A great blog post, I had to share about Fonts

Us digital scrapbookers love our Fonts!  Here’s a blog post just for you.  Smashing Magazine blog reviews all kinds of things, mostly about web design & building but today they have one for the Font lovers.  Go check it out if you want to see a great list of fonts tools for both the Mac and Windows and see what they think of each piece of software!

• 25 Font Management Tools Reviewed

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Create a new image from contents in clipboard in ACDSee Photo Editor 2008

If you have copied an image from somewhere or have done a screenshot (prtsnc button) then you most likely have an image in your clipboard (your computers memory about the last thing you copied.)    Here’s how to get it into ACDSee Photo Editor so you can edit it if you wish:

1. Copy an image from someplace  (the web, a file, etc.) so that it is in your clipboard.
2. In ACDSee Photo Editor, go to File | New
3. In the Size box, choose From Clipboard
4. The dimensions automatically change to fit the image in your clipboard. 
5. Click OK.  and then you will be asked if you want to paste in the image from the clipboard.  Select it and choose OK 
6. And you have a new image from the contents in your clipboard!  

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Registration for Getting Organized with ACDSee Photo Manager class now open

Registration is now open.  For more information and to register, visit:  Organization with ACDSee at Jessica Sprague’s site.

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ACDSee Photo Manager class

The next class for ACDSee Photo Manager is coming up.   Class runs from September 8-21. 

The class is modified slightly so that there are videos, pdf guide, daily emails with tips, and a private forum.  Their are no class live sessions but I will be available at different times during the week live to help answer a question if you have one.  Kind of like office hours!   In addition, I have a list of questions that are most frequently asked from previous live session classes and I will make sure that I address those in some format (more video, audio, tips/tricks, etc.)

For more information visit and how to register visit:

Organization with ACDSee

Registration starts August 25

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Shutterfly’s current sales!

Shutterfly’s current sales:

• Shutterfly: 15% Off Orders of $25+. Use coupon code: AF63-AG08. (Expires 9-9-08)
• New member’s offer: Get 50 free 4×6 prints and an 11×14 Collage Poster when you join Shutterfly.
• Shutterfly - $.15 4×6 print sale. Valid 8-21-08 to 09-08-08.

go try them out!

After you try them out, come here and rate them!

• Shutterfly Photo Book Printing
• Shutterfly Prints

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Sale on ACDSee Photo Editor 2008

15% off ACDSee Photo Editor 2008 with coupon code 08PE15.

ACDSee Photo Editor 2008 is ACDSee’s digital photo editing software that can easily do photo layouts.  It features templates by Andrea Gold, Maggie Lamarre and Vicki Stegall. 

Text on a path is easy to do… 

Here’s my latest layout using ACDSee Photo Editor 2008:

Credits:

• Template: Janet Phillips from her not-so-fat-pack 2
• Paper & Elements by Jessica Bolton from Pastiche kit

And another layout using Chase-ing Ryan from Studio Flergs, and fonts used:  DJB Chalk it up, Dirty Bakers Dozen, Desdemona

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Getting your digital scrapbooking prints printed online into prints and photobooks resource available!

I have created a resource for you to easily find the companies that print certain types of books or prints.   Trying to find those companies that print those special scrapbooking sizes prints or finding the right sized book can take time.  I have created a resource that allows you to quickly find the size you are looking for and then see what companies print them.

Here’s a search for 12 x 12 photo books:

And a search for 12 x 12 prints returns 17 companies that print 12 x 12.

You can find all Photo Book Makers

and I still have a few more to add!

Or all companies that print scrapbook specific sizes:

and more…

In addition, you can review each photo book company and print company:

All this information can be found under Printing Resources:

at DigiScrapinfo.

Feel free to go review any companies that you have used!  Enjoy!

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Renaming an External Hard Drive & Changing a Drive Letter

I apologize in advance for an extremely quiet blog.  Family comes first and I have dedicated my time to my family and extended family in the last few weeks.

I know I run with multiple External Hard Drive’s (EHDs) and I hate the names that get assigned to them (Mybook, simpletech, etc)  I really like to change the name of the drive so I can easily recognize what is on the drive.  It’s really simple to do:

How to rename a drive

On Vista:

1. Open Computer by clicking the Start button , and then clicking Computer.
2. Right-click the drive or device you want to rename, and then click Rename. If you are prompted for an administrator password or confirmation, type the password or provide confirmation.
3. Type a new name, and then press ENTER.

On XP:

1. Open My Computer by clicking the Start Button and then clicking My Computer
2. Right-click the drive or device you want to rename, and then click Rename. 
3. Type a new name, and then press ENTER.

Here’s my drives with how I renamed them:

Renaming a drive shouldn’t affect any software or your computer.

How to change a drive letter

In addition, I sometimes change my drive letter.  When new devices come online, they usually get assigned the first available letter.  I like to change my EHD’s to have a letter later in the alphabet so they always have a consistent letter.  (If they get assigned a letter early in the alphabet, like E:, and something else comes online, then they make get assignment like F:)  

Here are the instructions on how to change a drive letter from Microsoft.

• How to change drive letter assignments in Windows XP
• On Vista:  Change, add, or remove a drive letter  and in step 4, following the instructions for changing a drive letter.

From my screenshot above, you can see I have change my drive letters to S: & U:

Changing a drive letter, can affect software and your computer, but most software will update automatically.  I recommend closing all software though before you do the change.   The one thing that won’t be updates is any paths referring to the old drive letter will be broken.  Usually there are not too many of these and its a quick change.  In the case of ACDSee software, it will not affect your organizing since ACDSee recognizes your drives by the their serial/volume number.  The few exceptions are: 

• If you moved your ACDSee database to the EHD you specified a path and this path needs to be updated.
• If you sync, your paths need to be updated
• If you set your start folder to a path, this needs to be updated.

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DigiScrapInfo Makeover

Well, I have been working on this on the site for a few months.  Hopefully you will find DigiScrapInfo a more streamlined website and it is easier to find information.  As you move around, old links might take you to a general area where you need to look for what you were looking for, but hopefully I got you close.  As with all things on the internet, some links might take you to old or broken links.  I sincerely apologize if this happens.  If you can’t find what you are looking for, please post in our forum and someone can you direct you to the new location.

Here’s some screenshots of the new DigiScrapInfo:

Home Page:

Printing Resources

Different types of Photo Books offered by companies:

Companies that print 12 x 12:

ACDSee Resources

Tutorials

and look for the Play buttons to play online videos: 

Common Questions

Organizing Styles

ACDSee Photo Editor Tutorials

Along with a new blog & forum  look…

Hope you enjoy it!

Heidi

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Should you keep zipped files of digital kits?

I have often been asked this question and there is always some discussion on this topic. 

Let’s start with some background information:

A zipped file is a file containing one or more files that are compressed into one file.   This allows for easier distribution of many files and making files smaller to share.   The main reason why digital scrapbooking kits comes in a zip file is because it has so many files.  Since digital kits mostly contain image files and these files are already compressed due to the nature of an image file, compressing the image files into a zip doesn’t save any space.  So basically a zip file of images is almost equal in size to the unzipped images.    There are also other kinds of compressed file archives besides zip, like rar and others.  The difference is mainly the tool and the algorithm used to compressed.   All this information applies to rar files as well.

So what should you save?

Well, here is my process and the reasoning behind it:

• Once I unzip a file, I don’t immediately delete the zip file but I move it into a folder called let’s say:  “Zipped Done”.  The reason why is when I go to organize the kit,  if I see something is not quite right or strange, I can go back to the zipped and unzip the file again if necessary.
• I also have a process that all my digital kits get backed up automatically.  Once I know the unzipped digital kit is backed up and I have looked at the digital kit to make sure it looks alright, then I know I can delete the zip file.   But I don’t go delete it immediately cause that would be an extra step, but I wait for a while and do one big deletion (see next step.)
• Periodically, I go into the “Zipped Done” and delete anything older than a week or two old.   Because I know that everything I am deleting has gone through the above steps.   My periodic time is about every 6 months.  How often you do this is going to be based on a few factors:  the amount of hard drive space you have available and how much you download.

So obviously, by now you realized that I don’t save the zips permanently.   I know many people burn their zip files to CD/DVD to preserve them.  I wouldn’t recommend doing this for 3 reasons:

1. You aren’t saving much space.  (a digital scrapbook kit zip file is close to the same size as unzipped images in it)
2. If you have to go to your backups, you have to unzip all those again.  If it was a large collection this is hours of computer processing time. Restoring your collection from already unzipped images is much quicker.
3. And lastly it is due the nature of a zip.   If a zip gets corrupted, you can’t access any images in that zip file.  Here’s an example:  Let’s say you put all your zips on a DVD and on a second DVD you put all the unzipped images.   And both of these DVD’s are scratched in the exact same way.  On the zipped DVD, the scratch corrupts one zip file and you would be unable to unzip this file and thus unable to access any images in that zip file.   On the unzipped DVD, the scratch corrupts 1 or more images and you would lose those images but probably not all the images in the digital kit. 

Hope this helps you in coming up with a way to manager all your images and zips!

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