Want to make your home a heritage home? Here’s a great example.

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One of the best parts about My Studio is the photo storage system. And to help you make the most of your storage and use of photos, we’ve got a few tips from the home office.

Before Uploading Pictures
By Bryndi Cloward, Leadership Services
Because of the digital age and because camera memory is not an issue, we can take 100 pictures of some small-hour events. Many times we will take the same shot five to seven times just to make sure we get a good shot. But for a book, we don’t need all seven shots of Billy Joe eating his corn on the cob.

Before uploading to Heritage Makers, go through your pictures and clean them out.  Pick your one or two best sunset pictures. Don’t clutter your HM folder with 15 pictures of the same sunset. Choose the ones that are most vibrant to you. By doing this, not only will you clean up space on your hard drive, but you will make creating your book that much easier.

Manage Your Photos First
By Debbi Heaps, HR/Exec. Admin
Take the time to manage your photos before you take them off your camera. Doing so will help eliminate some of the overwhelming frustration of having to search through all your photos later. It’s that ole “take time to sharpen the saw” wisdom.

If Problems Occur
By Marshyl Cloward, Director of Client Services
When uploading your photos, if you get a 2038 error, or only a couple of images load while others don’t or get stuck loading, go to the original file on your computer and open it using an image view program. Resave the image as a JPG and re-upload the image to Heritage Makers.

Rotate Photos
By Lynda Angelastro, Project Manager
Before you upload photos to Heritage Makers, rotate images so they are set at the right angle. You can rotate inside Studio (not within your photos folder); however, when you submit a project as a template with photos that have been rotated inside Studio, new photos—if in the correct rotation before—will no longer be rotated correctly. Making sure your photos are rotated correctly before hand will help your design and other designs flow mush easier.

For Basic Account Members
By Megan Vernon, Client Services Rep.
With a Basic account, you have limited photo storage space (1 GB), compared to the space Premier members have. To help save space, only upload the photos you know you are going to use in the project.

Studio Tips Heritage Makers, manage, photo, Studio

The bottom of the “Toolbox,” displays five icons that are visible no matter which tab you are viewing.

From here you can lock in place and arrange stack order of backgrounds, photos, embellishments and text boxes. When you arrange the stack order of an object you can send it to back (this will push the object behind all elements on the page), send backward (this will send it behind one element with each click), bring forward (this will bring the object closer to the front with each click), or bring to front (this will bring the object all the way to the front).

As you play with the arrangement of objects on your page, you’ll want to keep a few things in mind.

1. This tool takes all elements on the page into consideration, not just elements that are stacked on top of each other. If you have many elements on your page and you want to bring something forward that was placed first, you will have to go hit the bring forward button several times. Instead, bring the object to front or send another object to back. If you think about the order objects were placed on your page, arranging them will be that much easier.
2. Make sure an object is unlocked before arranging it’s stack order, otherwise it will not move. However, if you are moving another unlocked object in front or back, you do not need to unlock the locked object.

Also remember that the lock icon is a great tool. If you are arranging many elements on a page, lock the elements in place that you do not want to move. It’s easy to accidentally click an element and move it just a few inches from where you want it.

Studio Tips

Leave 1/8” Margin Around Page – Many times, when we have a lot of content, we are tempted to put as much on the page as we can. And if we have a huge amount of text, we think getting the text as close to the edge of the page as possible will help preserve room for more pictures and such. And then we find ourselves putting our pictures as close to the edge as possible, too.

But, did you know that you need to leave a 1/8 margin between the edge of the page and anything you don’t want to get cut off? Yes, the gray box around the page shows you where your page should be cut off in production. But the page cutters can sometimes go slightly over that marked spot. To be safe, make sure you have a 1/8 inch margin around your entire page.

Use Ctrl Button for Swapping – I’m sure we have all had our amount of frustration trying to swap out a paper or photo. Just as we have been told, we keep the element locked in place, make sure it is highlighted, and drag the wanted element onto the page but that “drop art/photo here to swap” box does not appear. We drop it anyway in hope that it will magically work and… it doesn’t. We have a new element on the page with the old one still in the place we want it.

There is a solution. As you drag an element onto the page, hold down the ctrl key (or if you have a Mac hold down the Cmd. key). The element, then, should swap without any problems.

Studio Tips

Add to each month with a fun or inspiring quotation. Take a look at what you can add for December.

“In the bleak mid-winter
Frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron,
Water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow,
Snow on snow,
In the bleak mid-winter,
Long ago.”
~Christmas Carol   

“The gardening season officially begins on January 1st, and ends on December 31st.”
~Marie Huston

“The Lord of Misrule - December 17th.  This is the first day of the Roman festival Saturnalia.  It was a period of great feasting and festivity, with a lot of drinking and eating.  Slaves would become masters for the festival, and everything was turned upside down. This part of the Roman festival survived into the 17th Century.”
~Customs and Folktales for December

“I heard a bird sing
In the dark of December
A magical thing
And sweet to remember.

‘We are nearer to Spring
Than we were in September,’
I heard a bird sing
In the dark of December.”
~Oliver Herford, I Heard a Bird Sing

“God gave us our memories so that we might have roses in December.”
~ J. M. Barrie

“Colorful candles burning bright, each lit on eight very special nights.” 

~Author Unknown

“On Hanukkah, the first dark night,
Light yourself a candle bright.
I’ll you, if you will me invite
To dance within that gentle light.”
~Nicholas Gordon, poemsforfree.com

Studio Tips

Add to each month with a fun or inspiring quotation. Take a look at what you can add for November.

“As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them.”

~John Fitzgerald Kennedy

“No warmth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease,
No comfortable feel in any member -
No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees,
No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds -
November!”
~Thomas Hood, No!

“Now Autumn’s fire burns slowly along the woods.”
~William Allingham

“On Thanksgiving Day, all over America, families sit down to dinner at the same moment - halftime.”

~Author Unknown

“For each new morning with its light,
For rest and shelter of the night,
For health and food, for love and friends,
For everything Thy goodness sends.”
~Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Thanksgiving Day comes, by statute, once a year; to the honest man it comes as frequently as the heart of gratitude will allow.”

~Edward Sandford Martin

Studio Tips

Add to each month with a fun or inspiring quotation. Take a look at what you can add for October.

“He who thanks but with the lips
Thanks but in part;
The full, the true Thanksgiving
Comes from the heart.”
~J.A. Shedd

“Thanksgiving Day is a jewel, to set in the hearts of honest men; but be careful that you do not take the day, and leave out the gratitude.”
~E.P. Powell

“Pixie, kobold, elf, and sprite,
All are on their rounds tonight;
In the wan moon’s silver ray,
Thrives their helter-skelter play.”
~Joel Benton

“When witches go riding,
and black cats are seen,
the moon laughs and whispers,
‘tis near Halloween.”
~Author Unknown

“Even if something is left undone, everyone must take time to sit still and watch the leaves turn.”
~Elizabeth Lawrence

“October’s poplars are flaming torches 
lighting the way to winter.”
~Nova Bair

Studio Tips

Add to each month with a fun or inspiring quotation. Take a look at what you can add for September.

“‘Tis the last rose of summer,
Left blooming alone;
All her lovely companions
Are faded and gone.”
-   Thomas Moore, The Last Rose of Summer, 1830

May you be inscribed and sealed for a good year
(L’shanah tovah tikatev v’taihatem)

~Common New Year’s Greeting

“Harvest home, harvest home!
We’ve plowed, we’ve sowed
We’ve reaped, we’ve mowed
And brought safe home
Every load.”

~Harvest Home Song 

“A late summer garden has a tranquility found no other time of the year.”
~William Longgood

“September leaf
Blushing…
Remembering…
The torrid kisses
…Of July
September leaf
Sensing winter
….And oblivion
Shivers…
And whispers
“July, my only love” “Say you remember.”
~LaRetha Adams, Before Winter

Studio Tips

Add to each month with a fun or inspiring quotation. Take a look at what you can add for August.

“Summer is delicious, rain is refreshing, wind braces up, snow is exhilarating;
there is no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather.”
~John Ruskin

“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”
~William Shakespeare

“When summer gathers up her robes of glory, and like a dream of beauty glides away.”
~Sarah Helen Power Whitman

“Fairest of the months!
Ripe summer’s queen
The hey-day of the year
With robes that gleam with sunny sheen
Sweet August doth appear.”
~R. Combe Miller

“There is a harmony in autumn, and a luster in its sky, which through the summer
is not heard or seen, as if it could not be, as if it had not been!”
~Percy Bysshe Shelley

“The summer night is like a perfection of thought.”
~Wallace Stevens

“A life without love is like a year without summer.”
~Swedish Proverb

Studio Tips

Add to each month with a fun or inspiring quotation. Take a look at what you can add for July.

“It is wonderful to feel the grandness of Canada in the raw, not because she is Canada but because she’s something sublime that you were born into, some great rugged power that you are a part of.”
~Emily Carr

“Whether we live together in confidence and cohesion; with more faith and pride in ourselves and less self-doubt and hesitation; strong in the conviction that the destiny of Canada is to unite, not divide; sharing in cooperation, not in separation or in conflict; respecting our past and welcoming our future.”
~Lester B. Pearson

“Freedom’s natal day is here.
Fire the guns and shout for freedom,
See the flag above unfurled!
Hail the stars and stripes forever,
Dearest flag in all the world.”
~Florence A. Jones

“We on this continent should never forget that men first crossed the Atlantic not to find soil for their ploughs but to secure liberty for their souls.”

~Robert J. McCracken

“And I’m proud to be an American,
where at least I know I’m free.
And I won’t forget the men who died,
who gave that right to me.”
~Lee Greenwood

“The dandelions and buttercups gild all the lawn: the drowsy bee stumbles among the clover tops,
and summer sweetens all to me.”
~James Russell Lowell

“Oh, the summer night
Has a smile of light
And she sits on a sapphire throne.”
~Barry Cornwall

Studio Tips