Sometimes the solution for our not-so-great photos is simple cropping or zooming in.
My camera does not have a zoom lens, so many of my photos are of a large area with little people in the distance!! Until I get my zoom lens, I know that I can crop and zoom in on my photos with Memory Manager 3.0 and Storybook Creator Plus 3.0 software. These photos from a softball game are a good example of what can be done to not-very-great photos to make them much better!
The first photo is an example of what can happen when you give a kid a camera!! A very unflattering photo of mom’s rear end! My hand was on the delete button when I hesitated...I wanted to remember that moment, swinging the bat and running for home base...something that hasn’t happened for 20 years...even if it was a very unflattering pose. My children may never see me swing a bat again, I have to preserve this photo for posterity (that’s close to being a pun...), so let’s crop that baby!
It’s easy to crop a photo in either software. In Memory Manager you can decide whether to crop a photo horizontally or vertically or custom. In Storybook Creator Plus you can add your photo to your page then go to the Format Photos tab and there you find a magnifying glass icon that you can drag to zoom in on your photo, and then grab the yellow + in the middle of the photo and move your photo around. There’s a lot to be said for the subject of your photo to NOT be smack dab in the middle of the photo...off to one side is usually more visually interesting. And in both programs, just the click of the Auto Contrast and Auto Color buttons will easily give your photos more depth and better contrast and color!
I’ve added a few extras to these photos to make them a bit more ‘cool’. Adding word art right onto the photo next to the subject is one of my favorite things! And how about a grungy distressed border? Love it! There was so much empty space in the bottom photo, I decided to make it into 2 photos. In Storybook Creator Plus, I changed the aspect of the photo frame, copied and pasted the photo then with the slider in Format Photos, zoomed in and with the yellow + I moved the photos around so my son appeared in one photo frame, and my husband appeared in the other.
On this page I used the Distressed Digital Overlays resized to fit over the photos, the background paper is from the Rugged Digital Power Palette and the title alpha is from the Rugged Outdoors Kit. The font I used is called Complete in Him. The equal signs are from the Bold Digital Alpha set. The word art is from the Primary Baseball Digital Kit.
By Denna de Motta
I love everything about this layout!! Especially how you gave us such details as to the 'how' you did it so we can recreate it! AWESOME!! Thanks
Posted by: Kelly | 09/23/2011 at 06:08 PM
I love the way you cropped the bottom photo into two. Much better!
Posted by: Sara | 09/23/2011 at 05:02 PM
I'd love to see your finished page after all the tricks.
Posted by: Janet | 09/23/2011 at 02:03 PM