Creative Conversation
It’s not always easy to make complex selections in your Photoshop images, but in this tutorial, trainer Geoff Riggs will show you one very effective way to use the highlights in an image to make a selection in order to alter an image.
This moves me so much, I have to share it.
When we adults think of children there is a simple truth, which we ignore: childhood is not preparation for life, childhood is life. A child isn’t getting ready to live, a child is living. The child is constastantly confronted with the nagging question, “What are you going to be”? Courageous would be the youngster who, looking the adult squarely in the face, would say, “I’m not going to be anything; I already am.” We adults would be shocked by such an insolent remark for we have forgotten, if indeed we ever knew, that a child is an active participating and contributing member of society from the time he is born. Childhood isn’t a time when he is molded into a human who will then live life; his is a human who is living life. No child will miss the zest and joy of living unless these are denied him by adults who have convinced themselves that childhood is a period of preparation.
How much heartache we would save ourselves if we would recognize the child as a partner with adults in the process of living, rather than always viewing him as an apprentice. How much we would teach each other… adults with the experience and children with the freshness. How full both our lives could be. A little child may not lead us, but at least we ought to discuss the trip with him, for after all, life is his and her journey, too.
– Professor T. Ripaldi
I found a Wii Fit in Costco a few weeks ago. They are scarce - I’m looking for another one for my mother. I love it! It’s fun and engaging. I hate working out. I need to lose about 60 lbs. If you search my blog, you’ll see where I lost 50 lbs. Yeah, well, I gained back 60.
I do my body test before I start. My Mii starts out looking normal, then it calculates my BMI and the little gauge goes up and up and up and a little voice says “that’s obese” and my Mii plumps up nice and fat like a turkey ready for the oven!
The good news is that I am actually losing weight with it. I’m down a few pounds in since I started around July 4th. I feel it in my body. My back feels great. I was having lots of low back pain - I think the hula hoops have made it much better!
Yoga is hard! I’ve never done it and I have a hard time with the poses on the Wii. I’ve only tried a few and am working my way up. The strength exercises are also difficult. I’ve avoided most of them so far, too. Aerobics is easy and fun and I work up a sweat. The Balance games are just fun. I’m sure they help my balance but it’s a stretch to call them exercise!
It’s worth getting a Wii just for the Wii Fit. It’s more fun than going to the gym and having the feedback while you’re working out makes a difference. Having others in the high score spot motivates you to want to beat them! I highly recommend it and you don’t have to leave home and can toss that gym membership!
Got a Wii? Leave a note about how you like it.
Getting organized is important. With digital cameras you can literally have thousands of photos lying around on CDs, memory sticks, in the camera and on various hard drives. Choose your project - what do you want to scrap? Do you want to do a whole year, a set of years or a special trip? Once you’re clear about your topic, you need to gather all of your photos into one place.
There are lots of choices when it comes to photo organization software. I personally use a Mac and iPhoto. I’m not thrilled with it and curse it’s limitations, but I manage to work around those limitations and beat it into submission. I have been toying with Adobe Lightroom. I like it because I can quickly retouch all of my photos and I trust the software to do a good job (I don’t trust the iPhoto editing) and I don’t have to open them all in Photoshop.
Now that you have all of your photos in one place, you can start to whittle away at them. Choose the very best, your favorite, images you really want in your book. You should have a space on your primary hard drive for these photos. Make copies of them and leave the originals where they are. A fresh set, on your working hard drive, now you are ready to go.
Open the folder of photos in Adobe Bridge and manually arrange them in the order you want them to appear in your book. At least clump them together if you don’t know the order. Now your photos are ready to go.
For speed and efficiency, I actually design a bunch of pages first. I choose the kits I want to use and crank out pages using pre-made layout templates, “scrap-lifting” from magazines and websites, etc. I create a nice little cache of layered designs just waiting for me to add my photos. I keep these all in a folder on my working harddrive (and usually inside of a folder that holds this folder and my photos folder for this project).
With my templates and my photos both open in Bridge, I can now choose which photos will go in which page. This process goes fairly quickly. I’ve already completed the design - which was speedy because I wasn’t attached to how it looked. Now I can add my photos and make it mine. Sometimes my design is just perfect and I just drop in the photos and I’m done. Sometimes I alter the design to fit my photos. Either way, my pages take 5-15 minutes each to complete.
I create folders called “used inside” of my pre made design folder and my photos folder. I drag the designs and the photos into those as I use them to make my pages. That way I don’t accidentally use them again.
If you find this article helpful, please leave a comment, I would love to hear from you!
Summer is a time when family members get together and want to make heritage and anniversary books together. It can be a daunting task to figure out how to do that, especially with miles and miles between each other. I use a great tool called Basecamp with my customers. It has all the features I need to post images and allow my customers to provide comments and feedback. They can also upload any files they want to add.
Basecamp is flexible and will fit your needs. There is a free plan, the personal plan is $12 per month, basic is $24 per month, and they have more plans for larger companies. The Free plan should work for most people seeking a solution to create together. There is no contract, so if you need to upgrade, you can for just one month or several months.
If you have any questions about working on a project like these, please post it in the comments and I’ll share what I know. I’ve worked on many of these projects and helped many families create beautiful heirloom books.
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