When I first saw Boo’s Shutterfly/Artscow ready photo albums (Let’s Make A Photo Book Album 1 and Let’s Make A Photo Book Album 2), I squealed with joy!  The timing was perfect.  I needed a kick-in-the-pants to get my yearly gift for my Mom done.

I love how easy Boo has made these.  My goal is to do 1-4 pages a month, all year, and get this printed in November.  Until now, I’ve only done vacation books.  I’ve never done a whole year.  I think my mom will be thrilled! And I’m ecstatic I started early.

I picked Boo’s Let’s Make A Photo Book Album 2.  I love how complete it is. All I need to do is add pictures & journaling.  I started with Page 1:

And added a series of pictures of Dane in the snow.  Taken in January, perfect kick start to a 2013 yearbook:

The thing is, while I love Boo’s page, I don’t love pinks/purples for Dane.  Yet I want this done very quick.  I decided to use photoshop’s variations tool to get a different look in one quick click.

I clicked on Image–>Adjustments–>Variations and this screen popped right up:

I clicked once on More Green and once on More Cyan (I left the options at the default setting of Midtones, and centered in between Fine & Coarse).  I love my result:

The benefit of using variations is that it gives a range of new colors, not just one.  This simply can’t be achieved by overlaying with a new color or even gradient. The variation option isn’t for everything, but to quickly put a new spin on a favorite paper, element, cluster or quickpage it is worth a try.