As we all know, rainy weather is a great excuse to spend hours indoors reading. It’s also a great excuse to play around with the READ CD software! It had been a while since I’d had the time to sit down and look into the newly optimized version of the READ CD Box Set, so in homage to the old adage–which is holding painfully true here in Chicago–I opened up my Photoshop Elements. In doing so, I remembered a few things I thought I would share:

1. Don’t forget that you can add text in Photoshop. You can tailor the various READ backgrounds using props (as we’ve seen done in earlier posts), but you can also use words to expand and further customize the “READ” to fit your specific poster, school, or library.

2. In addition to using words, you can also use clip art to fill up empty space, further customize your poster, or just add more books! (Or add accessories. Waterwings, goggles, etc.)

3. When adding text, clip art, or another image Photoshop will turn each added item into a “layer” that appears in the layer box in the lower right corner of the Photoshop window. To quickly manipulate the order of your layers, all you have to do is click, drag, and pull an item within that box. You will find that dragging a layer down in the layer box will cause that image to go behind any layer that is above it on your READ poster. In this way, you can quickly reorder images and help make your poster more visually appealing!

Wishing you more May flowers than April showers, and lots of beautiful READ posters regardless!

What’s black and white and re(a)d all over?

 Well, READ posters, of course!

In my family, my dad has acquired the jokester role leaving my mom to a more discplinarian role. My dad typically found an audience at the dinner table– where no one could escape. His telling of jokes really became his joke tell because he would, without fail, begin “–Insert friend’s name– was telling me that…” Immediately, you knew a joke disguised as a true story was coming. One day, however, my mom took us all by surprised and unleashed a little something. She posed the question, “What’s black and white and red all over?” My elementary mind mulled this over for about 30 seconds before begging for the answer. When “newspaper” was revealed, I thought it was genius. Both the memory and riddle have obviously stuck with me for a long time.

Recently, it appears as if the printing of finished READ posters has been a bit of a riddle to some. First know, there is a lot of flexibility with the printing of these posters. The files comes sized at 11″ x 17″ but can easily be increased or decreased in size in Photoshop. From a simple black and white rendition printed on 8.5″ x 11″ paper on the ol’ desktop printer to a full-size 22″ x 34″ printed in full color on a HPz2100 poster printer, the choice is yours!

Here’s some extremely helpful words from Alexandria Arnold, Assistant Director at the Summit Free Public Library in New Jersey.

On this page, there’s a link on the right to printers/supplies compatibility. It provids a list of large-format HP printers and all the paper model numbers that are recommended for use with them. It was just what I was looking for.

As to actually buying the paper, I finally went to Amazon.com.  Since I know how heavy paper is I was worried about shipping charges. Their prices were competitive with the vendors other librarians recommended on the PR list,  and by choosing carefully, I was able to get most of the paper with free shipping (according to Amazon, I saved about $50 in shipping on a $250 paper order). The paper arrived in three separate shipments, but all within 10 days of placing the order – the first shipment arrived the day after I placed the order!

Don’t forget that your local print shop is also a great resource. Not only can they print your posters if you supply them with the digital file on a thumb drive or CD, but they also have the paper and ink you need if printing yourself!

As always, please share your own printing methods or questions in the comments!