Work It Wednesday

I've been asked a lot of questions about the photos I use for my scrapbooks. I am lucky enough to be married to a man who used to be a pro-photographer. He has since changed careers though so a lot of the photos I use for my scrapbooking are my own. And, where I used to rely on him for the editing, I do that now too. What does all of this have to do with Work It Wednesday? Well, I'll tell ya. Work It Wednesday is about finding new ways to better your craft and for me, one of the ways I do that is through the way I store and use my photos.

I use two programs; for quick and easy I use Picasa and for more indepth things I use Photoshop. If you currently aren't using a photo program like one of these I highly recommend that you give one a try. For me, Picasa is more user friendly, plus it's a free download. I love it because it is my way of keeping my digital photos organized. I can also edit my photos, send them to the printer, and create web albums for sharing super quick with this program.

One of the things I liked to do in Picasa is add some interest to my photos. The photo on your left is just a color photo, it's well composed, color is good and it would look great on a scrapbook layout just as it is. However, with the photo on the right I used an tool in Picasa called "focal black and white" this allowed me to keep the color on the boat and change everything else to black and white.

If you haven't explored your photo editing software I encourage you to do so, and if you don't have one yet, give Picasa a try. See what kind of cool things you can do with your photos. I think you'll like the results and will be happy with how your edited photos will increase interest on your layouts.

Enjoy!
Amy