Scraps Of Mind

The Secrets of Styles

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Guest Post by Melothria.

What is a Style?

A Style or Layer Style, is a range of layer settings and options. So when you choose to add to a shape, for example a drop shadow, a pattern, some color and a bit of emboss, you’ve created a new Style.

You can:

copy this Style to another layer (copy/paste)

save it to use it later, or

save it by creating a new file with a .asl extension. This is a new Style file.

Styles can be saved in ASL file format. ASL files work in Photoshop and Photoshop Elements. I use Photoshop but I found a quick tutorial for installing and using styles in PSE.

One ASL file can contain multiple styles. ASL files are located in the Styles folder of the Adobe/Photoshop/Presets folder.

Styles appear in the Photoshop Styles palette and if you don’t see it on your Photoshop screen, you can make the palette visible by clicking on Styles in the Windows menu. By default the Styles pallette is set to appear next to the color palette on your Photoshop screen.

Photoshop comes with default styles already installed. If you click on the little downward arrow top-right on the styles palette, you can choose to load and try some styles.

For example, if you are on a layer (ie the layer is active) on which you have typed a sentence and you click on a style, it will be applied to your text.

Have you got ‘Styles’?

The Internet is full of little (and big) places where you can find Styles for free. You can download ASL files thatwill generally contain several different Styles. Place your ASL file in the correct folder (described above) and then load the Style you want to use in your software.

Unfortunately these free Styles are most often aimed at webdesign and they are as cute as… the default Photoshop Styles…

Digital Scrapbooking online stores offer Styles that will enable you to add beautiful effects on your elements and texts. Using Styles, you can add a wide range of effects to your elements and texts like glitter, metal, paint, reflections, glass, textile and so much more.

You could also play with your layer’s options yourself, modify all settings (and there are a lot) and save your work when you’ve made something you like. You can then share your ASL files with your friends.

Create your own Style

Let’s say you’ve played for a while in the layer options and you came up with a beautiful effect on a shape, it doesn’t look like anything special but it’s beautiful or maybe, you’ve managed to create some very realistic effect.

What you have to do is:

While being on the layer on which you have set the options for this new style, go to the styles palette and click on ‘New Style’. You will be asked to provide a name for the Style and choose if you want to include in your styles the layer effects and blending options or not. You have saved your style.

If you have made several new styles, you might want to save them in an ASL file. Make your own ASL file by clicking on ‘Save Styles’ and choose to save in the appropriate Styles folder.

Hope you found this helpful.

Scraps of Mind would like to sincerely thank Melothria for this Guest Post. Melothria runs Digital Arts Cafe where she shares her fabulous digital scrapbooking creations (including great freebies).

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Great Photography Is About 30% Camera

Guest post by Kayla Lamoreaux

I am excited to be a guest author today here on Scraps of Mind. With Karen on vacation it seems I can talk about whatever I want, right? Well I suppose since you all are used to excellent content I better be on my best behavior. I thought I would share with you a few ideas to think about the next time you pull your camera out to shoot a photo.

First things first - a great camera doesn’t guarantee a great photo. I feel so sad when I visit online photography forums and people write messages something akin to this – “I just can’t wait to get my digital SLR – then my photos will be great.” As if the secret to a great photo is hidden inside the nearest SLR. Believe me, it isn’t and I have plenty of bad photos to prove it! There are definitely some advantages to an SLR – but aside from a larger lens aperture and camera release the differences between an SLR and your point and shoot can be minimal if you learn to compose your photos artistically.

One of the most important things to look at when shooting a photo is composition. The more you practice at it, no matter what camera you use, the better and more instinctive you will become – eventually it will become second nature. There are a few things to remember – and sometimes they are best evaluated by looking at photos so I will share a few of my good and not so good shots to illustrate my point…

When shooting landscape scenes – many a photo is shot with the horizon level dead center – case in point….

In this photo I was trying to capture the lens flare and trail of our boat in the water. The problem? My horizon ended up dead center in the photo. When the horizon is dead center, the eye looks at the photo and doesn’t really know where to go – you lose the focal point!

The fix? If you want the focus on the sky (sunset shots, clouds, etc.) Move the horizon down. If you want the focus on the ground – move the horizon up. You can see in this shot I have redeemed myself somewhat (still wish it was a clearer day…) I wanted to focus on the lens flare and clouds so I moved the horizon down to draw the eye upward in the photo.

The Rule of Thirds is one of the most basic rules in photography. It is always worth a review – basically it says that we should divide our photos into thirds vertically and horizontally (think tic-tac-toe). The intersection of the two horizontal dividing lines and the two vertical lines create four points – each of which is a good location for a center of interest in a photo. For you visual people like me – here is an illustration –

You can see that the baby’s face (where I want the eye to go to the focal point) is dead-on for the rule of thirds. But what about the photos that aren’t? There is an alternative way to place your center of interest and that is by dividing the photo into four equal quadrants and then finding the center of each. Here is an example with the same photo – you can see they are similar but a little different…

Both of these composition rules give you a focal point that is dead off-center. So if the rule of thirds or quadrants seem too technical, just remember not to center your photo – and don’t be afraid of quiet space in a photo! Also, some of your cameras may have a grid option for the viewfinders so as you are composing the photo, you can put your focal point right where it needs to be….

The last thing I want to touch on today is the importance of color value contrast in a photo. This is why many a good photographer captures their best photos early in the morning or later in the afternoon in the hours just before sunset. The sun casts a golden light over everything that is really beautiful. Another great time to shoot is after a rainstorm in the early or evening hours – the water in the air picks up more blues and greens, making landscapes seem more vivid.

I learned this lesson the hard way a few weeks ago while on an airboat trip – I was surrounded by thousands of American Avocet birds – and because the water was gray, the mountains in the distance were brown and the sky was hazy – my photos are really dull. (Getting on an airboat in the wildlife management area was a treat – and I didn’t get to pick my time of day – so I really shouldn’t complain – but knowing the photo that could have been…)

Here is the same type of bird – in the early morning hours – from left to right you have a marbled avocet, American avocets, and an American pelican. The vividness of the colors in this photo really gives it more impact. This is why the school photographers tell us to have our children wear vivid colors on school picture day – it really does help to make the photo look better!

I hope these tips have been helpful. I want to thank Karen for letting me guest write. If you would like more photography tips and tutorials, check out my blog at The Legacy Lady

Scraps of Mind would like to sincerely thank Kayla for this Guest Post. Kayla writes The Legacy Lady blog where she shares her great photography tips and her passion for leaving a scrapbooking legacy.

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The Story of a Scrapbooking Orphan

Hello. My name is Seona, and I’m a scrapbooking orphan.

It’s been a few years since Mum started scrapping. I suppose it started innocently enough: she came back from an overseas trip and decided she wanted a way to capture the photos and memorabilia (the flat ones, anyway) in an attractive and easy-to-view package. So she got some cardstock and glue, and for a couple of weeks the dining table was covered with paper and photos and the floor below it was covered with scraps and offcuts.

I’ll admit that the results were pretty impressive, especially since Mum’s always maintained that she’s not a creative person. But it turned out to be only the beginning. It’s true that a strong obsessive streak runs in our family, but this one was slowly taking over the house!

The years have only seen this obsession grow. I’ve watched with mounting trepidation as she scrapped her way through my life (I much prefer my baby photos to anything taken from about age 15 onwards). I’ve watched as paraphernalia and magazines slowly took over the study, a process which greatly accelerated once I moved out! I’ve watched as she moved into the world of hybrid and then (mostly) digital scrapping, and helped now and then with the technology-related queries. And lately I’ve watched as she took it to new levels by blogging about it.

I must confess to having fed the addiction from time to time, though. Mum’s never been an easy person to buy presents for, so once I found out that gifts of embellishments and papers and paper-working tools would be happily received, it opened up a whole new avenue for gift giving! Who could resist that?

From my point of view, it’s been an interesting learning exercise for both of us: Mum learned that she’s a lot more artistic and creative than she’d always thought, and I’ve learned a whole lot of new jargon and just how many photos of me are in existence.

Hmm… not so sure about that last one being a good thing….

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My ScrapBlogging Journey - Part 1

3 Tips for Better Titles

… on your Scrapbook Layouts

Guest Post by Melothria.

It was a great challenge for me to find more eye-catching and meaningful titles for my layouts and to make them look like… titles! Until I had the opportunity to discuss this with a long-time paper scrapbooker friend. Here are the suggestions I got from her for developing creativity on titles, the result of 3 hours critiquing a selection of my layouts!!

1. The title is not just descriptive.

Instead of writing the name of the place you went to or the event that you’re scrapping, “think twice, look beyond the obvious, digress, use a pinch of salt” I was told! Let’s take an example:

I spent an afternoon at a Basketball stadium to watch my young neighbour play. I wanted to offer him a layout with pictures of the game he had won and at first, I came up with the following titles: ‘A Game to Remember’, and ‘And the Winner Is’.

Of course, I thought it was still better than ‘A Great Basketball Game’ but I was told by this lady, who’s been scrapbooking for 5 years, that I really had to look below the surface of things to add a slice of irony. After a few minutes, spent considering, I came up with ‘Beware of the Champion’ and after more consideration, my final choice was ‘Tony Parker’s Worst Nightmare’. My little neighbour was delighted!

So this final title doesn’t use the words the viewer is expecting to see regarding the pictures I have used, like basketball, win, game, champion etc.

2. The title doesn’t say it all.

I was also told to create titles that make the viewers want to look closer at my layouts and also read the journaling. Let’s take another example. This might help for when we do portraits of people we love and there is no special event to scrap. I will not write ‘Stacey’ or ‘A Wonderful Girl’. Nor I will write ‘My American Friend’ on this layout I am doing for my wonderful American friend Stacey

So to think this through more carefully, I can:

• think about the word that best describes her. She’s generous. Of course, I am tempted to write ‘The Most Generous Person in the World’ or ‘Generosity’ or ‘A Very Generous Girl’. But with a little distance, after being told that giving, as in ‘Do You Ever Stop Giving?’ was still a boring title, I came up with ‘No Bounds’ as in ‘Your Generosity Knows No Bounds’,
• think about what she holds dear but I will not just write ‘San Francisco’. I came up with a title like ‘Soon’ as in ‘Soon You’ll See San Francisco Again’ and ‘Flowers in Your Hair’ (and this last one was the one that I ended up choosing) and
• I can think about turning negative things about people I know into positive. So I can think about my friend’s worst flaw, which is laziness without any doubt, and I would have the following title ‘Laziness Makes People Beautiful’

So the final title here, not only doesn’t use the words the viewer is expecting to see but says something more, something that the pictures do not necessarily say.

3. The title surprises the viewer.

It doesn’t take long to get the distance needed for better titles and really hit your viewer’s eyes. If you think twice, without that much consideration, you often come up with a thing called a synecdoche, which is a rethorical figure of speech that consists in using a part of something to represent the whole (as the law for police officer), and this apparently works for most scrapbook subjects.

Let’s use some examples for a week in Scotland, a friend’s wedding, an evening at an Indian restaurant and the day I was reunited with my cats.

• ‘By the Loch Ness’ was already a better title, I thought, than ‘Our Week in Scotland’. After thinking of a part for the whole, it has turned into ‘Looking for Nessie’; Nessie being that part of the whole.
• ‘A Wonderful Wedding’ after thinking of a part for the whole, has turned into ‘Yes, I do ‘ (this was my favourite moment of the whole week-end, when I cried!)
• ‘We Love Indian Food’ after thinking of a part for the whole, has turned into ‘I’ll have a Tandoori’

Now let’s have a look at a layout, to sum it all up. The little girl is my cousin, who took care of my cats while I was away. This layout is about a little girl taking care of a fat cat for several months, not only is he not her cat but he’s not a nice cat and spends all his time eating.

• I didn’t use the first words coming to my mind: little girl, brave, kind, fat, cat, care (just a flat description)
• I didn’t use the first words I was tempted to use to convey the idea like : A Big Hearted Girl (no distance at all)
• I didn’t use the ideas following the first ideas like: Cats’ Best Friend and so on (no additional information, no surprise).
• So it’s Who’s the Lucky One? which has all the elements for a great title.

And if you’re still struggling to come up with some innovative titles, there’s a great tool over on Hummie’s World that can help you out.

Thanks for reading, finding a nice title is one of the most difficult things for me when I scrapbook and I hope this has helped a bit those who find it difficult too!

Scraps of Mind would like to sincerely thank Melothria for this Guest Post. Melothria runs Digital Arts Cafe where she shares her fabulous digital scrapbooking creations (including great freebies).

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Would you like to get extra mileage from your digital scrapbooking kits?

Do you want to create new and different looks from the elements in your stash?

The Scrapbooking Edge Tutorials will show you how. Click here to find out more.