See that new name……

under the designer section in the store at Pink Ink? Amy Kant has decided to share her talent with all of us here at Pink Ink and we’re delighted to see her creative designs! We’ll be having a “Focus on a Designer” next week and ask her a few questions, so in the meantime, be sure to check out some of the fab stuff that she’s placed in the store already (lots more to come!) right here. You can also learn some more about Amy by checking out her blog here where she’s having a totally kick butt giveaway. Here’s my favorite product that she has in the store right now……totally love it!!!

Friday Tutorial::Amazing Black and Whites in Adobe Lightroom 2

I love the flexibilty that you get with Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 2. There is definitely more than one way to convert an image to Black and White in LR2 but my favorite way can be found in this tutorial at layersmagazine.com. Since Chris says it so much better than I could, I thought I would just share the link with you. (He also mentions a few awesome keyboard shortcuts – and you already know how much I love those!) This process is quick, easy, and produces amazing black and white images every time. Enjoy!

Gallery Feature

Today’s gallery feature is from user Tonya Joy over at the flickr group.

http://flickr.com/groups/friendsofpinkink/pool/

Her amazing basket image uses Holly’s defog action which she says she uses on almost all of her photos. find Holly’s defog action here in the store.  http://pinkinkstudios.com/store/product.php?productid=233&cat=0&bestseller=Y

Find Tonya Joy’s beautiful photography here: http://flickr.com/photos/18387926@N04/2282349976/

Wednesday’s Product Feature

Who doesn’t like quick and easy? Well if you need some help with creating your client albums it doesn’t get any easier than this! 

Holly created single design sets to make your album development more efficient and versatile! Included in this bundle is 10 pages, 10 x 10 sized with a .25 bleed design. Simply design, and drag into the book manufacturer’s templates. You can size these down to fit smaller album designs. Just add your custom colors to the back to match your photos or, purchase several backgrounds designs in the store and drop them in!

Don’t forget….

to send in your entry for the self portrait contest here at Pink Ink Studios!  One lucky winner is going to win $500 to the store.  All entries should be in by November 5!!!

The elves are busy at Pink Ink….

……designing new products for the holidays just for YOU and your clients.  One of my favorite and most versatile products are the Holly Days Album Backs.  You can use them as backgrounds for storyboards for clients or photo albums you design to give as the perfect gift for someone.

Another favorite are the Holiday Labels.  You can use these beauties on your holiday cards or on the other products you design such as albums or storyboards.  Whether you’re designing things for yourself or clients, these products are for commercial use so design away and have fun using products from Pink Ink to take your holiday creativity to a new level!

Product Feature

Need the perfect holiday card for the upcoming season to showcase your clients’ photos? If so then this new card template from Holly is for YOU! This card template is elegant and rich in color and texture. Plus I love the frame in this design too!! 

This card template is formatted to fit WHCC’s 5 x 7 Wide Format folded format cards. Included are four files in .PSD format. They are layered, however, you may only alter the text layers by deleting or turning them off. Graphics and colors cannot be altered. Consider purchasing Holly’s label files to add to the card and customize per your customer’s needs.

Friday Tutorial::Keyboard shortcuts

Keyboard shortcuts are a sure-fire way to make you life in photo-editing that much easier. I used to think it was this big mystery that only the pros used, but if you can come up with a simple system you can learn them quickly. Try this: After using your mouse three times to do the same step, take a second to look up the shortcut and start using it. One at a time, you will start to memorize your most used shortcuts. Almost every Adobe program has a list of shortcuts that you can look up and even print out. In Lightroom it’s in the Help menu (click on Library module shortcuts while in the library module, Develop module shortcuts while in the Develop module, etc. or use the shortcut command (or control)+/).

In Photoshop it’s in the Edit menu at the very bottom (keyboard shortcuts), and it even goes one step further by allowing you to change and add keyboard shortcuts to suit your work flow and comfort. Sweet!

Here is a quick “how to” on changing/adding shortcuts. It always drove me crazy when it came time to flatten an image and I had to do two or three mouse clicks to get it done. Why wasn’t there just a quick shortcut? Well, I had to make one. So I opened up the Keyboard shortcuts window:

Then I found the menu option that I wanted to change and then entered the new shortcut. For me it was Flatten Image I was looking for, which is under the Layer section. By default there was no shortcut so I added what seemed to make sense to me: command+f. I did this by clicking on the white space in the shortcut column, next to where it says Flatten Image, and pressing the keys as I would when I wanted to use the shortcut.

Easy, right? Very…except that command+f was already being used (Last filter, I think). Well, since I flatten images a lot more frequently than I apply previous filters, I decided to keep my change, and do something different for the Last filter shortcut. Then click on the Save icon and then Okay, and you’re done.

But wait, there’s more. Keyboard shortcuts are saved as .kys files, so you can save your default shortcuts and add entirely new sets of shortcuts for different types of editing. Really, you say? Why, of course! Once you’ve made the changes you want, click on the Create a new set based on the current set of shortcuts icon (to the left of the trash icon), rename it as you’d like and click save.

You can always revert back to the defaults by clicking on Sets and choosing Photoshop defaults. And this way you can have different sets for say portrait work and fine art work. That way, within each set, you can assign the command+f key (for instance) to do something different.

And don’t forget that you can change shortcuts for Tools as well as for Menus. So give your left-mouse-button finger a break and start using a few more shortcuts. You might even save some workflow time in the process.

Geotagging Your Photos

Back in the day, “finding your photos” literally meant finding where your photos reside within your computer or perhaps even finding them tucked away in a storage box somewhere when film was king but now this term has a whole new meaning.  Exciting new tools & technology are enabling us to tag not only our photos but the exact location of where they were taken.  This term is often referred to as “geotagging” and it opens up a whole new world of possibilities for your digital photos.  In a sense it leaves you a virtual trail of bread crumbs to remember and showcase your journey by pinpointing exactly where that photo was taken.  How do you do this you ask?  Here are just a few ways to begin geotagging your digital photos:

• Eye-Fi Explore which is a 2-gigabyte card that works in any digital camera that accepts SD cards.  The card uses Wi-Fi data to tag your photo then uploads them to your computer or photo-sharing site wirelessly.  Uploaded photos pass through Eye-Fi’s servers and are then compared with a database of Wi-Fi points.  Coordinates are then added to the photographs.  The Eye-Fi Explore card is priced around $130 which is pricey compared to the $20 a standard 2-gig SD will run you however if you’re snapping alot of photos in various locations, it could be well worth your money.
• GPS Logs – If your camera does not accept SD cards, never fear.  All you need is a portable GPS unit that will create a log of where you have traveled.  Using the time stamps in the GPS logs, software maps your photos based upon the times they were taken so it’s important to make sure your camera’s time is set accurately and don’t forget various time zones when traveling.
• Camera-specific options - The best solution is one that tags photos as soon as they’re taken however few cameras provide built-in GPS however you can find photo accessories that help geotag photos as they’re taken.  Both Nikon & Canon have GPS connectors for their higher-end models.  The transmitters connect to the bottom of your camera and then a GPS unit is attached via a USB port.  You can also operate your camera and upload your photos remotely.
• Photo-sharing Websites – sites such as www.flickr.com, Picasa and Google Earth provide geotagging services for free.

Geotagging is fun and a great way of sharing and organizing photos however use common sense when doing so.  Don’t geotag photos of your home nor children, doing so could put your family as risk.

Wednesday’s Focus on a Designer

Happy Wednesday everyone! I hope that everyone’s week is going well! Today we’re going to start a new feature at Pink Ink where each week, we’ll focus on one of the designers here at Pink Ink! Today’s focus is on Heather Green. You can check out all of Heather’s GREAT products here at Pink Ink. I asked Heather a few questions today and thought I’d share with everyone!

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