how about a LR tutorial?

I really like this one and if you wanna play in Lightroom, have fun! Somehow, I didn't know this trick. As if I know so many...

AAM Monday: Project Life Week 3

Working with the Project Life app, I find it fairly easy to do with my iPad. What I don't find as easy to do is edit my photos prior to the app. I have yet to venture into Lightroom on the iPad and want to be sure I'm not unnecessarily filling Cloud space allotments. I don't want to be in the position to see that Want to buy more Storage? message. That is something I need to research in the upcoming weeks.

But with the actions/templates from Wendy Zine that I tested and that are now on sale at Scrapbook Graphics, I'm pleased with the results. I modified the shadows and added a 15px inside stroke. As I use each template (which matches the PL template used) I save my changes by adding MMR in front of the name. Then they stay in the same folder and I know modifications will stay consistent.

And on to the pages.

http://shop.scrapbookgraphics.com/TOOLKIT-Project-Life-App-Complete-Bundle.html


That's it for this week. We'll see how next week goes and how my progress with Lightroom on the iPad goes also. Wish me luck!

5 on Friday: October 9, 2015

1. There's a gorgeous free October calendar download. Click the image to get to the website for your own download.

Thank you Oana Befort!!! it comes in desktop and phone sizes.

2. Still finalizing the withdrawals I need to make from my IRAs. The one drawback to getting past 70.

3. I got cut up with Project Life this week! Yay! now it's time to finish up the SW trip images. I'm not sure if these are going to be layouts or just printed for pocket pages in the 2015 album. Maybe a few insert cards for journaling.

4. This Lightroom Tutorial on Keyboarding, Rating and People seemed to be especially useful in particular if you have not used this feature of LR.

5. While himself was away for a week, I was seriously glad to have that free time. Mainly because I had time to watch 48, 48!, episodes of Homeland.

That was all of the first four seasons which I needed to watch before season\on 5 started. It was all I did for most of that week and glad I don't plan to do it again for a while.

Have a great weekend, enjoy some pumpkin spice flavored something while that flavor is still somewhat seasonally fresh!

Tuesday Tutorial: Using Lightroom Templates for Scrapping

This is another post on using a tutorial that is already out there for something I wanted to do. WendyZine makes the best actions and other helpers for those of us who scrap digitally. I have heard many times about using templates in Lightroom, watched videos, but it is Wendy who is a digitally scrapper who 'gets' what we want to do in LR.  Here is her Lightroom Tutorial on making and using templates IN Lightroom.

Right off, I'll say that at this moment I don't want to reinvent Wendy's wheel, and so I am using her template. I have a few others that I bought also but still haven't used. You know how that is....

With the sample given, I made this collage from some of my granddaughter's photos from the recent Alaska fishing trip.

 

Mistake #1 I used a video from the bought set rather than try to read the instructions given.  I then tried to add the overlay. No luck. Went back and listened to the tutorial again. <-- No I still didn't read the written instructions.  Sigh.

While the free Template Says Overlay, I don't see it working quite the same way. If I put it on top of the image file it covered up the photos. If I put it below, and changed the print to a layer, not background, you didn't see it because there is a white fill in the spaces outside the photos. I could not get rid of that. So...

I tried one of the bought templates. I have to confess I have not worked in Print module much at all. I am no way 'fluent' in its use. One thing I tend to do is mess with a template. Not a good idea here.

My print image looks good enough but that group photo on the bottom right was supposed to be in a square cell. I decided to enlarge that cell so the group would be larger. Mistake #2.

When I added the overlay, I realized the shadow overlay was set to squares. I also saw that I must have moved the cells a bit as they did not line up with the shadows. I have to remember to only use the move tool with the cmd button rather than just click on the photo which moves the whole cell. Mistakes #3,4 etc

You can see the cell misalignment in both of these last two images but of course there is also I shadow running through the middle of that group shot.

The concept is good but the user definitely needs more practice! and the user needs to pay attention to the specific instructions given.  I'll be back when I finally get it right! You should try it because seriously, Wendy' instructions are very clear. I apparently have difficulty following instructions.

 eta: I had to take my time and pay attention but now I get it!

With a background paper added in LR and the text and not so strong shadows added in PSE with the overlay. I think with the black stroke from LR it's hard to see the shadows but it's done. I could have added more stuff but I just wanted to be sure I knew what I was doing. What I obviously didn't know how to do was spell.  All of this was corrected and now what I need to do is practice, practice, practice. btw, I didn't do much of editing in the LR develop module but I will from now on. First things first.

AAM Monday: Antsy

Sometimes, I just can't wait to do something so I rush in without doing the things that might have been better done first. I wasn't like this when I was young. I read the manuals, checked the instructions, researched things. I suspect it took years of living to realize that you can't just keep preparing for any and all contingencies. That's fear based living.

I am constantly reminded of this as I use my Lightroom5 as a cataloging software for my digital supplies. I was soooo anxious to get this started that I ignored the sound advice to clean out my supplies before I imported them into Lightroom. Clean them out???? discard some??? God forbid!

On one hand, I can see a reason for not doing this. I really didn't know what I did have. But I was also just plain greedy I think. I wanted it all. Period. In the end, I did import it all and bit by bit I am going back and discarding things I really don't like all that much. Some of my taste has changed since I started buying in 2008 and some of the things that were free or that I bought are really not as well done as current products. Some things are classic and some are just outdated trends.

As I was doing a steady purge last weekend, I picked a couple of items as I was going along and used them to make a layout of my grandson. He was totally worn out his 1st semester in college. He pledged a fraternity, had a heavy load and in the end survived with very good grades. He is a really hard worker when he knows what he wants and I admire him for that. What I liked about doing this layout was that I had no Digi Store requirements to worry about. I could just play with what I felt like and enjoy the process in a different way. I also had a lot of digital trash at the end of the day! Good feelings all around.

Tuesday Tutorial - Lightroom, Have Your Cake and Eat It Too

My Lightroom class has ended and while I still have the month of April to go over the videos, I need to find other sources of information I think. With Kim Klassen's class, you can buy a year's access to them but I've decided I'm not going to do that. I'm pretty used to having unlimited access to class material for my digital classes and was not overjoyed to have to pay for a limited access.  Chacun a son gout.

I just saw a link to this video on Twitter today and thought I'd share it.  If you go to Tipsquirrel.com and do a search for Lightroom, you'll see quite a few. Adobe has a lot of wonderful videos too. Short and to the point.

I had already forgotten the Tab shortcut to see hide the side panels. Just call me sieve brain! But this video shows you how to have your cake and eat it too, by hiding those panels but still getting information on your photos.



I hope this one is helpful to you Lightroom users out there! I'd love to hear of any video tutorials you've found also.

AAM Lightroom Love - I've Got It

Now I only bought Lightroom to organize my digital supplies, remember? Oh has that changed! I'm taking Kim Klassen's on line course, Round Trip, and trying to take the time to play as well as watch all the videos and try to absorb a portion of the information...oh the fun!

I know I won't be using certain things in LR. Probably. For one thing, my images are almost totally iPhone. For another thing, my eyes don't 'see' some of the corrections and adjustments Kim makes, even on a 27" iMac. That's a bad thing but also a good thing. No point in losing sleep over aging eyes. At least I can see!

Well today I took some old images from a trip to Italy. A trip which had as its main purpose - a visit to the Mecca of opera, LaScala.

From what was an image where the blown out white even bothered me to an image that I like. It's got that old world look - a scene from a noir movie set in Italia?? Who knows. But I like it and Thank You Kim and Lightroom.  The cost of Lightroom was much cheaper than Photoshop for me and that leaves money for other goodies. Chocolate! And exercise classes to burn off that chocolate!

Template Tuesday: Free Lightroom Presets for Facebook

Now you know you can change your Facebook cover image, right? I just saw these free Lightroom templates yesterday and thought...oh what a great share! In the scheme of life, it's not all that important, but in the fun parts of life, it's a quick fix that makes most of us smile. That is if we love our techy stuff.

I think I'm going to see what I can do with these later this week. Right now, my ongoing class in Lightroom , Kim Klassen's Round Trip, is wearing my eyeballs out, plus filling my few remaining cells brain with an overload of information. I do love it though! (Thank you Kim for developing this class!)  This is an example of what those preset templates from 27ShutterClicks can do. Now, you do have to get your own great shots for the templates but hey...we do the best we can, right?

Now that you've seen what you can do, you want them, right? Remember that word...Free!
Merci 27ShutterClicks for this generous offer! Click here.