Transcripts
1. Introduction: Have you ever thought it would be great to do something creative with all my photos but don't know where to start? Maybe it's on traditional scrapbooking in the past, but want to try something? Maybe you're so busy you can't seem to find time to complete the whole layout. Or maybe you have tiny fingers. A little pause. I want Teoh. Help assumes you break your supplies. If so, why not come and explore digital scrapbooking on Cato MacDougal. But you can call me Kate. I'm a full time university on mom to a five year old. I've tried and enjoy all sorts of different from paper craft to what colors to spinning young. When I discovered digital scrapbooking, it opened up a world of possibilities. You too, can enjoy bright, fresh, funky memory, keeping with no mess that idea up afterwards. Follow along the series of classes and I will show you in this part one of my course design led scrapbooking from modern memory keepers. We will cover how to choose impact using design ALS as well as personal meaning on a story where we'll talk about what is it in different ways to record it? The cost project is designed to be accessible to anyone. No special software or supplies are required for this part of the course. This class is for anyone who loves art and design, loves taking photos on the phone. I would love to make something creative, to share online or print into a book. Even if you're a paper or hybrid scrapper, I hope you'll take something away from this class that you can use in your physical lands. I'm excited to explore design that scrapbooking with you, so let's get started.
2. Choosing photos with impact: choosing photos with impact. When you're choosing the photos you want to showcase in your layout, there are some simple design rules that can help you achieve the wild factor you're looking for. We're going to keep it simple with tips and tricks, which using photos using composition, lighting and meaning composition. Photography is a vast subject, and you can find many excellent photography classes here on skill share. Let's talk about a basic rule in photography and design that can really help you up your game when you're taking photos, as well as when you're selecting them for scrapbooking or any other kind of display, it's cooled the rule off thirds. You might have heard of this one already. It's so simple and is fantastic for photography on deciding where to place things on a scrapbook. Play out. It's based on this grid. By placing the subject within one of the thirds on the grid top bottom, left or right, we get a more pleasing composition. We can also place the subject at one of the intersections between lines. This gives more energy on impact to the image. Let's look at an example from my photo stream, so here's a photo I took on a recent camping trip. It looks nice enough. The boys looked really cute, but then I'm biased. But it is just a bit no. When we place the grid over the top, we can see straight away that the main subject is really centered in the image. The Horizon line is in the middle third. These are the factors that's making this are just than okay photo. What about another one that I took just moments after? Can you see the difference? When I look at this? I think, yeah, that's a good for time. If we use the grid, we can see the subject is It's an intersection, which makes for a strong composition. There's space in front of the boys, which leads our eyes dying the image. Then we see the shoreline in the bottom third, the diagonal leads our eyes up towards the trees. The water line is much closer to the top third. It doesn't matter that it's not straight. The slight diagonal gives a leading line that leads your eye back to the figure. Let's compare them side by side. I know which one I prefer, so that's a very short introduction to composition. Let's move on lighting here again. We could talk about lighting in photography for hours. Ideally, we would have natural light feeling every part of our frame when we want to take a picture . But that's definitely not always the case. I'm going to give you a couple of ideas of what to look out for and what you could do if lighting conditions aren't perfect. Ah, bright light, overexposed photos, glare, washed out colors Who'd have thought too much like could cause so many problems As a general rule, try and take a photo with the light source behind you, so that is lighting your subject's face. Sometimes, like on a really Sunday. Nothing seems to work. When that happens, why not try something different in this image? I turned around my subject until he was silhouetted against the sun. The bright sunlight caused a great son. Flair on the sky looks pretty dramatic, too. What about photos that too dark? Imagine the classic nighttime scene you're on holiday. You order a beer that's bigger than your head. You want a memento, so you hand over your phone and this is the result pretty underwhelming. huh? Luckily for us, a few quick taps on our phone could turn something block into something we want to keep. This was using only the auto setting in Photoshopped Express, one of my favorite phone ups, and it's free. What about this one? The photo I took really didn't capture the feel of the scene. It was January. It was cold as we came home from gymnastics class. It was really dark, even though it was only 5 p.m. But the yellow cast on the street lights really wasn't like I was going for one tap on the Cellini in Filter in Photoshopped Express. And here's the result much better with these great tools in the palm of our hands, we can start to think about using the darkness is a feature rather than hindrance. Look for unusual opportunities like these very lives. Floodlit monuments at night could be another good subject. And don't be afraid to use a black and white filter. Transforming a color photo into black and white can add so much drama. It's one of my favorite tools when I want a photo to really stand out, especially for special occasions like this one Speaking of which meaning is the last aspect of choosing impactful photos that I'm going to discuss with you today. Something that is meaningful to you will always be that extra bit special. So so often we want to capture a moment and it doesn't turn out quite right. I'm not so okay. Your picture might be dark or have weird lighting that makes you look like an alien from Star Trek. It might be an old photograph that's lost its color and clarity to the depths of time. It might be a difficult subject, like snow, which is notoriously difficult to expose correctly. Your subjects might have shut their eyes. Wrong time. The composition might be off or, you know, just miserable British weather or a combination of all of the's. All of these photos have their faults for that already special to me. Which brings me to my final point. If it has meaning, Teoh, you use it. Hopefully, this lesson has given you some ideas on how best to choose your photos for your cost project. Next, we'll talk about stories
3. Storytelling - bringing your photos to life: storytelling, bringing your photos to life. We're going to talk about what you can do to record your memories, ready for scrapbooking. Even when you're not sitting at your craft table or computer, we will look at different ways to actually get your journaling onto the page. In Part two of this series, people love stories. Humans have always told stories many ancient cultures had rich all histories that predated writing. Today we can house thousands of books in a handheld device. We are hard wired to enjoy stories, stories and pictures go hand in hand. But even if we know that pairing our photos with words is powerful, we can still be stopped for what? To actually write dime. To overcome this, I think of journaling as having two parts. Facts on meanings. Family historians or indeed, anyone who has tried to look up their family tree will know how important it is to record the facts alongside photos. This could be who is in the photo, their names, their relationship to each other or to you over age. What's happening in the photo? Is it an event? Is it an everyday occurs All these old or new habits Where is the photo taken? That could be the name of the place. It could be a picture of a map. It could be my corners. And when was it taken? The date? The time? And perhaps, where does this photo fit in? On a timeline of events. I like to put some of these on my layouts, often in different combinations, but there's more to it than just that. It comes back to what we said earlier about meanings. Unlike the word meaning, I think about what this moment means to me. Why does this memory matter what makes it special for me, this counts as much for special events as for the mundane. Everyday. I like to document both. Sometimes I'll describe my feelings. This could be the emotion of the moment. More memories from your senses. The photo might show what you saw, but what about what you heard, smells or touched? If you ever feel intimidated by generally, just remember, you already tell stories all the time. Let's just have a think about some of the ways we tell stories. Maybe you tell bedtime stories to a loved one. Well, tell your colleagues about your weekend What about stories around the campfire? Maybe you chat about your day over dinner. What, do you like to sing? Songs or stories, too? So how can we translate thes meaningful little stories into meaningful journaling on our scrapbook pages? If you already keep a journal daily or otherwise than congratulations, you probably already have tons of material you can pull from. Add to your photos. I am not a great general, so I use a few different strategies to help me document my memories. Many people love to journal regularly, and having a dedicated notebook is perhaps the simplest of all methods. Any notebook, pen or pencil could be your tools for jotting down memories. Although I've not had much success with notebooks, I do use my every day planner to record some things. This is most useful for recording facts where we went and when. But since I discovered more flexible planners like this one that I use in my faux Travelers notebook, I also jot down my thoughts and feelings more often. It's useful to me because I have it with me all the time. I also used TN inserts for physical and hybrid scrapbooking. More about that in an upcoming class, When it comes to technology, there are loads of tools that can help you record and keep track of your memories and stories. If you use a computer regularly, you might find it easy to type up your journalist. This could be straight after the event. Well, maybe whenever memory comes to you, you could simply type it up in the word processor of your choice. If you have a personal blawg, maybe where you share photos with family and friends, you could use this space to write the facts and meanings alongside your pictures. You could write yourself e mails with journaling or scrapbooking in the subject, along with the date instantly searchable and available anyway, you have WiFi. One of my favorite methods is to use one night. Of course, Evernote or another similar program will function in much the same way. The's no taking naps are great because you can quickly dip in and out to add a few lines, toe a note. You can create a virtual notebook just for journaling, keeping it separate to your other notes, but easily accessible and it syncs across devices. I have one note on my android phone windows laptop on My Mac, and I love that I can seamlessly move between any of them. It's also really easy to add in photos where blinks, screen clippings, anything that you think might add to your storytelling, like a screenshot of a Google Maps itinerary, phones. I love my phone. The technology would carry around in our pockets, is incredibly powerful and better still, always with us. This has lots of advantages for memory keepers. I already mentioned one note was one of my favorite APS, for according memories on my phone has an amazing function that makes it even easier. Voice recognition. If you've never used it, I urge you to try it out right now. If you use social media, then you probably already have some ready made, curated photos and stories for your scrapbook pages. Have a look back through your Facebook or instagram feed. I'll bet there's some post about that holiday you took that is perfect for adding a creative touch and creating a layout. Instagram or Facebook stories can be a fun way to journal on your photos ready for printing ? Or did he scrapping later? My last tip is don't forget about text messages. Whether you use I messages, what's up telegram or something else? Remember that you can send messages to yourself to This is great for writing a quick snippet of your thoughts. It's private, so could be great for journaling, more difficult things that you might not be ready to share on social media. I love this technique. When I'm away on a trip at the end of the day, I can write a few lines about my day, probably while lying in bed and collect them at the end of the trip went on back. Now we've discussed what to record in your journal facts and meanings. We've also looked at different ways, both analog and digital, that we can use to record our stories ready for use in our scrapbooking layouts. Next will jump into the class project
4. Class project: for the class project. I want you to curate one or more photos that you really love and write down your story. Create your project in the class project section below, then follow three simple steps. Follow along with lesson one on Look through your treasure Trove of photos. Whether this is on your phone. Ah, hard drive a cloud service. Printed photos. Take a trip down memory lane while you're doing that. Think about what makes for an impactful photo. Remember, we spoke about composition, lighting and meaning. I can't wait to see what you choose. Once you've chosen your images, use any of the techniques from lesson to to record your story, adding facts and meanings. I would encourage you to try method you haven't tried before. You could make this as short or as long as you like. Upload your photos and copy across your journey. Leave us a note telling us how you recorded this story. I can't wait to see your projects and we'll leave feedback on everyone. No, who fancies a bonus
5. Bonus class!: we spoke about improving the composition of photo using cropping in the lesson on choosing your photos. As a bonus, I'm going to show you a really quick way to do this. Using your phone on the free photo shop Express up. This is my favorite app for quick edits. It has just the right combination of being beginner friendly, still having some more advanced beaches. Let's go back to the camping trip photo from lesson one. I've already find it in the photo stream. You can see on opening the photo that you have several taps. This first section has a variety of filters and some of them are really nice. I particularly like the new charm set and some of the black and white presets. Although there is a set called free, you can unlock the others by creating a free adobe account on logging in on the act. The second time is the one that we're interested in. Here we can simply tap on drag to crop the photo. Conveniently, there is an overlay of the rule of thirds grid we spoke about earlier, so I'm just gonna drag this corner in until the subjects are placed on one of the lines. They're actually a couple of ways that we could cross this. I think I prefer this version. In photographic terms. This is better, as there is negative space in front of the figures. If you crop it the other way round, the flow won't be as good. Our eye tends to follow the direction that figures are facing. We want to see what they are looking at, so if we leave plenty of space in front of them, I will naturally follow that direction on the photo will be more enjoyable to look out. If we wanted to crop this image to a square, safer instagram, or to make a Polaroid style image for a layout, we can simply topped the 1 to 1 ratio. But automatically this crops with the figures. Dead Center. Although centering the subject in a square image can be really effective here, the subjects are too small in a bigger landscape for that to work. But if we just tap and drag the square across like so we can place them on the third line again and the image looks much nicer. I still prefer the landscape version, and I would use that for a scrapbook layouts, but this would make a great instagram image. While we're here, I'll give you a very quick overview of the other functions. The Levels tab gives you lots of options, like exposure, contrast, clarity, temperature and saturation. The magic one function is also really good. This isn't exactly the look I go for in my pictures, but it would certainly fit in with a lot of people style. In this tab, you can use automatic red eye removal. On the last tab is auto blemish removal. To be honest, I don't use thes, but they're useful. Toe have toe hand in case you need them. This time here lets you other been yet effect or a frame. I like to use the thin frame option as it's so easy to add at this stage rather than later in photo shock or a college. When you're done with your cropping or other edits, top the share button. Here, you can adjust the size and quality that you want to save in and then save it to your gallery. You can share directly from the up to, and you can even set your photo as your wallpaper or send it straight to your printer, and so ends the bonus round. And the class, for that matter. I hope you've enjoyed it. I've really enjoyed creating this class as part of the skill share the I P T Challenge. And I have loads of ideas for other classes, too. If you want to ask a question, chat about the class content or have an idea for something you'd like me to cover in a future class, leave me a comment in the community tab below. If you've enjoyed this class, please leave me a review and follow me here on skill share so you'll get updates on my new classes. Next up will be part two of this Siris on design led digital scrapbooking from modern memory keepers. In Part two, we will create a digital Nayarit together from start to finish. I will provide you with a free mini kit of downloadable elements to get you started. We'll talk about using design rules in your layouts, color choices, picking products to complement your photos and incorporating meaningful journaling. Bright, fresh, funky, no mess scrapbooking. Thanks for watching