[fertilepress]

digital monday :: preset your favorite document sizes

If you're a digital scrapbooker, you're probably making our pages in "standard" square scrapbook sizes like 12x12, 8x8 or 6x6. But Photoshop doesn't include any of these sizes in the list when you open a new document. Guess what? You can add them yourself. Here's how:

• Select File > New.
• In the New dialog box, click the Preset box and choose Custom.
• Set the Width, Height, Resolution and other options.   

 

• Click the Save Preset button.
• Choose the settings you want to save. I chose them all.   

   

• Accept the name for the preset or change it if you want.
• Finally, click OK in the dialog box.

That's it! Now, the next time you open a new document in Photoshop, your preset will be included in the list.

later...

digital monday :: photoshop elements 6

Seems appropriate to devote today's Digital Monday post to this announcement:

Adobe Introduces New Photoshop Elements & Premiere Elements

Best-Selling Photo and Video Software Feature New Levels of Integration and Creativity

SAN JOSE, Calif. — Sept. 24, 2007 — Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) today announced two major upgrades to its digital photo and video software for consumers: Adobe® Photoshop® Elements 6 for Windows® & Adobe Premiere® Elements 4 for Windows. Tight integration and a shared Organizer, with a common database accessible from either application, allow users to do more with their photos and videos.   Available separately or together in a single retail package, Photoshop Elements & Adobe Premiere Elements software give photo and video enthusiasts more creative ways to organize, edit, create and share digital photos and home movies.

“With video and digital cameras now part of our everyday lives and social networking sites on the rise, people are demanding sophisticated tools to show off their photos and videos,” said John Loiacono, senior vice president of Creative Solutions at Adobe. “Sophistication doesn’t mean complication.  The combination of Photoshop Elements & Adobe Premiere Elements offers a whole new user experience for consumers, which makes sharing impressive photo and video creations much easier and more fun. With access to all photos and video clips from one convenient place and options to export to YouTube, mobile devices and interactive galleries created with Adobe Flash technology, we expect our new products to be high on holiday wish lists.”

Okay, so I have seen this software and it has some great new features with a whole new look and feel. Check it out here!

later...

digital monday :: a request, a giveaway and a tip!

Memory Trends is next week. As I prepare for the show, I'm thinking about the kinds of questions I'll get from the retailers who will attend. They're all trying to figure out how best to incorporate digital scrapbooking products into their store inventory. So, I thought, "What a great question to present to my blog readers?"

So, here's the question:

What digital products would you like to see on the shelves of your favorite scrapbook store?

Everyone who answers via a comment to this post will have their entry thrown into the virtual "hat" to win a special digital giveaway!

Can't wait to hear what you guys come up with!

The tip!

Here's a great tip I learned from Christy, a student in my Doing it Digi class. Just goes to show you that we do indeed "teach that which we most need to learn." Thank you, Christy!

Photoshop Elements is a great tool at a great price point and more than adequate for most digital scrapbookers. But one of the areas where it falls short of its big sister, Photoshop CS3, is in text handling.

You can do a lot of things with Photoshop Elements (PSE), but one of the things you cannot do is kern or track text. Kerning is the adjustment of space between a pair of letters while tracking is the adjustment of space for an entire block of text. Christy found a workaround that will allow you to tightening the space between pairs of letters or blocks of text in PSE. Here's how:

Using the Asian text options

The key is Tsume, which reduces the space around a character by a specified percentage value. The function is designed for Asian characters, but it works for our alphabet, too! Here's what you need to do:

1. First you need to enable the Asian text options in Preferences. Go to Edit > Preferences > Type. (Photoshop Elements > Preferences > Type on a Mac.)
2. Turn on the check box next to Show Asian Text Options and click OK.
3. Now type a line of text in your document window.
4. Select the characters you want to adjust.
5. Click the Show Asian Text Options button in the options bar.
6. Select a percentage for Tsume from the pop-up menu, and press the Enter or Return key. The greater the percentage, the tighter the compression between characters.

   

Pretty neat tip, huh?

later...

digital monday :: photoshop elements 5.0 on a mac?

The post today is (mostly) for the Mac users (and those considering becoming a Mac user) in the audience!

If you're a Mac user, you probably know that the latest version of Adobe Photoshop Elements for the Mac is 4.0 while the latest version available for the PC (as of this writing) is 5.0. Well...what's a Mac user to do? Is she stuck using 4.0 until Adobe sees fit to release an upgrade? Not necessarily. Read on...

You may or may not remember the big uproar a few years back when Apple announced they were switching to the Intel processor. "Horror of horrors!" many exclaimed. "They've drunk the kool-aid and Macs will be no better than PCs!"

Well, the reality is not nearly as dire as many predicted. As a matter of fact, there's a lot of good news if you have one of the newer Intel-based Macs. I, for one, was delighted to find out that I could run Windows applications on my MacBook Pro. This means I can now travel with a single laptop, my trusty Mac, and work in either an OSX or a Windows environment. Maximum flexibility is always a good thing in my book.

So, if this is all news to you and you didn't know you could also run Windows applications on your Intel Mac, this post is for you. Read on...

 

Here's a screenshot of Photoshop Elements 5.0 running on my very own MacBook Pro.

First let's deal with the whole Windows thing.

Number 1...you must have an Intel Mac to do this.

Number 2...you will still have to buy Windows. Apple does not sell or support Microsoft Windows. Just wanted to make that clear.

Number 3...you need to decide how you want to access Windows on your Mac. This is where I enter the picture.

You basically have two choices. One choice involves downloading some free beta software called Boot Camp from Apple. This software allows you to set up windows as a bootable option on your Mac. That means when you turn on (boot) your computer, you can choose which operating system you want to work under...OSX or Mac. Not my favorite choice, but it's free and it works! (It will also come packaged with the next release of OSX -- Leopard.)

 

Here's how Boot Camp it works. Hold down the option key (that’s the “alt” key for you longtime Windows users) at startup to choose between Mac OS X and Windows. After starting up, your Mac runs Windows natively just like a PC. Simply restart to come back to Mac.

Now, that's certainly a solution. But I wanted something more seamless, more elegant and less involved. I wanted to be able to easily move back and forth between Windows and OSX without having to re-boot my computer every time.

   
That's when I found Parallels.

 

Parallels allows me to run Windows on my Mac without having to reboot. This is what I like to call, "the best thing since sliced bread." And it works!

I finished writing my last book while traveling in Europe. The last time I traveled while writing and working, I had to take two laptops with me. One was a Sony VAIO because most of my readers are PC users. The other was my Mac Powerbook because that was my platform of choice.

After I upgraded to my MacBook Pro, though, I was able to finish my book using Adobe Photoshop Elements 5.0 running under Windows on a Mac. All because of Parallels.

:::

Now, at the beginning of this post I said this was mostly for Mac users. Here's the part that's for PC users. If you've always admired the Mac OSX interface but don't want to (or can't afford to) totally abandon Windows, there's a solution for you, too!

Flyakite OSX is what's called a transformation tool. It transforms the look of a basic Windows XP system so that it resembles OSX. You don't have to unlearn Windows to use it, either. It simply "transforms" the Windows architecture into a Mac look and feel. Here are a couple of examples:

Windows desktop looking like Mac OSX...complete with a Dock!

 

And here's the Windows Control Panel...Mac-atized!

I actually think it's kind of cool that while Mac users are learning to embrace Windows, Windows users are learning to appreciate (and emulate) the elegance of the Mac interface. Yeah...I think that's very cool!

:::

Hope you're having a fantastic Labor(less) Day! That's all I got for now.

later...