Blog — Page 30

April 14, 2023: Fresh Baked

Apr

2023

Well here we are at another Friday. I hope your week has been amazing. I’m excited because I will be on “vacation” next week. I’m working a good part of it, but it will be from a different location so it’s sort of a vacation.

Remember any $10 spent in the store gets you this great collab.

It’s always exciting to see what the designers have new in the store each Friday. Let’s see what we have this week.

We have exciting news to share. Moore Blessings Digital Design is now a permanent designer here at GingerScraps.

To celebrate, she has a new mini kit in the Welcome Wagon Forum and a sale on her store for the rest of the month.

How are you doing on the challenges for April. We’re almost halfway through the month. If you complete any 10 challenges, you’ll get this kit as a reward.

Filed Under: Digital Scrapbooking, Fresh Baked, GingerBread Ladies Tagged With: Digital Scrapbooking, Fresh Baked, GingerBread Ladies

Tutorial Tuesday (Photoshop Elements 2021+)

Apr

2023

Guided Edit: Perfect Landscape

PDF Version : https://bit.ly/3GDI35u

By popular request! Let’s get this one off on the right foot from the start… this Guided Edit wasn’t available until Elements 2021 launched. If you’re using an older version of Elements (2018, 2019 or 2020), you’ll have to use the old-school method I showed you here. Anything older than that and you’ll have to manually extract the sky, find a sky overlay and add it on. Much more work. 🙁

Landscape photos can be stunning, or they can be kinda blah. Uniformly gray skies can provide great saturated colour to objects in the foreground, but overall, they can make for a pretty boring image. Most of the photos I took while in Ireland have a blown-out almost white sky. But now, with the Perfect Landscape Guided Edit, I can do something about that, fairly easily too! I’d already used my usual editing arsenal on this image – there was a car in the original photo! – but that sky drags the whole thing down. Let’s fix it!

You’ll find this marvel on this path: Guided>Special Edits>Perfect Landscape. Elements uses Artificial Intelligence for this Edit. It seems to be fairly competent at it too.

This is what the Perfect Landscape interface looks like. Because I’ve already edited the photo before, I’ll skip over the Crop, Straighten and Remove Haze tools. They’re pretty much self-explanatory and/or have been featured in other tutorials. I’m going right to the Choose a new Sky toolkit. There are 16 different sky options here. Experiment with them to see what will look best with your particular photo. To undo your choice, just CTRL/CMD>Z.

What do you think of this one? I know, right?! [Please ignore the typo in the image. Ta!]

This is the progress bar for the analysis part of the Edit, while AI is working. It’s deciding where the sky is and judging how bright to make the replacement sky.

Here you can see I’ve chosen the very first option from the palette with the Opacity and Brightness at 100%, and the photo looks better. But not quite right. There are a few adjustments that can be made manually, so let’s look at them.

Watch closely when you make adjustments. Every time. You need to see what’s happening so you can decide how much of a change the action is creating and if it actually looks better or worse. Ticking the Auto Match Color Tone box made the entire image darker and the details less visible. It’s a no for me, dawg.

When you hear about how much it rains in Ireland, it’s not an exaggeration. They have a lot of “soft days” – when it’s drizzling. In my photo there’s a muddy area just in front of the opening in the back wall. So maybe I should move the sky around so there are a few more clouds, to give the impression that a storm has blown through and the ground is drying. The Move Tool button activates the layer with the sky on it so I can do that.

That’s better. Because the AI worked flawlessly, I don’t really need to make any more changes to this one. So I’ll click Next down at the lower right corner of the canvas to the next menu.

I’ll Save As this image as an edit of the original, but I’ll do it in the Expert editing area. I might decide I want to use the photo right away on a layout.

I wanted you to see all the steps Elements took in the background. You can see the first thing it did was to isolate the sky area. Then came a gradient layer, the sky image layer, a brightness adjustment layer then a mask that concealed all but the sky area. Last is a composite of all the layers. Because the top layer is a composite, adjusting any of the other layers makes no change to the end result.

So. What happens if part of the photo is mistaken for sky by the AI bot? In this photo, the buildings along the upper right are bright white, just like the sky. So our AI bot was confused and added sky to them. How can that be remedied?

Easy! Use the Refine Edge toolkit. I want to remove the sky from the buildings, so I clicked on Subtract and using a smallish, hard, round brush at 100% Opacity I erased it from view. if you’ve used any other brush just prior to doing this edit, you’ll run into trouble so click through to the Expert Edit, check the brush and then click back to the Guided Edit. I could pretend that I did this on purpose so I could tell you it works, but that would be a fib… I had the arrow brush I use on my screenshots active and it was a MESS!

There are still a few things I want to adjust on this image. For example, the water under and in front of the bridge should reflect some blue and cloud, and the area under the arch in the foreground would probably be a bit lighter and brighter with a blue sky. But I think it’s all doable.

My tip for making this easy and quick: Choose a photo with an easily identified sky and let the software do all the work!

Filed Under: Be Inspired, Behind the Scrapbook, Creative Style, Digital Scrapbooking, Theres An App For That, Tutorials Tagged With: Tutorial Tuesday

April 7, 2023: Fresh Baked

Apr

2023

Happy Good Friday! I hope you have all had a great week and have a wonderful weekend!

Remember any $10 spent in the store gets you this great collab.

Ready for a look at what is new in the store?

Have you gotten a start on your challenges? Remember, if you complete 10, you get this great kit as a reward.

Filed Under: Digital Scrapbooking, Fresh Baked, GingerBread Ladies Tagged With: Digital Scrapbooking, Fresh Baked, GingerBread Ladies

Designer Spotlight: April 2023

Apr

2023

ScrapChat Designs

Hello again, ladies! Another month has begun and it’s time for the Designer Spotlight once again. This month I’m chatting with Jillian, otherwise known as ScrapChat Designs. A little birdie told me April is her birthday month, so in celebration we visited over bourbon rather than coffee. Let’s get to know her a bit!

O: We’ll start with the yeahyeahyeah stuff… How long have you been designing?

J: I began designing templates spring of 2021. Kits/collections in Summer of 2021.

O: So you’re pretty much still cutting your designer teeth. Props to you for jumping in and doing a such great job already. What made you decide to design?

J: I was on the creative team for many of the wonderful designers here at Gingerscraps. Several of them encouraged me to start and support me with their moral support and advice to this day. They are not only my mentors but my friends.

O: The community here is really incredible. I arrived here ten years ago as a CT member and have loved every second of those ten years. When I think about how much I’ve grown, both as a digital scrapper and as a person, I can’t regret any of it. What tools do you use when creating your designs?

J: I use Photoshop. Late in 2022 I started to use some basic functions in Illustrator. I switched to Mac at Christmas time.

O: I’m always trying to learn new things. But I draw the line at an entire, new software system. I’ve been organizing my crafting space for months now so that I can accommodate a Cricut. What an enormous job. Do you have a specific place that’s set up specifically for your design work?

J: I don’t have an official work space. I have a Mac Book. I can work any place. I move with the sunshine in my house. I work in the sun room, at the kitchen table and even outside on the porch. I spend a lot of time in airport parking lots waiting to pick up my long time boyfriend who is a pilot. I work there as well. My computer, planner and idea notebook travel with me.

O: Being portable really makes it easier to be productive, doesn’t it? I couldn’t imagine working in my car though. This next question can be hard to answer… Do you have a favourite kit or collection in the GingerScraps Shop?

J: I Have Overcome, the collection I designed for the March Buffet is my favorite. It’s dedicated to the strength of overcoming things. My oldest daughter passed in March of 2019. She had a tattoo that said “I’m not what I have done but what I have overcome.” The photo of her and her tattoo showed on my photo memories on my phone the day I started to work on the Buffet. The collection was one of the prettiest and quickest collections I’ve ever created.

O: What an amazing way to remember your daughter, although I’m sure it was a painful process. I’m so sorry for your loss. She sounds like someone I’d like a lot. How do you relax? Describe your perfect vacation.

J: My perfect family vacation would be to take my three children, significant others and grand kids to Walt Disney World. Many of my best memories of my children’s childhoods were created at Disney World. My perfect couple vacation a long cruise with a balcony room starting with coffee in the room each day.

O: How did I know your first thought would be family? Made me think about the Disney cruises I’ve seen on Instagram – you could have a twofer! What would you do if you won the lottery?

J: After the obvious of paying off bills, I have a dream of starting a garage for low income individuals to get their cars repaired at. As a long time single mom, car maintenance was always a struggle. Cars I could afford needed work but the work was expensive. Not having a car was not an option living in southwest Ohio, so I always had to pay for the repairs some how. I dream of helping people by removing the fear of that noise in the back of the car costing them a $1,000.

O: OMG, what a selfless dream! I’ve never been a single parent, but I absolutely have lived the used-car-unexpected-repair-bill-how-do-I-pay-it part. It’s funny that I’m driving an eight-year-old SUV that is still in very good condition and rarely have to spend any money on it, but I can’t explain why that is. I told the salesman it was the last vehicle I intended to buy. He laughed. But it’s hauled me, my family, hundreds of bedding plants, tons of soil and mulch and many other things. Are you a green-thumb kind of person?

J: I cannot grow things in my house. I love, however, caring for our two acre yard. When we moved in almost two years ago, I was overwhelmed by the number of trees and flower beds this house had. I have embraced the care of the yard. I relax and forget time when I am out there.

O: Our old house had a huge yard that eventually had 5 separate flowerbeds. There’s something very soothing about digging and pulling weeds. Now we have a very small yard so most of my planting is in pots. Still satisfying. And as I get older it’s nice to garden standing up. 😉 Okay, I’m trying to decide what to cook for supper_ unsuccessfully, might I add. If you could only eat one meal for the rest of your life, what would it be?

J: Pepperoni and pepperjack cheese. So weird I know! It’s always my go to snack.

O: Ooh. Pass the Pepcid please! I used to have a cast iron stomach, but no more. Thanks, COVID. Anyway, if there was one thing you could change about yourself, what would it be?

J: My anxiety and confidence levels. I stress over every decision I make. I’m the poster child for a mountain out of mole hill. I can overthink everything. If you only knew how long it took me to pick out 10 questions and answer them, you would laugh. [Editor’s note: Designers receive a list of possible questions in advance so they can avoid topics they’d rather not address.]

O: Thank you for being a good sport! Before I let you off the hook, let’s remind our readers about what being the Spotlight Designer means… Obviously, it means she’s hosting the so-named Challenge this month in addition to her usual Year of Blessings Challenge. And she’s providing this month’s Daily Download right here on the Blog. She’s gotta be busy! Make sure you check out her Shop.

See you next time!

Filed Under: Be Inspired, Behind the Scrapbook, Creative Style, Daily Download, Digital Scrapbooking Freebies, Feature Designer, GingerBread Ladies Tagged With: Designer Spotlight

Tutorial Tuesday (Photoshop Elements)

Apr

2023

How Do I Know When to Stop? (Editing)

PDF Version : https://bit.ly/3nDFOZc

Last week this comment was left for the tutorial post: “I have trouble judging how far to make these setting changes. Is it simply a bit of practice? Or how can I make better decisions on the settings for these adjustments? Thanks, Lorri” Well, you know my reply would end up taking up the whole page and would end up not meaning much without visuals, so today I’m offering some tips on what too much looks like. Because I’ve definitely gone WAY too far with some of my edits when I was just learning the ropes and made a LOT of mistakes along the way (like saving the edit over the original so I can’t even fix it!). Anything I put particular emphasis on in a tutorial is something I’ve messed up badly at least once… and that answers part of Lorri’s comment. Some of it IS a bit of practice. Prepare for an onslaught of screenshots!

Here’s a photo of the World War II Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia that I snapped when I was there in 2010. I’m going to show you my (new) process for those out-of-the-camera almost-good photos I have and show you one of my serious fails.

The first thing I like to adjust is the lighting. Sometimes that’s all a photo needs. There are a few ways of doing that using the Enhance tab menu, but this one is really simple and seems to give the best results. I’ve shown this before, so let’s review. Make a Copy of the photo layer: right-click>Duplicate Layer>OK or CTRL (Windows)/CMD (Mac)>J. On the Copy layer, change the Blend Mode to Screen then adjust the Opacity until the white balance looks right.

My next step is to use the Shake Reduction… command. This is a newer addition to my workflow; you may remember it from a few tuts back. It was added to the Enhance tab menu with Elements 14, so a lot of you should see it in your tab menu options. (I just ignored it. Sigh.)

Elements decides where on the image it’s going to analyze shake. Most of the time, it seems to just go to the centre of the image. If it chooses an area of the image that isn’t what you’re really hoping to sharpen, you can wait for it to run then choose your own focal area and it’ll run again. Shown also is the default setting for the Sensitivity.

Make use of the sliders to adjust the Sensitivity so the effect doesn’t end up being phony-looking. Don’t rush the adjustment part; it only takes a few seconds most of the time to get the natural-looking sharpness you want. The default Sensitivity setting is where I’ve placed the red bar. Small adjustments can change the way your photo looks quite a lot.

This is an important thing to keep in mind. All of these adjustments are ADDITIVE. Watching your image as it’s affected by your actions is really important to ensure you end up with a result you’re happy with. After adjusting the lighting and the sharpness, I use the Enhance>Haze Removal… (CTRL/CMD>ALT/OPT>Z) command. Haze Removal also adjusts lighting, sharpness and colour saturation.

Here’s an example of an over-processed image. I think it looks fake. As with the Shake Reduction command, there are sliders to control how sensitive the adjustment and how far the process will go.

Get in the habit of ZOOMing in on areas of your photo so you can see up close what’s happening. It’ll help with restraint. I’ve reduced both the amount of Haze Reduction and the Sensitivity to reach this effect.

The shadows are too intense. I used to use Enhance>Adjust Lighting>Shadows/Highlights but have found I have better control using Enhance>Adjust Lighting>Levels (CTRL/CMD>L).

Noooope!! That’s not what I want to see! I mean, I like that the veins in the marble are more present but the highlights are so blown out it looks awful.

This is better. It’s never going to be perfect, but it’s better than the original, so I’ll Save this as Edit_1… just in case I make more changes later.

What can I do with this one?

The lighting is already okay, so I’ll start with Enhance>Shake Reduction…

Ooh, look at how high the default Sensitivity is! Do you suppose that’s a comment on my photography skills?

Better.

On to Enhance>Haze Removal… (CTRL/CMD>ALT/OPT>Z)

The feathers on the bird’s neck look 3D almost, with the sliders all the way to the right.

Up close, those filaments are pretty obvious, and the colours are too bright.

I think that’s better. Most of the time, just small adjustments are all that’s needed.

Oh, wait. That’s not what I want to see! Look at how pixellated -and greenish! – those feathers are.

I tossed that edit and went back to the original so I can show you another way to sharpen without ruining your image. This time I’ll use a High Pass Filter. This option requires a Copy layer. CTRL/CMD>J.

With the Copy layer active, click Filter>Other>High Pass.

Here’s where it’s clear that less is more. For the best outcome, you don’t want to see any colour coming through the filter.

To see the sharpening effect of the Filter, change the Blend Mode to Overlay. You’ll see what I’m saying about less is more as we look at the next couple of screenshots.

Look how awful the grass is! And the feathers look almost green.

When we look at his head, the fiberoptic filament effect is even more exaggerated, the bill looks jagged and everything is just. Not. Right.

Here’s an unretouched look.

And with the Filter on? Ooh nooo!

So let’s lower the Radius on the Filter way down from 12.5 pixels to 2.0. There’s no colour visible through the Filter.

Mm. Better-ish.

It’s much smoother. It’s a good trade-off.

On to Enhance>Haze Removal… (CTRL/CMD>ALT/OPT>Z)

Not bad. Actually, it might be a good place to stop.

It’s still a bit soft, but that’s at extreme ZOOM. As a print, or part of a layout, it’ll be just right.

Side-by-side. Looks better, but not phony.

Let’s revisit the World War II Memorial. That middle one is garbage. See what I mean about fake? I tried to add some colour to the sky, and it’s nasty. The actual marble isn’t that pinkish travesty either. The third one has picked out details not seen in the other two and even with the blown-out sky, it’s overall a better image.

I couldn’t resist just one more tweak on this one. In the Guided Edit>Special Edits menu you’ll find Perfect Landscape. This Edit lets you do a bunch of neat things, including replacing the sky. I’m not sure if this is exactly the right look, but I wanted you to see it. Is this one tut-worthy?

Sorry this was posted a little later than normal. It sort of took on a life of its own!

Filed Under: Be Inspired, Behind the Scrapbook, Creative Style, Digital Scrapbooking, Tutorials Tagged With: Tutorial Tuesday

NEW Buffet @ Gingerscraps!!

Apr

2023

Did you get all the goodies you wanted during that huge sale? Now it’s time for the April Buffet.

Remember any $10 spent in the store gets you this great collab.

Don’t forget to check out the Buffet Bundles. One easy click to add bundles of Buffet goodies to your cart.

I love the spring hues of this month’s buffet! They just make me smile!

Have you gotten a start on the challenges? Complete any 10 challenges and get this kit as a reward.

Filed Under: Buffet, Digital Scrapbooking, GingerBread Ladies Tagged With: buffet, Digital Scrapbooking, GingerBread Ladies

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

Apr

2023

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.

Filed Under: Digital Scrapbooking, GingerBread Ladies, sales Tagged With: Digital Scrapbooking, GingerBread Ladies, sales

March 31, 2023: Fresh Baked

Mar

2023

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.

Filed Under: Digital Scrapbooking, Fresh Baked, GingerBread Ladies Tagged With: Digital Scrapbooking, Fresh Baked, GingerBread Ladies

Tutorial Tuesday (Photoshop Elements)

Mar

2023

Quick Trick: Select SUBJECT

PDF Version : https://bit.ly/3ZGrH2z

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!

Filed Under: Be Inspired, Behind the Scrapbook, Creative Style, Digital Scrapbooking, Tutorials Tagged With: Tutorial Tuesday

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

Mar

2023

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!