Have you ever packed for a scrapbooking retreat? That question translates into do you have a lot of stuff? Then the next question is how much does one take?

So we need to back up and assess what projects are needed to work on… and I knew the answer to this one.

4 paper albums (and a couple more that need journaling) - sigh

I’m waiting for that magic day when I will sit down & journal them all at once!  uh huh That’s what I love about digital scrapbooking, the journaling is done with the page.

So in looking over my unfinished albums, I decided to take three of them. And I have a milk crate of paper (but I did take out 1/4 of it). Then I pulled out the rubbermaid tub & found some blank pages. I was a Creative Memories consultant for awhile & umm have supplies. So I only have 3 items - but they definitely exceed the weight limit in true scrapbooking style! My husband will need to help carry them upstairs. Maybe he’s right about ebay?!!

Our retreat is at a resort & there will be 8 or so. My sister-in-law & I are driving together. Only two people can go in our car because of the ’stuff’ factor. Oh, I’m bringing my flat panel for my sister to set up for me & my 2 EHD’s. She set them up at Christmas, but I didn’t finish the file transfer. (I’m really not as geeky as you think!). Funny story on that - when I said that I was joining ACDSee a friend said, “It couldn’t have happened to a better geek”. Ahem, that’s a compliment, I think?

This is our fourth retreat. It’s a great way to scrapbook without interruptions & leave your ’stuff’ out for days. We bring our own groceries & rotate cooking/cleaning duties.  The menu is decided upon in advance. Heidi had talked about the wiki she created for this last one. Let us know if you’d like to hear our favorite group meals. We eat pretty healthy! And then there is the beverages. My life has been so hectic the only thing I put on the meal list was Margaritas. Don’t worry though - they will let me eat. At the last retreat, I gave away stickers quite liberally. And I remember doing it! But the next morning the girls asked if I wanted them back…LOL so it must’ve been pretty funny to someone.

I’m excited because my best friend whom I haven’t seen for over a year decided to come! So we’ll have our usual giggly time. We can laugh about pretty much anything. We got in trouble on a retreat because we were giggling too early. Heidi may have to tell you about the 9 am rule. Her mother-in-law & I are up at 7 though… because we are.

Do you go on scrapbooking crops & retreats? Have fun stories to tell? Blog about them & link in our comments - do tell!

hmmm I bet I could blog from the retreat! It just may happen. We needed internet so we can keep track of the forums. It’s like milking cows.  Heidi & I grew up on a dairy farm, so we’re well aware of the 24/7 commitment. But you may notice us just a little more quiet than usual….

I just wanted to point everyone over to DiscTalkRadio to hear the latest Hullabaloo show. Patti Knox and I had a long conversation this summer about ACDSee Photo Manager and ACDSee Photo Editor.

In the 45 minute conversation… Yes! 45 minutes, I started listening to it late last night and it went well past my bedtime. So in the 45 minute show, I talk about how Connie and I got started with using ACDSee, a few highlights of ACDSee Photo Manager and some tips, a few highlights of ACDSee Photo Editor and where to find helps & how to’s for it.

Here are some of the links to what I talk about in the show:

Photo Manager:

• Organizing with ACDSee (General Overview)
• Organizing Tutorials (All the tutorials)
• Using Organizing Styles
• PNG Files: Want to view white png files?
• Default Photo Editor: How can I get ACDSee Photo Manager to automatically open all my images in my photo editing program?

Photo Editor:

• Creating with ACDSee (General Overview)
• Creative Tutorials (All the tutorials)
• ACDSee Photo Editor Built-in How-tos
• Four Season Bonus CD:

Directions to hear the show:

You need to register at DiscTalkRadio

Once registered, login and go to Shows | Hullabaloo

(updated…  Go to Show |Archives, scroll to bottom, click on ACDSee)

At the bottom, you have to wait for the audio to load (it’s huge) and then click play. If you don’t see it loading (white bar turning grey), click on download and hopefully this will start it loading.

Printing:

AdoramaPix is now printing 12 x 12’s on metallic paper! Cost is expensive but if you had a special layout it might be worth it.

Costco is now showing that they print 12 x 12 images. It’s the same price as 12 x 18 images at $2.99. The benefit is you don’t have to figure out how to put 3 layouts together to print a 12 x 18 page.

SB To Share has reduced a few of their prices but increased shipping and handling.

Scrapquick has also reduced their prices but increased shipping and handling.

Winkflash is printing 10 x 10 images for $3.39. They are also offering customize photo book covers for $31.95. Winkflash also raised their prices on shipping for their books. And lastly they have a $19.95 flat-rate book sale going on. A flat-rate sale means you can put as many pages as you want and the book will still cost $19.95. Only available on the classic hardcover 9 x 12 book.

BellaScrapbook is a newcomer to this market.

Bella Scrapbook offers an affordable solution for Quickpage selection and printing. We print on Archival photographic paper that will last for many generations. Your pages will be beautiful & vibrant showing all the details on your print.

Dotphoto has 10% off order plus 50 free prints for signing up:

• Get 10% OFF your order with coupon code PHOTO10OFF

Heritage Makers raised the price of the 12 x 12 books by $5 to $79.95 and Beginning October 1, 2007 all books will include 21 pages.

Kodak has a new Martha Stewart book

Lulu

Has increased their prices for their photobooks but they also are offering a new improved interface. Their description:

To celebrate the introduction of Lulu Studio™, as the web’s premier Photo Book building application, we’re also happy to announce a higher quality photo book print product will to going along with this release as well. The Photo Books coming out of the new Lulu Studio™ will have better color reproduction and clarity resulting from the latest state-of-the-art digital printing.

MyPublisher

Is offering new book jacket covers for the photo books:

Photo Book Memories

Has increased the cost of their Photobooks by $20 each. So a 12 x 12 book is now $100 and a 8 x 8 book is now $80.

Shutterfly Prints

Offering new 8×8 & 12×12 Scrapbook Page. Cost is $6.99 for 12 x 12 pages and $3.49 for 8 x 8 pages.

HP Snapfish:

Has a great deal on Photo Books but you have to hurry since it expires Oct 1.

50% off Photo books! Coupon code: FALLBOOKS

Sony ImageStation

has closed. They suggest transferring any photos you may have to Shutterfly.

Top Line Creations

Have REDUCED their prices for their books. See the link for current prices. They also have some cute board books for children. A great present for a special child:

WHCC

Did you know you can create small spiral bound proof books!

I updated my resources at my website:

My sister-in-law stopped by today & mentioned that she had seen my photos from yesterday’s post on Photo Walking. Isn’t that cool that she reads our blog?! *waving at you, Nancy!* She’s going with us on our scrapbooking retreat next weekend & is great fun!

She mentioned that she had downloaded ACDSee Photo Editor & was playing with it. She was excited that she had done some creative things. But she expressed confusion about some things. In talking to her I realized that she was using the How-to’s that it comes with. So I wanted to link her (& all of you) that are using ACDSee Photo Editor to our resources here that are specifically for Digital Scrapbooking.

Digital Scrapbooking How-to’s - installed directly into ACDSee Photo Editor

ACDSee Photo Editor Tutorials - Heidi & I have written all of these for you!

If you’d like to request something - please ask.

• Your First Layout in ACDSee Photo Editor
• Basic Steps to do Common Scrapbooking functions in Photo Editor
• Using Templates in ACDSee Photo Editor
• Color Isolation in ACDSee Photo Editor
• Photo Extraction in ACDSee Photo Editor
• Paper Tearing Templates in ACDSee Photo Editor
• Threading Ribbon through a Buckle in ACDSee Photo Editor
• Using Text with ACDSee Photo Editor
• Popping Images out of Frames with ACDSee Photo Editor (Out of Bounds effect)
• Recoloring Elements or Paper in ACDSee Photo Editor
• Drop Shadow with ACDSee Photo Editor
• How to blend two images in ACDSee Photo Editor
• Colorizing a brush (png file) in ACDSee Photo Editor
• Moving objects in ACDSee Photo Editor (blog)
• Make a Paperclip Look Realistic (blog)

Download Trial of ACDSee Photo Editor: ACDSee Photo Editor $34.99 for previous customers and $49.99 for new customers.

My family thinks that I spend a lot of time on the computer. In the past between my work & this website it was probably true. Too much of a good thing is bad. So I’ve resolved to make some changes. Today I tried the concept of photo walking which I had first seen on Hummie’s blog. And she has a Facebook group too.

When I saw Thomas Hawk’s Principles & Guidelines for Photo Walking I wanted to share them with you. He has some great ideas & his photos are incredible.

Then today I saw a link to the America at Home project that I had read about. They have neat challenges that may inspire you or give you ideas for activities for your forum members. They have a list of Pro Photo Tips that are very helpful!

So would you like to see the results of my photo walk? It was a gorgeous fall day here in Minnesota. I took a book out to where my family was working/playing & enjoyed some time outside minus the computer! There is hope All of these were processed in ACDSee Pro 2.

This is my favorite photo of the afternoon & they don’t even know I took it! I like the shadows of the leaves on their backs.

  I love ladybugs! and this one sidetracked my reading.

My Canon S3IS totally rocks with macro! I love it! While watching the ladybug I noticed that she crawled up to the top of a leaf, then back down, on to another leaf. Back up to the top & down again. Is that representative of life?

  I used the shadows/highlights tool in ACDSee Pro 2 to lighten this photo. It’s maybe not the best photo, but the parts underneath the ladybug are pretty amazing. Do you like the photo or no?

  This is my husband’s deerstand. It is insulated with electricity & he’s adding on to it. Deer hunting is a cultural thing here in Minnesota. Guys spend hours in preparation in the fall in anticipation of a few days in November. The original was a bit at an angle, so I used ACDSee Pro 2 to straighten it.

Do you go photo walking?

I am excited to announce that on Monday, I will begin a new position as Community Manager for ACD Systems! It is a wonderful opportunity for me to expand my support of their products & community. I will also be able to follow my passion in exploring social media, it’s tools, the various aspects of social networking in depth and web strategy.

ACD Systems is an industry leader in digital imaging systems. They have many great products: ACDSee Photo Manager (available in both standard and professional versions) is my favorite photo management program for organizing, enhancing and sharing digital photographs. ACDSee Photo Editor offers creativity that’s unbelievably easy. Canvas combines all the features of other graphics editors, technical illustration programs, and publishing tools, enabling users to create professional and precise images and graphics, and a superior Web presence.

For almost a year, my sister & I have been creating third party tutorials, videos & plug-ins that are available at our site at DigiScrapInfo.com. We have provided tech support & connected users to ACD when necessary. I have utilized our blog for fostering community, exploring creative marketing strategies, and software solutions to make everyone’s busy lives easier. Recently I’ve helped our community explore social media & its tools as avenues to maximize their hobbies & online businesses.  In this new role I look forward to communicating your needs as digiscrappers & photographers to the company for new features & improve product functionality. Together we can make great products even better!

My responsibilities will be:

Connie Bensen will serve as Community Manager for ACDSee. In this role, she is the “voice of the customer,” maintaining a constant dialog with photographers and memory keepers to ensure that the company’s products and services are directly in line with the needs of the people who use them. This conversation is fostered through regular engagement in community events, as well as her enthusiastic participation in online social networks. She also shares her passion, ideas and discoveries related to digital scrapbooking and photography through the ACDSee blog.

My blogging will continue at each place as it has been. I will continue teaching & sharing with my sister at DigiScrapInfo.com This blog will be for My Conversations, a place to explore ideas with everyone. The ACDSee blog will continue to be a group blog.

I have so many people to thank!

• Jason Kiwaluk - who introduced us to & got us hooked on SEO & utilizing social media
• Heidi, my sister - of course! I keep telling her she’ll have a city built on the web soon & now she’s building for other people - you go girl!
• My staff that I’ve just left - thank you for your support & I’ll come & use your wireless that I pushed for for so many years!  Love you guys!
• Sue, Cam, Nav, Paul, & Gen - you guys are the best & I look forward to working with you!
• The digiscrapping & blogging communities - thank you for teaching us so much & Heidi & I look forward to continuing to give back!

(Byline says Connie but it’s me Heidi talking.  I need to change users so that I could add to the wiki series.)

A while ago, Connie and I introduced you to Wikis. Have you found a use for them yet? We have and I wanted to share with you. It’s rare that I share my personal side but Connie keeps telling me to give in and share, so here it is a personal story from me with how we used a Wiki and what it led to.

First of all, Connie and I live over 200 miles apart. We talk a lot and say goodnight to each other every night over instant messenging, but we only see each other a few times a year. But a few years ago, we came up with the idea of doing scrapbooking weekends and invite family/friends to come with us. After planning these a few times, we are getting pretty good at it. The first times we met in hotels but found we were space constricted and ordering pizza for all meals isn’t realistic. Since then we rent places that have full kitchens, multiple bathrooms and many bedrooms. So besides planning when, where, who, we also have to plan what to bring for scrapbooking supplies and meals. The first few times, Connie, myself and my mother-in-law had a zillion emails going back and forth planning meals and who brings what groceries. The second time, we planned meals and the person that drove the least did the grocery shopping for all. This time we have eliminated the emails (or the majority of them) and created a wiki to organize our weekend. Take a look: http://mnscrapretreat.pbwiki.com/ We are finalizing plans since we are going next weekend (in 6 days, yikes better get packing.) So everyone in our group has worked on the menu although the drinks list got finished first for some reason. I need to go finish up the grocery list and double check that all the items are there for the grocery shopper.

And this leads into another story. My mother-in-law was one of the people in the group helping plan and use the above wiki to plan our scrapbook retreat. At her work, they are starting a collaborative project and an idea to use a wiki came up. She was thrilled that she knew what they were talking about and explained that she was using a wiki to plan a weekend get together. My mother-in-law was promptly assigned the task of giving a report on how a wiki works. Needless to say, I got a panic email minutes after the meeting asking more about wikis. I replied that I was laughing at her! My next reply was giving her Wiki 101. I told her what wikis to look at and how to set one up in a particular wiki service, PBWiki. By that evening, she had one setup and was playing with it. A quick phone call to walk her through wiki basics do’s & don’ts and she is off and running. She has put together a wiki to present at work, added sample content, including photos and videos. Has played with the voice chat feature. And this is from a lady who less than a month ago was introduced to a wiki and replied “Yep, I figured it out!! It just proves that you can still teach an old dog new tricks!” Good job Peggy!

So hopefully I have given you few examples on how to use a wiki and inspired you to try it out. Anytime you have a bunch of email going back and forth between multiple people, this maybe a signal that a wiki is needed. Be creative. There are some cool tools out their on the internet and if you use them it can make things simpler!

So many people are publishing or posting their layouts and it is very important for them to keep track of all the images used in their layout so they can properly credit the designers.

We have suggested a few different ways to do this on our website, but using Favorites is probably the best method. Favorites allows you to save shortcuts to all your images or folder. To keep track of images used in a layout, you create a new favorite folder with the layout name and save shortcuts to images in there. Then later you generate a list that contains file information and organizing information.

Sound confusing? Well I made a video that will explain it all. It gives tips/hints/things to watch for while you use this method. Here it is: Tracking Designer Credits

As I make videos, I always think, okay this next one will be shorter. This last one ended up being one of my longest one yet! The longer they are the longer they take to make. But I so want to give you tips/hints/suggestions and not just “show” you how to do it. So I making myself a promise that the next one WILL be shorter.

If you have ideas for videos, please leave comments. I am thinking of doing either “Assigning Designer & Kit Name” or “Organizing Alphas.” Or maybe a quick one on using the Search Pane for advanced searching. Or making contact sheets (previews?) Or using batch resize or rename? What would you like to see?

My tip today is a repeat but it is so important. I recommend backing up ACDSee Photo Manager. What this means in backing up all the organizational info. This doesn’t mean backup your images which I would recommend doing to if you haven’t done it recently, especially the photos.

Backing up your ACDSee Photo Manager takes less than 5 minutes and it should be done on a regular basis.

Backup is really quick and easy, follow this tutorial: Backing up ACDSee Photo Manager

I recommend setting a reminder for ACDSee Photo Manager to tell you to do this: Go under a Tools | Options and click on Database. Make sure Display Backup Reminder box is checked and pick how often. I would recommend every week if you have done a lot of organizing and download kits frequently.

Optimizing is like cleaning up that office and filing system. All the “things” get put back into its place, junk paper is cleaned away, etc. This will help ACDSee Photo Manager run even quicker and smoother.

Here’s how: Optimize your ACDSee Database

What kind of tips would you like to see? I throw tips out in a random fashion. Either from questions I see users asking or some random thought of mine that says I should tell people about this. What would you like to have it do, that you can’t figure out how? Or is there a feature that you would like explained more? Feel free to leave a comment and let me know.

I see that Kaboodle has a Facebook application available & some of you have found it! It looks really slick. Here’s what it looks like & what it can do for you.

My suggestion to designers & store owners would be to create an account in Kaboodle & add your items to that. Then you maybe don’t need to upload the items into Facebook. You can add the Kaboodle app & have them on your homepage in Facebook automatically & easily accessible. From there you could encourage people to explore them by creating games, offering coupons, RAK’ing etc. Encouraging people to add them to their lists will be important because then others will see them in Facebook. The beauty in it is that people can shop directly from Facebook.

Here’s what the app. looks like on the profile page. (Thanks to Vicky Shaw who’s profile I used)

Clicking on View All shows the items along with the description.

Here you can:

Clicking on the image takes you to a nice large image. This is what I like about Facebook. It shows larger images than Kaboodle or most stores which really makes the item for sale appealing!

On this item view you can

• add it to your list
• shop for it by linking to the store
• see related items

It looks like fun! Let us know how you’re using this new connection between Facebook & Kaboodle?