Quick impressions from the Photo Marketing Association show

As many of our digital scrapbooking and photography friends know I work for a large photo lab here in Tennessee and have worked in the photo industry for (gulp!) 30 years.  One aspect of my job is staffing or attending trade shows and conferences for the lab and previously for Kodak.  While travel can get old sometimes (see my “been to Vegas again and again” post), I enjoy meeting new customers, catching up with old ones, learning new things, and seeing new products to spark my mind for how I can help my customers’ succeed and grow in their business.

Too bad I wasn’t able to do any of that at this year’s show!

Wow – what a bad show.  And that’s a major diss from someone as positive as me. The show was in Anaheim, CA this year – why? no one really knew.  But it seemed to keep the attendees and vendors away.  I know for us it was much harder to travel to and more expensive to stay.  The show was easy to move around and you could easily get helped in a booth – meaning there was no one there.  And some of the major industry players (Canon, Epson) didn’t exhibit.  I hope that doesn’t spell the death of this once great show.

So on the bright side what did I learn and what did I see?

I learned a fair amount (really emphasized what I had recently learned) about social media, Search Engine Optimization, and how a website can be used to promote and further your business.  I picked up one tip that will help us significantly promote our new site for ordering additional photo gifts and ideas – so that made the learning worthwhile.

We saw and purchased a great suite of software from Topaz Labs. The software has great uses for digital scrapbookers and digital photographers.  I’m working on a review and will post it within two weeks.

 

Kodak used Microsoft’s Surface technology to showcase their products.  It generated a lot of traffic and interest in their booth and made it easy to find out about their offerings.  Here’s a very quick video of me using one of the tables:

Unlike the last few years, there was no scrapbooking booths at all.  I think at one time the  independent photo stores had thought that scrapbooking might be a natural addition to their offerings but I feel both the photo industry and the scrapbooking industry saw it wasn’t quite the right fit and have given up.  I know paper scrappers when they think “I gotta go grab a new kit” aren’t thinking their local camera store. 

So that’s it.  All around a disappointing show.  I’m looking forward to the Wedding and Portrait Photographers International (WPPI) show next week (3/8-3/10/2010) in Las Vegas.  I’ll try and do reports from the show through my Facebook account and might even be able to get in a blog post or two.

I didn’t even get a doughnut…

Tutorial Crop – Paper Piecing! Sponsor Bubblescrap Designs

We welcome our sponsor Mye from Bubblescrap Designs at My Life and Scrap. She’s brought wonderful gifts for you all today, and some prizes too!

We’ll be using her beautiful Cappucchino kit to talk about ways to make your own elements with a digital paper-piecing technique.

Join us at 10pm Eastern tonight in our chatroom http://www.scrappersworkshop.com/chat to get the papers and the tutorial, so you can play along!  If you make an element using the tutorial, you can earn the rest of the kit!

See you in the chatroom!!
Jenn

Quick Tip Tuesday – Lock it!

One of the more overlooked features of Photoshop and Photoshop Elements is the ability to lock your layers!  The one place I use this a lot is when coloring in shapes, or chalking edges on elements.

We have two options – Lock and Transparency Lock.  You can access these at the top or bottom of your Layers palette.  Here’s what it looks like in PSE 8:

Next to the word Lock, there is a little checkerboard, and a padlock.

The padlock is a Layer Lock and will keep you from being able to do ANYthing to the layer.  This is useful at times when you don’t want to mistakenly make marks on a layer, or keep from moving something inadvertently.  You just click on the padlock, and a padlock shows on the layer in the palette to remind you it’s locked.  To unlock, click on the padlock below the palette again to toggle it off. 

The more useful tool is the little checkerboard, or the Transparency Lock. When  you click the checkerboard, a lighter colored padlock shows on the layer in the palette.  Now, you will not be able to alter the transparent areas of the layer, only the layers with pixels!  So you can take a large soft brush and add color like I did to this leaf.  The color will show up only on the shape, and not in the transparent area!

Some of you may accomplish this by CTRL-clicking on the layer thumbnail to select the item, then brushing on it.  This is not a bad way to do it, but sometimes the ‘marching ants’ keep you from being able to see the edge clearly.  I find using the Transparency Lock feature is easier, and gives me a better result!

Give it a whirl, go ‘chalk’ the edges of a journal card, or draw a shape and add some color!  And if you use it in a layout, post it in the gallery for everyone to see

Happy Scrapping!
Jenn

Saturday Scraplift: An Eye on Shapes

This amazing layout by winston at Scrapbook Elements really jumped out at me!  Besides the beautiful colors, and the way the light part of the paper highlights the photo, the unusual shape of the frame really caught my eye!  How creative is that?

I thought this was worth a try to scraplift!  I had a couple of ideas how to achieve the eye shape:

• notice the circle of light blue dots centers the shape
• I thought the top and bottom borders between the flowers could be cut from segments of a much larger circle
• the corners seem to be part of a swirl that had the right curve to complete the point
• the flower clusters do a great job of edging the photo and filling in the triangular corners.

I also like the glittery borders that are almost the same color as the paper.  They stand out without being flashy!  Don’t have glitter elements or a glitter style that’s the right color?  No problem!  Place what you do have on your paper, and press CTRL+U to bring up the Hue/Saturation dialog box.  Adjust the color with your Hue slider (you may have to adjust saturation if the color is too strong or not strong enough, or the lightness slider too) to make the glitter pieces match your paper.

If you don’t have a paper with a light spot in the middle, you could add a vignette (tutorial HERE) to a lighter paper to darken the edges, or use your dodge tool to lighten the center of a darker one.

I wonder if anyone is up to this kind of challenge today? I’ll be in and out (celebrating a certain 10 year old’s birthday) but I plan to give it a go! Can’t wait to see what YOU do!

Jenn

Digital Scrapbookers – Size matters

Ok ladies, stop the snickering.

No really… This is serious.

Size does matter.

The size of your sensor, that is.  Yes, the size of the sensor (the actual “chip” in a digital camera that takes the picture) matters for a lot of things.  What I want to talk about today is how your sensor size affects the depth-of-field you are able to get.

This “bokeh” effect or the shallow depth of field effect is very popular with digital scrapbookers and photographers.  And why not?  Bokeh produces some artistic, unexpected effects and the shallow depth of field isolates your main subject so the viewer’s eye immediately focuses in on the most important part of the picture.  During our digital photography classes we are always asked “how do I do that”?  And it’s really simple – you need to use the shallowest depth-of-field on your f/stop or aperture setting (that would be the lowest numbers.)

And here’s where the size matters.  The size of the chip determines how shallow the depth of field will be – the larger the chip, the shallower the depth of field is and the easier it is to get a good bokeh effect.  So my little point-and-shoot digital camera, in order to keep it small and portable, has a really tiny chip – making it tough (if not impossible) to get a shallow enough depth of field.  It will always be easier and better using a DSLR.  Here’s a real shocker – a typical DSLR set at f/1.4 would need to be set at f/0.6 on a typical point-and-shoot digital camera to get the same look. And I know my point-and-shoot doesn’t go down that low!

So I guess Jenn and I will be buying the shiny new DSLR soon, right?

I don’t think so.

Leave us a comment with your thoughts!

« Later Posts — Earlier Posts »