Continually Amazed by Photoshop

Until I learn to be a better photographer, there's Photoshop CS3!

Here's a good example of NOT having my digital camera's white balance set correctly for an outdoor photo:

But after just a few clicks of the mouse using the Curves tool I've got this:

All I can say is "Wow." Oh, and "HOORAY FOR PHOTOSHOP!"

ShaZAM'n my Photos

Here's why I love blogs...people share so much COOL STUFF!

The English Geek wrote today about a new, quick & easy Photoshop technique that she'd found at Jessica Sprague's blog. Jessica calls it "ShaZAM" and it really makes the colors POP!

I decided to try it right away, on the above photo of my cousin, Stacy's, youngest son, Nick, during a swimming lesson. This next photo shows the result:
Wow!! The funny thing is that I thought that the original was a perfectly fine photo, but the enhanced version has much better color and contrast. I love this technique and am going to make a Photoshop Action for it becauseI'm going to be using it a LOT. My custom-designed digital scrapbook clients are going to love it, too.

Thx, Jessica!

Scrapbooking in China

At the moment I am in Luoyang City, China, visiting my son, who teaches English at a university here. I'm having a marvelous trip -- this country is really unbelievable. Opulence and poverty side by side with poverty, of course, winning out in sheer numbers. If you are interested in seeing some of my photos and reading a bit of my travels here, please visit my personal blog; www.debztalkin.blogspot.com.

As far as I can tell, no one here has heard about traditional scrapbooking, let alone digital, so it's really hard to explain to people what I do for a living! I been a special guest in my son's classroom on several occasions and we have been showing photos of him as a little boy, places of interest in America, and even one or two of my digital scrapbook pages. They especially love this one of my two cats.

In spite of the title of this posting, I'm not actually doing any scrapbooking here in China. I didn't want to bring my laptop so I don't have my Photoshop program. I am going to go home with TONS of photos, however! If I scrapbooked my China photos full-time 'til the end of the year I wouldn't be able to do them all, so I'm going to have to be very picky about which pictures to use. My son and I are both shutterbugs so, between the two of us, we will have literally thousands of photos!

I can't wait to get started on a travel album but will need lots of tips and ideas. If any of you have done travel pages I'd love to see them. Please leave a comment and a url where I can view them. THX!!!

Scrapbooker for Hire, Scrapbooking for Others

Ahhh, the magic phrases that seem to bring new customers my way. Gotta love Google!

Lately, I've had some more unconventional requests from people. Several have called wanting advice on starting up their own digi-for-hire business. I'm only too glad to talk to them and share what I have learned as I've organized and built my little business. I believe there is more than enough work out there for lots of scrapbookers for hire.

Another lady has requested tutoring in PhotoShop Elements so that she can do her own digi-scrapping. We will have our first telephone lesson today. I use PhotoShop CS3 so the menus and such are going to be different - I'm hoping that won't be too big an issue. I have used Elements in the past so I hope I can remember enough to make the tutoring worthwhile. This very nice lady from Massachussetts will be in San Francisco next month, accompanying her husband on a business trip. Since I'm only 35 miles from S.F. we are going to take advantage of the close physical proximity to get together in person for hands-on tutoring. It will be great to meet her, too!

I find a lot of inspiration for my page layout designs from magazines. Recently I came across an ad in a women's mag (I think it was Ladies' Home Journal) that I based the following layout on. It's probably not everyone's cup o' tea, but I like it. Now if I could just figure out where to put a title and journaling!