Hi everyone! I’m back. I had told Hummie longgggg ago that I would find her some friends for Twitter. Then when Molly Newman connected with me I remembered that I hadn’t followed thru.

It’s been awhile since I brought you new social media tools! I’m going to start with Twitter. In the beginning it takes awhile to figure out (until you get some followers - so I’ve given you a list below).

They way Twitter works is that you follow friends & they follow you back. Then when you post you’re limited to 144 characters. You can talk about whatever you want.

If you want to say something to a specific person then you use the @ sign. For example if you wanted to ask me Where have I been? you’d use –        @cbensen Where have you been?

Then I can click on my Replies tab & I’ll see it. (I have 1000 people following me & there’s a lot of chatter).

Here is how I use Twitter:

• pop in only on breaks (there are ways to stream it, but I wouldn’t get anything done)
• chat with my network that is online at the moment
• if I see an interesting comment I may
  • click on the @username for context
  • follow that person
  • put their name into quotably.com to see the thread of the conversation (it works pretty well albeit it’s not perfect)
• use quotably.com to check my favorite tweeters & follow their links
• check replies & respond

My Twitter tips:

If you tweet about a broad variety of topics you’ll get followers of varied interests

Ask questions - crowdsource your followers - they love to help! (today I asked if I should get a kayak or canoe; on another day it was what to do in Paris) It’s also a great place to get tech help (my following is very geeky).

Business related tips:

• Tweetscan.com delivers an email every morning to me with a standing search for:
• cbensen - for DM’s that are missed - Twitter is prone to hiccups)
• cbenson (people misspelling my name)
• acdsee - brand monitoring
• community manager - I’m connecting with like minded people & I like reading the news as people announce their positions or talk about their work

Benefits:

• Networking - I’ve met a large number of people from Minnesota. After getting to know them I’m ready to attend the Twin Cities Social Media Breakfast & met them in person!
• Branding -
  • repetitive - Use your photo as your avatar
  • memorable - Use a representative photo for your home page & people will see it when they check out your profile or go to DM you. This space offers the opportunity to display your brand logo multiple times. If you have questions on how to do it, let me know - I know of some software that makes it easy!

Follow me @cbensen & I’ll follow you back!

Resources

• for the beginner - Beginner’s Guide to Twitter
• more in-depth - Caroline Middlebrook has a great guide
• And there are tons of Twitter app’s out there - Lee Odden lists 5 newer ones & @jowyang has a good list too.
• Ellen has a good resource
• all things Twitter - a wiki with many, many resources!

Here are some Twitter friends to follow - I’m not sure how actively they use it though.

Have fun & ask if you have questions! Add your twitter name in the comments if I didn’t list you.

Julie Ann Shahin

aggietha

robincarlton

Hom74

SaraAmarie
juliebee70

elainebitt

PacificBlue

rmcabana

rachel_martin
melrio
ScrapperBlog

MollyNewman
meemosa

kaboodledotcom

skyemedia

HummieIsMe

hejeva my sister

jeanineb

I’ve been using selection tools and my delete key to do extractions but sometimes I get frustrated with deleting too much and having to undo then redo so much of the work.  So I decided to explore Photo Editor’s automatic object mask feature.  And wow, has that made a difference in my extractions!  Let me show you what I love about object masks.

Here’s a picture of my house from when we first bought it.  I decided to do something fun with it but I wanted to remove the sky and the foreground grass so I could put my house someplace more interesting.

1. In the object palette, next to the thumbnail of the photo is a white square…that’s your mask.  Double-click on that white square so that it has a double-lined frame around it.  Then make sure you have a paintbrush tool selected and the color black is on your color picker’s top square.

2. Begin ‘painting’ the area you don’t want to show up anymore.  You aren’t deleting it, just masking it.

3. Feel free to zoom in and vary your brush size, hardness, roundness, and angle to get into the nooks and crannies of your extraction margins.  I like to start large and use smaller and softer brushes as I reach the edges of my masked area.  When you paint over the edge, just reverse the colors on the toolbar using the small color swap icon and ‘paint’ with white to reveal the part you didn’t mean to mask.

Have fun playing with your object masks and see how easy it is to correct your mistakes.  Here’s the layout featuring my extracted house as well as an extraction of an x-wing fighter from our trip to the Star Wars exhibit in Ft. Worth last year.

Credits can be found by clicking on the layout.

We’re going to explore a few different ways to blend a picture into the background using ACDSee Photo Editor 2008. I was amazed to discover how easy it was when I learned how to do it. Ready?

1. Start with a solid background paper with some texture. I used the black solid from Tangie Baxter’s new “Timeless Masters” kit.

2. Drag and drop the image you want to use into your work area. We’re using a picture of my daughter from her dance recital.

3. I went ahead and reduced my opacity to 80% on the image, but this is optional.

4. Next to the opacity, click on the pull down menu next to Transfer. You will have the following options: Normal, Multiply, Screen, Overlay, Soft Light, Hard Light, Darken, Lighten, Difference, Burn, and Dodge. Play with each of these and select the option you like the best. For this example, I used soft light.

5. I did this first with the image uncropped to see what the effect would be. I will show you some other options as well.

6. I didn’t do this to this image, but you can also apply a vignette and manipulate that as well. Try playing with the vignette option by itself, as well as with the transfer option.

7. I didn’t end up liking the look of the uncropped image- the black didn’t blend in as well as I thought, so I decided to extract my daughter out of the background.

8. If you extracted your image, drag and drop the image onto your background.

9. We’re going to apply a slight gaussian blur to soften the image a little. From the adjustments pull down menu to the right of your workspace, select gaussian blur.

10. Adjust the slider bar at the bottom until you’re happy with the result. Remember to go for a very slight blur- just to soften the edges.

11. Repeat Step 4 to blend the extraction using the transfer menu, and adjust the opacity to your liking.

12. That’s it! Here’s my finished layout:

I also ended up blending the ballet dancer jpeg into the black background as well.

13. Have fun with your blending! Remember that it’s a very broad field, and there are many different effects you can use to achieve the look you want. Play with it and experiment with different methods to find one that works best for you.

Well, if you’ve been following my series on using brushes in Photo Editor then you’ve been playing with making brushes from simple shapes and converting your ABR files from other software programs.  Let’s do something a little more creative and make a brush from one of our own photos.  The beauty of this technique is that you can make a totally fabulous brush from a not so great photo. 

So the first thing you want to do is choose a photo.  You’re going to be doing an extraction so find one where the background isn’t too complicated or with some simple outlines for the subject.  Here’s a great tutorial for doing an extraction.  I like to use the polygon lasso tool.

After you’ve cleared out the background and cropped your subject you’ll need to make three adjustments to your picture. 

1. Convert it to gray scale by going to Adjustments|Color|Gray Scale. 

2. Increase the contrast.  You might also want to increase or decrease the brightness depending on the photo.  Go to Adjustment|Light|Brightness/Contrast and adjust the sliders to that you have a crisp picture without losing too much detail.  See how much clearer the differences between the highlights and shadows look before and after my adjustments? 

3. The last adjustment is called Posterize and you can find it under Adjustments|Color|Posterize.  Set your posterize adjustment to 5 or 6 levels and click OK.  Now you’re ready for the magic!  We’re going to do our 3-step process on your newly adjusted extraction so select your paintbrush tool and let’s go!

1. Double-click on the thumbnail in the object palette

2. CTRL-A to select all (or use the menu option Image|Selection|Select All Pixels.)

3. click on Saved Brushes|open the fly-out menu|Define Brush.  Grab yourself an empty canvas, choose a paint color, and have fun playing with your new photo brush!  Here are some layouts I created using my photo brushes:

So your Thursday challenge is to create a brush from a photo and then post a layout using your brush.  I can’t wait to see what you come up with!

Artwork credits for Viva Las Vegas: paper by Deanna Tafoya; alpha by Tamara Burwick and for Stitches: Paper, chain, and gems by Gisella; glass frame by Liz Pike; glass bubble by Jennilyn; and antique textiles by myself.

Hi everyone! This is Liz and I will be helping you get to know our Photo Editing Program- ACDSee Photo Editor. Every week either Kristi or I will be presenting you with a different tutorial and challenge. Because I still have a lot to learn as well, I will be participating right along with you.

When I first tried ACDSee Photo Editor, I had already been using ACDSee Photo Manager 9 for a while to organize my supplies, and was very happy with it. I started digiscrapping with Photoshop 6.0. It was an old version, even in 2006. I loved the concept of digiscrapping, but was having a very hard time with the learning curve of Photoshop, and an even harder time with finding help for my version. The program would crash if I had other programs open, and was just a frustrating experience in general. When I found out that ACDSee had a scrapbooking program, I was definitely intrigued. I jumped on the forums at DigiScrapInfo and bombarded Heidi and Connie with question after question. Once my new 160GB hard drive came in, I downloaded the trial, found the tutorials and started reading. I was able to create 2 pages that night, with no troubles at all. I was hooked from Day 1.

Many people already have a program that they use for scrapbooking. That is ok. But I would love for you to try this program out and see how it compares. Every day we discover something else about this program that we love. If you don’t currently have this program, feel free to download the trial and play with it for 30 days!

Today we’re going to focus on selective photo recolorization. I recently learned this from the tutorial and was amazed at how easy it was to recolor part of a black and white photo. The results are very elegant, and a stand out technique.

Here’s the link to the tutorial that we will be using:

Color Isolation in Photos using ACDSee Photo Editor

Post back your results with a link to it in the comment section of this blog. Feel free to make a layout with it, like I did, or just show me the picture by itself. And since we’re constantly trying to improve things for you, I’d love to hear some feedback from you as well as far as how easy it was, if you have ever tried it on another program, etc.

Here’s what I came up with using this tutorial: (Image is also linked to my gallery for credits)

Notice the hydrangea is colored while the rest of the photo is black and white. I also reduced the opacity on the top layer to 85% for a softer effect. I’m really pleased with how it turned out.

I can’t wait to see all the fabulous photos you come up with! Then, check back next Thursday for a new tutorial!

-Liz

In my last tutorial, we learned how to create a brush from simple image file.  In my examples I used some cookie cutter shapes that come with Photo Editor which are a great creative tool already at your fingertips.  But now you might be interested in utilizing the brush files you already own or plan to purchase.  ACDSee’s Photo Editor can convert any type of brush file that you can view using Photo Manager.  So let’s learn how to convert them in Photo Editor, your cross-platform creative tool for creating and using brushes!

First, let’s review the basic three steps you used to define a brush: double-click on the thumbnail, CTRL-A to select, then Saved Brushes|open the fly-out menu|Define Brush.  Now let’s open an ABR file as if it’s a regular image file.  You can use CTRL-E from Photo Manager or just browse to your file location using the Add Images button on the image basket.  I have Swish Two by Lori Wiley open in my Photo Editor.  (Important note: open it from the file menu, image basket or directly from PM.  Do not attempt to load brush in the brushes menu.)

1. When you open the file you’ll notice all the brushes are on separate object layers and the images are reversed so we need to invert them.  So select all of the objects in the object palette and go to Adjustments|Color|Invert.

2. Working one object at a time, do your three-steps to define each brush.  Double-click on the thumbnail, select all (CTRL-A), then choose Define Brush. 

3. Once each brush is defined you can click on the eye icon to hide that object (make it invisible) as you work your way through all the images.

4. Be sure to save the set when you are finished so you can load them from the Saved Brushes fly-out menu the next time you want to work with them.  (Important note: all brushes visible in the Saved Brushes menu will be saved in your new brush file so you may want to delete the default brushes from the list.  Just use that fly-out menu and choose Delete Brush from the menu.)  And don’t forget to tag your new PE brush file in Photo Manager!

This procedure works on any type of brush file that you can view using Photo Manager.  Simply open it from the image basket, convert each brush image, then save as a new brush file for easy loading later.  It’s important to recognize your photo editor brush files since they have the ABR file extension but are different from other program ABR files.  I like to name my converted brushes with the filename of the original and add ‘_PE’ at the end but any system you choose to designate your PE-type brush files will work fine.

Well, I’ve been having fun discovering lots of creative tools in Photo Editor and I thought I’d show you how to create your own brushes.  So let’s get started!  The first thing you need is a png file you would like to turn into a brush.  I have a simple heart shape open in photo editor and I’ve selected my brush tool in the toolbar.

1. In your object palette, double click on the thumbnail of your image.

2. Select the entire layer using CTRL-A or go to Image|Selection|Select all Pixels.  You should now have ‘marching ants’ around your image and crop marks in the corners.

3. Click on the Saved Brushes button on the toolbar for the paintbrush tool.  Notice the small menu button on the right side?  Click on that to find the brush menu.

4. Choose Define brush from the fly-out menu.

You can now make, save, load, and delete brushes. 

You can always return to the default set that came pre-loaded by choosing ‘Reset Brushes’. 

One important note: you can only use the ‘load brushes’ feature with .abr files created in Photo Editor.  Not to worry, though…we’ll cover how to convert your other .abr files next!

How many times have you went looking for something on your computer & didn’t really know where to begin?

• an email that you know you received or sent? with the person’s name or topic?  but you have 5+ accounts)
• a document & you can’t remember if it’s an email attachment or on your hard drive?

I just don’t have the patience or time to spend looking for those types of things anymore.

So, copernic has become one of my ESSENTIAL desktop app’s. And it’s free as most are that I bring you!

What it is:

It’s a desktop application that you download, install, and then it catalogs your hard drive. My sister was suspect of this, but she’s heard me rave about it enough that I think she may be using it. (She reads more email accounts into Thunderbird than I do).

How to use it:

Copernic installs a little search bar in the bottom right of your window

Type in your search term. In this case I’m going to look for email from Robin (from Rakscraps).

A pop up window comes up when you start typing.

The search results for Robin show 65 emails, 32 files & 3 contacts.

From here click on the “Open Main Window” & a full window opens with a bottom pane showing the details of the email or file that you choose.

The choice to Reply or Forward email from Copernic doesn’t work.

But you can open files from it, which is very handy!  This handy little app saves me a LOT of time!