Archive for November, 2007:
Creating A Viovio Book, the process…
Table of contents for Viovio Book Printing Process
It is always fun to get to the point of enough layouts to create a photo book. I love photo books and don’t print any single images anymore. This does cause problems when my child comes from school and say “Mom, I need a picture of this or that.” But then I just go through my photos, get the one they want, print it on my home computer and they can do anything they want with it. Anyway, back to photo books. Photo books make such a statement. If you have never seen one, you should do a test one. I think I have got many people digital scrapbooking by showing them the finished product. I have books printed from Shutterfly, Winkflash and Heritage Makers. Each company has their pros and cons.
For my next book, I am going to try Viovio. I am going to do a 10 x 10 book (since they don’t have 12 x 12 books) but the price is very reasonable. So I am taking you along on my process of taking my layouts to a book. I basically typed up this process as I was doing it and then it got really long so I am going to give it to you in a series of blog entries.
Proof your book
Enough said? Well, not for me. This is probably the biggest downfall of printing a photo book. If you find an error on page 5, you can’t just slip out that page, reprint that page and slip it back in. If you find an error you a) live with it or b) reprint it. So that is why I stress go proof your book. Later on in the series, you will find out Viovio creates a pdf of your book for you. I gave that pdf to my husband to proofread. In the last book, my son found an error that both myself and my husband missed, so I might just have him read through it too before I print. Nothing like having a 8 year old perfectionist son proofing your book.
Verifying nothing important will be cropped in your layouts:
The first thing you should do when you are creating a Viovio book, is make sure that if you are going to do full bleed, that none of your images are going to be cropped badly. Viovio provides a template to do this:
One option in your Editor:
- I opened up my layouts in my editor.
- Placed the Viovio cropping template over each image.
- Looked to see what would be cut for sure (red) and what might be cut (orange.)
- I then rearranged my objects (or layers in some editors but ACDSee Photo editor calls them objects) so nothing will be cropped that is important. This is especially important for journaling & titles. A photo cropped might look intentional but journaling or title getting cut off looks bad.
- I then deleted the Viovio overlay and resaved my file.
A second option to doing this in Photo Manager:
- Double Click the image to open in the Photo Viewer
- Select the crop button
- By Looking at their template in the editor I have estimated on: (Red portion is the first number which will be cut and they say up to orange position which is the second number)
- A 12 x 12 inch image at 300 dpi, which is really 3600 x 3600 pixels, about 75 - 150 pixels may cut off. So I subtracted 115 pixes off and get a 3485 x 3486 image will be printed.
- A 10.25 x 10.25 inch image with 300 dpi, which is really 3075 x 3075 pixels, it looks like 60 - 120 pixels would be cut off. So I subtracted 90 of that to be safe. and got a 2985 x 2985 image will be printed.
- So for a 12 x 12 inch image, I made a cropping template of 2985 x 2985 and now I can visible see what will be cropped.
- So for a 10.25 x 10.25 inch image, I made a cropping template of 2985 x 2985 and now I can visible see what will be cropped.
- Once I see how much will be cropped I just cancel out since I really don’t want to crop it. I was just using the crop tool to what the printer will crop. If you need to then you open up the file in your editor and adjust the layout.
So those are some tips for seeing how your images will be cropped!
Soon, I will blog about the next steps.
Subscribe to the comments for this postACDSee Holiday Deals!
ACDSee’s holiday sale has started!
There are currently 3 sales going on:
We will start at the bottom of their ad and move up:
- Buy 1 copy of ACDSee Photo Manager and a receive a second licensed ACDSee Photo Manager on CD, along with a 1GB Sandisk SD card for $59.99.
- Buy the ACDSee Bundle of ACDSee Photo Manager and Photo Editor for the regular price of $79.99 and you will receive free a second licensed ACDSee Photo Manager on CD and the Four Seasons Digital Scrapbook Kits CD.
- The last one is for those wanting RAW file processing. But ACDSee Pro 2 for $129.99 and get Naneu Pro Media Wallet and a second licensed ACDSee Pro 2 on CD
So this is how it works for this deal. If you make a purchase, you will receive one email with a license number (immediately) and the CD will be mailed to you. The CD has the second license number on it. Last time ACDSee did this 2 for 1 sale, people found friends and they purchased it together. One person got the emailed license and the second used the trial until CD arrived at their house with the second license. So knowing you might want to find friends, we created a thread for you to help find “friends” to do this with: Looking for a friend to purchase ACDSee with together?
Get ready for the Holidays with printing discounts!
Shutterfly Sale:
Picaboo Sale:
Kodak Sale:
Save 20% on all holiday gift products at the Gallery!
Snapfish Sale:
Is having a sale of 40% select cards through Nov 21, 2007
Life without Photo Manager!
I was away this weekend, and I didn’t think I was going to make it through. I went to visit my parents who own a lake house in Northeast Pennsylvania. It is nice and relaxing. There is not much to do but sit in front of the fireplace when the weather isn’t too nice. My husband had been working on my mother-in-law’s laptop at out home, so I had asked her if I could borrow it so I could get some scrapping done. I usually bring our ancient laptop that has Photo Manager on it, but it is so old it takes hours to even simply boot up. (Ok, that is an exaggeration, but not by much!)
I settle down in front of my mother-in-law’s zippy new laptop, and opened up her Photoshop CS2 program (shhh- but I sometimes scrap with that in addition to Photo Editor.) Would you believe that it was harder to scrap using MIL’s fast computer than it is to use my old slowpoke one, that at least has Photo Manager on it? In the last year of being an ACDSee user, I never, ever scrap without Photo Manager. Now I can see why! It took me forever to find elements, photos, papers- just about everything. I had to use Windows to preview an element, then drag it into my workspace. Then go back and do it all over again. And I had a hard time figuring out the credits on what I was using, because that information was not there, at my fingertips like I am used too. And when I wanted to look for something as simple as “Stitches” it was next to impossible to find them, as they were all scattered in different folders and kits. I really, really missed my Photo Manager.
But all was not lost. I was able to scrap the “skeleton version” of four different layouts. Just a background paper, a title, some simple journaling (because I couldn’t preview fonts easily, I just typed everything In Times New Roman– Bo-ring! LOL) and that was about it. But when I got home, I opened the layouts on my computer, booted up Photo Manager and was able to finish all four layouts in no time. I found the perfect stitches, the best fonts, all of the credits– everything I needed, and I did it in no time at all, and best of all– no frustrations!
Have any of you tried to scrap without Photo Manager? Was your experience similar to mine? Be sure to post a comment- I’d love to hear about it!
DigiScrapInfo’s 3 in 1 Challenge Winners!
The winners have been picked and we are ready to announce them!
drumrolll……
The winners of ACDSee Photo Editor are:
- Susan L
- GodBlessAmerica
The winners of ACDSee Photo Manager 10 are:
- ljcrochet
- scrapmuch
The winner of ACDSee Photo Manager 10, ACDSee Photo Editor and the Kodak 5300 All-in-One Easy Share Printer is:
- jesse77
All winners will be receiving an email from us in the near future with your prize information. If you do not receive it, please let us know.
We want to thank everyone that participated in the DigiScrapInfo’s 3 in 1 Challenge!
A huge thank you goes out to Kristen Foster at Kodak for providing the Kodak printer. I also want to thank ACDSee for providing the software to give away.
How to view PDF files in ACDSee Photo Manager
Did you know that you could view PDF’s right inside ACDSee Photo Manager?
Here’s what they look in the file list section in ACDSee Photo Manager:
And when I double click on one to view it in the ACDSee Viewer, it looks like this:
To get this to work, you need to install a simple pdf viewer called Ghostscript:
Visit Ghostscript for more information and to read about it. I suggest downloading the latest one, GPL Ghostscript 8.60 released 2007-08-01. To save you time, I will link you to the exact latest exe to download: gs860w32.exe The link is from this page: Ghostscript at Sourceforge but sourceforge isn’t the easiest place to maneuver. Updated!! One user informed me that latest ghostscript didn’t work. You may want to try this version instead if you have problems: gs854w32.exe
- Once you download ghostscript run it and let it install.
- Then go into Tools | Plug-ins | Plug-in settings
- Find the ID_PS.apl plug in and select it.
- Click on Properties and you should see that GhostScript has been detected on your system if all went well.
- Click OK
- Then make sure the ID_PS.apl plug-in is checked.
- Click OK
You should now be able to see pdf’s inside ACDSee Photo Manager.
Selective Coloring in ACDSee 10
Selective coloring in ACDSee is SO easy now! Before ACDSee 10 in order to achieve this I had to use masks in ACDSee Photo Editor.
Watch how easy this is to do in both ACDSee 10 & ACDSee Pro 2!
- Open your photo in ACDSee by double clicking on the thumbnail.
- Use the pull down menu on the Palette Icon & choose Edit Mode
A new pane opens on the left
- Click on Selections
- With Freehand Lasso tool selected, draw around the item
- stay fairly close, but it doesn’t have to be exact.
- when you get back to where you started the selection will be made
- Click on Invert, Click on Done if you’re satisfied with your selection
Click on the Color - in the left pane & this is when the magic happens!
- Move the Saturation slider to the left to desaturate the background
To make up for the area around the image, on the top
- Move the slider for the Feathering to the right.
- Decide what looks the most natural.
- Click on Done
This will bring you back to the Main Menu of the Edit Panel
- Click on Finished Editing at the bottom
- And your photo is finished!
Multiple Windows of ACDSee Photo Manager.
How many of you know that you can have multiple windows of ACDSee Photo Manager?
Just go to File | New Window and another window popups up.
Why would you want to do this?
When I scrap, I have 2 windows up:
- One with window showing my photos
- Second window for showing/searching on digital kits.
Another use:
- You may have a window up showing the digital kit you are using
- Second window searching for items that go with that digital kit
Or another:
- I have a window up of searched results and I want to copy them to another folder
- Second window is where I want them to copy to. Then I just drag from my first window to my second window.
If you drag and drop files from one ACDSee Window to another, this is considered “within” ACDSee Photo Manager so your categories and organizing follow.
Advanced Editing Mode in ACDSee
Here’s a quick tutorial for opening the Advanced Editing mode.
You’ll find it in both ACDSee 10 & ACDSee Pro 2.
Under the palette icon’s pull down menu, choose Edit Mode
This opens a new pane on the left with the icons described. And now you have access to the Selections tool.
And more to come on what you can do from here!
Fun with The Cookie Cutter Tool
If I was asked which tool is the most fun to use in ACDSee’s Photo Editor, I would have to say the cookie cutter tool. Do you remember being a child and helping your mom roll out the sugar cookie dough and make great shapes to decorate? And you know how that is a lot less fun as a parent because of the mess? Well, this cookie cutter is all of the fun with none of the mess.
Take a good look at this layout. See if you can find all of the shapes I made with this tool.
Can you find three? How about six? Were you able to get nine? I first used a star shape to crop the picture of the girls’ faces. I then used the same shape to cut out a red star to place behind them. I grabbed some more papers and used a border shape to create my journal box. The flowers to the side of the box were made from other papers. I used the Transfer Mode of Multiply on some of the flowers to give them a sense of depth. Lastly, I needed some leaves for the stem of my flower. There is a heart shape that were turned into perfect leaves when cut from green paper, which were then rotated and skewed.
This is just one way to use this tool. But it is lots of fun and the possibilities in creating elements and neat shapes are truly endless.
Credits: Papers and doodles from the kit Lena’s World by Nina Scraps.
Green Paper on leaves from Noble Castellana also by Nina Scraps.
Fonts: Artistamp Medium, Bradley Hand