Help [ME] Ronda

Instagram How to, the fine print part 2

This week's series is coming to a close.  I hope you have found this post useful to capture your daily life.  Today's topic is actually printing instagram photos along with how to use them in your life & scrapbook journals.  If you haven't been saving your photos to your camera roll there is a program called instaport.me that helps you export your instagram photos to your hard drive.  I have not tried it so i cannot tell you how it works or if it works well.  It's just a resource for you to check out. 

I usually import my photos to my PC by plugging my phone into the computer via usb cable.  I copy & paste my photos from the iPhone into a folder named instagram.  it's quick & easy to do for me.  Another quick way to grab just one photo is to just email it to yourself.  I print at home so it's easy for me to decide what size i want my photos. 

If you don't print at home, don't worry there are lots of places out there to print your photos.  You can also use a photo editing program (i use photoshop) and make your own 4 x 6 prints using the instagram photos.  You can do many variations like 2x2 photos, 3 in a row, 2 columns; two 3x3 photos with an inch border; a 4x4 and two 2 x 2 photos. Upload these to your favorite printing places as a 4 x 6 (snapfish, shutterfly, etc).  it's cheaper than printing them as individuals.

I use my instagram prints in my scrapbook pages. (Click on any of the above layouts to make them larger) I love that little square.  I will print them 5x5, 4x4, 3x3, 2x2, and even 1x1 (think a month of documentation on one layout). 

I use them in my mini albums & art journal pages. 

I use them in project life pages.  All these photos are from my camera/instagram.  Because i save both sizes, i have the option on how i want to print them.  I love that 6x6 photo of Andrew & I on the page (Design e). 

I just ordered these 4 x 4 sleeves from Cocoa Daisy.  They are from We are Memory Keepers.  Next time i think i will order the 4 6x4, 3 4x4 pages too. 

My sweet & gorgeous friend Jude made this awesome family canvas using her instagram prints.  You can check out her tutorial here!  Make sure you leave her some love from me as she generously let me use her photo & link to her post.  I really want to do something like this. Maybe for Andrew for a Christmas present!

Like i said, there are a great many places to print instagram prints.  Here is a list of a few of the ones i have looked into.  We have used Printstagram for stickers.  

1. Printstagram: 2x2 squares, stickers, mini prints, posters, calendars
2. Canvas Pop: Canvases (i so want a grouping of these!)
3. Persnickety Prints: 2x2, 3x3, 4x4 Silk Cover, Matte, Pearl or Linen
4. Stickygram: Magnets think about a fridge covered with those photos
5. Casetagram: Custom Phone Cases & iPad cases
6. PostalPix: Pics from your phone delivered to you
7. InstaThis: Prints on Wood & Acrylic in a variety of sizes

I hope you have enjoyed this week of instagram and learned some tips & tricks along the way.  If you'd like to follow me on instagram, simply click on the camera icon to bookmark my instagram feed on your computer or find me on instagram: rondapalazzari

Instagram How to, the fine print part 1

This week we have covered the basics to advance settings, uses with other social media, using instagram with other apps, etc.  Today we will be covering some things to think about regarding social media & picture taking.  So before we dive into the second two, let's take about social media itself. 

Nat shared with me a post i think you will find interesting. She's right.  You have the right & responsibility to decide how much of your life you want to share publicly.  You can set your instagram photo feed to private and require approval of who views them.  The same goes with adding photos to your map.  You can choose when & where you add these to your personal map.  I use Instagram both as a place to record daily life as well as a way to share my art/job.  I do share family photos and such but i do not add my home on the map.  I will add places i am locally on occasion but use the map feature more when i am traveling.  You need to decide what is okay in your opinion and then set your features accordingly.  This goes for instagram and any other social media platform. 

Tap to focus when taking pictures, especially if you want something specific in focus.  And remember the crop & angle makes a difference.  Sometimes i will take the photo with the iPhone camera and then load it into instagram.  I can control the crop this way and move the photo around easier.  This is also great for macro shots, that is close up photos.  it is easier to get the lighting (no camera shadow) by changing up the angle with the regular camera and then zooming in with the instagram program.  I also found a video on how to get  a jump shot here. 

Let's talk a bit about what photos to take.  Sometimes this topic can be overwhelming.  People sometimes get wrapped up in what others want to see instead of thinking about what tells the story of their lives.  So let's start with the obvious, family portraits.  Pretty straight forward, their faces, yours & theirs together.  easy peasy lemon squeeze.  On some of the iPhones, you have the ability to use the forward camera so it's easier to get these portraits.  Perfect the one arm reach. Did you know you can click the Volume buttons on the side to take your picture?  This way you don't have to try to hold the camera and click the camera button on the front screen with one hand!

a twist on family portraits.

The everyday events that make up your life.  What did you do today?  What did the family do?  Do the kids have after school activities?  Are family dinners a must?

Self portraits.  These are important.  Nobody knows you better than you.  Tell your story.

what's for breakfast/lunch/dinner?  Do you bake or cook?  Share your recipes.  Special lunch date?  Dinner out?  a foodie?

where you live... around the house, around the town, the scenery, the special things about the place you live (Colorado sunsets are amazing!), the places you shop, favorite local spots, the park, favorite places in your home, favorite decor, etc

Right now moments.  What is happening right now?

seasons & holidays.  Is there something that reminds you of winter, spring, summer, or fall?  Is it the changing of leaves, the Starbucks red cups, the first snowfall, the first buds of spring, outdoor activities, specific clothing (hats & scarves, boots, flip-flops)

Travel & events.  Birthday parties, girls nights out, weddings, cities, vacations/holidays, anniversaries, etc.

What does work space look like.  This can be both your creative life and your work life. Working on a project?  Tools of the trade, what do you use on a day to day basis.  Are you creative?  Got Quilt, crafts, paints, layouts, mini albums, etc.  let us be inspired by your creativity. 

Inspiring stuff, words of wisdom, awesome art, cool decor, etc...

I know this was a picture heavy posts.  I hope it leaves you feeling like you are ready to capture your life this instant.  One more blog post tomorrow on Instagram and then i hope to see you on the feed!

Instagram How to, Web Viewer & Combining Apps

Now that we have gone through most of the app, let's take a look at other programs you can use in conjunction with instagram.  There are so many fun apps out there and i am going to share a few of them with you. But first let's talk about something brand new instagram, your own instagram web viewer.  So now you can see your feed on the web like this: http://instagram.com/rondapalazzari

pretty darn cool i think. you can see yours and others if you know their user names. like say for instance Julie Balzer, Emily Pitts, Dina Wakley, Nat Kalbach, Lisa Pace, etc

In capturing every day life, I tend to take lots of photos with my camera.  These next few apps work in conjunction with Instagram.  A collage is a great way to share multiple photos and there are a few apps i use.  Again these can be found on the iPhone but i am not sure if they are found on the Droid.  If you have some you like, please feel free to share.

 

PicStitch and PicCollage are two collage apps that are pretty darn cool.  You can export to multiple places including Instagram.  To fill in the spaces on PicStitch, you just double click on the spaces to fill in photos from your camera roll.  On PicCollage you tap the background to add photos.  You can add them from your camera roll or from Facebook with PicCollage but you will have to allow the program access to facebook. 

InstaCollage is another collage app but you can also add text to the collage.  Again you can export it to many different places including instagram. Typoinsta is another app that be used to add typography to photos.  

Bokeful is an awesome app that allows you to bokehs to your photos.  You can rotate the color wheel to pic a color and then click on the shape.  Once you pick your colors and shape, you simply tap on your photo to add the bokeh. 

Two fun apps are Be Funky and Postagram.  With Be funky you can add cool effects to your photos.  And while you cannot send it to instagram, you can send it to other social media apps and save it to your camera roll.  With Postgram you can upload photos (including instagram photos) and send postcards to friends and familys for a fee.  I haven't used this one yet but plan to put it to use next Doha trip. 

So what apps do you use with Instagram?

Instagram How to, Sharing

Time to dive into some more advanced settings and sharing possibilities.  There is so much you can do with instagram whether you are capturing day to day life or using it as a marketing tool.  Let's take a look at some more settings and sharing capabilities. 

When you post your pictures, you have the option to add them to your map.  It's a cool feature that shows where in the world your photos have been taken.  In order to use this feature you need to change your share settings on your phone.  For the iPhone, click on settings>privacy>photos and then switch the button to on.  You can also look at other photo maps if the people you follow have that featured turned on. 

You can also share your photos on different social media sites like facebook, twitter, etc.  You need to enable this feature first in your profile settings (see yesterday's post about profile settings) and then when you are posting your photos, click on the ones you want to send your photo and caption to.  In the captions of your photos, you can also add at symbol & user name (@mlepitts) that will link to friends on instagram and/or twitter. 

When you do, it will link automatically on twitter to those people.  The photos will also show up on your twitter feed on the left side.  You will also see a link to the instagram photo on your twitter feed. 

If you click on Facebook, it will also be posted in an instagram photo album on your Facebook profile.  It will not be tagged and you will have to do that on Facebook. 

You can like other peoples photos in two ways.  You can double click on the photo.  See the heart on the photo on the left?  it appears after double clicking.  Or you can click on the like button.  You can comment on photos by clicking the comment button and typing in your message.  Again you can use @username in the comments and it will show up on that person's news feed. 

Say you want to share someones photo on your twitter feed. Dot, dot, dot on the right side pulls up another menu that allows you to share it.  Once you click the tweet button it pulls up their name & photo in your twitter dialog box with their user name and a link to the photo.  You can also add a message.   

Remember this is all using my iPhone 4s (ios 6.0) but hopefully the droid phones aren't too far off from this. 

Instagram How to, Basics part 2

This week i am bringing to you Instagram tips from basic to more advanced.  Yesterday's post was just the beginning of taking photos.  Today's topic is more about the settings and the instagram stream.  Again i am using an iPhone but it should be similar on the droid. 

 

1. Home Screen
2. Explore Screen
3. Camera
4. Following/News
5. Profile

When you open the app, you land on the home screen.  It comes up with stream of photos.  On that screen as you scroll through the photos, you can see the photos of the people you follow, how many likes the photo has, the caption of the photo, the time it was posted. 

 

If you click on the explore icon, a search bar comes up.  If you click on the bar, you have the option of searching users or hashtags.  You can search for users & their photos by either their user name or their real name.  Sometimes people have their photos set to private and you won't be able to see their photos until they approve your request.  You can also search hashtags, like food, fashion, art, colors, manufacture companies, kit companies, sayings, etc. 

if you click on the heart, you can view your following likes (photo on the left) or your news (photo on right).  By scrolling through the following likes, you can see what photos strike your friends fancy.  On the news photo you can see who has liked & commented on your photos.  You can also click on the name or photo to be taken directly to that page. 

If you click on the last icon, you pull up your profile.  This is where you can change your settings, see your photo stream, and your photo map.  You can see the number of photos you have in your collection, your followers, and who you are following.  If you click on these tabs, you can see who is following you.  If there is a green bar next to their name you are also following this person.  The grid icon means your photos are laid out in a grid 3 in a row.  The bar icon means your photos are bigger in a single column.  

One more tip for you today.  If you click on the gear icon up at the top of your profile page it brings you to this page.  Scroll down to see the save to the library buttons.  If you want the photos to save to your camera library turn this feature on.  Not only do i have this one one, i have also turned on the save original photo so when i take a picture using the instagram camera, it saves the larger full sized photo.  It's nice to have these available in my camera roll. 

Instagram How to, Basics part 1

Instagram is one of my favorite ways to capture snapshots of our daily life.  It's an application you can find on most droids & iPhones.  There is something so special and so easy about pulling our my phone to take a quick photo capturing that moment.  Although it hasn't replaced my DSLR, I take more daily pictures now.  365 is a breeze with instagram.  But I do like having both options for photos.   Also with the instagram feed, you get to peek into your friends & those you follows lives.  It can be linked to various accounts, like facebook and twitter. I'll go more into that on future posts but for now let's start with the basics. 

So let's talk about some basic features and how to use instagram. I am using my iPhone so i don't know if the droid looks different.  I imagine though it is similar.  Once you install the app and signed up, you simply click on the instagram app. Once you open the app you have two choices for photos.  You can use the camera which is already opened by simply touching the camera button.  You have some options like flash, automatic flash, or no flash with the camera.  The other option is to click the double squares to bring up your camera roll/gallery. 

 

1. Frames button (these depend on your filter)
2. Rotate image button
3. Reverse Camera (if you are taking a photo)
4. Blur Button
5. Close the camera
6. Lux button (enhances photos)
7. Close this photo & restart
8. Go on to add caption & link to other apps
9. Filters

Once you click the filters buttons it brings up all the different filters (right photo).  You can scoll through the filters and click on them to see how they will look with your photo.  Here's a visual guide of filters photo from dailydigi.com. 

 

Source: thedailydigi.com via Ronda on Pinterest

 

 

You can also use filters with or without frames.  The visual guide above shows all the frames with the filters.  Each filter brings something different to the photos.  It all depends on the mood you are going for with each shot. My favorites right now are Sierra and Lo-Fi.  I use them quite frequently. 

The Blurs are another cool function of the camera.  If you click on the horizontal bar under the drop, you will place a horizontal blur in the center of the photo (photo on the left).  If you click on the circle under the drop, you will place a spot blur in the center of your photo (photo on the right). You can move these around too with just the touch of your finger. 

Do you use instagram?  What's your favorite filter of the moment?