1. Pick a lens to start with. If you have a 50mm lens, that is a great one to practice with. Your kit lens will work just fine too! (If you’re working with your kit lens, pick a focal length to work with and keep it set through the exercise.)

2. I suggest starting in Aperture Priority Mode. This way you can set your aperture and the camera will set your shutter speed to create a good exposure. If you’re comfortable in using Manual Mode, that’s great!

*If you’re shooting in full Manual, (and actually in Aperture Priority Mode too) make sure you keep your shutter speed above 1/50 second. It’s a neat little “rule” with lenses… keep your shutter speed at or above 1/length of your lens. This way you’re pretty sure to freeze your subject and not get any camera shake.

3. Set yourself up in a well-lit area (This will allow your shutter speed to be high enough to freeze any motion there may be). Outside or next to a bright window are great places to practice. Pick a subject to work with, preferably something that will hold still for you!

4. Set your aperture to 3.5 (on a 50mm lens) or 7.1 (on a kit lens). On the 50mm lens, you can get a pretty decent shallow depth of field at that aperture, yet still have a good area to work with on focus.

5. I like to have my focus point set in the middle; that’s a good place to start. Now, focus on your subject and take the photo. Practice with that aperture until you feel comfortable and happy with the sharpness of your focus.

6. Now that you’re comfortable, change your aperture to the next stop, 3.2 for the 50mm, and 6.3 for the kit lens. Practice there until you’re happy with your focus, then change your aperture again and so on until you get down to the maximum aperture for your lens (the smallest number).

7. Now you can move on to kids (if you have them) and moving things! This is where your practice really pays off!

Take some time every week to practice on this one thing! It will really help, and you’ll have fun and come away with some great photos!

This is the week! We finally get to upload our layouts to Shutterfly!!! We’ll be able to see our photo books take shape as we place our layouts and put our cover together…this is defintely where all our hard work pays off. I’ll show you step-by-step how to navigate through the Shutterfly website and upload & place your layouts on the pages. I’ll even show you how to preview your books to make sure they print exactly how you want them to. I can’t wait any longer, let’s get started!…

If you’re a member of OpenScrapbook, all you need to do is log in.
This adventure is available in PS Elements and Photoshop.

Not a member? Join us now!

Let’s Get Started!

Step One – Navigating Shutterfly

The first thing we need to do is log in to Shutterfly. Click the logo below to be taken directly to the Shutterfly homepage where you can then click “sign in”.

Once you’re logged in, scroll down just a tad and click “Start a Photo Book” in the My Projects section.

Then scroll down the page a little and click on “Custom Path”.

Scroll down the page and you’ll see a list of occasions, click on the “See All Occasions” link at the bottom of the list.

Choose the “Digital Scrapbooking” option from the list.

Next, you’ll want to select the size of the book you’re going to make. For this Adventure, we’re making an 8×8 Photo Book, so go ahead and click that option.

This will take you to a page that lists the details for the 8×8 photo book. You might remember from week 2, this is where we downloaded the templates. We’re going to now click on the “Get Started” button at the bottom.

You will be directed to a page where you can set the style of fonts for your book but since we’re uploading our own full-page images we can skip this step as it does not apply to our books. Click “Next”.

Step Two – Uploading Our Layouts!

Now we’re ready to upload our layouts! First thing’s first, we need to get our pictures. Click on the “Get Pictures” button towards the bottom of the page.

This will take you to a page where you can see all the albums you create for specific books. To create a new album, hover over “My Albums” in the navigation to the left and click the down arrow that appears. Then select “New Album” in the menu that comes up. This will bring up a window where you can type in the title of your new album. I title mine, “Wedding Adventure Book” but you can name it something more appropriate for the book you’ve created.

Once you’ve created your new album, go ahead and click “Upload” towards the top-left corner of the page.

This will bring up a window where you can then select the files you’d like to upload. But first, let’s select our new album at the bottom so our files will be uploaded to the correct area. Click “Select Album” and select the album you just created from the list. It should be listed under “Recent Albums”, you can find it under the “My Albums” headline as well.

Once you’ve selected your album, you can now upload your files by clicking the “Choose Files” button.

Navigate to where you saved your files, while holding down the Shift key, select each file and click open.

Make sure all your files are listed in the menu and click “Start” to begin uploading your files. This might take a minute, so go get yourself a snack and meet me back here in a few!

Once the upload is complete, it will ask you if you want to view your pictures or upload more. You’ll want to click “View Pictures”. Once you see all the thumbnails of your layouts, click on each one to select it. Then click “Add to Photobook”.

Step Three – Laying Out Our Books

Now, comes the fun part! Let’s start adding our layouts to the book… Start by clicking the layout you want to appear on the Title Page, then drag and drop it onto the area that reads “Drop picture here”. The facing page will remain blank on all books so we don’t need to worry about putting a layout there. Continue this process with your other layouts until your book is completely full.

Once you’ve placed all of your layouts into your book, let’s place our cover files! Click on the “Cover” tab towards the top of the page.

Start by dragging and dropping the back cover into the first slot, then the spine, and finally the front cover. Don’t worry if this looks a little bit backwards to you, that’s how it’s supposed to look in order to print right.

Click “Preview” in the top navigation to see what your book will look like. Flip through each page, making sure you put the pages in the order you’d like them printed in. You can always go back and edit by clicking the “Pages” tab and dragging and dropping the pages on and off the book.

Yay, we’re almost finished with our books! This week we’re going to be creating our covers. I’ve got to tell you, I have more fun designing covers than any other part of the book…and that’s saying something because I LOVE creating layouts! So, are you ready to pull your theme together and create a cover that says it all? Well then, let’s get started!

If you’re a member of OpenScrapbook, all you need to do is log in.
This adventure is available in PS Elements and Photoshop.

Not a member? Join us now!

Let’s Get Started!

First thing is first…let’s download all the goodies! Yes, there are some more goodies. You didn’t think I was going to leave you on your own for the cover did you?
Click here to download the Adventure Book Cover Quick-pages … Enjoy!

Step One – The Front Cover Photos

Let’s start by opening the front cover template we downloaded from Shutterfly during week one of our adventure (8×8 Front Hard Cover.psd). Next, let’s open the front cover quick-page you downloaded at the beginning of this week’s adventure (front_cover-OS.png). Once they’re both open, go ahead and drag and drop the quick-page over onto the template document and move into place using the Move Tool. Then go ahead and close the quick-page document by clicking the “x” in the upper right corner of the document window.

Before moving on, it’s a good idea to save your document as something else, as to not write over the Shutterfly template document. This will allow you to use this template for creating books in the future.

Now, choose three of your photos, the ones that express the theme of your book the best, and open each one into Photoshop. Using the same method as above, go ahead and drag and drop each one onto the template document. Then go ahead and close the original photo files, as we will no longer need them.

Now, let’s move the photo layers behind the quick-page layer in the Layers Palette, this way our photos will show through the quick-page windows. To do this, hold down the shift key and click on each photo layer in the layers palette. This will select each photo layer, allowing you then drag the selected layers below the quick-page layer.

You’ll notice the photos are much too large to show through the quick-page windows, so let’s scale them down a bit. With the Move Tool still selected, make sure the “Show Bounding Box” is checked in the top tool bar.

Now, choose the photo you want to show through the window to the left, and click on that layer in the layers palette. This will allow you to adjust only that one photo. Click and hold the toggle in the top-left corner and drag the toggle towards the center of the photo. You’ll want to move the photo into place as you scale the image. This will allow you to make sure you scale it down to the right size for the window. To do this, just click on the photo between the bounding box borders. When you have your photo scaled down to the right size and placed where you’d like it in the quick-page window, you can click the green check mark to apply the change. It’s ok if there’s a little bit of overhang into the center window area, this will be taken care of in the next step.

Now, choose the photo you want to show through the center window. If this layer is not above the photo we just worked with in the layers palette, go ahead and drag it above that layer now. Follow the same process as before, scaling and moving this photo into place. To make sure this photo fills only the center window area with no overhang, you may need to rotate it a bit. To do this, just hover over the bottom-center toggle, click and drag the toggle to the left. When you’re done adjusting this photo and you’ve moved it into place, click the green check mark to apply the changes you’ve made.

For the last photo, follow the same process as described above. When you have your photo scaled to the size you’d like and moved into place, go ahead and click the green check mark to apply the change. And there you have it, all of your photos are in place and we’re ready to add our title!

Step Two – The Front Cover Text

This is the fun part! The title is what sets the theme for the entire book. For my cover, I’m using the same flourished font (Flemish Script) as I did throughout the book on my layouts. You want to make sure that the font you use on the cover is one you’ve already used in the book. This is an important guideline to follow when designing. It creates continuity and makes your book one cohesive work.

To start with, make sure you click on the top layer in the layers palette. In this case it’s the quick-page layer. This will allow the coming text layers to be visible above the rest of the work we’ve just done. Press T to select the Text Tool, and select your font from the top tool bar. Also, choose the color. I’m using a nice brown color (R: 68, G: 38, B: 14) to compliment the layout, while still being bold enough to be readable. You’ll also want to choose a size. For book title such as this, I like to vary the size of my text to put emphasis on certain words. For the first word “Our”, I’m setting the size to about 75pt. Once you’ve got your text set, click inside the document area and type out your first word.

To exit the text edit mode, click the text layer that was just create in the layers palette. Now, with the Text Tool still selected, click again inside the document area. This will create a new text layer, where you’ll type your second word. Repeat this process until you’ve typed out your entire title.

Now, to put emphasis on one of the words, making it stand out from the rest, select the text layer in the layers palette that you’d like to stand out and increase the size to about 120pt in the top tool bar. I chose to emphasize the word “Wedding” because that’s the main focus of my book.

To add a little bit more interest to the word, you might want to tilt it to the left slightly. To do this, select the Move Tool from the left tool bar. Make sure the “Show Bounding Box” is checked, and hover above the bottom-center toggle of the word, click and drag to the left. Remember to click the green check mark to apply the change.

Now all we need to do is move our words into place and we’ve got it! Select the Move Tool from the left tool bar and click on each text layer in the layers palette to move the words into place. You might want to adjust the font size again at this point, making sure all the words fit nicely together. I took the “Adventure” text down to about 50pt. allowing it to fit nicely in the space created above the photos.

If you notice, the “Wedding” text overlaps the photo and hits the “Our” text in an odd place. To adjust this, I’m going to teach you a fun trick! Click on the “Wedding” layer in the layers palette. Then press Ctrl+J, duplicating the layer. Then right click on the copied layer and select the “Simplify Layer” option in the menu that comes up. This will turn your text into an image. Click the eye icon next to the text layer to turn it off. You’ll want to keep this layer, as it will allow you to edit the text in the future if needed. Press E to select the Eraser Tool from the left tool bar, and choose a large (250px) soft round brush from the menu of brushes in the top tool bar. To create the effect that the word “Wedding” is behind the photo, hover just slightly over the loop of the “W” and click to erase. You might need to erase a few times to get the effect you want. I also erase a portion of the “W” near the word “Our” to make the transition a little less abrupt.

Step Three – The Spine

Open the spine template (8×8 Spine Hard Cover.psd) you downloaded from Shutterfly. Also, open the spine quick-page (spine_cover-OS.jpg) you downloaded at the start of this week’s adventure. Drag and drop the quick-page into place and move it into place on the template document, using the Move Tool. Then go ahead and close the original quick-page file by clicking the “x” in the top-right corner. Remember to save your document as something else, as to not overwrite the original file.

The spine is one of the trickiest parts of a book cover when it comes to text, especially if the spine is quite small, as it is in our case. We are going to need our guidelines to show so we can align our text, making sure none will be cut off during the printing of our book. To do this, press Ctrl+;. This is one of the benefits of using Shutterfly’s templates; they’ve taken the guesswork out of the process for us. Now we’re ready to add our title. Select the Text Tool from the left tool bar and type out your title in the same font you used on the front of the cover. You might need to adjust the color, I chose white so it would show up nicely over the background. Then go to Image > Rotate > 90° RightW to get your text to line up with the spine.

Then select the Move Tool and move your title into place. You may want to add a little bit more info like the date of your event or the names of the main people involved. It’s up to you. Just remember to keep it simple because all of your text needs to fit within the aqua colored guidelines in order for everything to appear when printed.

Step Four – The Back Cover

Open the Shutterfly template file (8×8 Back Hard Cover.psd) for the back cover and the quick-page (back_cover-OS.jpg) you downloaded earlier. Follow the same process as before, dragging and dropping the quick-page onto the template file, also saving the document under a new name. I always like to add a little something personal to the back of my book covers. For this book, I include our names and the date of our wedding, using the same fonts from the front cover…you know, the whole continuity thing! First we need to have the guidelines show, so let’s press Ctrl+;. This will allow us to align the text so it’s centered when the book is printed. First, select the font, size, and color from the top tool bar and then type out your text and move into place.

And there you have it! Your cover is complete. Now save each file in a jpeg format, go to File > Save As, then select “.jpg” from the list of formats available.

You’re all ready to upload your layouts and cover to Shutterfly next week. Just think, when your book comes all shiny and new, you’ll be able to show off all your beautiful work to your friends and family. I like to set my books on the sofa table…