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Digital Project Life with Guest Kari Holt

Welcome back to scrapbooking with project life with becky higgens here on creative live becky, taking away that I was waiting for all sorts of intertype. No, I'm kidding, good to be back. We had a short break, we are now completely inundated with all this digital inspiration was good to have kevin here with us, explaining a lot of that overview of what kind of things that we can tap into when it comes to the digital stuff in terms of scrapbooking. So in this particular segment, we are going to dig in a little deeper, but more specifically, we're going to talk about digital project life, so this is no longer our photo organization. And what about this and how do you print pictures? But more of when it comes to project life and doing scrapbooking, we have seen a growing number of people who do prefer digital. So before I even introduce our guests, I want to just put this out there that I don't I don't know everyone's individual situations, but we're going to have some of you who are like...

digital, no, not interested. Stick around for a few minutes and just see because this isn't a deep, deep digital educational type of experience, this is really geared to help those of you who have never done it before understand how easy it can be. And certainly for those of you who might already be doing digital, we have a lot of fun things to share with you that kerry has prepared. So, with that, I will introduce our guest. Her name is carrie holt, and carrie is a part of our team, but she's not only a part, she is such and a hugely important part to the company. For a lot of reasons. She wears many, many hats, she is really my personal, like right hand woman when it comes to everything that ideo, as the company has grown and I've become increasingly busy, are all the time. Kerry really does kind of like, step in and help with a lot of that stuff. And so she's, she means a lot to me personally because of what she contributes to the company, but she's become a very close personal friend, and I can trust her with anything. So in terms of why she's here, though, it's, not just because I love her, but because kerry is an expert when it comes to digital. And so kevin. Likewise, that expertise and digital you want, but who knows what they're talking about, but she has been in the scrap booking industry, specifically in the digital side of it, for many years, doing wearing different hats different ways of going about it in different roles that she's had. So she truly gets what digital means to digital scrap bookers specifically and most specifically, digital project life. And so, with that I welcome please join me in welcoming carrie holt. Totally surreal to be up here. Honestly, I think it's one of those like you pictured, you had nightmares about it here we are so weighed, like kerry knows how I feel about a live audience here. You guys have been so amazing, it's so great having real light breathing people here. So we're going to forget that there's cameras moving around in there, it's just us and it's, you girls. So so what do you want tio do in terms of starting, like, where is our starting point? Well, I want to start with is just kind of gauging from the audience here, and that is how many of you have done anything in terms of digital scrapbooking? Ok, a couple of you. So how many of you are like, not interested at all? Little problem that's totally fine, that is totally fine. Because I know that there are people out there that are not going to be super jazzed about the whole idea of digital, and my hope is that what you will get from this presentation is maybe a couple of tips and tricks that you might be able to incorporate into your everyday documenting, even if you're using physical products, just because there are some things that you really can do on a computer to enhance your memory keeping and what you're able to add to your scrapbook. So that's kind of my hope can I add something really to that just to give a quick example, just to make sure that we don't lose the attention span of those who are like no digital is not for me. You were just sitting in the battle over, not me, just a quick example of, like, when you're doing project life, you're sticking photos and cards sometimes, if you want to actually type on a card and print that out, or how do you do that? It's a little tips and tricks it doesn't have to be that you're a digital scrapbook, er, that you're constantly in photo shop or whatever. There are so many little tips and tricks that are beneficial from the digital side of things, so sorry, I know interesting this life is how you want, ok? So we're going to start what do I do? I haven't ever done aquino I had to make this, you know, presentation button right there. Okay that's me right there digital project like ok, so we're actually they start way back at the basics and that is going to be with what it is that you need to get started with digital project life from the beginning that we're going to start with some of the basic things that you start with when you're doing traditional scrapbooking and that would be you need your photos, you need scan artwork. You talked a lot about scanning any other types of media that you might want to incorporate a digital project wife kit, our project like templates and then some type of software that you're going to use. Okay, so once you've got those things digital project like dot com, that is our sister website that is affiliated with becky's website, that is where you will find all of the official project life core kits many kids templates, theme packs all that stuff is going to be found at digital digital project like dot com don't deliver that actually carried before you dance this I do want to interrupt for something really important because this is something that you could be important digital project I thought come to you guys remember day one yesterday and there was a real quest to remember what we were talking about, and I think I don't number if it was you or what we were talking about, but organizing all of the plastics and the request was, can we see what they all look like? A reference sheet? And I said somebody from my team. Are you listening? Can we do this? Guess what? It's already up. It's done it's on the website that's, my amazing team. And so that magic has happened. And if you go it's, actually, I think we got on becky higgins dot com I think it's. Not quite that it's coming to becky higgins dot com right now in the previous section. Yes, but right now, if you go to digital project like dot com up at the upper upper navigation bar that's, what it's called there is a link for card reference sheet, which may sound deceiving because this has nothing to do with cards. It has to do with templates, but if you go through that at the very bottom, there is a little reference sheet there. And if you click on that, it will pull up a two page pdf that are amazing lari peacock, who oversees all of our digital stuff, and we absolutely could not have this website without her and she created a document that's two pages you can download it shows every single template it's labeled design a design be designed their alphabetical order it go figure on it is awesome. So that is a great reference it's at digital project life dot com right now and it is coming to becky higgins dot com in our freebie page as well. No, really end of day your wish is our command that's that's what we do and we did it live so fun so that was that was worth interrupting, right? Totally broken up there right now. Okay, here's a sample sorry from our digital project like website just could give you an idea this would be what kind of one of our core kits would look like? We've got many kids our theme cards and then of course, our template. So this would be what our preview images would look like if you're going to the website that's just kind of gives you an overview of what it is that you're going to receive when you download the kid. Ok, so the first thing you're gonna dio you're gonna head on over and you're gonna fill up your shopping cart it's gonna be really easy because there's tons of great designs to choose from so adam to your shopping cart you're going to check out next thing you're going to get an email from digital project white and it's going to have a little link right here and that is going to help, you know that's going to go to download my products, you're going to click on that link and you're going to come to the next flight and this is going to show you all visit files. This is an example of a core kit it has multiple products that are included with it, so every one of them is broken down into an individual's that file so you're going tohave journaling card spiller, cards, title cards, everything is going to be individual. So when you get to this page, you want to make sure that you download each one of those links because just clicking on the one isn't going to give you the whole kit. You want to make sure that you click to download each one of those files, okay, every every computer is going to download a little bit differently. So it's kind of a matter of knowing and understanding your computer like I know for me, I just click on those on this little arrows plops right down into a downloads folder. Some of you might have your set up that it downloads automatically to your desktop, so just kind of no one understand how it is that you download products from online and that'll help you know where to go next okay, so next thing you're going to do is you're going to find all of your zip files on your computer, okay? And mine were all in one folder nice and neat. Ok, so that's again by questions on there. Did you save it to your desk top your folder? Did it save to drop box? Just kind of keep in mind where it is that your files are going when you download them. Because that's gonna be important, you need to find him. Okay, once you find those, then you need to extract them. So what's happened is all these files are putting these little what they're called zip folders that files, and they have compressed all the information into smaller bits. So we need to extract our open that up so we can access all the files that are inside visit file. So you're going to go ahead and do that on a mac. You're going to go and dio open with and select archive utility that's one way to do it. So on a mac, which is what I have open with archive utility if you are on a pc, then you're going to go and you're gonna right click and you extract all okay, some people use different programs, I've used a program before called cy pig there's winds it, there's other utilities that you can use to download or to extract folders, but that's kind of the more built in simple, easy way to do it. So, um, and then what you need to do is just continue to extract them. I know, at least on my computer, I could just kind of drag and select all the folders at one time do one right click and do extract and it will just it'll just undid all of them so yours might have that capability as well. I'm not as familiar with the pc. I'll be totally honest about that, but typically you can extract multiple folders of the same time. So do, however works you just want to make sure that each and every single folder gets under it. Hey, and that's, what it's going to look like once you're done okay, your folder these are the folders that people are familiar scene this is what you would normally see. So instead of having that little zipper right up, the center is going to show you these air ready to go and of course they're gonna be label like peopie one is going to be paper pack one three my four filler, they're all labelled fairly intuitively so that you can understand when you're looking in the different folders, what it is that you're going to find okay, so that's how they're organized all right, next we're going to talk about software. There are a lot of different software programs that you can use to scrap book digitally. All of our templates are created in psd files, which is a layered file. Kevin talked a little bit about that in his statement, so we recommend using a photo shop program whether use full version photo shop like kevin was using or I'm going to be using photoshopped elements version twelve today, it's the newest version it was recently released I think in the last month or so we're going to be using that the main reason for that is because photoshopped elements is a little more accessible to people in terms of price point and in terms of ease of use and things like that. Although I was impressed, I actually haven't used photoshopped elements for years because I used full version photo shop, so I just downloaded the trial version again. You can go to adobe dot com and download a trial version of elements just to see see just to try it out see, but something that might interest you. So I downloaded the trial and they've changed so much since I used a woman used the full size version as well, and I'm not sure why I just did, and I ended up switching to the photo shop elements also and realize that photo shopped the full version photo shop just has so many bells and whistles I didn't use any of them I don't need most of us don't need the full version of photo shop it's, much less expensive to get the element it's much everything that you need. Yes, in fact, you can watch online for sale. I know, at least for me, costco at least once a year, puts a coupon in their big coupon book for, like, thirty dollars off the price so you can get it for around fifty dollars. I think typically it retails for about eighty right around there is what elements will cost you okay, there's, something that happened in the price, I have a product very ok, so we're going to get started here pretty quick. We're going to be going into photo shop in just a minute, but before we do that with photo shop elements, when you open it, you just click to open your program and it's going to give you two options. It's going to give you the organizer and it's going to give you the photo editor. Okay, now some of you are asking when kevin was talking about, you know, I photo and some of these other ways to organize our photos and tag and things like that photoshopped elements has a built in organizer that you can actually use and I'm fairly certain that they have all the capabilities of tagging and all of that type of stuff when you put your files into the photo shop elements organizer okay, so photoshopped elements were going to open that up. We're going to click on the photo editor because that is where we're actually gonna be able to build our pages, ok? Um from the beginning, when we first opened it up, we're going to go and set a couple of preferences the's air my personal preferences because they make my life a little bit easier, but the one first thing is you're going to go to up in the corner photoshopped elements editor go down to preferences and click on general okay that's going to the first thing we're going to do when we open it. The reason I'm saying do that because first thing when you open it up once you set your preferences than they're good to go forever so you don't have to do this every time you open up elements, once you set these preferences then you're then you can just move forward ok, so a couple things we're going to look at not anything major, not anything super techie but first of all up in the upper corner and photoshopped elements it's gonna have a quick guided an expert hey, those are give you some different editing options in terms of editing photos with kind of some, uh what would they call it in, like a photo editor on your phone like presets? Ok, I didn't even know that anyway, those will give you kind of amore guided tour of what you're doing. You want to make sure to click expert okay, don't be intimidated by the word expert when you're clicking, I promise I will teach you enough things that you will feel like an expert once you get there. Okay? In the preferences window that opens up the other one that you want to check everything else that's on there that was checked was already preset zoom with scroll wheel. Okay, check that little box, okay, zoom with scroll will. The reason that that is important, at least for me, is because when I am working on my pages, when I'm looking at things that are a little bit more detailed, I want to be able to zoom in quickly to be able to see the detail. So instead of having to go up into the menu and go down and figure out how I zoom in or use keys, if you click that zoom with scroll wheel than on your mouse or on your keep had here, you can just zoom and it'll over. And old do me right in on your project and zoom you right back out so that is a preference that I absolutely love it's essential for me and what any time I'm working in foshan workflow becomes a lot more efficient so and helps you really to go to the details that you want to go to and then come right back out and see your page of the whole okay all right, so the next thing that we're going to do is we're going to open our template ok there's a couple different ways that you can do that in the navigation bar up top you can go to file open or you can do control or command open now on a mac it's going to be command command and o is going to give you open on a pc control and o is going to allow you to open and that would be anything whether it's a template or we're going to bring in photos and we're going to bring in cards later command and oh control and oh, I personally like to use shortcuts whenever I can just cause dragging up to the menus and all that you know, whatever your son bilingual and what you're so by filing group on then you'll click open and actually I found another little cool thing that I will show you as soon as we switch live to this but note we're starting with the template, kate, we're not opening and creating our own document. Kevin talked a little bit about pixels per inch, things like that. Our templates air all created twelve by twelve inches, twelve inches by twelve inches at three hundred pixels per inch. That's a fairly standard size in the digital industry when people are designing their designing things at three hundred pixels per inch. Obviously, those sizes will range, but our templates because we're dealing with twelve by twelve pages just so you're aware when you're opening them up that's the size of your document is going to be twelve inches by twelve inches, three hundred pixels per inch and that's a magical number that everybody here now knows because we talked about that three hundred d p I r p p I I was the standard that you want to remember and why that's important in this in this case is probably I imagine make sure I'm not saying this wrong if my template is three hundred d p I and I know that my photos that I put into it, you'll want to have three hundred d p I also, and if they're not, you can resize that accordingly and we'll cover that it sounds like we're going that's, why shouldn't even bring it up again? This is my last flight then we're going to go to photo shop ok? We're just gonna talk really quickly about a couple of the most commonly used tools that we're going to focus on when we head into photos of elements one is this little one right here it's called the move tool that's what we're going to use to move things around once we get them on the canvas k this is a shortcut for that is the letter v honestly has nothing to do with except that it comes from I don't never forget never forget that right? Okay, so the move tool you can just hit the letter v on your keyboard and it will automatically select the move to a for you okay down here that type tool when we're going to be adding text, our pages are cards things like that that type tool it's the letter t pretty easy to remember that one right? So same thing you don't have to have control command nothing else just letter t and it will bring up the type tool. Okay? And down here we have a little kind of like double boxes that's going to be our color picker okay, sounds silly right now it'll make a lot more sense later when we talk about wanting to match fonts and things like that to the colors that are in our layouts already okay, so the color picker and the last one over there is the layers palate we're going to talk about that kevin again talked about layers and we're going toe really show you a lot of layers here on dh hopefully that won't overwhelm you, but you want to make sure that you've clicked on the layers palette so that actually shows up on the side of your home screen because we've got some questions of incoming wear not necessarily related to what we're doing now, but it is a good opportunity while we're waiting just let's hear from first my students any questions from the students before we go to the online audience? Please don't rush obviously not. There are touching straight way when kevin said are no maybe it was you in this segment who has absolutely no interest like way, however, theo, are these temples to make the full twelve by twelve and then print them out or just to print out the cards? Uh, we're going to talk about both. So wait themselves is what we're actually going to create layouts we're going to create what our page would look like it's going, they're going to be laid out exactly like the photo pocket page designs that you would have in the physical scrapbooks, so we're going to talk about that first, then we are also going to talk about just simply printing the cards because when you download all of our kids they come with a pdf and eight and a half by eleven so it's it doesn't even have to be the twelve by twelve you can print them in a standard home printer we're gonna talk about that just printing the cards and we're also going to talk about printing text that you write and you put together in photo sha directly onto physical cards that you have at your house so helpless are your pages yep there's your digital page templates yes yes yeah and kept him you know I have not personally done I do know that's possible if you are versed in silhouette I'm not teaching solo today for sure but if you are versed with scylla and how to do all the different selections and things like that there really is no reason that you should not be able to import that files and converted in order to be able to cut the outlines of the cards for people who don't know what scylla is just because I know we have a lot of people watching who are really scrap bookers and have never heard of that silhouette and there are others is like a personal cutting machine cutting system would you say that's the best way to describe it so that's why it's kind of it's own animal it really really really and there were classes so that my area yeah for sure another question seventeen and wants to know how do you manage the transition between I photo and photo shop? When you're doing the heavy editing, andi, do you and do you create a duplicate before editing? So this is sort of like some cross use between? Do you do that? And I don't do a lot of that only because I don't personally spend a lot of time editing my photos. Ok, that might be a better question for kevin, just because he he's the genius, the where's, the cape, and I'm not I know, but I think there there are a lot of people I think that have have troubles kind of transitioning from my photo, too, into photo shop or things like that, it really isn't all that hard. If you are working on an image in I photo, you can actually select that image and right click it and there's an option to open in another editor, and you can choose whichever you want to open it in or you you drag and drop yeah, that's, what I do when my photos there and I felt my photo, which they are that's, where I keep them organized, I literally congest take that picture, click on it, drag and drop it into photo shop if I wanted to extensive editing, and that and that's all it is that's all it is. And so the answer the second part of the question, I would then say that as a copy if I felt like I wasn't sure about losing that original, but if I really did think that I wanted to keep that as the final version that I don't need to keep the original and so it's it's very situational. Ok, well, hopefully that provided a little bit of insight so way have actually question for becky that just came back from something this morning. That quest question from roadie becky, I was wonder what he does with the negatives of photos taken before the digital age. Do you store those? Do you keep those is part of your scrapbook system on a fantastic question? Andi, I certainly think that if anybody else has something, they want to chime in in terms of these physical images, please dio physical negatives. But when, when I got into scrap booking initially when I was in college and that was mike, one of my first tasks is this is before digital for sure, I was really excited because I enjoy organizing to take every strip negative strip. Now, listen, if you're in the twenties, you don't even know what I'm talking about, but you're gonna take that negative strip you're going to slip it into these sleeves it's like photo pocket pages for negatives isn't you slip them into the sleeves that's how you organize them but I do have actually probably two or three binders worth of negatives that I have and I'm surprised I haven't addressed this yet because that really is kind of on my list of two duis that I haven't really given much attention to because it's kind of buried away at the top of my closet because I don't need to enjoy them right now but those negative cause I have prints those negatives are organized chronologically and labeled at the top and they're started notebooks so that one day I can actually use one of the many, many services that are out there on dh there are too many to mention but you can actually just ship your negatives off literally to companies who do this they take your negatives they scan them all and they give you all those digital files so there are plenty of services like that and so when I do get to that point of addressing the physical negatives that I have that's what I would be doing they also have little devices electron ix that are used for personal use that do the same thing I'm just not verse and what they are so one final question for kerry which it since you're the dj queen well there and are there any plans for an iphone I've had at to help organize and plan project life. Tonto, wait, get more often. There is not a question that we get more often, probably get asked that a lot. Okay, so the short answer is, hang on, hang on, I'll leave it at that, so, wait, hang on, hang on, hang on, hang on, because if you have a right now e o a follow up like that mean what you think it means in your own mind, but wear full of nonstop awesomeness.