Basic Photo Editing with Aperture 3
Here is a quick video tutorial on how to use Aperture 3 to do some photo editing. Aperture 3 is software designed for Mac computers and does a beautiful job editing photos. In this tutorial I go through some of the basic steps to edit a photograph to make it look more clean and professional. Don’t have Aperture or would like me to do your photo editing? Use my contact page to request a quote for my services.
Want to see this video in High Definition? Go to YouTube directly for more Web Savvy Mama tutorial videos featured in HD.
See the finished photo and others at Nate Paul Images, my husband’s online photo gallery where he and I display some of our favorites!
My Eyes, My Eyes! Big Blog Sale!
So I got the all-clear that my eyes are healed, yay! For those who are a little late to this party, I recently suffered corneal abrasions on both my eyes that covered the majority of my corneas. They were chemically etched. Yikes is right! After 4 days completely blind, then another week of just ok vision I now have my vision back and eyes are healed. That is a lot to celebrate!
I’m passing on my excitement with a big blog sale! Its my opinion that business web sites can benefit immensely from blogs being incorporated. Any web site for that matter! To celebrate being back to designing and to also help raise funds to cover the cost of expenses related to my eye injury I’m having this sale.
When you purchase a web site design package and add a matching blog design to your order I will take %50 off that matching blog! I’ll design a theme to match the web design you ordered and install it to the associated WordPress blog on your new site! You’ll have a fresh new blog to chronicle all your excited about your fresh new web site.
How do you take advantage of this sale? Simply add your design package using the package picker (Get Started @ top) and check the “Add a Matching WP Blog Theme” option. After you add that to your cart you can use the coupon code: BLOGTASTIC at checkout to get your discount.
eCommerce site owners start here | Informational site owners start here
That’s it, its that easy! So check out the design packages and get your BLOGTASTIC savings on your matching WordPress blog theme.
Do You Care About Your Eye Health? Read This!
**Warning, pictures of my eye are shown further down**
As some already know, I suffered eye damage this past week that has basically had me sitting in a dark room studying the insides of my eyelids. As I write this my eyes are still recovering and I am only able to keep them open for brief periods of time. But, this message is far too important to wait though, so I must apologize in advance if it seems a bit discombobulated as you read it.
It all started last Wednesday (the 7th) I was coaching a little league game when I noticed everything was a bit hazy. It felt as though I had stepped into a fog bank and I was looking at the world through a white film. A bit concerning to say the least. I brushed it off to something being on my contact lenses and that as soon as the game was over I’d rush home and take them out. Soon enough, the game ended we all high-fived, said our “good games” and enjoyed the customary Popsicle. We drove home and I rushed to take out my contacts, sure that this would take care of my vision issues. I was mistaken. After taking out my contacts I still could see the white haze but also realized that all light sources also had halos around them.
We had company over and talking to my friends they assured me it was nothing to worry about, probably sinus pressure or tired. I did agree that being tired probably was the case and I took my leave to bed early. The next morning my vision was still blurry, I went in to work but also called my eye Dr to set up an appointment. By 8:30 I was at the clinic and having my eyes checked out something definitely was not right.
During the examination the Dr put stain in my eyes that would show any scratched or damage to my eyes, the entire surface of my right cornea lit up and about a third of the left cornea. I was told that my corneas were covered in serrations, the same size as my contacts. It looked like a chemical burn on my corneas, but how? Well, I have been using Clear Care overnight contact cleaner for the past few months. Its a hydrogen peroxide type cleaner that uses a special case. When used in the case the cleaner does its job and then deactivates within 6 hours and the contacts are safe to use again. I hadn’t had an issue until now. As far as we can tell, the cleaner did not deactivate fully the last time I used it. It was deactivated enough that it didn’t burn when I put them in but instead damaged my eye over the course of the day.
I was sent home from the Dr’s office with prednisone eye drops and directions to rest my eyes. By late afternoon I was in so much pain that it took all my will not to scream out. I had also lost all of my vision by this time. My husband rushed me to the Emergency Room where I was given 2 shots of a pain killer that did nothing to ease the pain. They told me it was seven times stronger than morphine, I was seriously doubting that claim at the time. They instilled numbing drops into my eyes so that they could pry them open and get a basic vision test done. No surprise, I couldn’t see anything. They stained my eyes again and confirmed that they were, of course, covered in serrations. Not much could be done. The worst of my eyes was patched and I was sent home with more pain killers to knock me out until morning.
Actual pictures of my eye after the jump.
Read More…
New Photography Site
My husband has been doing photography for a bit now and finally asked me to create a website for his photos. I spent the weekend finishing the setup and loading a sample of his photos.
What does this mean for my web design clients? Custom stock photography! We will be slowly building a large collection of images that can be used for stock photography for everything from web sites to advertising. Our goal will be to offer stock photos that will be of use to WAHMs and other small businesses for a reason price, with out needing to buy large amounts of credits to do so!
Eventually we may decide to expand this to product photography to go along with my graphic editing services. You’ll be able to have Web Savvy Mama not only design your website but supply the images to go along with your products! Of course, this is still a bit in the future, but the white box I made my husband build is just itching for use!
In the meanwhile, what would you like to see pictures of?
SEO Services from WSM
A while back I posted that I don’t offer SEO, the reason behind that I feel Search Engine Optimization is a long term relationship between the site owner and the web site. SEO is a process that not only includes the basic set up, but also the continual attention of the site owner. Its not something you can just “do” as a one time thing and forget about. With that said, I’m getting a lot of requests to help with SEO type services. I’ve decided its time to make these services available for those who need a bit more help getting started.
What I’ve decided to offer are starter services that will jump start the SEO process for the web site. I still encourage site owners to learn more about how to optimize their site and work towards reinforcing the optimization with long term efforts. In the Add Ons – A la Carte category of my online ordering area I’ve added some basic SEO services to help get you started.
Some of the services listed include adding meta tags or pages and products, keyword research, full product optimization, site map creation and submission, search engine submission, Analytics creation and integration, social networking setup and integration (including Twitter and Facebook) as well as various Wordpress social networking plugin setups.
A few of these are offered as stand alone add ons and the rest are part of the SEO services customized package where you can pick and choose which services to add.
All SEO services are for sites and blogs designed by me, Web Savvy Mama. If you have a site designed by someone else please contact me using my custom quote form to inquire about the cost for your SEO package.
iOS 4 Critically Wounded My iPhone 3G
As an apple fan girl it pains me to say it, but my 3G iPhone is now almost completely unusable. I am incredibly disappointed with the lack of warning 3G users were given. It leaves me to wonder 2 things: did Apple simply drop the ball and not test enough on the 3G phones? Or was this killer iOS 4 software upgrade an intentional ploy to get 3G users, who are most likely near the end of their contracts, to upgrade to the new 4G phones? Either way it makes me instantly have painful flashbacks to my Microsoft days and the crippling money pit that was Windows ME. *shudder* Why Apple, why?!
I first thought that maybe it was just me. Perhaps I had a bad download and upgrade? Maybe I needed to reboot my phone more than a dozen times? Maybe I’m just expecting too much? A quick Google search confirmed my fears, 3G users all over are having issues and Apple has been silent.
Like most people, I anxiously plugged in my iPhone to do the upgrade that promised to rock. I knew I would be missing out on some features, but that was ok. At least I wasn’t being left in the dark like the 2G users were, right? I’d soon discover that perhaps they were the lucky ones. After upgrading my iTunes and struggling with the upgrade process freezing several times I finally decided to delete all backups and start over. I should have seen the signs and given up at this point. Over 2 hours later, or longer – after awhile I was too frustrated and just walked away to let it try to sort itself out, I finally had the coveted iOS 4 on my iPhone. Yay! Or so I thought.
It didn’t take long to figure out that my iPhone just wasn’t the same. As I was drooling over the new features I started to notice that my once fast companion was now very sluggish. My phone is not even half full so this shouldn’t be an issue. After several reboots the issue had not resolved. I took a deep breath and told myself I could deal with that. If that had been my only issue I could have lived with it, unfortunately it was just the beginning.
I’m not sure of the extent of other iPhone users’ issues because many are complaining about features that were not intended for our phones to begin with, but here is a list of the ones I have been having. For disclosure purposes I have a 8GB iPhone 3G. My husband has a 16GB 3Gs and while he has not experienced the vast list of bugs I have, he has noted quite a few himself. Each of us have iMacs that we use to sync our phones with.
Here are the wounds that are crippling my poor iPhone:
#1 Sluggishly slow. The phone lags so bad that texting or inputting any text on the phone can be almost painful.
#2 My phone freezes more than a slurpee brainfreeze in Antartica.
#3 Folder glitchiness. When switching between apps and folders they sometimes behave erratically, and then lead back to issue #2.
#4 Incoming calls randomly fail to display name or number.
#5 Incoming calls lagging when connecting, sometimes not able to even answer the call.
#6 Any notification received by the phone while in standby mode causes the phone to become non-responsive. This forces me to do a frustrated series of home button mashing while trying to restrain myself from chucking the phone across the room.
#7 When trying to simply wake the phone from sleep/standby mode the slider bar often is non-responsive. I found that I can bypass the slider button by performing the aforementioned home button mashing enough times. This causes my phone to suddenly come alive with a random app open. Hey, at least its past the dang slider bar screen!
#8 Random contact list and folder errors. I found that the phone function on the phone is very glitchy, especially the contacts. On several occasions now I’ve opened up my phone, selected my contact to call from my contact list, placed the call, finished the call, closed the phone and proceeded to open an app or do some other function on the phone before putting it back into sleep mode. When I decided to try to use the phone again I attempted to get to the home page and would find that the contact page would be open again and when I closed it a folder would be open as well. Its almost like my phone is trying to evolve into a multitasking phone on its own and failing miserably.
#9 Apps suddenly closing or crashing more frequently. Memory issues?
At times it seems my phone can’t decide what it wants to allow me to achieve. It feels like trying to convince a cranky overtired toddler that peas are the best food on Earth. In the end I am left with a barely functional iPhone and my family is avoiding me in fear that they may unintentionally get in the path of a flying phone if I lose my patience one.more.time. The 3G phone that I ran through the wash on extended rinse cycle is looking like it just might be more functional than my current phone is now. That is, as long as I don’t upgrade the OS on it.
Apple, where is the update? Why are you so silent on this?