Social Media Update

Posted on 12/06/2011 by photospaz

Hi everyone!

Still can’t believe Christmas is almost here! Time has flown by so quickly. As a child, I don’t remember the time flying. As an adult, we have so many more responsibilities and things that snag our time.

Speaking of time, I spent all day last Friday watching an online workshop with Justin Seeley via creativeLIVE. http://www.creativeLIVE.com It was Designing with Social Media. Now I have pages of notes to help me streamline and best utilize my Social Media tools. There is so much to take advantage of, so many options. Over the next few weeks I’ll be updating each of my social sites and creating logos and such. I’m actually very excited. Honestly, it takes me a bit of time to do the designing portion but I really enjoy it, nonetheless. If you are interested in hearing what Justin has to say about this, you can go to the creativeLive website. I believe they have a video of the workshop for sell.

Tell me what are your favorite Social Media sites and why!

RSS Feeds & Reader Made Easy

Posted on 11/28/2011 by photospaz

For a long time, the little orange square indicating RSS feeds made me cringe. What in the world is an RSS feed? Clicking on it would take me to a screen with a bunch of text that made no sense at all, further confusing me. How was I supposed to subscribe to a blog when this kept happening?

This is going to be a basic explanation, not a technical one.

An RSS feed goes hand in hand with a Reader. First, let me explain about the Reader. It is necessary in order to utilize the RSS feeds. In a nutshell, the Reader is a place that holds all of your blog and website subscriptions in one location. It helps cut down on the incoming traffic to your inbox. Before I learned about the Reader, I had so many emails coming in to notify me that a new blog had been posted. Now I just have to open up my reader and there is a list of all subscriptions, and any new posts show up on the main page (Google Reader).

Choose which Reader suits you best. These are a few of the ones out there – Google Reader, Feed Demon, My Yahoo! Reader. Sign up and download any necessary software. These Readers are free.

Once you have your Reader opened up, it’s now time to add all of your favorite blogs and websites. This is where the RSS feed comes in. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. It’s an easy way to sign up for a blog or website. The symbol for RSS feed or subscription is that little orange box with 3 curved lines. Some sites have just the 3 curved lines or just say RSS. Regardless of how it is shown, the same thing applies.

1. Go to your favorite blog or website.

2. Find the RSS feed symbol or indicator and click on it.

3. There are 2 options for subscribing to a site.

a. A screen comes up that asks which Reader you are using. Find your choice and click

on it. This will add it to your Reader.

b. If you click to subscribe and a screen comes up with a lot of text that doesn’t make much sense, you will need to subscribe THROUGH your Reader. (ie. Google Reader has a Subscribe button on the upper left of the screen.) Click on the Subscribe button and type in the URL (ie. www.melissa-burns-photography.com) of the website or blog you’re wanting, then click ADD. This will add it to your Reader.

4. Do the above any time you want to add a new blog or site to your Reader.

Now you have all of your blog and website updates all neatly organized in one place!! Trust me; it makes it so much easier. I actually read more of them now that they are all together.

©Melissa Burns Photography – www.capturedmomentsbymel.com –capturedmomentsbymel@gmail.com

Does Your Image Change Color When It’s Uploaded to the Web?

Posted on 09/22/2011 by photospaz

This morning I finally finished my first photo blog post. A problem arose while working on it that I hadn’t experienced until recently. I’ve been uploading images to the web for a while now. Never had any problem with color changes. When I uploaded my images to put in my post, the color turned flat and dull. Whoa!! Couldn’t have my images looking like that for everyone to see! So, I started searching the internet for some help. I couldn’t find anything that worked for me but not for lack of trying.

Woke up today and decided to somehow find a solution to this problem. I opened up Photoshop and tried a few different Color Setting options. Finally, I found a combo that worked!! Hurray!!! Below I have listed the settings I used.

1) Open Photoshop.

2) Click the Edit menu and go down to Color Settings.

3) A Color Settings Dialogue Box will come up.

4) At the top you’ll see the Settings drop-down menu. Click on this.

5) Scroll down to North America Web/Internet. Click on this.

6) You’ll see that in the Working Spaces box, it changes the RGB drop-down menu to sRGB….

7) Go down to the Color Management Policies.

8) On the RGB drop-down menu, click to Convert to Working Space. Then click OK.

9) Next, open the image you want to upload. If it has a different working space than what you just selected, then the Embedded Profile Mismatch box comes up. Click to Convert to Working Space and click OK.

10) Then SAVE your image.

After doing this to all of the images I wanted to add to the web, I uploaded them to WordPress. Sure enough, they were all the PERFECT color!!! Yeah!!

I looked into setting it back to the best color setting for printing. The consensus that I seem to have come across is to set the Workspace RGB to sRGB… That is supposed to be the default for most uses.

Give this a try and see if you find it helpful!! I know I did!!