With my head slightly above water for a moment, I'm posting to say hello. :D I finally upgraded to 2.4.something and have used it a teeny bit, but haven't found any significant difference yet. It might make a difference though, that I use Linux for my operating system, as opposed to Windows, so it may look way different in Windows, I don't know.

Been mainly scrapping for therapy lately (LOL!) and haven't printed a thing (or finished a page!) in months, but I'm coming back little by little and you'll see me around regularly soon. And as my motto should be: you will learn (ie. tuts) as I learn. :D

And to answer the question posted in the comments, here is a page I found that explains the brightness-contrast tool. Haven't tried it yet, but I think I'm gonna keep the site bookmarked for future reference! :D

Happy Scrapping! ~Jen

I haven't fallen off the planet...

We're just discovering them... heeheehee. My 4 year old is so cute! My husband gets up earlier than me and lately even THEN the sky is a little dark. Well, the other morning, after I got up, my sweet little boy told me that Daddy had shown him a planet! It's just so cool to see him discover his world. Now he wants to go somewhere to see planets close up, you know, like we went to the air museum to see airplanes close up? LOL! What a hoot! On top of this great discovery, we started MOPS, AWANA and preschool in the last couple of weeks! Yikes! And a great class called Financial Peace University. Can you say "hectic?" Heehee! So, that said, I am STILL HERE... just a little quiet right now. That tut I promised you all has NOT been written yet... sorry. Hang in there with me. It will be worth the wait. And here's a big welcome to all the new people we have visiting! WELCOME!!!! :D Later, Jen

Be watching for a new tutorial!

I don't know what your favorite digi-scrapping website is. Frankly, I don't know what MY favorite digi-scrapping website is. But I know who sends out the coolest newsletter! It's ScrapGirls! They send out a newsletter about 3 times a week and it is LOADED with cool stuff! The CEO of the company writes a MUSE that is thought provoking, funny, serious, light-hearted or just plain entertaining. There is always lots of great inspiration in the form of layouts that customers have done. There's always a freebie. And there's TUTORIALS! Alas, none for the GIMP, but we all cope, don't we. ;) Oh, and did I mention? The newsletter is free, too! LOL!

Anyway, one thing I have tried to do is learn from the methods explained in the tutorials of other software (both SG tuts, and others'), and not the specific instructions themselves. This has proven fairly productive and has resulted in some of the GIMP tutorials here in my blog.

So, to make a long story even longer, I'm gearin' up to give you all a really cool tutorial. But in the mean time, sign up for the ScrapGirls newsletter--I highly recommend it!

A quick backtrack...

I took some time last night and this morning to review what I've blogged about, and what you all have commented about, to see what I might have missed and make sure I don't double post! LOL!

Well, I ran across this comment and wanted to draw attention to it for a minute. Sílvia said...

"Hi!

Well, I know about that "New window" view, though I think I've never used it. Might turn to be very helpful, will have to give it a try!

However, if you ALWAYS want the "other window" to show the full size image, the easiest thing to do is add the "Navigator" tab to the "right-panel" (the one that contains the Layers, History, Brushes.... tabs. I have customized it in a way which quite resembles Photoshop, and it works great for me!"

Well, I have not decided if I want to even USE the other window all the time, but I have learned a little bit more about the dialogue windows. Thanks Sílvia!

I think I'm gonna scrap zucchini

Okay, a BIG GRIN here. I LOVE the versatility of zucchini! And I grew some in my garden this year. Okay, I HAD a garden this year, and zucchini was one of the first veggies on my list to plant. So, in my attempt to keep this scrap-related, I'm going to scrap a page about my obsession with zucchini and all the ways I love to cook it! Here are some of my favorites:

zucchini bread
zucchini pancakes
BBQ zucchini slices
Mousakka with zucchini (instead of eggplant)
shredded z in salads
shredded or cubed z in caseroles of all kinds
shredded z in spaghetti sauce
cubed z in fried rice (I tried that last night!)

Wow. I think I might try z pickles this year, too. Zucchini makes me so happy! :D

So, what's your favorite food of the summer? Or for you Southern folks, what warms your tummy this time of year?

I'm still here...

Sorry it's been so long since I've posted. I'm still here. Not scrapping very much, mostly quick pages. Life has been kinda busy lately, and complicated. You don't wanna know, so I won't bother you with the details, but I AM alive and well, and will post some more useful information eventually. Thanks for visiting my blog, and I hope you find something useful while you're here. :) Happy Scrapping! ~Jen

Retraction...

Okay, that last post was NOT very well written, and I didn't try those instructions before I published them. Can you all just pretend I didn't write them??? And..... duh..... there was a layer in the file titled "delete this layer" which just happens to be all those titles. And if you really DO have titles imbedded in your template or template layer, use the color picker, not the "select by color" option and things will go much better. :D

Happy Scrapping! ~Jen

How obnoxious!

I finally discovered what an earlier reader was complaining about when she said she couldn't remove the words from the templates she used. Oy! now I see what she was talking about!

Well, here's how I am going to fix the problem. Start over.... whaaaaa!!!!!! And then I'm going to use the "select by color" tool, select the color of the layer I want to erase a word out of, change my eraser tool to that color, and erase the word! Yuk. Why do they have to create templates that way?!?!

Happy scrapping!

Using Your Mouse in GIMP

I got a new computer for myself after Christmas and now get to use a roller "middle button" on my mouse. It's an interesting little feature that I have been learning more and more about. Well, I've also learned more about using it in GIMP and I thought I'd share my discoveries. There are three ways that I've discovered to use my roller (with numerous others, I'm sure, that I either haven't discovered, or don't feel worth mentioning here):

1. Scroll up and down in my layout. I do this by rolling the roller button while inside my layout window. Useful when my image is scaled bigger than my window.
2. Scroll side to side in my layout. I do this by rolling the roller button while at the bottom of the image window, where the slider is to go left and right. Also useful when my image is scaled bigger than the window it is occupying.
3. Scale bigger and smaller scale in my layout. (This, my friends, is why you get this post today.) :) To do this, hold your pointer over the scale number at the bottom of your window. It might say 18% or 25% or something like that. Well, if you hold your pointer over that number, then use your roller button, it will scale your image larger or smaller, depending on whether you roll forward or backward! I KNEW you'd like that as much as *I* do! :D

Happy scrappin'! ~Jen

Summer Vacation!!

My 3 year old son's last day of preschool was last Thursday and summer vacation is HERE! I'm still trying to put together a little scrapbook for my 12 y/o niece for her graduation from elementary school LAST YEAR and have actually seen some success. I also ended up getting a Costco membership and am going to try getting some pages printed there. Seems like I hardly have printed any of my scrapbook pages--me who loves to sit down with a good book and just hold it in my hands and read it! The computer just isn't the same! I really have to print some pages and get them in my book asap! Okay, enough exclamation points. I'm rambling a bit. Gearing up for a vacation to see family, too, and have to make sure the camera is ready for the trip. I can't wait to take all those pics and scrap them! :D There will be 7 kids together all under the age of 7. It really sounds exhausting, but fun, too.

Do you have any older projects still on the burner? What are your photo ops going to be this summer? What will you scrap to remember this summer by? Toodles! ~Jen

What version do you use?

It has come to my attention that I am not using the most current version of GIMP thanks to Silvia, one of my readers. Although 2.2.13 is fairly recent(this is the version I use), there is now 2.2.14 which corrects several bugs in the program. And, although I read through the list of "bugs," I didn't see anything that was affecting my scrapping so I decided to stay with 2.2.13 for now.

GIMP, however, has CONSTANT development going on and occasionally a "development" version is released for download. Right now is a current example of this. 2.3.15 and 2.3.16 are both development releases and apparently present a fairly different kind of GIMP to its users.

But for those of you who are new to GIMP, or if you are considering upgrading to the development version 2.3.16, heed this warning from gimp.org:

"GIMP 2.3 Release Notes

This is an unstable development version of the GNU Image Manipulation Program. Please realize that this is just a snapshot of the development tree. We are about halfway up the hill to GIMP 2.4, the next stable release. GIMP 2.3 is in no way a final product. A lot of new features are incomplete and some things may even be completely broken. If you need to get work done, please use the stable version, GIMP 2.2."

You can find more at http://gimp.org/release-notes/gimp-2.3.html but with that kind of warning, I don't want to upgrade yet. I haven't learned to hit the save button often enough in my digi-scrapping yet!

So, now that you know what version I use, what version do you use?

Reading not writing?

Sorry I've been a little quiet. I'm on chapter 3 of Grokking the GIMP. It is pretty heavy stuff, and after over a year of using GIMP, in it's various versions, I finally have enough GIMP experience to read it without getting completely overwhelmed. Sorry you had to read that--yes, I get overwhelmed! :D LOL! And I've been so busy hangin' out here on the blog, and reading "Grokking..." (on the web) that I haven't had much time to do any scrapping. I guess it's about time I do some, isn't it. If you want to see my meager attempts at scrapping--you all are so far beyond me!--check out my gallery here. At least this is my biggest public gallery where I have given all the credits I'm supposed to. And some of them are older pages I did, before I knew how to do drop-shadows and stuff like that. Can you tell I've learned a lot since then?

TTFN! ~Jen

A new discovery!

Okay, I'm still working on trying to find out how to un-skew a picture, which someone asked about in the comments. BUT I have been reading "Grokking the GIMP" and found something VERY COOL that you scrappers are going to LOVE!

I don't know about you, but I just love to fine tune things when I am erasing some b/w to make a photo colorized, or erasing some of a paperclip to make it look realistic. I always want to see what it will look like when I view the whole image, so I go back and forth a lot, zooming in and out until I'm happy. Well, I found a way to not have to do that anymore!

While you have your layout open, do this: In the "View" drop down menu, click on "New View." This will open up a new window with a duplicate view of your current image (layout). Now you can zoom in on one, and not the other and do all the editing you please, close up, while watching the full sized view in the other window! Isn't that cool? I am way excited! Have fun playin' around with the new toy! :D ~Jen

More updates?!?!?

Yeah. I just added a counter at the bottom. I really hope it works. The last one I had didn't do squat and I was really bummed, 'cause it had worked on another blog I had. So...visit a LOT and send your friends over! :D I want to feel the heat from that counter spinning! teehee!

Update to blog links

Just wanted to let you all know there are some more tutorials in the links on the right side of my blog. I updated laurarid's link so it should be good now. :D ~Jen

A shift from Photoshop to GIMP

[Commentary]: It seems like whenever I read conversations about Photoshop I discover something that bugs me. You see, I'm a part of a great group of gals on a private, online, moms group that is all about digi-scrapping. But it seems like about 95% of them use Photoshop and they always start their digi-scrapping projects with a BLANK DOCUMENT. I'd like to take a peek at Photoshop sometime, to see if they could start a page the way I do in GIMP, but I just haven't been curious enough. [End Commentary]

If you are shifting from another software program to using GIMP, OR if you're just starting out in the digi-scrapping world and decided to use GIMP from the get-go, here's how to get a project started.

1. From your tools window, choose "File" and then "Open" from the drop-down menu.
2. Find the background paper you want to use for the major portion of your layout, select it, and then click "Open". You will now have a page that consists of one layer, your background paper, that is the same size as your background paper.

Note: most people I've run across scrap square pages and will either buy 3600 x 3600 pixel digi-papers (a 12" x 12" book), or sometimes 1800 (6") or 2400 (8") pixel square papers. If you like to scrap for an 8.5" x 11" notebook-style scrapbook, I am not familiar with the pixel dimensions for that size paper, but it would be easy to figure out. If you need more help with this please ask.

3. In your image window, from the drop-down menu, click on "File" and "Save As". Rename the file to something relevant to you, such as the topic for your scrapbook page.
4. Make sure it is going in the appropriate folder. If not, find the right folder by either clicking on the drop-down window, or click on "Browse for other Folders".
5. Now click on "Browse for File Type". Here you will change the file type (likely from a .jpg extention) TO a .xcf extention. This will allow you to save your file in the middle of working on it, close it, and come back to it another time, with all of your layers still in place. This is VERY important!
6. Now click "Save".

FYI, when you layout is complete and you have no more changes to make, save your file one more time as a .xcf. Then go back and choose "Save As" and save it as a .jpg. This will give you a file format that can be printed out for later display in your book. Then, if you want to show your page off in an online gallery, choose "Image" in the drop-down menu, then "scale image" and shrink it down to about 800 x 800 pixels. Then choose "Save As" one more time from the "File" drop-down menu, and save it with "small" added to your file name so you know it is the small version of your layout. Now you will have 3 files all virtually the same. One GIMP file, and two JPG files, one smaller than the other. :D

I hope this helps some. I really gotta go feed the kids! ~Jen

Working with templates (and a "freebie!')

I just LOVE specific requests! Especially when I know how to fill them! :D I'm going to try more of a bullet point type of instructions this time and see how that goes.

About Templates
With templates, the layout of your page is done for you. All you do is fill it in with the photos, papers and (sometimes) extra embellishments to make it uniquely yours. That being said, it may seem harder than it really is, once you try to do it. For some reason, in GIMP, the "select" feature can combine specifics of different layers to accomplish one goal. And that is necessary when using templates (apparently) in GIMP. It's the only way I've figured out how to get the job done. So... here goes:

Instructions
1. In your layers dialogue, position your paper underneath the template layer you want to use.
2. Select the template layer.
3. From the drop-down menu, choose "Select" then "by color"
4. Click on the layer, in your layout. It will now have a dotted line around it that looks like it's floating a bit, or, as someone else said once, like ants marching around your selection. :D
5. Go back to your layers dialogue and choose your paper.
6. From the drop-down menu, choose "Select" then "Invert".
7. From the drop-down menu again, choose "Edit" then "cut"
8. In your layers dialogue, raise your paper layer so that it is ABOVE your template layer.
9. DONE!

Okay, now here's the freebie! It's not really a freebie, but it's something I feel worth mentioning here. When you've cropped a layer, like you just did, the "outline" of the layer remains the same size, even though the content of the layer is drastically smaller. What I do, for visual clarity, is shrink the size of the "outline" or "layer boundary" as GIMP calls it. Here's how: From the drop-down menu, click on "Layer" then "Auto-crop". Unless there is some of your layer outside of the image boundary (which I can address later if you like), your layer boundary should shrink to the new size of your layer. Also, try playing around with "Layer Boundary Size" in the "Layer"drop-down menu. It's pretty fun!

Well, that's all I have for today. I'm thrilled with the feedback I've been getting so please keep the questions and comments coming. They make my day! :~) ~Jen

Ooooo, Drop Shadows!

When I was learning how to create drop shadows, a friend of mine said to me, "once you figure them out, you'll be addicted!" Well, she was right! And drop shadows are SO EASY!

GIMP has two ways to create drop shadows that I like. You'll find them both in the same drop-down menu: "Script-fu". I have no idea what script-fu means, but there is a lot of cool stuff in there, drop shadows being one. (Now, if you don't see the script-fu drop down menu, you've got a little bit more learning to do. I'll get to you in a later post, since I'm on a roll right here with the shadows. ;) For now, try looking at a different GIMP window to see if that helps.)

Now I'm not going to get fancy and try to include screen shots so bear with me in the descriptions and please let me know if you need more help! Click on "Script-Fu" and then go down and click on "Shadow", then click on "Drop Shadow". GIMP has already entered some numbers for you which will be the degree of shadow and darkness of shadow that will appear on your layer. Did I forget to mention you need to choose a layer you want a shadow on? Well, click cancel on the drop-shadow window and go back and do that. We'll wait for you!

So you've got your layer highlighted in the layers dialogue, and you're back on the drop-shadow option. No click..... "OK"! Wasn't that easy? Really--it's THAT easy! What you just did was create a new layer (take a peek in your layers dialogue!) that is JUST shadow. If you don't believe me, try this: see the little eye next to each layer? Click on the eye next to the layer that the shadow is behind. Now look at your layout. You should just see that shadow! Now click on the eye again and your layer will be back. Now try drop shadows on text, photos, ribbons, etc--your layouts are going to POP!

I'll go into more detail with drop-shadows in another post. I'll also show you another way to create drop shadows. For now, have fun scrapping! ~Jen

A goal for myself...

I want to set a goal for myself. Do you have any scrapping goals? I think mine is going to be to start participating in some challenges. I'm going to start with the freebie challenge over here and hopefully get over this block I have of not posting LO's on public galleries. What is YOUR current digi-scrapping goal?

Did you hear that?

There was some serious partying going on this past weekend! It was National Scrapbook Day on Saturday and some of the digi-scrapping sites were hoppin'! I hope you got in on some of the goodies they all were giving away. :D

Did I speak too soon?

My poor baby is suffering miserably from GI problems, and I have not had ANY time whatsoever to devote to digi-scrapping for what seems like forever. So I'll just throw a few of my favorite sites out there, in case you all need a creative pick-me-up. Here's a partial list of my favorite places for FREE digi-supplies:

www.digitalfreebies.com

www.scrapgirls.com

www.oscraps.com

www.digitalscrapbookplace.com

Most sites have newsletters to sign-up for where you can get lots of freebies, or blogs where they often will post links to freebies as well.

So, there, I wrote something. Not a tutorial, which I would like to write more of, but at least it's something to whet your appetite. :D

More later! ~Jen

Writer not Reader

I want to be a writer, not a reader. At least I want my emphasis to be that way. Look forward to more posts from me soon!