I am having problems with the Gallery not liking me right now (yes, I did place some feedback about a bug!) but I don't have much more time this week to play on the internets (as Sheldon's mother would say) and I wanted to share these. I am learning so much from the site and all the contributors, I want to give back! Even though I have no idea about half of what people are saying! 
I want to share but I have to balance that with my husbands freakish desire for privacy, so not so many people pictures in these...
Anyway, a couple of layouts from a recent trip to AZ.
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Desert layout 1 by melijoh, on Flickr[/url]
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Desert layout by melijoh, on Flickr[/url]
The layouts look great Melinda! I especially like the vintagey feel to the top one. Hopefully we'll get the kinks for you worked out soon.
TFS your layouts!
And that's funny about your hubby. I'm actually the one in our family that is more private (my hubby's the social butterfly or should you call a man a "moth" haha) and look at me the last 3 years... especially since finding my scrapping home here at PS.
Way to go Melinda! Your pictures are breathtaking, so sharp and full of vibrant colors. I love what you did with the top one, the blending in the background, the little tear on the side, the titling... very well done!
Thanks! I can't take credit for the paper in the top one, I LOVE to travel so I bought a bunch of travel PNGs and paper, including many of Marisa's! I think that one from Katie Pertiet over at Designer Digitals, but I can't swear to it! For the pictures, Lightroom can be your best friend! I forgot my ND filter when we were on our hike, so the one in Lightroom really saved the pictures!
Great pages Melinda! If you'd like to share your pics with ppl in them, you can always blur out faces like these I did here:
@Catherine: Can you please give a mini tutorial on how you pixilated them? Mine always look blurry and stand out as ugly. LoL
I use photoshop, do you?
Cool! I have photoshop elements 12, I would love to know how to do that! I create my pages in Artisan however. I find using layers difficult - likely because I don't really know how! I need to get that Elements for Dummies book!
Beautiful pages Catherine!
Yes Mam! PS CS5 to be exact. just got it before thanksgiving and still working out the differences though since I had CS2 before.
Okay, after saving my layered LO, I flatten to prepare to save for web.
On the flattened LO, I use the lasso tool to select all of the faces. (hold shift while lasso-ing to do multiple faces)
After everything is selected...
Go up to the top menus, select "Filter" -> "Pixelate" -> "Mosaic"
Then you will get a pop up that asks you what cell size you want, I use anywhere from 5 to 50 depending on how large the faces are, haha. But there is a preview so you'll be able to see what you are doing.
Then I run my save for web action and voila!
Let me know if this helps, if not I'll try to explain better!
I like this option better than blurring because that can take forever, or gausian (sp?) blur because that looks freaky, lol.
I also don't save the pixelated version of the layered file which is why I save RIGHT BEFORE flattening, then when I close it and it asks if I want to save changes, I say no.
Thanks Catherine! That actually sounds very easy to do.
Makes sense, no need to save the layered pixelated file.
Just a quick correction! I thought I was using Katie Pertiet papers, they are really Cottage Arts from their Road Trip collection! http://cottagearts-net.stores.yahoo.net/rotrpapak.html
My hubby isn't too fond of the idea of posting identifying photos either, so your idea, Catherine, of pixilating the faces is a great solution. Thanks for the tip.
That's a great mini-tute Catherine! I've often wondered how you do that...