ScrappingTips

Perfect Prints

Boston and Cincinnati news stations have stories up on their websites with some interesting information on a digital photo printing study that was recently conducted by Consumer Reports.

According to WCPO in Cincinnati "Home photo printing --which was supposed to be cheap and easy -- is not cheap, and for most of us, not easy."

The answer to that quandary is obvious – get your photos printed professionally. But WCPO points out that when Consumer Reports compared more than two-thousand photos from leading stores and online photofinishing sites they found that not all photo developers delivered great results.

 "Most stores use either a Kodak or a Fujifilm minilab. In our test the Fujifilm minilabs provided the best quality prints," Consumer Reports reported, as quoted by WCPO reporter John Matarese.

CBS4 Boston noted that "Printing your digital snapshots at home can actually cost more than getting them printed online or in a store."

"Wal-Mart has Fujifilm minilabs and Consumer Reports says at 19 cents for a four-by-six print, digital photo processing at Wal-Mart is just about the best deal around," CBS4 reported. Costco or Sam's club also got kudos for their photo finishing services.

 I have to admit that I'm pretty blasé about many of the truly magical things I can do with my computer and an Internet connection. But I'm still amazed that I can upload my digital photos right from my computer and then pick them up at a local store within an hour of uploading them. Like science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke said "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

The study is printed in full in Consumer Reports' "Annual Photo Guide," which is in the July issue of the magazine.

 

Fab Filters for Photoshop

When I first started seriously using Photoshop I went filter crazy – plug-ins were my friend. And I wasn't the only one – back when Photoshop came on a few floppy disks (yes, really) it seemed like everyone was enraptured with the program's built in art filters.

But like a pop song that's in heavy rotation on the radio, filters soon got played out. Soon enough the easiest way to make a graphic designer sneer was to use a filter or two in your Photoshop work. That was right around the time when we all suddenly realized that no, the watercolor filter doesn't really make your photo look like a painting. (You can produce effects that mimic watercolors and other real world mediums, but not with a single pass of Photoshop's watercolor filter.)

Happily most people have eased off the rabid plug-in prejudice now, and most figure that filters are fine as long as they aren't used as an end in themselves – that is, special effect aren't ever a good substitute for your creativity. Think of the difference between a well-plotted and acted movie and one that relies solely on splashy special effects to grab your attention – which film are you likely to want to look at more than once?

My favorite filter now, one that I use on a daily basis and the workhorse and creative muse in my plug-in folder, is Alien Skin's Exposure filter. The advertising blurb promises that this set of filters brings "the look and feel of film to digital photography... allowing you to digitally simulate the dozens of film stocks, both color and black and white, and with the size, shape, and color of real world film grain." It does, it works like a charm, and it also has a slew of one-click effects that lets you simulate the look of old photos – from daguerreotypes to the first color films – as well as darkroom developing techniques like cross-processing and pushing. And it includes some terrific digital editing features, letting you correct color, soften a portrait, and boost contrast among other features. All of the effects can be applied with one click, or you can tweak the settings to suit your needs.

Exposure is $199 for the package, which includes dozens of effects for color and black and white prints (Exposure also does great color to black and white conversions). You get a discount on the price if you're a registered user of any other Alien Skin product.

Download a free 30 day demo and check it out – it works on Mac and Windows boxes (Windows users must have at least a 2 GHz Pentium 4 processor, 256 MB RAM and Windows 2000 or Windows XP. Macintosh users must have at least a 1 GHz PowerPC G4 processor, 256 MB RAM and Mac OS X 10.3.8 or later) and you'll need a copy of Adobe Photoshop CS or later, Adobe Photoshop Elements 3 or later, Macromedia Fireworks MX 2004 or later, Corel® Paint Shop ProTM 9 or later to use the plug-in.

I also love OptikVerve lab's Virtual Photographer, which is free for the downloading and includes 50 one-click effects that you can use to apply interesting combinations of film grain, color modification, B/W, soft focus, high contrast and other effects. Every time I use it, and I use it a lot, I'm amazed that OptikVerve is giving Virtual Photographer away for free.

I Dare You

There's more to scrapbooking than just documenting the kids, holidays and vacations – terrific as all that may be. Lots of scrapbookers lately are also branching off into a newish scrapbook style that's based on visual/art journals – a mix of imagery and words that document thoughts, events and personal mental meanderings.

Sometimes the daily round isn't all that inspiring though and we get a bad case of scrapper's block when it comes to laying out our own lives on paper. When that happens I hit the web and look for inspiration. There's plenty of kickstarts for scrapbooks on blogs and websites, most of which comes in the form of "challenges" – someone picks an intriguing topic and challenges others to scrapbook/journal about thatthe chosen subject.

For example, this week over at The Effer Dares blogsite the challenge is to use your worst photos – the bleary, blurry, bizarre ones we all have – in a layout. But that's not all – the challenge is to find a way to make those bad photos look terrific. "Life is certainly not perfect, and so you might not have "that perfect photo" so use the one you got" say the Effers.

At Freestyle the latest challenge is to use found items and your favorite stuff on a page. "Look around your house, your car, your purse -- see what you can find to add to your layout that is just something that you like . use your favorite scrapbooking items, too.. that package of those things that you just love. Use them now, don't save them for later!"

The Digital Memories forum over at Digital Art Quirks has a slew of swell challenges, including making a layout featuring yourself as "Queen for The Day" and documenting weird collections and people (including yourself, if you're sufficiently weird .. and who isn't?). Mixed Media Memoirs latest challenge suggests you make a layout documenting "What I've Learned Since...." And over at "52 Weeks" Jason McHenry has an interesting shadow box project that should appeal to ephemera collectors, and is eminently adaptable to scrapbooking. Jason did one shadowbox a week for a year "using found objects, original art, ephemera, et cetera. A visual diary, of sorts. I kept a detailed journal with an inventory of all of the objects and items in the boxes along with written journal entries for each week."

And Self Portrait is just getting ready to start a new round of challenges, this time aimed at "exploring the psychology of self portraiture, of art, ourselves as artists and maybe even delve into the exciting world of the psychology of colors." Definitely not to be missed.

Three All-Purpose Photoshop Tips

Supersize it
This custom action will let you supersize a standard-size photo with very little loss of image quality. Open a photo. Choose "Actions" from the Windows menu. Click "Create New Action," on the Actions palette, and assign a function key (like F3). Click record. Then go to the "Image" menu, select "Image Size" and click "Resample Image." Switch the measurement unit from inches to percent. Type "110" in the height and width boxes. Click ok. Then click "Stop" in the Action palette. Now whenever you want to size up an image just keep whacking whatever function key you assigned until the image is as big as you want it to be. Photoshop's algorithms apparently prefer to upsize in 10% increments. (I picked up this tip at one of Scott Kelby's Photoshop Pro workshops.)

Photos that Pop

For a perfect finishing touch, when you're finished editing an image in Photoshop duplicate the final image (Layers/Duplicate Layer) and change the new layer's blend mode to "Overlay" then reduce the opacity to 20% or 30% percent. This technique makes many images really pop, but doesn't look harsh or overdone.

Looking Sharp

This Photoshop sharpening technique works with almost every image: choose "Unsharp Mask," from Filters/Sharpen, enter "Amount: 85" "Radius: 1" "Threshold: 4," hit ok. Immediately after the image is sharpened, go to "Edit" choose "Fade Unsharp Mask" set the fade to 100% and mode to "Luminosity." This sharpens only the contrasting data in your image and leaves the colors alone, resulting in a crisper image with no pixilation or weird artifacts. You can repeat the entire process again if your image needs more sharpening.

These tips were originally published in Scrapbook Answers' "Tips From The Pros" feature. I was totally stoked when they asked me to contribute tips to the feature. Me? A Scrapbooking Pro? Cool!

Printing Direct From Your XP Desktop

You can send your digital images off to be printed directly from your Microsoft Windows XP desktop. First open any folder that contains photos and click on "Order Prints Online" (on the left hand side of your screen, third option from the top.)