{ Bad Blogger and a PS tip }

Forgive me blog, for I have sinned, it has been too long since my last post…. I did want to try and blog 3-4 times a week, but I have been unwell with a few other things happening. I think I am on top of everything now, so I should be back on track…

Hmmm, lots to report, speaking of reports (nice segue, hey), my girls got their school reports this week, and man I could not be more proud of them both. They are bright girls so I expect that their reports are good, but all I really want to know is that they try their hardest, and it appears they both do. I could go on and on, but I won’t bore you, you get the picture…

I have also joined Through The Lens – Digital Photography 101, over at From The Rubber Room. They are a great (big) bunch of ladies and I have had a ball dropping by some of the blogs, some great talent out there too. Here is my first Assignment, which was to take a picture of something you love. Obviously my family is up there at number one, but since Bronte was in the shower and Brian was cooking a lovely Penang Gai (Dry Chicken Curry), Quinn was the guinea pig for the first assignment. I have screen calibration problems, it looked very oversaturated on my screen, so I dropped the saturation slightly and now it looks under-saturated on the web… calibration does my head in!

Wow, what a great response to my Subscription Offer (see sidebar announcement), if you have subscribed to the blog but haven’t received your download link for the CD calendar template, check that your subscription has been verified properly, there are a couple waiting on verification, other than that you should all have your links. I’d love to see some pics of your CD calendar made up and in use, post a link in the comments so I can see.

I have another blog freebie to post, but I am on my way out now so will do it soon, so watch out for that in the next day or two.

I got to see my blog on another computer recently and it was a little skewif (technical term) because of the “highlighted notes”, I am working on the problem and hope to have it fixed soon, sorry if it throws things out a little.

PHOTOSHOP TIP #1 (and #2)

I am sure you all know this one, but I’ll start at the basics… I didn’t know which shortcut to post first, as there are just sooo many that I use every time I open PS, I have never much used shortcuts in programs, but PS has converted me and their usefulness is never ending and makes for a much faster workflow.

BRUSH SIZE

To change brush size on the fly you can use the Left (to make the brush smaller) and Right (to make the bush larger) bracket keys. They sit next to the letter “P” on your keyboard, they are second nature to me now, so make a concerted effort to use them he next time you are using brushes in PS, this will also work, for the healing, clone, history, dodge, burn and other brush tools as well.

BRUSH HARDNESS

And because I can’t resist throwing this one in, you can also change the hardness and softness of your brush as well (this means that your brush can have a blurred or hard edge to it) to use this shortcut just add the Shift key in as well, Shift>[ makes the brush softer and Shift>] makes the brush harder, this is very useful when you are masking or erasing close to edges, to get a cleaner more realistic edge.

I hope you found this useful… leave a comment if you have.

Edited to add: We introduced Clinton and Jennifer to the joys of Puerto Rico tonight. They seemed to pick it up very well and are keen for another game, I had to report that Jen won her first ever game! Go Jen! Also, I have been accused of only reporting my wins, so just for the record, Suzy has won and so has Lincoln and I think Brian is the next highest winner, and I am fairly sure (I will be corrected if I am wrong) I am currently the overall champ. And this is my blog, so I guess I can say what I like! LOL