GingerScraps: New FREE with Purchase Collab, New Monthly Mix, No Joke SALE & More!!

Happy April!! Hold onto your spring hats my fellow scrappers, it’s a big day at GingerScraps. The first of the month is always a big deal. But when it’s on April 1st, it’s even better.

REMEMBER THIS SALE WILL END ON APRIL 2 AT 11:59PM EASTERN TIME!
Make sure your checkout is complete prior to the close of the sale, as soon as the clock strikes midnight the sale prices will disappear.

NOTE Becuse of this sale, the April Buffet will start on April 3. Watch for the newsletter on the 3rd with all the Buffet goodness.

Remember any $10 spent in the store gets you this great collab. It’s {puddle jumpers} time!

This Free With Purchase was created by: CarolW Designs, Designs by Lisa Minor, Scrappin’ Serenity, Laurie’s Scraps, and PrelestnayaP Design.

This collab includes: 1 Alpha {Uppercase, Lowercase, Numbers & Punctuation}, 54 Papers, and 114 Elements.

Do you celebrate {easter morning}? This collab is perfect for those Easter photos.

This Monthly Mix was created by: Chere Kaye Designs, Craft-tastrophic, HeartMade Scrapbook, Ilonkas Designs, and LDragDesigns.

This collab includes: 1 Alpha {Uppercase, Numbers & Punctuation}, 60 Papers, and 99 Elements.

Now to the April Daily Download Sneak Peek. This month’s Daily Download is from ScrapChat Designs! Make sure you are checking the blog every day to get all the pieces of this kit!

Are you ready for the March challenges? Remember any 10 completed challenges gets you this great kit. {raindrops keep falling} on my head (I might be dating myself here)!

This Challenge Reward was created by: Aimee Harrison, CathyK Designs, Cindy Ritter Designs, and Key Lime Digi Design.

This collab includes: 3 Alphas {Uppercase, Lowercase, Numbers & Punctuation}, 52 Papers, 84 Elements, and 2 12×12 Templates {png, psd, tif file formats}.

Let’s look at a few layouts from our talented store creative team.

 

DD: APR 1

It’s a new month and time for a new Daily Download. Before we get to the new sneak peek, let’s look at the full kit from March.

Legacy of Faith – North Meets South Studios

Now to the April Sneak Peek. This month’s Daily Download is from ScrapChat Designs.

https://bit.ly/3lVNVA0

Follow ScrapChat Designs on her Facebook page.

Remember, the download is kept up for 5 days, and then it is taken down. If you miss pieces, the kit will be available for purchase on the first day of the following month.

Post expires at 10:00am on Friday April 7th, 2023

March 31, 2023: Fresh Baked

Can you believe we’re already at the end of March? The year is just flying by.

Remember, spend $10 in the store and get this great kit for free. 

How about a peek a the new kits in the store this week?

Don’t foget to get your March challenges posted. Remember any 10 completed challenges gets you this great kit.

DD: MAR 31

https://bit.ly/3IZcDbr

Remember, the download is kept up for 5 days, and then it is taken down. If you miss pieces, the kit will be available for purchase on the first day of the following month.

Post expires at 10:00am on Thursday April 6th, 2023

DD: MAR 30

https://bit.ly/3J1n5PN

Remember, the download is kept up for 5 days, and then it is taken down. If you miss pieces, the kit will be available for purchase on the first day of the following month.

Post expires at 10:00am on Wednesday April 5th, 2023

DD: MAR 29

https://bit.ly/3kAtjN0

Remember, the download is kept up for 5 days, and then it is taken down. If you miss pieces, the kit will be available for purchase on the first day of the following month.

Post expires at 10:00am on Tuesday April 4th, 2023

Tutorial Tuesday (Photoshop Elements)

Quick Trick: Select SUBJECT

Gradually, oh-so-gradually, Adobe is adding more functionality to Photoshop Elements and bringing it closer to Photoshop itself. Today I’ll show you one of these game-changing tools. It’s one that I’ve used a LOT in the last few weeks. For this tutorial I’m going to selectively edit a photo by lightening and brightening the sculpture while making other adjustments to the rest of the image.

Introduced in Elements 2020, there’s now a Select>Subject option! There are two other ways to access this function: CTRL/CMD>ALT/OPT>S is the keyboard shortcut. I’ll show you the second way in a moment.

Elements uses AI to decide what the subject of the image is, and that takes a few seconds. It’s not always perfect, as you can see here – it missed the lower corner of the sculpture. But that’s easy enough to fix.

Here’s another back door into the function: the Quick Selection (aka the Magic Wand) Tool. See the Select Subject button? This is also where you can add or subtract the parts Elements didn’t get right. There’s a lot of power in these Tool Options, but we don’t need them for today’s purpose.

I’ve discovered it’s a good habit to develop to shift the edge of my Selection by a few pixels to make sure all the tiny details are included and to keep the actual edge of the Selection from being too visible later. Select>Modify>Expand is the choice I make most often. 5 pixels is usually enough.

Here’s and extreme close-up of that 5 pixel shift.

The next few screenshots will show the specific adjustments I made to my image. There are as many other possibilities as there are Edits: blurring the background, changing the background, removing the background, moving objects in the image around, copying the subject onto another image… wherever your imagination takes you. But let’s see if we can bring out the detail in the sculpture a bit using Enhance>Adjust Lighting>Brightness/Contrast…

Oh THERE you are!

Once I had the sculpture looking better, I turned my attention to the background. The tweaks it needs are different from the sculpture. All I needed to do was Select>Inverse (CTRL/CMD>SHIFT>I).

This time I used Enhance>Adjust Lighting>Shadows/Highlights…

It really didn’t need much.

Once I was satisfied with the separate adjustments, I hit Select>Deselect (CTRL/CMD>D). I subsequently made a few more slight adjustments using some of the things we’ve talked about previously: Fill Selection>Content Aware to remove the fire hydrant and the light on the wall in the background, Shake Reduction… and Haze Removal…

Here are the Before and After images. Thoughts?

See you in April!

DD: MAR 28

https://bit.ly/3EJuD76

Remember, the download is kept up for 5 days, and then it is taken down. If you miss pieces, the kit will be available for purchase on the first day of the following month.

Post expires at 10:00am on Monday April 3rd, 2023

DD: MAR 27

https://bit.ly/3J29cRq

Remember, the download is kept up for 5 days, and then it is taken down. If you miss pieces, the kit will be available for purchase on the first day of the following month.

Post expires at 10:00am on Sunday April 2nd, 2023

March 24, 2023: Fresh Baked and Scrap-a-thon!

Happy Friday everyone! Hope your week has gone well!

We still have the Scrap-a-Thon going on. How are your challenges going? 

Remember, spend $10 in the store and get this great kit for free. 

Let’s see what we have new in the store for this week.

Have you started the March challenges? Remember any 10 completed challenges gets you this great kit.

Don’t forget since it is the Scrap-A-Thon during the month of march you will get DOUBLE REWARDS! If you complete 20 challenges you will get the {you are your own rainbow} AND {best of friends}! Get those challenges done scrappers!