Tech Tuesday ~ Do Something Digital With Those Photos!

Over the past couple of Tuesdays I've shared how my family digitized our slides, photos and jpegs and how we organized all those lovely images. Today I have two posts for you ~ one here at Scandia Musings "Do Something Digital With Those Photos!"; and one over at The Keough Corner "Do Something Traditional With Those Photos!" You have worked hard to preserve, protect and organize your images, but unless you do something with them no one else will be able to enjoy them. And that is what it's all about! Please check out both posts as some of our ideas might give you some ideas ~ above all, do something with your own photos.

Now back to our story . . .

I maintain both a Family Media Library (all the images from our slide and print scan project as well as the more recent images received from my parents, siblings and extended family members) and a Personal Media Library (all my images relating to my travel and genealogy research) with Memory Manager.  How I organize my Personal Media Library is a story for another day/blog.

• As a result of organizing in Memory Manger, I can quickly find, use and share our family images for digital projects.  Some recent examples include
• framed prints/posters of family photographs as wall art
• digital photo albums (now that we have scanned our photos we are making our scrapbooks digitally; we are working on an updated family recipe/history book)
• 2012 calendar that includes family photos and birthdays/anniversaries

The following examples are all using the digital software – StoryBook Creator

Like many families, we have members who live in all over the country.  Digital sharing through social media and software programs has vastly improved in the past 5 years what with online photo sharing, emailing presentations and slideshows, and remotely collaborating on digital projects (wall art, albums, calendars, and posters).

This is StoryBook Creator’s Welcome screen – note open projects are 

listed along the bottom of the screen – albums, calendars, posters and cards; 

news & tips are listed at the right column.

This is StoryBook Creator's Workspace - note the page elements on the left, 
the workspace in the center where photos and captions are added the page being worked on,
and the album pages and selection of paper and embellishments on the right

Wall Art

To make these framed posters out of old family photos, we chose jpegs from our Memory Manager Media Library of both my mother’s and father’s side of the family and started a project in StoryBook Creator.  We then chose the background color by copying the texture and color of the trim on my parents’ drapes and adding it as a background page for each poster, edited the jpegs by shadowing them for a 3D effect, selected a font style and color to complement the background chosen (the software uses any font on your computer), added names, dates and places to the poster to identify the family members (see the close up example below).  We had the posters printed through Creative Memories and purchased ready made frames and the vinyl wall art from a local craft store.  

One of the framed posters shows my mother’s Norwegian and Swedish ancestors

(that’s my mother as a child with her parents)

A close up showing the shadowed photos on the textured background and script font

(this is a print on photo quality paper)

Photos of my great grandfather’s farm (taken in color and edited to black & white)

again using ready made frames

A framed photo of Crater Lake that my father took which we had printed 

It was professionally framed  

Our 2012 Calendar

This is an example of putting together our 2012 family calendar in StoryBook Creator – October is the month shown.  I included jpegs (simply drag and drop) of various family members dressed up for Halloween (from the event sort box) as well as the three family members whose birthdays are in October (from the birthdays sort box).  We added birthdays and anniversaries in the calendar section (at the bottom of the page).  Note the background for the calendar section is another Halloween jpeg.  On this 2012 calendar - the top (photo) pages are 12x12 and the bottom (calendar) pages are 6x12 – on photo quality paper.  Once the year is done, the monthly pages could be used for a “year in review” family scrapbook.  

A larger view of October 2012 calendar page

A larger view of December 2012 calendar page

And just for fun (and to make sure our projects have our signature on them) we made 3 inch decals to attach to them.  Use your imagination, lots of color and have some fun!  Ours read:

Another Exceptional Endeavor by Those Sensational Snappy Sisters

(we know who we are and we love alliteration)

I know that there is a variety of excellent photo organizing software available.  Many people use online or dedicated photo editing software (Google’s Picasa or Adobe’s Photoshop), or the photo software that came with their computers (Windows Live Photo Gallery for PCs and iPhoto for Macs).   However, I started using Memory Manager and StoryBook Creator in 2008, I like working with them, and the updates have been excellent.  

Creative Memories has been in business since 1987 and they focus exclusively on preserving photos and providing excellent products (both traditional and digital) to share those photos.  The integration of Memory Manager with Storybook Creator (their digital scrapbook software program that we used to make the above projects) is also excellent.  I think their software is reasonably priced and they have a free trial period so you can play around with it and see if it works for you.

Creative Memories’ website lists their products as well as several video tutorials and pdfs (for those who like to read and watch how to do something) that clearly explain step by step how to do a variety of things (backing up media, editing photos, organizing and printing & sharing your photos).  Check out their pdfs here. I think these are great whether you use their products or apply the lessons to your own software program. 

Whatever you do, USE & SHARE THOSE PHOTOS!  I would love to hear about and see what you do with your photos, so please share with the rest of us. Cheers.

Tech Tuesday ~ Do Something Digital With Those Photos!