* a girl's guide to technology
Whether it’s knowing how to share your photos online, back up important files or what to do if you spill coffee on your laptop… the list goes on.
It just seems never ending but it doesn’t have to be that complicated – honest.
Check out girl geeks how to’s to get the easy peasy answers you need.
Here at girlgeekchic towers we love Christmas and we love stickers so what better way to celebrate by combining the two!
You can transform minicards, stickers and greeting cards into fun, festive favourites and bring even more holiday cheer to family and friends. Make your Christmas Cards truly personal by uploading your favourite photos (everyone loves a dog in a pullover!) for friends, family and loyal clients.
MiniCard gift tags will give your Christmas presents that extra festive flourish. Upload your favourite photos or use your own artwork to make it special.
And finally what better way to seal a gift than with a sticker, print festive Logo Stickers to add your own special stamp to your pressies.
I have to get some of these for my girlgeekchic-ers soon!!
You’re back from travelling, a family occasion, or a day out with friends, and you’re ready to upload your photos to your computer. But what do you do with them next?
There are a plenty of ways that you can edit your photos, whether it’s cropping, removing blemishes or altering the colour. This doesn’t necessarily have to be a time-consuming task – and sometimes even the smallest of changes to photos can make the biggest difference.
Taking photos can be easy – what isn’t easy is taking the perfect photo. That’s why we’ve come up with five quick fixes you can do to automatically enhance your photos!
Our survey found that 62% of camera owners take photos of people. Interestingly, over half (56%) of them found they needed to remove red eye from their portraits. Red eye is caused by the camera flash bouncing off of the person’s retina. Don’t let red eye ruin an otherwise great photo, especially when it can be quickly fixed.
Firstly, you need to check if your camera has the red eye reduction function. If so, definitely use it! If not, photo editing software should have a tool specifically designed to remove red eye in a matter of clicks.
When you’ve successfully removed the red eye from your image, you could also make some other improvements such as removing blemishes, or increasing the whiteness of the subject’s eyes to make them really pop out in the photo.
Our recent survey also showed that 56% of photos need to be cropped. Often a photo will lack impact because the main subject is lost among the clutter of its surroundings. By using the crop tool, you can remove the unwanted areas of your background, ensuring the subject is the centre of attention in the photo.
If you find the composition of your photo is less than desirable, try applying the rule of thirds and using the crop tool. The rule of thirds says that you should divide your photo into 9 invisible squares and position the most important elements in your scene along the imaginary gridlines, or at the points where they intersect. This will add balance and interest to your photo. Some cameras offer an option to superimpose a rule of thirds grid over the screen, making it even easier to use.
However, not every photo needs cropping, but the visual impact and composition of many photos can be improved drastically.
When you’re shooting a scene, there is so much to think about and you sometimes end up with shots that aren’t straight. There are many reasons why this happens, such as uneven ground, or an off-centred camera which can altogether lower the photo quality. The best way to ensure a perfectly straight photo is to use a tripod with a spirit level.
Unless you take all your photos with your camera on a tripod, it’s more than likely that some of your photos are going to turn out a bit crooked. Fortunately, the majority of photo editing software packages make it easy to straighten them in just a few simple steps.
It is quite easy to spot a sloping horizon once it is on your computer screen, especially when you compare it to an adjacent object, or by using the ruler tool. Once you have loaded up your image, use the rotate tool to re-align the scene so the horizon is straight, and then crop the image to make it square again.
Thought you took the perfect shot until you uploaded your images on your computer and realised darkness or shadowing has ruined it? There are many reasons for underexposed photos, such as shooting in a dimly lit space, standing too far away from your subject, or setting your camera’s shutter speed too fast. This can easily be avoided before taking a photo by moving near a window or lamp to add extra light when shooting indoors, moving closer to your subject and manually adjusting the shutter speed on your camera so it’s slower.
However, for pictures you have already taken that appear under exposed, the easiest solution is increasing the brightness and contrast slightly to lighten it. If you have over exposed images, simply reduce the brightness. You can also use contrast to adjust the difference in brightness between the lightest and darkest pixels, or edit the levels and curves to improve your image dramatically. In fact, most good photo editing programs will have a range of presets (eg. lighten image, darken image, etc.) so it’s easy to make changes to your pictures – even if you have never worked with levels or curves before.
If you want to make your photos stand out from the crowd, why not add a simple creative effect? We found that 24% of people choose to add creative filters and effects to their photos. There are numerous creative effects that can be applied to images during processing, like changing the colours of an image, applying effects to make the photo look like a watercolour painting, or create a stunning black & white image with a single ‘popping’ colour.
Don’t be afraid to experiment with editing your photos – just remember to save a copy of the original in case you don’t like the changes! It’s always worth spending a couple of minutes editing your images in a photo editing software package to ensure your photos look the best they can. With these five quick fixes your photos can be turned from average to fantastic in a matter of minutes.
For more information on Serif, the award-winning creative software developer of products including photo editing software, visit www.serif.com
It may be unthinkable now but it wasn’t that long ago when instead of being held on a beautifully shiny mp3 player our music collections were stored in awkward CD racks dotted unattractively around the house.
Digitally downloading our music has become such a way of life that many young people under the age of 20 may have never bought a CD and it could well be the case that when we explain the concept of CDs to our grandchildren they look at us with a horrified disbelief that we had to endure such a complete lack of technology back when we were growing up!
Due to the downloading of music being so simple and convenient it’s not surprising that many of us have amassed a collection of music and movies totalling £1000’s but what is surprising is how many of us don’t have an adequate insurance policy to cover us should the worst happen and our collection is lost, stolen or damaged.
In 2010, Julie Owens, MoneySupermarket.com’s home insurance expert, highlighted the issue: “Whether it’s Beyonce or The Beatles, people don’t associate the same value to an MP3 player full of music as they do to a wall full of CDs or vinyl, but it is just as – if not more – valuable in terms of money, so people need to ensure they are appropriately insured.”
Research by MoneySupermarket has found that the average person has well over £1000 worth of music, movies and software stored on a hard drive and many of the big name home insurance policies do not protect these should anything go wrong.
Julie continues “”I recommend checking the small print of your policy to find out what you are covered for and to what value. Being underinsured is also a dangerous position to find yourself in – if in doubt, speak to your insurer to find out whether you need to increase your cover for downloaded material.”
And it’s not just music that we are downloading, more and more of us are frequently downloading movies, TV series and PC games making what we store on our hard drives an important part of our day to day lives. I don’t know if you’ve ever been unfortunate enough to lose your entire download collection, I have and it does not feel good, in a way I was lucky it was a new computer and so I only lost a few new albums but I cannot describe the feeling of frustration knowing I’d lost those songs.
Purchasing an external hard drive is a great way of protecting against computer malfunctions but if you do a lot of downloading an insurance policy is still vital as the hard drive can easily be damaged or stolen and you need to know your valuable downloads are protected.
Over a third of home insurance policies don’t cover digital downloads so if your downloads are important to you it’s vital you choose a policy to suit your needs, while it’s true that not all home owners will think this is a vital, for many of us we couldn’t live without the contents of our computers!
When deciding on which home insurance policy is right for you, don’t just take into consideration the price, while cheap home insurance is great you need to know you have purchased an adequate cover for your needs. And of course do your research and ensure the insurance company you are choosing will cover for digital downloads, while not all insurance companies have quite hit the digital age yet there are many that can give you a great level of protection for great prices.
Phones, smartphones and tablets allow you to have the world at your fingertips, even from your car. But always be sure to consider safety first; here are some of the best apps to make your car journeys safer and more convenient.
Carrr Matey! is a parking app that allows you to log where you parked your car, making it easier to find again. The app also has a timer so you can get to your car before your parking ticket expires. If you’ve parked in a multi-storey car park, activate Harbour Mode to note the exact location of the car. Best of all, everything in the app is themed around pirates for a bit of fun.
Reading your texts or emails while driving is not only extremely dangerous, it’s also illegal. The DriveCarefully app takes away the temptation to take your eyes off the road by automatically reading aloud any text messages or emails you receive. You can also set an auto response to let people know that you’ve received their message, but that you are driving. This app could be a step towards reducing accidents caused by texting and driving. You can also avoid a potential £30-60 penalty and 3 points on your license from driving whilst using a mobile phone.
Road Trip Lite enables you to keep track of your miles per gallon and fuel economy for your car. Using this app will give you a good idea of what you are spending on fuel for your car compared with how much you use it, and will make you rethink how to get the best out of your car. Team this app up with a petrol price calculator and you can quickly assess how much your motor is costing you each week.
Geocaching is essentially a game of high-tech hide and seek. You use the c:geo app to pinpoint your location as well as a number of ‘caches’ (hidden containers that often contain some form of trinket as a reward). There are hundreds of caches to be found, and using the geocaching app to locate them can turn a normal car journey into an exciting treasure hunt.
Sitting in traffic can cause even the mildest mannered motorist to become enraged, so use this app to avoid it. Luckily, this app follows your progress and alerts you of any nasty jams that may delay your journey. The map updates in real time and lets you know if there are any new incidents.
Thanks to Jamie Gibbs from www.confused.com
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