Blogging Goals from Blogging for Scrapbookers(Shimelle.com)

I have so many gadgets to distract me from my real love: taking pictures and telling stories. I swear I would probably be better off with none of these things except my Nikon, of course!! (I am loving Windows Live Writer for helping me write my posts!)

Journaling on Page 2: When I decided to take this course I knew that I would be challenged to develop goals for my blogging and scrapbooking life. I have been trying to systematize my digital workflow for over a year now. I just seem to be missing the mark in terms of feeling content in my crafting life. I have taken courses at Big Picture and I am a Paperclipping Member. I have taken drawing and painting lessons at Willowing, but I just feel like I haven’t found a flow. I take so many pictures that I can’t keep up with creating anything half the time. I spend my time organizing, purging and organizing my pictures. Since getting my iPad last fall I have been trying out apps that will help me get more of my story told and more of my photos out there to share. After all that’s why I take them. They are for me, but also for the people I love to enjoy. My new blog will be another way to share the pictures and the stories that they help to tell in a way that is both meaningful and easy.

A Breath of New Life and Perhaps a Goal or Two

I am taking a class over at Shimelle.com called Blogging for Scrapbookers. I am so excited about it. I have already downloaded the materials from when she ran the course in 2009 and I have updated my blog and made a post. I look forward to meeting other bloggers who love photos and stories and scrapbooking. We'll see what new life this will breathe into my blog.

Can I blog directly from my iPad?

I have been at a crossroads or maybe I should say I have hit a wall. I have done so little scrapping this year, really hardly any since April. I started off the year with so much excitement about the classes I was taking through bigpictureclasses.com, especially Stacy Julian's "Library of Memories". I was excited about learning my new camera and had so much planned. I think I just stopped enjoying it. I loved listening to the podcasts at Paperclipping.com. I love learning about photography, but I am having trouble putting it all together. I figure I have this last bit of effort to do something with my pictures and the stories they document.

Idea #999: I am going to become an expert on using my iPad to digital scrapbook.

I am going to try to do this without using a scrap booking app like Escrap or ScraPad which I find reminiscent of the early days of scrap booking software. I have been researching a lot lately and I have found a few things to help me. But first I had to figure out how to share what I am learning on my blog.

Next time: How I made this layout and how I posted it to my blog!

Location:Here I am on my iPad

All Those Photo Projects Brainstorm List

Because I keep coming up with them and don't want to forget them I will post the ideas swimming around my head right now:

• Photobooks for Michelle, Michele, and Darby
• Photobook for Utah 2010 trip
• Calendars for Kathy, Jean, Mom and Dad, Vickie, Hillary, and Heather
• CD for Jessica of her birthday and sprinkle
• Photo Frames for Mom and Dad

I need to rate, keyword, and purge my 2010 photos.

I have converted Aug - November to Jpgs and stored the NEF and RAW files on both EHDs. The bulk has bugged me since converting and I have decided to shoot JPEG fine with my Nikon. JPEGs are just so much easier to work with.

Working In Raw is Frustrating Me!

The files are too big! I am constantly battling not having enough space. I have a 500G EHD for backups and I am just getting overwhelmed. . . Again!

Steps Again??

1. Upload to Photoshop Elements Organizer (label with date, then pic #)

2. Manually backup to EHD

3. Rate (use F11 to get to big screen view)

4. Delete 0-star ratings

5. Keyword in batch - Who, What, Where

6. Advanced Keyword for Category Drawers - Us, People, Things, Places

7.

When do I print? When do I scrapbook? When do I get to play with my photos because it seems like all I do is upload, purge, rate, and edit. It's too much. Just too much! I never get to just scrapbook with my photos.

Digital Workflow Part 2

I am listening and watching my Library of Memories videos from Kayla Lamoureaux again. I recently returned from a two-week road trip to Utah with almost 2000 photos in tow. My workflow HAS to get better. I found this program for cheap-cheap and decided to give it a try. I am tired of PSE Organizer being so SLOW. Here I am starting over again!

First I have been working on the file organization on my hard drive. I have a folder for each year and a subfolder for each month. I upload photos with their date and number into their month folder. I have to rename lots of files this way-not sure that is a good use of my time.

I moved my pictures from my desktop into My Pictures folder on my laptop and have created a little bit of a mess. I have not been consistent in how and where I saved photos that I had edited or used for projects so things are not tidy. This bugs me to no end. I am reorganizing the files now. I had subfolders by day and found this to be totally cumbersome. I already moved the pics out of those, but I need to delete those folders. This just seems so stupid to me, but I feel like I can't move forward without this basic structure in place and solid.

I realized something recently . . . If I rate my photos first, then keyword, I don't have to keyword so many. That's that photo haystack that Kayla/Stacy are talking about. I have to narrow down the choices. That does not mean I have to keyword EVERY SINGLE PHOTO, just the ones that I might use. I don't even have to delete the ones that I might not use. That is a concept.

Importing: Upload to Monthly Folder
Backing Up
Paring Down Purge pics with no potential
Rating
Do not rate: Duplicates, Not special but don't want to trash

1. Maybe/Details/Overview of Story 
2. Main Idea/Theme/Got to Scrapbook/Focal Point Photo/Represent People, Places, Things, Us, School
3. The Best of the Best

Batch BASIC Keywords to ALL PHOTOS: Who, What, and Where when you download
Who is in this picture?
What are we doing? i.e. Whitney's Birthday, Norwich Fair
Where are we? (This can be a tag that has the gps data attached to it)

ADVANCED Keywords are only applied to 2 and 3 stars. Category Drawer Keywords are also applied to these images.

BACKUP One off site for star-rated photos only!

Paperclipping.com September Monthly Challenge

I haven't submitted anything for a while because I seem to want to spend more time editing and sorting my photos than making layouts! I can always count on the Paperclipping challenges to help me find my mojo. I created this layout with the topic of wide angle photos and my natural surroundings in mind. I am experimenting with layouts that have less "stuff" on them and more photos and words. I love the idea of a big photo used as a background to draw the viewer immediately into the action of this story. It seems to say, "Let's go explore!" As we entered the field that evening the sun was just starting to set and the light was waning fast. I loved the texture of the mushrooms and saw my daughter walking out of the frame as I crouched down to capture its remarkable texture. Again, the photo says, "Hey, wait for me!"

My second goal with this layout was to make it look like I printed the photos on canvas, then laid it out on some cardstock, added the butterfly and took a picture of it. I played a lot with the placement of objects and the painting on the edges of the background photo to create a frame. Although I was trying to keep it simple, I couldn't help but try to see how a visual triangle would fit in. As I added the finishing touches to the title I realized that the buttons, the butterfly, and the scripted text in the title create a visual triangle, directing the viewer into the story. ( I just love this design stuff!! (Hee-hee)) This was so much fun! I think I might have woken my muse!!!

{Melissa Bennett buttons and background papers from "Autumn Memories" (TDF21; thedailydigi.com)}

Summary of PDS011-Lots of Rabbit Holes

There were so many designer names and resources mentioned in this week's Paperclipping Digi Show that I wanted to make a summary of them all. I hope others will find this useful to. If you have listened to the show and I have an error here please post a comment so I can fix it! Thanks, Angie

Show Notes

Digi Tips for Beginners Summarized

•     Get a good feel for the software
•     Undo is your best friend
•     Print out your first few pages
•     Start with Templates
•     Join a community
•     Possible: attend live events
•     Favorite Tools
•     Find Good Resources
•     Ask Questions on the forums

Meetup- Izzy talks about this website for trying to find other digi scrappers in your area.
   
Indispensible Products
Karen:
        Shadow Actions
            Jenn Barrette at ScrapMatters.com (can't find)
            Kristin Rice "Shadows Perfected" 2 kits at CatScrap
            Traci Murphy (can't find - shop at ScrapArtist)
            Flergalicious 
        Kraft Paper
            Ann deJong "ChromaPhobia" (ScrapArtist.com - unavailable when I looked)
            Robin Carlton (can't find)
        Font
            Steph's Printing Primer
        Stitches
            Anna Aspnes
            Lauren Reid
            Syrin         

Aaron:
        Shadow Actions
            Jenn Barrette (see above)
            Krystal Hartley - free, great for light background
            SimplyScraps (Laura Banasiak)
            From Aaron's Blog: Five Resources for Awesome Drop Shadows and Drop Shadows Revisited
        Font
            Gimme Space by Laura Reid
        Stitches
            Tracy Ried's Bad Stitches                  
       His Kit for the bright colors and stitching mentioned by Steph
            Boy Oh Boy

Forums (non-shop related)
    DigiScrapAddicts
    DigiShopTalk
    MyScrapbookArt
    Scrapbook.com
   

Back to RAW

A recent comment by Kayla Lamoureaux got me thinking about the file format of my digital images. She shoots in RAW because she wants to be able to make up for the fact that she isn't a fabulous photographer and RAW gives her more flexibility with her final product. She has just started using LightRoom to organize her files, which I am not ready to do ($200 for the software) so I started looking for ways to put RAW back into my workflow.

When I started getting into digital scrapping more and more I made the decision to shoot in JPEG only. I was finding my workflow to be interrupted by having to convert to JPEG from RAW. It was also slower to shoot in RAW as the camera had to write the larger file to the memory card. JPEGs are universal, but they are lossy. This means that the files are compressed with every save and data is lost  from the file. This bothers me. Having read about the minimal effect of this compression on the quality of photos as viewed by the average person, I decided I didn't want the take the time to convert to JPEG before I scrapped my photos. I also learned that you could edit JPEGs from inside Camera Raw, Adobe's Raw file processor that comes with Photoshop Elements. This made the decision to stay with JPEG easier as I like the flexibility that application offers.

The RAW files are huge. They slow down the camera. They take up storage space on my memory card and on my computer and external hard drive. Not all browsers read them, including VISTA, and Facebook only reads jpeg.

As I have been getting my digital Library of Memories up and running and defining my workflow, I have found that I am rethinking and understanding why RAW might be the better choice. Both my Panasonic Lumix FZ-18 and my Nikon D60 shoot in RAW, so going back is not that hard in terms of taking the pictures. My perception is that the RAW files are giving me more opportunity to improve the quality of my photos. That is also what I hear the experts say about it. I need to find out for myself because the RAW files do require an additional step in my workflow, and one that is potentially quite time consuming.

Here's my assignment:
I recently shot pictures at Weirs Beach in RAW. I discovered that in the RAW format the blown out areas are highlighted within Camera Raw allowing me to make sure I correct that to recover details lost. I am going to take the same picture and convert it to JPEG and edit the RAW file and the JPEG file to see if I can see any big difference. I do need to consider what might be coming in the future. Perhaps there will be software to preserve the JPEGs or to fix the artifacts (what's left behind when pixels are lost), but I don't know about that now. I will post the results of my little experiment right here. Meanwhile go to this video by Scott Kelby and see if you think shooting in RAW is the better choice.

Defining My Digital Workflow, Part 1

Goals for what I want to do with pictures:

1. Scrapbook my favorites to document the everyday, the special, and the insightful.
2. Share with others on Flickr, AllThoseLayouts.blogspot.com, and Facebook
3. Print some for frames.
4. Add to digital frame.

Steps in the process from taking the photos to final product.

As I write this I am using pictures taken yesterday at Wiers Beach. I took about 50 pictures.

1. Take pictures, lots of pictures, lots and lots of pictures. Shooting in RAW??
2. Upload to computer using PSE7 Organizer. Files loaded into folder for date: One folder for each month within a year. Format file name "yyyy mm dd". Add copyright info in upload screen.
3. Keywording, Captioning, and Rating:
1. Geotag Batch while in small import folder. (Where?)
2. Tag for Places We Go/Things We Do-any tags that can be generalized (What?)
3. Find Faces for Tagging (Who?)-this won't get all of them, but it's a start
4. Move through deleting and captioning photos. Checking basic keywords, tag for edits (if a certain effect is in mind), apply star rating
1. 1-star: Might Scrapbook or have some caption
2. 2-star: Great Images that represent the event
3. 3-star: Gotta Scrapbook-The BEST
5. Write metadata to files. (Do this while you are still in the new batch window or else select batch and write. Otherwise, it will write metadata for ALL files.)
6. Show "To Be Deleted" and delete those.
7. Backup to Maxtor. (Maxtor will backup automatically any day that I upload. Make sure to do so before I log off. The files are backed up initially. The original versions are kept in the "History" folder. The current version of the files is in the folder labeled "C" or "D" drive. Once metadata or edits have been made those will be saved in the current folder.)

The last two steps I need to work out:

1. Before any sharing can happen I have to convert files from RAW to JPEG.
2. Upload 2-stars and higher to Flickr-even without any edits-just to get that backup. Any edits can be made later.

I can't upload RAW files to Flickr. When I open them in Camera Raw and edit them, I am saving them as dng - another incompatible file type. Maybe I just export them. I don't know I have to figure this out. RAW definitely gives me more flexibility with the photos and helps me to make up for the fact that I make mistakes as a beginning photographer. 

More work to go!

These are the basic steps for setting up my Library of Memories. Now I have to work backwards by date and/or in 15-minute batches practicing applying these steps. Next I will define my inspiration workflow which will outline how to share these photos.

1.