scrapkittydesign.com » Quick Tip

Quick Tip Tuesday – Multiplication!

bigscrapkitty — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 03:58:54 +0000

I’m working on some old slides – look at this one of my Dad!!

Drop by the blog at Scrappers’ Workshop to see how I fixed it up with two clicks!

Keep your eye on this blog this week, I have a new little kit coming your way!

Happy Scrapping!

Jenn

Quick Tip Time… but first…

bigscrapkitty — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 03:55:08 +0000

We’ve been really busy this week – we hosted a Girl Scout Troop from Michigan that was passing thru on their way to Disney World:

Then the Grandparents and a cousin are here this week, so we’re doing all the touristy stuff…

Mining for Gems at the Lost Sea:

(YES, Twila, we’ll take you there if you want! ) It’s cool, a cave you get a boat ride in, then they have a great little shopping village and for 5 bucks the kids can use the sluice to ‘find’ gems in a bag of dirt!

BUT… despite it all… DH made you guys a Quick Tip Tuesday over at Scrappers’ Workshop!!

Go take a look, and you’ll know why I keep that guy around!!

Happy Scrapping!

Jenn

Quick Tip Tuesday – Now at Scrappers’ Workshop!

bigscrapkitty — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 03:37:51 +0000

Yes, we’re moving the quick tips over to our teaching site ScrappersWorkshop.com! Seems like a better fit there. I’ll still be posting here regularly, and here’s where you’ll find my kits and freebies!

so go check out today’s tips -CLICK HERE- and don’t forget to enter your email addy in the little box at the top right so you can get emails whenever we post a cool Quick tip!

Happy Scrapping!

Jenn

Quick Tip Tuesday – Close em’ up

daddykitty — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 03:13:20 +0000

A super fast tip this week. Ever have a lot of windows open in Photoshop or Elements and wanted to close them all?

There’s a great shortcut to do this. Usually Ctrl-W closes one window; but Ctrl-Alt-W closes all open windows. (Mac users it’s Cmd-Shift-W). I’ve used this to close over 100 open windows (don’t ask why I had 100 windows open…).

Until next week – Keep Scrappin’!

Stan – The DaddyKitty

Quick Tip Tuesday – I see your TRUUUUUE COLORS…

bigscrapkitty — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 02:17:43 +0000

Taking you back to the 80′s – remember Cindy Lauper’s version of that song? Well, I’m always on the lookout for color combos that would make interesting kits – and there are a zillion color schemers out there – but did you know some sites will let you download an .aco (swatch) file? I’m starting to use my swatch palette a lot more – it’s way faster than sampling from a color swatch image.

Here’s a great site I stumbled upon tonight – http://www.colourlovers.com/

And they have a PS button – just click on it and you can download the .aco file!

But what do you do once you have that file? Unzip it and place in a folder labeled SWATCHES with your scrap stuff. REMEMBER where you put it!

In PS, open your swatch window (Window>Swatches) and you will see something like this:

Click on the little triangular arrow at the top on the right – (in CS2 it points to the right, in CS3 it points down as in the example above) and you will get a menu. Choose Load Swatches… from the menu, and navigate to the folder you saved your swatch in. Choose the swatch, and click ok.

in PSE6 – go to Window>Color Swatches and you will get this window:

Click on the little arrow next to “More” in the top right corner, and click on Load Swatch… navigate to the file you saved, and click ok.

To USE a swatch, all you have to do is move your mouse over a color. No matter what tool you have selected, your cursor will change to an eyedropper. Click, and your foreground color will change to the color you clicked on! QUICK and EASY!! You can even rename your swatches to match your kits, share the swatch files with collaborators, and save them for future use.

Have fun – hope to see some of your ‘true colors’ over at www.colourlovers.com sometime!

Quick Tip Tuesday – Find that Font!

bigscrapkitty — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 05:32:18 +0000

I’m working on a slide show for our friends who are celebrating their 20th anniversary tomorrow night – here is the end slide. I actually used three different fonts to put the word art together – and it can be a REAL pain to choose fonts. I’m the kind of person who needs to SEE the type in the font before I can choose, so I have a quick, easy way to do that!

1. Type your text in any font you have handy.

2. Change to the move tool (hit V) and click on the type layer you want to choose a font for.

3. Change back to the type tool (hit T) and go up to the tool options bar – click on the name of the font – it will highlight blue.

4. Use your arrow up or down keys to move through the list of fonts. When you change the font in the tool options bar, you will see the font on your layout change too! That way you can see JUST how it will look on your layout, and know what you’re getting!

And just for a little gift – CLICK HERE for the word art!

Happy Scrapping!

Jenn

Quick Tip Tuesday – Get Me a Blender!

daddykitty — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 01:00:36 +0000

Stan White the DaddyKitty here with a quick tip showing the use of layer blending modes. A Layer What mode?

Yes, a Layer Blending Mode. Blending modes allow the layers to interact in different and helpful ways in both Adobe Photoshop and Elements. Here’s a great example- fixing a faded photo:

Here’s an old, faded picture (source unknown) .

Hit Ctrl-J (Windows) or Command-J (Mac) to duplicate the layer.

Now up at the top of the layer palette you’ll see a pull-down menu. Set it to Linear Burn.

And you get this. Neat! Now we can make it ever better. Hit Ctrl/Command-J again to duplicate the layer again.

Now set the blending mode of the new layer to multiply.

And you get this! A nice, full range B&W that maintains the subtle tones.

Play around with blending modes and see all the cool stuff they can do.

Until Next time- Keep Scrappin!

Stan – The DaddyKitty

Cookies – in a FLASH!

bigscrapkitty — Wed, 28 May 2008 17:24:53 +0000

My youngest, Becky, has been bugging me to bake these lemon cookies from a recipe we found in the newspaper last week, so this morning we got BUSY! (recipe below) But I ALSO had an AH-HA photo moment!!

I wanted to take a photo of Bec with her cookies, but it took a couple of tries:

first, I took the photo without a flash – kinda dark, I COULD lighten it in Photoshop, but let’s try with the flash…

WHOA! That blew her out completely – WAY too strong a flash!

Now what I would have LIKED to do is use a fill flash – where the flash goes off but not at full strength – but alas, this camera does not have a fill flash setting. Hmmmm – What if I put my finger over the flash to attenuate it…

OOH – that’s RED! Hmmm… what ELSE do I have that I could cover the flash with to make it not so bright – oh wait! There’s a stack of paper in the printer right here….

THERE WE GO! I just held a piece of paper from my printer up to the flash, and it diffused and deflected the flash! COOL!

So the lesson from this is, you don’t need to know all the fancy settings on your camera to get great results! There’s a great post on Photojojo about how to make a flash diffuser out of a film can – CLICK HERE to see it.

Now go make your OWN cookies – they are YUMMY!

Lemon Cooler Cookies

from USA Today Magazine, May 16, 2008

Ingredients:

1 cup bleached all purpose flour

¾ cups confectionary sugar, divided

1 tsp finely grated lemon zest

1 stick salted butter, softened

¼ tsp. vanilla extract

Directions:

Adjust oven rack to lowe-middle position and heat oven to 350 degrees F.

Mix flour, ¼ cup confectioners sugar, and lemon zest in a medium bowl. Add butter and vanilla; beat until ingredients form into a dough. Drop cookie dough by generous teaspoons onto a parchment or Silpat lined cookie sheet. Bake until cookie bottoms are golden brown, about 15 minutes. Transfer cookies to a wire rack to cool completely.

Place remaining ½ cup confectioner’s sugar in a quart sized zipper-lock bag. Working a dozen at a time, drop the cookies into the sugar and shake to coat.

Cookies can be stored in an airtight tin for up to 1 week.

MAKES ABOUT 2 dozen Per cookie: 67 calories, 1g protein, 8g carbohydrates, 4g fat (2g saturated), 10mg cholesterol, 0g fiber, 27 mg sodium. (WW points= 2 per cookie)

AND – don’t forget to scrap your baking session!

Happy Scrapping!

Quick Tip Tuesday – But you can’t UNsharpen a knife??

bigscrapkitty — Wed, 28 May 2008 02:03:36 +0000

One of the most confusing things I think is explaining to students how you need to use the UNSHARP MASK filter to SHARPEN an image! Today I came across a tutorial that explains it so well – better than I could hope to! Watch this image to see how you can improve a photo…

just amazing! The PHOTOJOJO blog has this tut today – CLICK HERE to read it. If you don’t subscribe to this blog, and you use photoshop… you’re missing out!

Now go look for all those photos you thought weren’t sharp enough to use and get busy!

Happy Scrapping!

Quick Tip Tuesday – The ScrapKitty’s Famous

daddykitty — Wed, 21 May 2008 01:25:34 +0000

Bet you didn’t know this but Jenn, the ScrapKitty herself, was one of the key alpha testers of Adobe Photoshop. The team at Adobe was so grateful they actually included her in the credits:

Here’s a close up: (and no, it’s not Photoshopped):

Did we fool you? What you just saw is one of the famous Photoshop Easter Eggs – a treat left by the software developers for users to get a laugh at latter. Here’s the trick: it substitutes whatever name you input when your register the serial number – so mine says ..”thanks go the Stan,”

Here’s how to find it and see YOUR name:

In Photoshop (all versions): Go to Help – About Photoshop. The main Photoshop About windows pops up. After a few seconds the credits will starts scrolling – you will be at the very bottom. (To speed up the scrolling hold down your Alt key)

In Photoshop Elements (all versions as far as I know): Go to Help – About Photoshop Elements. And wait for the scroll. The Alt key does the same.

For extra fun, google “photoshop easter egg” and you’ll see tons of results.

Have fun and keep scrapping’!

Stan White – The DaddyKitty