the photo-a-day challenge in May! Yay! :D

 

So, who’s in for the challenge in May?  

Hi there! Welcome to another (on time!) edition of Photoshop Friday!  

Today’s topic is noise reduction. I know. A lot of us wish that we could have Noise Reduction in real life. Unfortunately, short of suggesting earplugs, there isn’t much I can do to help you there.

But I can help you get the noise out of your images. :D 

Photoshop’s default noise reduction tools have left a lot to be desired. And as of CS3, they have made a few updates, but I still prefer to go the plug-in route with this. I’ve been using this particular plug-in for several years with great results. It’s my favorite noise-reduction software, and I think you’ll like it too! :D

The software is called Neat Image, and it’s available for a FREE fully functional demo here for Windows, and demo here for Mac. I’ll be using the free version in this tutorial, so grab it and follow along! :D

Just for incentive, here’s the before-and-after shot that I’ll be using in my example:

 

Editing the Image: Adjusting Lighting and Color Correcting

 

First, open your image in Photoshop and make the edits you’d like to it. Often when we brighten up a photo, we also bring up the noise levels (noise lurks in shadows), so you’ll want this image to be in more or less its final state before we switch over to Neat Image.

Here’s my original image. It’s pretty dark, and already fairly noisy (it was taken in low light). But this is a precious picture to me (Rowen in the hospital on the day she got the tubes out of her nose)

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1. First I’ll open my Levels dialog box. Ctrl-l or Enhance > Adjust Lighting > Levels (PSE) or Image > Adjustments > Levels (CS3).

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2. I can see from the Levels dialog box that my photo is quite dark. The Levels dialog box shows a map of all the tones in your image, from dark on the left, to light on the right. When there is no black mountain on the right, it means that my image is underexposed. I have two options for fixing it:

• I can move the white slider under the mountain toward the left until it just begins to meet the right edge of the mountain. This works to adjust the lighting in ANY image, but be careful not to blow out the highlights by overdoing that white slider. :) (you can also move the black slider toward the right to increase the contrast in your image)
  
• (PREFERRED:) If my photo has an area in it that should be white, I can color correct AND correct lighting all in one step. Select the white eyedropper on the right side of the Levels dialog box, and click on an area of your image that SHOULD be white. Photoshop adjusts all the other tones in your image around this selection. This is known as “setting the white point” in an image.

After setting the white point with the eyedropper (I clicked on an area of the blanket in the lower right), you can see the difference here:

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The only downside to this is that by improving the lighting in the image, I’ve dramatically increased the levels of noise as well. Basically brought all the little pixellated grains out of the shadows and into broad daylight, and portions of the image that should be smooth appear rough. Here’s this image zoomed in:

 
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Cleaning Up Noise with NeatImage 

And here is where Neat Image can come to the rescue! You can use the Neat Image plug-in on the demo mode if your image is smaller than 1024x1024 pixels (mine isn’t).  Neat Image offers a Home+ edition for $50.00 that will work straight out of Photoshop. Since we’re just testing out the demo, we’ll have to save this image and open it in the standalone application. (this is what I’ve always done anyway).

So we open our noisy image in Neat Image.

1. Launch the Neat Image standalone application.

2. Click on the Open Input Image button, navigate to your edited image, and click Open.

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3. Click the Device Noise Profile tab at the top.

4. Click and drag over your image to highlight an area that should be smooth. This works best on faces or smooth backgrounds.

 
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5. With your selection active, click the  Auto Profile button. If your selection is too small, you’ll need to re-draw it.

6. Click the Noise Filter Settings tab.

7. Click the Preview button. This creates a square preview window that allows you to see the image edited with the default settings. You can zoom in on the image with your mouse’s scroll wheel or move the selection area around to see whether the settings are good for you.

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8.  The only thing I normally change here is to make sure in a color image that the Noise Reduction area for the Chrominance (color) channels is set to 100% - this takes out all the strange colored pixels that cause the most trouble in noisy color images. And then I add back in some sharpness using the Luminance (light) sharpness slider in the bottom.

NOTE: Keep in mind here that in general, sharpness and noise reduction are related to each other, and so when you increase sharpness, you increase noise as well, and when you increase the level of noise reduction, you generally lose a certain amount of sharpness. The real trick is balancing out the noise reduction without losing TOO much sharpness.

9. When you’re happy with the preview, click on the Output Image tab, and click Apply. Neat Image will grind for a few seconds (or longer) and then show you your completed image in the preview window.

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10. Click the Save Image button to save your newly noise-reduced image! Yay! :D

Here’s the before and after for my particular photo, using a fresh download of NeatImage:

 

 A few other things:

• You can purchase the Home+ version to get rid of the limitations such as not being able to save in anything but a high quality .jpg and having to come out to the standalone application to use it (I totally recommend the HUGE time savings of being able to use the plug-in in the Filter menu, plus the ability to perform the noise reduction on individual layers, rather than the whole image)
  
• Neat Image also comes with downloadable profiles JUST for your camera - different cameras make different noise patterns, and downloading the profile for your specific camera will help NeatImage clean up your photos a bit better.

I hope you enjoy your demo of Neat Image, I’ve been using it with lots of success for a few years now, and couldn’t be happier! It’s the best noise reduction tool on market right now, in my opinion, and can really help to rescue some of those precious photos that might otherwise be unusable.

Have a super, Phabulous Photoshop Phriday and a great weekend!  

Creepies.

Crawlies.

Buzzers.

Totally not the kind of thing I’m usually into. Not by a long shot. I don’t mind snakes. I’ve held a rat or two. But if you’ve got more than 6 legs, buddy, you are not welcome.

Two things have worked together to change this for me this week:

1. Rowen is studying bugs in preschool. She came home with a bug catcher AND lectured me that ants are good! when I squished one in the house the other day. Then I had to sigh and explain that “good” has varying definitions depending on whether the creature is inside or outside my bathroom. Outside? Good. Inside? Meet Mr. Paper Towel and Take a Ride on the Toilet Express… or better yet, call Jared and tell him there’s a HUGE spider *sob* and can’t he come and get it? (hehe).

2. Anyway. The bug catcher has suddenly got her interested in bugs of all kinds! With any number of legs, and lengths of body, and while these words would normally leave me feeling queasy, my Mama-hood takes over, and puts on a Brave, Bright Face and says, WOW! Look at that great big.. thing! Yay! Oh gosh, doesn’t THAT one have a lot of … colors on it? Because having kids run from harmless bugs isn’t a good way to grow up, right? I want them to experience the world around them with as little inherited bias about crawlies as I can. And I can push the limits a bit if it’s for my kids. A bit. After all, isn’t parenthood as much about learning our own capacities as it is about teaching anyone else anything? :)

Lucky for me and my Brave Face, though, I happen not to be too grossed out by caterpillars, and also lucky for us, there are LOTS of caterpillars around these days. Rowen learned all about them in preschool, and now gets the opportunity to learn how to treat even the smallest creatures with gentleness. We found this fella in the backyard today:

 

I love this shot for a lot of reasons, but the main ones are the look on Rowen’s face and the gentleness of her hand. I LOVE that. I pity any creature that finds itself in the backyard of curious toddlers/preschoolers, but this girl just wanted to hold the caterpillar, find it some food, and give it a home in an old plastic cup. She even named it “Stripey Caterpillar” (we are very into descriptive names), and had to go check on it the second she woke up from her nap. And you know what? I think Stripey Caterpillar is .. kinda cute. :) 

I was perusing  my new Body + Soul magazine, and an article about Risk, and how healthy risk can be. It says that to take a risk is to accept a challenge. Find things that intrigue and excite you, and do them.

They define risk as  “activities with uncertain outcomes”. “Whatever gives you that ‘ping’ feeling where you wonder what’s going to happen next.”

Everyone considers different things to be a risk for them, but it says that “the best learning happens just beyond your comfort zone.” There are lots of emotional benefits to taking risks.

“Research shows that risk-takers … are more likely to feel accepted, responsible, trustworthy, and capable. The sense of satisfaction comes from trying something new and proving yourself up to the task. You get to know, with the understanding that can only come from experience, how competent and capable you really are…”

And this doesn’t mean doing things that are dangerous or stupid, but just something that we’ve never done before, and that we think we would LIKE to try. Something different. How can we know how capable we are, if the limits of our capability aren’t tested?

“Perhaps the most immediate benefit of risk is that it’s simply plain fun. Neuroscientists explain this bliss with biochemistry: New, challenging, and risky activities trigger the release of dopamine, a feel-good neurotransmitter that’s part of the brain’s reward system. Call it the ultimate antidote to boredom—it’s the best way I know of to wake up and feel fully and ecstatically alive. You believe you have a say in your destiny rather than being dominated by your circumstances. In that way, every chance we take teaches us something about ourselves.”

I must say, that I am not much of a risk-taker. A pretty conservative girl, here. I like four dishes at all the restaurants we go to, I drink pretty much only three kinds of drinks, and I will admit to being stuck in a fairly predictable rut in a lot of ways. Now stability is nothing to sneeze at - but I love that taking chances on things - taking risks that it might be awful or it might turn out to be WONDERFUL, helps us feel alive and get to know ourselves and our capacities a little better. :)

So I am thinking of taking a new risk in May. I’ve seen so many Flickr galleries and personal blogs from those lovely and organized people who started way at the beginning of the year taking a photo every day. Every day. Well, what is one (like me) unorganized and slightly prone to procrastination person supposed to do with a grand intention that I’m only just starting to feel here on April 23? April 23 doesn’t feel like much of a Day To Begin Something, does it…

Challenge = Risk  

So I would like to begin taking a photo a day in May. And see how I do.

 

Would you like to join me? I would love to see what you take. All the daily stuff. Or if you have another Risk you’d like to take, perhaps you’d like to:

• learn how to digi-scrap, and you’d like to take a chance on my Up & Running with Photoshop class, which begins registration on Monday? :D).
  
• learn how to fold a Rhombic Hexecontahedron out of origami paper?
  
• use your rubber stamps to create a really cool shrinky-dink ring?
• make these amazing lavender cream filled cupcakes with citrus cream frosting? (and then send me some!)
• buy a digital SLR, or buy a prime lens for your dSLR?
• make a grocery list and only go to Target once.a.week. whoa *gasp* I almost couldn’t even type that without passing out. I actually don’t recommend this one at all. Forget I said it. Did I mention that you can learn to digi scrap? How about that rhombic hexecontahedron? Who’s up for a Target run? :D
  

Of course these are just random ones. Did something come into your head that would be a risk for you? I’m actually looking FORWARD to May, now! :D

Hi There!

Gosh, it seems like a long time since my last Photoshop Friday - and it HAS been! Digi: In Deep is winding down, and I really am feeling like I can pull things back together again.

Today’s topic: Adding dropshadows to acrylic items in Photoshop Elements. (Works in the full version of PS, too, of course. :D)

PSE is notoriously difficult to manage with shadows like this, simply because PSE doesn’t allow you to separate a dropshadow layer style onto its own layer so you can manipulate it. When you’re dealing with transparent or semi-transparent items, then, you are stuck making your own, or finding fancy ways around the issue.

Today’s way is pretty fancy. :D

This tutorial is in conjunction with the Designer Challenge at the forum at JessicaSprague.com, and this week our featured designer is none other than the incredible, fabulous, and talented Meredith Fenwick. She has created an entire acrylic alphabet set EXCLUSIVELY for us!  Head on over to the thread right here in the General forums to download the kit, and to participate in the challenge by creating a layout! :D Here’s what it looks like:

 

After you’ve downloaded your kit, we can practice adding dropshadows to it. The sample here shows the items with shadows, but the alphabet in the kit doesn’t have them. So this is a great chance to learn a cool digi skill! :D

Add Dropshadows to Transparent Items 

 

 

1. Open one of your alphabet letters.

2. Create a new blank document (I created mine at 6x6 just for this), and either pull in a patterned paper or fill your background with a solid color.

3. Drag your letter onto the new document.

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4. Right-click on the letter in the Layers palette and choose Duplicate Layer from the flyout menu.

5. Target the lower layer in the Layers palette.

6. Open the Effects palette. Switch to Drop Shadows, and double-click on the Low layer style.

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7. Double-click on the small “FX” icon (a sun icon in earlier versions) next to the layer name in the Layers palette. Set the distance to anywhere between 5-8, the size anywhere from 5-8, the opacity to 60%, and then click on the color swatch to change the color to dark brown.

8. Click OK in the Color Picker, and OK in the Style Settings dialog.

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9. With the lower acrylic layer still targeted, go to Edit > Fill Layer.

10. In the Fill dialog box, set the Use to Black, and make sure the Preserve Transparency checkbox is checked.

11. Click OK.

 
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12. Hide the top acrylic layer in the Layers palette.

13. With the lower acrylic layer targeted, select the Paint Bucket tool.

14. Type “d” to return your foreground and background colors to their defaults. Click down inside of the blackened letter to fill the shape with black.

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15. At the top of the Layers palette, set the blending mode for the lower layer to Difference. This hides the black fill on the layer, and shows only the dropshadow.

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 16. Now you can show the top acrylic layer to check out your handiwork! :D

Here’s what the two look like side-by-side. :D

 

EDITED: Let me explain the concept behind this one: We are trying to get our duplicated layer to be as solid black as we can. Simply filling it with the paint bucket doesn’t work, because of the white accents (paint bucket has a tolerance, just like the other fill and selection tools). So we have to use a “fill” command to bring the colors closer together, and THEN apply the paint bucket. If you’re dealing with an object that doesn’t have reflections on it, you might be able to skip the Fill command and go straight to the paint bucket. Or vice versa. The goal is to get your lower layer to be solid black, so the Difference blending mode will hide it and just show the dropshadow. :) 

I hope you had a wonderful weekend, and here’s to many more Photoshop Phridays! (Or whatever day it happens to be! LOL) 

 

I have been incredibly busy and not very bloggity lately. Mostly because of the aforementioned busi-ness. I’ve been a bit lax with a lot of things as the crunch of just getting things DONE has kind of overwhelmed a lot of other things. I feel the tide turning today, though, in a few ways, and I’m grateful for that. I feel a little like I’ve been swimming like crazy just to stay afloat, and now I can finally touch the shore again and start to walk. :)

I had an experience today, that confirmed for me something that I have wondered, in my depth of heart, a few times in the past few months - did God still remember me? Did He see me way down here? I don’t know if you’ve ever had that experience before, when you’re in pain, or in doubt, or really needing an answer. It’s a small and a lonely feeling, though.

I’ve been struggling to do what I know is right, and feeling sort of adrift in the universe, and sometimes I’ve honestly wondered, why doesn’t the Lord, who notices the sparrows fall, notice me? Why is this happening?

And it often happens, when I stop thrashing around, that I’m able to hear a little better, when I get the whisper in my ear that says, “This is for YOU.” And I just want to put out there, that today I know that God knows my name. And He knows yours.

I hope your Sunday was blessed and restful. And I will blog more often now. Feet in the sand, and not paddling for dear life against the current. :)

If you were going to take a driving trip during the summer (or early fall) with a 3 year old and a 4 year old, starting in, let’s just say, Raleigh, North Carolina, where would you go? What would  you do?

:D 

p.s. Unless you can convincingly tell me that my kids are old enough to enjoy it, we’d rather wait another year before DisneyWorld. ;)

Monday after a busy weekend is always kind of sleepy. I feel like I’m in slow-motion today, like the day just started and it’s already pushing 5 p.m. :P Hopefully I’ll find a few more hours after the kids go to bed, or maybe they’ll wash up in my shower tomorrow morning…

Rowen 

This girl decided that each and every one of the shoes by the front door (who has lived her for 18 months and STILL can’t park cars in the garage? ahem…) should contain a soft and fuzzy creature, so we came down to Care Bears and assorted stuffed toys in all our shoes. :) 

Love this girl. She has an imagination like nobody I’ve ever known. Most of the time she has this storyline going in her head, and some of it comes out loud in speech, and we’re like, where did she GET that?

It was another busy weekend, we’re just beginning Week 3 of 4 in our advanced digi class at JessicaSprague.com, and I think it’s going well. I am learning a lot, and I’m WORKING a lot, and in that ‘unbalanced but only temporarily’ kind of mode right now. When it ends (which will be sad) we’ll be able to slow down a bit, focus on a couple of other things, etc. Teaching online is amazing, and intense, and frankly a ton of work, but so worth it.

This week, we’re taking photos of ourselves in the bathroom mirror. Oh, and making a LAYOUT with it. Yeah. You can imagine the excitement. :P But I LOVE that people are actually doing it. Most of the class participants are women, and it doesn’t seem like we women get into our photos very often. And most of us would say we LIKE it that way, right?

But here’s what I said in one thread that was posted expressing a desire not to take a photo of herself in the mirror (our particular photos are intentionally out of focus, by the way, and I took mine in my bathroom, unshowered, wearing a dead green shirt I had just cleaned the bathroom in):

Imagine if your mama or grandma or great-grandma had stood herself in front of the mirror in her pj’s and taken a picture of her finger on a Saturday morning? No matter WHAT that photo looked like, it would be precious.

And I really believe that. Here’s to snapping a pic of ourselves sometimes, just so people remember it’s US behind the camera. :)

 

 

And a totally random other thought:

Do you own a QuicKutz Silhouette or other digital cutting machine that hooks to your computer?

Would you be interested in taking a class that includes using it for a project?

Just askin’.. ;) 

I can’t even say enough good things about digital templates.

Think of them like a “live” pencil sketch of a layout, only you can use the shapes on the various layers to clip your papers in, and you can create a gorgeous layout in 15 minutes. No kidding!

For the April issue of Creating Keepsakes, I created a video tutorial to walk you through the process of using a template, AND you can download two free templates from Jen Caputo at Scrapbookgraphics.com!

Using templates is a great way to speed up your scrapbooking whether you’re a digital OR a paper scrapbooker. Simply print your completed template out onto 12x12 matte photo paper (or upload it to a place like scrapbookpictures.com or shutterfly.com to have it printed and sent to you), and then complete it with traditional supplies!

Here is one of my pages from the April issue: 

 

Supplies 

• Digital page template: Jen Caputo
  
• Digital patterned paper: Beautiful Journey kit by Michelle Coleman, littledreamerdesigns.com (pink paper);
• Rejuvenate kit by Jen Wilson, jenwilsondesigns.com (white paper); Haute Momma kit by Jen Wilson, jenwilsondesigns.com (brown paper); Scalloped cardstock: Bazzill Basics Paper;
• Patterned paper: American Crafts (yellow);
• Digital flourish (over photo): On the Edge Flourishes No. 3 kit by Katie Pertiet, www.designerdigitals.com;
• Title rub-on words: Daisy D’s Paper Co.;
• Flower stickers: Making Memories;
• Rhinestone: Heidi Swapp for Advantus;
• Heart pin: Heidi Grace Designs;
• Date stamp: Rhonna Farrer, Autumn Leaves;
• Stamping ink: Cat’s Eye, Clearsnap;
• Photo corner and circle punches: EK Success;
• Printer: Epson R1800; Photo paper: PremierArt Matte Photo Paper, Epson;
• Font: Century Gothic, Microsoft.
  

Click here to watch the tutorial video and download the free templates! 

Thanks to Jen for the beautiful templates!  Have a Phabulous Photoshop Phriday and a great weekend! :D