Happy New Year!! I hope you are all back safe and sound from your Thanksgiving and Christmas trips, all rested from Chanukah and happily recovered from Kwanza! Whatever the holiday you celebrated or are celebrating, most of us are now celebrating the beginning of a new year! It seems like only yesterday we were worried about our computers crashing as we hit 2000 and here we are starting 2006!
I know that a lot of you got software for Christmas! (Don’t ask me how I know- I just do…) Some of you ask for it, some of you are getting into computer software while digging heels into the carpet saying, “no, no, I won’t go!” and others have been looking at the pages in digital magazines saying “I can do that!” You are right! You can do it! And some of you want to scrap your Christmas photos this month. My crafter friends love to use the Christmas Creatables months before the Holiday while my scrapbooking friends use them after Christmas.
Let’s talk software programs:
For those of you who got Microsoft Digital Image Pro, it is very easy to use right out of the box. I use it for most of my articles because of the ease of use and affordability. Adobe Photoshop is the much sought after, fabulous and high end package. But to start, it is more than you really need and takes a bit to learn. Adobe Photoshop Elements is another great favorite and takes a bit longer to learn than some, but is worth the effort. It has great tutorials available at many sites online and with both of these, there are great books available. Paint Shop Pro is a lot like Photoshop and Elements and is great fun. There are a lot of tutorials available to help you learn it as well.
Another easy to learn software is Photo Impact. However, nowadays you can’t really go wrong with any software package. I recently ordered FxFoto to try it out and I have had a lot of fun playing with it. It is a great software program to give to a new digital scrapper. It has some fun effects that look much harder to achieve than they are with the program. I love the effects of Dreamsuite Software. You can use it as a plug-in with your Adobe software packages. Foto Fusion is great software to help you create projects using a multitude of photos. It does the thinking and arranging for you. Our computers, scanners and cameras may be packaged with various software to get us started using them. Explore, experiment and investigate those packages.
There are also several fun programs that help you create kaleidoscope pages and most of the programs accept plug-ins that you can buy or find free as a download online.
Let’s rip open those boxes, put the new software in the computer and create something!
Using Santa’s Express with HugClub member Janet’s doggies, Dollar and Penny. I love this Creatable because of the warm rich colors. These gold, green and red tones make you feel warm and toasty inside. Can’t you just feel the warmth in the fireplace as you put out the milk and cookies for Santa?
Using the same background papers from Santa’s Express.
*I duplicated the photo and changed it to black and white. I placed the color photo on the bottom layer and erased away color or my photo with the transparency brush.
Using Teach Kindness. The chalkboard on a simple black background makes a wonderful page.
There you have it! These are some very simple but fun pages that anyone can do. I downloaded my favorite bevel plug-in from the internet. I found it and others by doing a search for plug-ins that will work for Digital Image Pro.