Friday 29 April 2011

how to save your images for the web

I just opened up Gracely Designs to post my saving images, and I did a double take at the followers widget.
63.
63?!
63 people like my blog enough to get updates of it! Holla!
That makes me so happy. I mean, I only have 25 posts!

Well, that made my day, now moving on to our last photoshop tutorial before going back to our regular blog design posts. I have a few in mind that I will post in the next few weeks, so stay tuned y'all!
now, moving on to how to resize for web. i'm a rule follower at heart so credit needs to be given where credit needs to be given... i learned this from my mom, rachel at and then she {snapped}. i think she just thought this up by herself!

first step... open your photo and do all of your pretty editing stuff to it!


once you're happy with your photo, go to File > Save for web. This box will pop up.


Don't worry, it's OK. Just click "yes".
Now, you get to this page.


First thing we're gonna do is change is "Custom" to Jpeg High, Medium, or Low. Here's an example of all three.

low

medium

high

So, as you can see, the quality goes up or down (Low being the lowest quality) so it's really just up to what you're using the photo for. For blog posts, I usually use High, but keep in mind that I do XLG pictures that take up most of my blog, so it has to be pretty high quality. If you're doing Medium or Small photos, Jpg medium or low would be fine.

So, this is where you change from "Custom" to "Jpg High/Low/Medium".


Next you're going to change the numbers (you can see where on the photo below) to make the Width 800. It will automatically change the height.


When you're done with that, well, you're done!
If you have any questions, email or leaving a comment is the best way of contacting me.
But really, how else would you contact me!?
Happy Friday guys.



Monday 25 April 2011

some new stuff.

salutations people!
we've gotten almost 10 new followers in the past day.
CRAZY!
i just want to say welcome to our new followers. i hope you like it here!

another thing is that this blog got a makeover. It's been many designs in the past week or so, but i think this one's here to stay for the month of May... maybe. please replace my orange flowery button with the button on my sidebar. thanks!

many of my new followers have stumbled upon this blog from and then, she {snapped}'s awesomesauce package giveaway! if you haven't entered, you have until friday. you could win a free awesomesauce package! i'm sponsoring many giveaways, so if you don't win this one, please don't cry.

I learned how to do removable backgrounds and will adding that to my packages. you can see an example of the background here, on my personal blog. just know that if you buy the sweet blogger giveaway or the awesomesauce, you get a background too. you have to purchase a scrapbook kit for this, however. more information on this later, pinky swear!

the next tutorial will be how to save you images for the web. this is super easy and super helpful! i've seen on a few blogs that they have ran out of space in blogger and it wants to charge them. if you use this, your images will take up virtually no space in blogger. ta da! so that's coming soon, so stay tuned... probably Friday at the latest. that will be my last photoshop post, and then back to blog design tutorials! if you're strictly here for the blog design tutorials, please forgive me. i just wanted to have a little more variety with my tutorials.

i hope you lovelies all had a lovely Easter weekend... i sure did! have a nice week and i'll see you sometime in the week. :)

Saturday 23 April 2011

Editing in Adobe camera Raw

Today is a very special day because (1) It's the day before Easter and (2) we're going to talk about editing in .jpg RAW! Now if that's not the most exciting thing you've heard all day I don't know what to tell you.

So lately this has been a mostly blog design blog with a little bit of blog design tutorials and that's not how I want it to be. I want to teach people about blog design, if blog design isn't your thing why not learn about photography and editing? When I started this blog I knew that it would end up pretty random because I'm a random person. If you read my other blog, which has everything from POTD's to fashion to whatever, I would be surprised.

So that's why I've decided to not care about being random and talk about random stuff! If that even made sense.  Let's get started, shalllll we?

Today I'm going to talk about editing a .jpg in RAW. It sounds so nerdy! It kind of is, too, but frankly, I don't care about being nerdy if it means my photos turn out good. This tecnique I've been using a ton and it's super easy. When i just need a simple touch up this is what I do. I've been hardly using any actions lately because I can get the same affects of some of my favorite actions just by using this.

If you didn't know, I'm using Photoshop Elements 8. I'm not sure but I know you can do something super similar to this in Lightroom (the link to a great video explaining doing this in Lightroom is here.) Go to File > Open As. Choose your photo but don't open it!

Make sure that you open it as an Adobe Camera Raw file, or this won't work.

Then this purdy little box will open. Just play around with it! It's awesome!

Here's the same photo (it was blah SOOC but it was in focus, so I still liked it) edited in different ways using this method.

auto

temperature and contrast +30


white balance : auto, blacks and brightness +5

There's so many more combinations but this is just a few.
I hope this helped you! If you have any other questions just leave a comment here or shoot me an email.


Oh! That reminds me! Gracely Designs got it's own email. The email address is now gracelydesigns(at)gmail(dot)com. I've actually had this email address since Gracely Designs started, but I forgot about it since I do things like that. From now on, all orders and questions/comments about tutorials, or anything regarding Gracely Designs will got there instead of my personal email address. Cool, right?! Suuure, Grace. Totally cool.

Happy Easter everybody! Have a great Easter Sunday!

Sunday 10 April 2011

read all about it!

hey!
happy sunday!
there's been a big change in blog design... both with price and quality.
click here and read all about it!

Wednesday 6 April 2011

how to make your blog 3-columned

this might be a "DUH" moment, (i know it was for me) but i finally figured out how to make my blog 3 columned! turns out, it was all in template designer! ha! silly me.

so, go to you dashboard and click on design. from there, click on "template designer", and from there click on "layout".
see?! so easy!
{kudos to nicole for helping me "figure this out". ha!}
happy thursday friends!


Monday 4 April 2011

how to schedule a blog post

hey! it's been a while since my last tutorial (not really) so i wanted to put a new one up. again, this might be super obvious, but i go looking on the internet for super obvious things to. so.
the first thing you need to do is... {obviously}... write your post.
now, click "Post Options". (where the little finger is pointing.) A drop down box that looks like this should show up.
choose your time and your date and your post should post at the time you set it to.

questions? email me.
comments? leave a comment down there.

also: read this.

have a nice monday!
xx