Adding Pictures from your computer

So you are ready to add some pictures...

Start by logging into mixbook and going to your "My Projects" page.

Select the "Edit" button in the right hand column of the book you want to add pictures to:

If you get excited and click on the book's title, you're normal (or just like me - which may or may not be normal...), it will open the book for viewing, but not editing.  You'll have to click the back button in your browser:

It will take you back to your "My Projects" page and this time, take a breath, and click on the edit button.  

Your book will open in a new window (that is part of how you'll know you did it right) and you will see the mixbook logo thumbing through red pages as it loads.  Then you will get your welcome screen:

You can go through their tour, but today I'm going to have you close that box and I will go through adding photos.

In the top left corner you have your tabs for adding things to your book.  Right now we are working with photos, so make sure you have selected the "Photos" tab:

Then click the "Add Photos" button:

It will open a smaller window where you can select where you want to add your pictures from:

You can upload them from several different online services or from your own computer:

That's what I am showing you today.  So click on "upload photos" and it will take you to the second tab in the "add photos" menu, the "upload" tab:

And yes, I took this screen shot before I figured out I could use much better arrows...

Ok, so clicking this "upload photos" button will open your own computer's drive and you will have to find your pictures wherever it is on your computer you have them saved.  

Here is my pictures library file of the screen shots for this blog.

  When I have selected a photo it will highlight:

It will only select one photo at a time.  There are two ways to get it to select multiple pictures.  If you want a smattering of photos, like I did above, press and hold the "ctrl" button in the bottom left hand corner of your keyboard each time you click on a picture.  This will select each one you choose.

If you want to select a large group of photos in a row, click on the first photo so that it is highlighted.  Then press the "shift" button on your keyboard while you click on the last picture you want to select.  It will select all the pictures in between:

Now all the photos in the first two rows are selected.  Once you have highlighted all the photos you want in a particular file, click the "open" button in the bottom right hand corner of the window:

This screen will then pop up:

And will track the progress of your uploading photos.  The great thing is that you can close this window and it won't interrupt the upload, so you can continue to work while the pictures upload.

When they are finished, if you still have the window open, it will change to this:

Telling you that your photos are finished and inviting you to upload more photos.  If you have closed the window, anytime you go back to the that "add photos" button:

It will open back up this window and either tell you the progress of your photos or invite you to upload more.  If you are uploading photos from more than one file folder, you will have to select the photos you want, press the "open" button, and then when it pulls up the progress window, click the "add more photos" button:

This will take you back to your files, so you can add more photos from a different file folder, or the same one.

Once you add photos, they begin to show up in your "photo tray" on the right hand side of your screen.  Make sure you are still in the "photos" tab:

Now you can start adding them to your book!  Simply click and press on a photo as you drag it to the spot you want it, then release and it will be on your page!

One more tiny thing...

Your picture tray has different options for sorting your pictures.  They are located at the bottom of the tray:

The one on the right is the "hide used" button.  If I put some pictures on a page, they get little green check marks in my photo tray to show they have been used:

If I click so that the "hide used" box is checked, any photos I have used are now hidden in the photo tray:

This can be very helpful when working on large projects to make sure you got all the photos you wanted.  You can always uncheck the box to see the photos again.  You can also re-use the same photo as many times as you want in a book.

The other button at the bottom of your paper tray lets you choose how your photos are sorted:

The top option is by "date taken" and this is the default sort option.  Every time you open your book it will start with the photos sorted by "date taken".  This can be helpful - if your photos are dated properly, but less so if they are not.  Also, sometimes I don't scrapbook in strict timeline order.  

I often times find myself using the second option, the "date added" option.  This will pull up the photos in the order they were added to the book, with the most recent ones on top.

The last option is the "usage" option.  This will sort your photos by which ones are used the most on top, least on bottom.  I personally haven't ever used this one...

So, go upload some pictures already!!

Accepting an Invitation to Collaborate

If you receive an invitation to edit someone's book, it will come in an email and look something like this (only the text will hopefully be intelligible):

Basically, it says you'be been invited to collaborate on a book and invites you to click the link. You click on the blue link as directed and it will take you to the mixbook site and ask you to sign in (unless you are like me, and are always signed in...):

Once you are signed in, you will get a screen that looks like this:

You can choose to accept, or ignore the request.

Once you click accept:

Congratulations!  You are now a contributing member of this book!

Changing Your Title and other settings

I'm going to take a few minutes and go over how to change the details of your new book.   Go to your "My Projects" page. 

 There should be all the books that you have created.  They will have the title of whatever theme you chose.  In my case, I chose a "Blank Canvas".  I want to change the title. 

Once I click on that, the following screen will pop up.  I can easily change the title now:

I can also add a description of the book:

Select who can view it:

And add contributors:

Clicking on this will take me to a screen that looks like this:

Here you can put in the email addresses of anyone you want to be able to edit your book with you.  The benefits are that they can add their pictures to the book.  They can help proof read your text and layouts.  They can even create their own pages.  The bad news, is that any changes they make are made in your book.  Just keep that in mind.  You can also invite people to look at your book without being able to make changes, we'll go over that later.

So, back to your book settings.  Mine now look like this:

You just changed your title, so now "My Projects" page looks like this:

Starting a Book

 So you are ready to start your first book.  Once you are all logged in you will get a screen that gives you some choices.  We are choosing a book:

When you select the book, it will take you to a screen where you can choose what kind of book you want.  I recommend just clicking the "start your book" button. 

It will take you to another screen where you can make specific choices:

1. Is where you are going to choose which book template you want.  You can see samples of each "theme".  Know that you are in no way locked into any decision that you make at this point.  I tend to start with a blank canvas for my family year books and am more inclined to pick a more specific theme for smaller books.

2. is where you pick your book shape.  Again, don't stress too much.  You can change your shape later.  It may mean a little layout adjustments but I've done it and it's not too bad.

3.  Once you've made your choices, you can click the "start your book" button!  For the book I made for this post, I did't select anything, I just went straight to the "start your book" button.  It will open your book in  new window on your computer.  

To learn more about your book, you can take the tour option that pops up, or check out one of my other posts.

If you click back to your original window, it will show you the book you just created:

And you started your first book!

Creating an Account

So you want to mixbook...

AWESOME!!!

To get started, you need an account.  Go to mixbook.com.  The screen will look like this:

You want the right side of the screen.  Click the "new account" button.  It will take you to this screen:

Fill this one out and make sure to either pick a username and password that you will never forget, or write it down somewhere so that you have it for the future.

And that's it!  Now you are ready to start on your first book!