Short Cut to view Heritage Makers Studio Art

Ever wanted to see all the Heritage Makers Art in one convenient place?
Someone recently posted this awesome short cut to our studio art browser.

click here to browse the Studio Art Collections

here you can look at the thumbnails of all our art collections or click on the collection to open and view each piece individually.  Type in keywords to search for a specific theme or embellishment.  What a time saver to help plan out a project and get ideas.

I dont remember who posted this link on facebook but Thanks SO much!!!

Melissa

Another great feature we've added to Heritage Makers Studio is the advanced options for managing pages.  While this can be done on most any project it is most obvious when making our decks of playing cards.

We used to be able to add or delete only one page at a time...  This feature is used to copy pages or delete unwanted pages in bulk.  YEAH!!!

Heres a quick tutorial about the Manage Pages Update:

Hope this helps you complete some of your projects more quickly.

Melissa

THE MAGIC BUTTON!!! How to change the size of ANY project.

We just added the most amazing feature to our Heritage Maker Studio.  I cant even imagine the programming that had to go into it but I am SO thankful.

You can now Import Pages from Different Projects with Heritage Makers.  Basically this means if you see a project you love but its in a different size you can make it into any size you want.  Change a 12x12 book into an 8x8.  Turn a Canvas print into a greeting card.  The possibilities are endless.

I am working on a post bound yearbook.  Each month I make 2-6 pages celebrating events that month.  Now I can take random pages out of books that are the theme I want and then add them to my yearbook.  Example a Trip to Disney- well i can import a few pages from a Disney Album to commemorate our trip.  How awesome is that.

Just remember to check the print quality.  When going from large projects to smaller ones the quality should be ok but when going from small to large you need to be sure that everything has a green outline or it may print grainy.

THANKS SO MUCH HERITAGE MAKERS!!!  You really are leading the way.  love it.

Tuesdays Tips & Tricks - Hand tinting?

For my reader who use Heritage Makers Studio for thier digital storybooking heres an easy way to create a fun effect.  Photo Tinting.

To have the whole photo look hand tinted: turn the photo black and white.  Then lock in place.  Copy and paste in place (now you have 2 layers of the same photo). Turn the top layer back to color (no filter). Now fade it by adjusting the transparency to desired effect.

If you want to color just a portion like I did to the topleft photo in the page above.  you have to crop the top layer photo to show only the portion you want colored. When you fade it the line between the color and black and white photos kind of fades away too.

Depending on the shape/size of the area you want to have colored you may have to do some creative cropping. For allies I cropped around her whole body and then rounded until it was an oval. Then I added more layers using paste in place and made these top layers black and white again but cropped so it was only a small bit of grass here, part of the stone wall.

To break it down by layer
I had a bottom photo black and white.
Then a colored oval of just her but transparent probably about 80% or more Then black and white cropped of just stones More cropped of B&W grass More cropped of B&W background

Basically the top layers I was trying to cut around her feet or arms so that the back ground stayed as much black and white as possible. But because of the photo being in color you need to trick the eye by glueing the black and white pieces back on top like a collage.  This photo though looks like it was before all my tweaking.

Let me know if you try this technique and let me know how it comes out for you.  Post links to photos of your work with these techniques.

~Melissa

Tuesdays Tips & Tricks - RED EYE Quick Fix

I am going to start a new thread called Tuesday Tips & Tricks.  I hope you will check back each week to see what new tip or trick I have to share.

RED EYE- quick Fix
Todays tip is a real quickie.  We all have photos with red eye.  Even with cameras that have built in red eye removal somehow I still end up with red eyes in some photos.  Mostly because my daughter has blue eyes and that always makes it worse.

Is you are a client of mine and use Heritage Makers Studio through my website http://www.digitalstorybooks.com/
you will love this quick fix.  Have you ever uploaded your photos only to find one of them has red eyes?  I have.  and often I am just too lazy to go fix it and then upload again.  You know you've been there too.  Once i am in looking at all the 40,000 pieces of art I want to play.  I dont want to stop and fix a photo.  SO what to do?

I turn the photo filter to Black and White.  In most cases once the photo is black and white you cant tell if the eyes are red or not.  Instant fix and even gives your pages some nastalgia flare and makes you look like a pro designer.  Try this in your next project and tell me you dont love the look...

Have a problem you need help with send it to me as a suggestion for tips and tricks.  If I post yours I will send you a gift. 

Celebrating lifes moments...   :)   Melissa