Calendar Workshop 2024

[Corrie Kinkel]

1 hour ago, Susan Ewart said:

I wish to print them too.  It sure is a conundrum; to print or not to print.  It's a huge expense.  I was thinking of print them as 10x10s or 8x8s to save a bit.  would be neat to have a revolving art wall where I can change out the pictures (I'm not talking the WHOLE wall, just a little cluster).  Would be nice to see them other than looking at them on the computer. We had Epson in the past and liked it.  It seems now that stuff just isnt made like it used to be.  It's hard to know what is reliable and well built and what isn't.  

I used print shops a lot for my photo albums and was very satisfied,  but as I'm in the Netherlands that doesn't help you! My cards and calendars I print at home on our Canon printer and we are very happy with the result; we never have had problems of any kind. I print my calendars on matte photopaper and it is looking very fine!  For my cards I alternated between matte or glossy photopaper. The problem is that we only have A-4 paper for the calendar and that is not totally comparable with the American standard. As a solution I use the full width of the A-4 paper and print the calendar with its bottom at the bottom of the A-4 paper which leaves me with a small empty strip at the top. I can cut that strip off or leave it as is and  punch 2 holes in that strip instead of the calendar itself so I can bind the pages with a nice ribbon or string. Sometimes I color that strip in the color of the background of the page before printing. The recipients of my calendars are always very happy with their new copy for the next year and often save the part with the photos and use that for their own paper crafts; that is the reason I never put something overlapping the photo part of the calendar. 

[Corrie Kinkel]

15 minutes ago, Mary Solaas said:

Thanks for the answer.  I'm going to bite the bullet (if I finish the travel tale album) and buy it on Cyber Monday.  The previous albums I had printed at Shutterfly were great - couldn't afford the 12X12 but the 8X8 worked well.  Those were only about 20 pages.  Gave them to my daughter who really loves them.  Her children loved them too.  This one is going to be more than 40 pages..  I like my Epson 6100 printer.  I print out my greeting cards on them.  You said you print directly from PSP?  I haven't tried that, as I've been printing them from Word.  I may try that next.

Mary I too print direct from PSP and for me that works well!

[Rene Marker]

1 hour ago, Mary Solaas said:

Thanks for the answer.  I'm going to bite the bullet (if I finish the travel tale album) and buy it on Cyber Monday.  The previous albums I had printed at Shutterfly were great - couldn't afford the 12X12 but the 8X8 worked well.  Those were only about 20 pages.  Gave them to my daughter who really loves them.  Her children loved them too.  This one is going to be more than 40 pages..  I like my Epson 6100 printer.  I print out my greeting cards on them.  You said you print directly from PSP?  I haven't tried that, as I've been printing them from Word.  I may try that next.

I get the 10x10 books from Shutterfly. Easier to read the journaling! And, fit quite nicely on regular book shelves.

The only thing I print right from PSP is 4x6 photos.

[Julian Adams]

19 hours ago, Ann Seeber said:

My Epson is just a personal size. I think the largest would be 8.5x14. I use the print option in PSP which seems to work well. I always struggle with the print being too dark, which I can adjust, so I'm pleased with the quality. It's binding my work into a calendar this time that has me looking to outsource. I've never had a clog.

Maybe the reason I had problems with clogging is that I was buying them when they first came out and I was also buying the cheapest ones at the time.  Glad to hear they are reliable now.  I always thought they did marvellous color prints.

[Julian Adams]

I have a hard time stopping tweaking these calendars.  I have a new version of April.  I'm curious which one people like better. 

Edited November 26, 2023 by Julian Adams
typo

[Carolyn Rye]

The Last 2 Months of the calendar.  November shows the beautiful Grotto at Pt Campbell Victoria and December Noosa Beach in Queensland.

[Carolyn Rye]

I decided to show a photo of the beautiful Eucalyptus flower for the cover page.

[Susan Ewart]

2 hours ago, Julian Adams said:

I have a hard time stopping tweaking these calendars.  I have a new version of April.  I'm curious which one people like better. 

I like the dark one.  I tend toward shades though.  Both are really nice, but the darker one stands out and catches my attention.

Edited November 26, 2023 by Susan Ewart

[Susan Ewart]

2 hours ago, Carolyn Rye said:

The Last 2 Months of the calendar.  November shows the beautiful Grotto at Pt Campbell Victoria and December Noosa Beach in Queensland.

Your photos through the whole calendar area really beautiful.

[Ann Seeber]

3 hours ago, Julian Adams said:

Maybe the reason I had problems with clogging is that I was buying them when they first came out and I was also buying the cheapest ones at the time.  Glad to hear they are reliable now.  I always thought they did marvellous color prints.

I understand the manufacturers add a lubricant that is patented so it can't be used by the generic companies. That prevents the clogging.

[Ann Seeber]

3 hours ago, Julian Adams said:

I have a hard time stopping tweaking these calendars.  I have a new version of April.  I'm curious which one people like better. 

My own choice would be the first version. Nice job, Julian.

[Julian Adams]

12 minutes ago, Ann Seeber said:

I understand the manufacturers add a lubricant that is patented so it can't be used by the generic companies. That prevents the clogging.

I always did use Epson ink. This was when inkjets first came out.  Before that all you had was dot matrix.

11 minutes ago, Ann Seeber said:

My own choice would be the first version. Nice job, Julian.

Thank you for the kind feedback Ann!  There are so many advanced users here.  I've used PSP for a long time on single layer photography but I am very new to layers, masks, transparency and all the other techniques we are using here so I am like a kid in a candy shop.

[MoniqueN.]

7 hours ago, Julian Adams said:

I have a hard time stopping tweaking these calendars.  I have a new version of April.  I'm curious which one people like better. 

The dark one 🙂

[MoniqueN.]

18 hours ago, Corrie Kinkel said:

Mary I too print direct from PSP and for me that works well!

Print or print lay out? I get white edges on A4 🙂

[Sue Thomas]

54 minutes ago, MoniqueN. said:

Print or print lay out? I get white edges on A4 🙂

Your printer doesn't print to the edges,  mine doesn't, I use a guillotine to trim the edges.  You can get printers that do.  When you use an outside source  for printing, they too trim the edges.  

[MoniqueN.]

56 minutes ago, Sue Thomas said:

Your printer doesn't print to the edges,  mine doesn't, I use a guillotine to trim the edges.  You can get printers that do.  When you use an outside source  for printing, they too trim the edges.  

I was wondering maybe you could print with a minimum or none  white edges. Trimmed the white edges in previous years.

[Corrie Kinkel]

2 hours ago, MoniqueN. said:

Print or print lay out? I get white edges on A4 🙂

I use the print layout from PSP where you have the flexibility to put your page the way it fit best but there still is a white strip that you have to cut off or use for making holes to bind all the pages together, like Sue mentioned. If you want your page fitting the A-4 format like we use in Europe you have to alter the calendar pages from the workshop.

[Sue Thomas]

3 minutes ago, Corrie Kinkel said:

I use the print layout from PSP where you have the flexibility to put your page the way it fit best but there still is a white strip that you have to cut off or use for making holes to bind all the pages together, like Sue mentioned. If you want your page fitting the A-4 format like we use in Europe you have to alter the calendar pages from the workshop.

I am used to A4, then  coming to North America, I was under the impression that  US letter was it's equivalent.  Not so.  Not only they changed  the paper size name, they also changed the size itself. Subtle as it may be. The American pint is different to the  Imperial pint, to me a pint is a pint.  Which makes the  American fluid ounce   4% more than  the imperial.  Same goes for measuring cups.  Australia is the  same as  the European.  It can make baking a  maths lesson sometime, when you are trying to convert an America recipe to imperial. when you have imperial measuring jugs and scales.

That is why I mentioned in a previous comment, when using an outside source for printing anything, the first thing to do  is to choose the layout size from  the printers option list.  No matter how  little the size difference may be, it can be a real hassle editing it to fit.

[Susan Ewart]

1 hour ago, Sue Thomas said:

I am used to A4, then  coming to North America, I was under the impression that  US letter was it's equivalent.  Not so.  Not only they changed  the paper size name, they also changed the size itself. Subtle as it may be. The American pint is different to the  Imperial pint, to me a pint is a pint.  Which makes the  American fluid ounce   4% more than  the imperial.  Same goes for measuring cups.  Australia is the  same as  the European.  It can make baking a  maths lesson sometime, when you are trying to convert an America recipe to imperial. when you have imperial measuring jugs and scales.

That is why I mentioned in a previous comment, when using an outside source for printing anything, the first thing to do  is to choose the layout size from  the printers option list.  No matter how  little the size difference may be, it can be a real hassle editing it to fit.

I will usually get a test print done, 1 print to see how the  outsource photo printing company prints the photo/layout (I'm using London Drugs Photo - Canadians may recognize this company).  Usually it's too dark so I'll add remarks, like lighten, or watch the whites or I'll even tell them the correction to make eg. take out 1 cyan and add +1 density etc.  Then when I'm okay with it, is when I make the full order.  I'm not talking Calendars, although  when I do try a calendar I will test out 1 month probably, just to see if it's worth printing or if I need to make changes (before I commit to 12 months and a cover only to find it's too dark).  Prints always come back darker, simply because it's on paper and not a backlit screen we are used to seeing it on.  And then there's the blacks and inherent issues with JPG not having the latitude a TIFF file has.  I have meant to save my pspimages as a jpg and tiff to compare.  But not much sense in doing that until I start working from a RAW file then converting and comparing.  so much still to learn in the digital post processing for me.  

[Donna Sillia]

I have been experimenting with borderless printing on my Epson and have finally determined the correct settings so that edges and borders are equal. I copied the calendar page to an 8.5 by 11 paper and filled the edges with a pattern. I have a lot of different kinds of paper and will test the heavier papers to see if you can write on them. I have also been researching how to bind the pages together with ribbon or yarn.

My calendar making slowed down, first because I kept changing my mind on the calendar and the shading and the because my grandsons were visiting from Las Vegas for Thanksgiving.

[Julian Adams]

I also wanted to print these borderless but I hadn't thought to fill in borders with a pattern.  Carole laid these out to print 8"x10.5" at 300 dpi and I wanted to print 8.5"x11".  I wanted to keep it at 300 dpi just because that's the standard resolution for printing. That meant increasing the image size instead of reducing it.  I decided the image could stand a little increase because the elements were so high quality and I changed the image size from 2400x3150 to 2550x3300.  Even at that size when I dragged it onto the page layout I still had to futz around trying to get the borders perfect.  That was  very time consuming!  I decided to add a few extra pixels to both dimensions.  That meant when I dragged the image onto the page layout I got the message my image was too big and I could sit back and let PSP resize those few pixels to make it fit perfectly with no time consuming futzing.

If anyone is interested the final image size I came up with is 2556x3307.  That prints 8.520"x11.023" at 300 dpi which gave me a tiny bit of wiggle room around the edges so it fit perfectly with no borders after PSP resized it in the page layout.  I'm sorry this was so long winded.  You can tell I work as an engineer!  

I really want to thank Carole and everyone else for this workshop.  I learned a huge amount having never worked with layers, or masks, or gradients and a whole bunch of other new things before!  Each new calendar month I learn something new.

Here's my May Calendar resized to print on 8.5"x11" paper.  

 

Edited November 27, 2023 by Julian Adams
several typos

[Donna Sillia]

18 minutes ago, Julian Adams said:

I also wanted to print these borderless but I hadn't thought to fill in borders with a pattern.  Carole laid these out to print 8"x10.5" at 300 dpi and I wanted to print 8.5"x11".  I wanted to keep it at 300 dpi just because that's the standard resolution for printing. That meant increasing the image size instead of reducing it.  I decided the image could stand a little increase because the elements were so high quality and I changed the image size from 2400x3150 to 2550x3300.  Even at that size when I dragged it onto the page layout I still had to futz around trying to get the borders perfect on the page layout.  That was  very time consuming!  I decided to add a few extra pixels to both dimensions.  That meant when I dragged the image onto the page layout I got the message my image was too big and I could let PSP resize those few pixels to make it fit perfectly with no time consuming futzing.

If anyone is interested the final image size I came up with is 2556x3307.  That prints 8.520"x11.023" at 300 dpi which gave me a tiny bit of wiggle room around the edges so it fit perfectly with no borders when PSP resized it to fit on the page layout.  I'm sorry this was so long winded.  You can tell I work as an engineer!  

I really want to thank Carole and everyone else for this workshop.  I learned a huge amount having never worked with layers, or masks, or gradients and a whole bunch of other new things before!  Each new calendar month I learn something new.

Here's my May Calendar resized to print on 8.5"x11" paper. 

 

Thank you, Julian. I like your resized page better than mine with the border. I am going to try your dimensions. Thank your for your thorough explanation.

[Julian Adams]

7 minutes ago, Donna Sillia said:

Thank you, Julian. I like your resized page better than mine with the border. I am going to try your dimensions. Thank your for your thorough explanation.

How did you get that lovely 3D effect on the dates Donna?  I was aiming for something similar but yours looks much better.

[Cassel]

37 minutes ago, Julian Adams said:

I really want to thank Carole and everyone else for this workshop.  I learned a huge amount having never worked with layers, or masks, or gradients and a whole bunch of other new things before!  Each new calendar month I learn something new.

I am glad you found this workshop useful. That is my goal through all the workshops, tutorials, and classes in the Campus.

[Donna Sillia]

56 minutes ago, Julian Adams said:

How did you get that lovely 3D effect on the dates Donna?  I was aiming for something similar but yours looks much better.

Julian, here are pictures of the settings that I used for the bevel and drop shadow. I couldn't figure out how to do a screen shot with the bevel screen up so I had to take camera pictures. They are sort of rough looking.