I’ve had a lot of people ask me personally or via a forum how I print my wallet size photos or how to print a wallet size photos without paying the wallet size price and the extras. How do I do it? Like the below video!

I did the editing in Photoshop but this is a very basic concept and so any photo editing software should be able to resize and drop a few photos into a 4×6 work area. Don’t have a photo editing software? Try Gimp. It’s free! Hope this helps!

Ok… I got into my craft room yesterday. It was only for five minutes but I did make a card. Yeah!!! One more night, I know, and I get my craft room back {::SMILES}.

Here’s another video I want to share. It’s my first M video. I’ve made many videos of her but not one to publish to the world. I thought, since her picture is on almost all my pages and I’m posting them all over the place, why the heck not.

So here she is… the chatterbox. This is what she does everyday, make things up as she goes. This is her very new bike. Grandma and grandpa had to spoil her. We didn’t get her one because… we have no place to ride it besides the garage. We live on 1/2 mile of gravel road. But, they got her one and M’s just super happy with it.

After the bike we played school but somebody was just not cooperating! Ok, have a great rest of the day! More later… hopefully with something else but digital {::SMILES}.

I used a Flip recorder for this. My unit purchased three of them for faculty check-out. I’ve recorded and emailed myself the video using it’s software but uhmmm… I’m not sure where the email is. Lost in AOL land. So far I’m not too impress with the software but the recorder itself is pretty nice. The image is better than I expected it to be. I used iMovie to edit this. I’ll have a better report after I play with it a little more.

Since I wasn’t too happy with the way the video looks, I am adding the Flash version. You need to have Adobe Flash Player, which is free, installed on your computer. Most computers have this already built in. Actually, you’ll probably like this Flash version better than the YouTube/Revver ones. You can resize it and it’ll pretty much keep its clearness. Let me know what you think. I just never did it this way because you have to wait until it downloads fully before you can play it. I might just posting two versions like this until my service space gets full. I think I can fit over 80,000 videos if I make them around this size (6 minutes at 15 megs). Yeah, I have 1,000 gigs of web space. INSANE! I have this site, a personal blog that hasn’t been updated and I donated space to my church and I’ve only use 5,500 megs of space!! My church uses it more than I do for pictures.

So the video… There are a few other things too in the video but if I list them all, my title would be super long {::SMILES}. Some info on the action. The action that you saw will only work AFTER you’ve changed the pen path to the marching ants OR if you use the marquee tool. The reason why was because Photoshop didn’t record my right click when I changed the path into marching ants. That’s also why you might want to create a few actions for the same effect. Maybe you might want to do one for a general image, with nothing selected. Just a picture and change that to a b&w or sepia. Lots of different ways. As usual, contact me if you have any questions. Either leave a comment or use the Contact form that you can find under the Contact menu above.

Some video tuts info: In case you haven’t noticed, my tuts that were uploaded to Revver, they got a little warped after I updated to WordPress 2.5.1. The plugin for Revver was only tested up to 2.3 and after the update an 1/8″ is cut off from the left and the right of the video screen. The height is ok. So, for the most part the tuts are viewable but if there are something that I clicked on that was either to the very left or right, you might not see them well. It seems like no big deal on the video portion but because of the “shrinkage” you now can’t close the ads. The (x) sign is on the bottom top right… on that 1/8″ that’s cut. I’m still messing with it when I have the time. Like I said before, I just like Revver better because my videos still look decent looking even after going through their resizing, decompression, format changing or whatever they do to get the videos posted.

In the mean time, just try to live with it and when I have time, I’ll convert and upload a Flash version of each video. Sorry about that. Besides the video issue, I LOVE my WordPress 2.5.1. If you use the installed version, you should update!

Two in one tutorial. Since I fail to create one last week, I tried but it just didn’t come out right, here’s a combo video.

Before you create an action, decide what you want to record first and then practice. Write down the exact settings (unlike me who just likes to wing it) and then record your steps/technique. You might find yourself buying less and less actions {::SMILES}.

A little story… yesterday I received a call from the Nielsen ratings folks. I was feeling in the mood for a survey so I went through the process. The first question was:

Nielsen: Have you watched a movie at the movie theatre in the last six months
Savitri: No
N: In the last 12 months?
S: Yes
N: I’m going to go through a list of movies and you say or no on whether or not you’ve seen any of them.
S: Ok
N: Something or something
S: Never heard
N: Something and something again
S: Wow, I don’t know that movie
N: Something, something, and something
S: (thinking: finally a movie I’ve heard of) No
N: Something, something, something, and something
S: N
N: Harry Potter - the last one
S: No
S: Hey look, I’ve only seen one movie in the last 12 months. Can I just give you the title and you look it up and mark it for me?
N: Uhmm, oh yeah, sure

One minute later he came back — wow, must have been a list!

After the call, I think the dude was probably thinking, “Wow, weird family.” We don’t have cable/satellite service, we have no Hi Def anything, we don’t download music/movies, we rarely go to the movies, we mostly rent kids DVDs, and I’m on the Internet A LOT.

This is one easy way to recolor. You’ll find many other ways but I’m all about quick and easy {::SMILES}.

After watching the tutorial, if you’re interested in some digi or stamp blog giveaways, please keep scrolling down.

I say part I because this is the easiest pattern you can do — stripes. For the second time I’m using ColourLovers for this tutorial. There are so many cool things that you can do on that site. I’ll show you more later if you haven’t figure them out yourselves yet.

Those who has PSE will also be able to go through this tutorial. You have the pattern and fill option. TFW — thanks for watching!

EDIT: If this is your first visit, don’t forget to check out creating pattern using the pattern sample from ColourLovers. Oh, also, don’t think that you can only pick colors from the swatch. You can use whatever color. I just want to show you how you can incorporate color pallets that you find online — in case you’re stumped or need some visual help.

Before I forget… have you visited Shabby Princess lately? They have a new freebie kit. Check it out, very nice!! Also, Weeds and Wildflowers are having their 1st year anniversary celebration. On their blog they have a mini kit freebie (very nice looking) and it’s only going to be up for 24 hrs. There will be a new giveaway until Sunday, so bookmark them, add them to your rss or subscribe via email. Whatever… but W&W is one of my favorite stores. I’d love to be Gina’s CT/guest {::SMILES}.

Last week I posted some Kuler info and also a one liner on ColourLovers.com. Well, I got to exploring ColourLovers a bit and it’s a really cool place. I found out that it was created way before Kuler and even though Kuler is very nice, CL has a better community and also this thing called patterns. YES, FREE patterns!! This isn’t great new just for digi scrappers, but those who has Photoshop (Elements included), you can create your own background/pattern paper with premade AND free patterns. Once you have your pattern paper, you can either go digital or print it out and use it for your cards, layouts, altered, and more — do whatever you do with pattern paper.

CL isn’t the only place to get patterns. There are many other free ones but this is my newest find and I want to share it with you. Watch the video and see how easy it is to create your own pattern paper from a sample pattern. Keep in mind that if you want bigger patterns, you need a higher ppi pattern sample or in other word a bigger sample. We’ll get to that later. For now, enjoy this.

This is a super easy technique using your eraser and burning tool. Once you’re done with the process, you’ll have something that will look worn. I did this in Photoshop CS3 but I think any software that has an eraser and burning tool will be able to give you the same effect. I haven’t used this technique in a while but I think I’ll try to do something with it this weekend at my crop. If you want to download the image on the left to use in your layout. Please feel free too. Just use the Creative Commons copyright rules when modifying and sharing.

I have nothing new to tell. M was not too happy when I dropped her off at school. She was crying and clinging on to me. Poor baby. Thank goodness it’s Friday.

Happy Friday everybody! Most likely I’ll check back in on Monday. I need to give my family some attention this weekend {::SMILES}.

I think this is a fun technique. You can use it on your photo as my video shows, or you can use this on your paper, alpha, etc. Give your work a dirty/grungy look. Incorporate your dirty/grungy brush for some cool visual (and easy) visual effect. I am almost sure you can use this technique from PSE 4 to PS CS3 on a PC/Mac. On my Mac’s PSE 4, look at your layer palette. Right under the word layer there is a drop down that probably says normal. Next to that is the opacaity. Change normal to overlay and move the opacity and you have it. You can do this in PS too but I like going into the blending mode just because there are more stuff to play with.

Credits:

Texture image: Darknews
Brush: Misprinted Type

Again, all I did was show you the basics. Play around and you might be amazed at the end result. Don’t forget to keep adding layers when you play with the brushes, that way you can easily delete a stroke that you don’t like. Yes you can undo (or delete a step from the history) but there is a limit to history and you can freely move the brush if need be.

My Studio Calico kit came today. I am so happy with it. I think I got a great deal in many ways. The kit is beautiful and I feel like I saved $$ in time. I don’t have to go to the store, stare, not find coordinating items, and leave with stuff I didn’t work. Now I have this coordinating set and by looking at it, I can make about five pages (or more but I don’t like using the same - obvious - stuff over again) and a few cards and/or altered stuff. The downside… the kit is so pretty I am afraid to cut it. Ahhhhh!

It’s 1 a.m. I should go to bed. This post will be available when my video is approved by Revver. Isn’t technology amazing? You push a few buttons and it just works without you being there.

Finally, a tutorial! {::SMILES}

It’s just been a crazy week. Being sick, all of us, and then trying to catch up is always a no fun thing to do. M is still down. Her flu-like illness is gone but now she’s left with an ear infection. Her ear drums, or something minor, in there broke due to her coughs, sneezes, and nose blowing. She said her ear, left, hurt and for the 2nd time today we had to take her to the doctor — the ear wasn’t filled with goop or blood earlier this morning. Poor baby. She should feel a lot better by tomorrow — the Amoxycillin stuff works pretty well on her.

But here’s a video and hope it’ll be beneficial for you. I used a brad for my example but really, you can use this same technique to create chipboard like alphas and more. Try it out!

Also, if you hear some crazy noise in the background, blame it on the dogs. It’s pass their dinner time — they were really trying to tell me by being rambunctious.

Download Converting Color Photo to B&W

Well, I’m experimenting and I think this youtube video will be temporary until I can get my video processed at Revver. For some reason it doesn’t look as good. I also tried running it straight from my server but since I don’t have a streaming server, it clogged up my website. So, here’s the video — kind of blurry. So if you’re not happy with it, you can go to the download version and hope you have high speed. At least for a little while.

There are many ways to do this but CS2 and 3 has this b&w option that’s really nice. I don’t recommend going into Image -> Mode -> Grayscale. You want to keep your RGB status but change the photo to B&W and edit still or go back to color without the hassle. Also, you can do this by going up to Image -> Adjustment -> Black & White but you see how nice the layering system is? I sometimes forget it’s there too but by using it you can remove, make it invisible, go back to it and edit, etc. Give it a shot.

Oh, I didn’t learn this technique on my own. Actually I learned all I know, except a few maybe, from books, online tutorials, school, conferences, seminars, etc. I’ve worked with Photoshop since college (just a hint, I graduated in 1997) so I can’t always reference my resources. Now this B&W technique is new but I can’t remember where I learned it from.