1. Learn more photo manipulation
2. Learn more about Photoshop

Janee has a way of giving lots of very useful tips about little things in Photoshop along with the discipline of making images a certain file size and dimension!

All the image thumbnails below will open to a new, larger image in its own window. Be sure to close them after viewing.

The Edge Images

1. The first image is a studio portrait of my granddaughter, Amanda, taken at high school graduation time. I used the colors sampled from her hair to make the mat for the vignette in the Wheat Paper style. It was difficult to decide exactly where I wanted the vignette and decided I liked the hair sort of fading into it. (Her right hand also fades in a bit, but I am leaving it that way to focus on her face.
2. The skater with the scratch edge was fun but quite labor intensive! It seemed a lot like doing Crayon etching which I have done in school with kids. I found that by rotating the canvas, I was able to get a better slant on the scratching for the bottom and opposite sides.
3. The 'Splash Edge' on the Blithewold Gardens frog was done by painting into the mask with a round, hard brush of 12pixels, then applying Halftone, Crystallize and Liquefy filters. I had never quite realized that I could mess around in the mask with Liquefy! I had also, instead of a white background, applied a blue and green gradient.
4. The 'Cast Iron Edge' on the Wickford, RI giftshop frog has many steps, many filters! I first used a brush I had made from the crocheted doily he is on and then went to town with lots of things, ending with the Liquefy Filter in the mask again! I then duplicated the edge and flipped it vertically. It seems to give a 3D effect (depth)to the frog within the frame. I apologize for 2, but I liked both of these and so included both.

Framed Photos

1. The 'gallery' is composed of photos from 2 places in Rhode Island that are among my favorite spots - Wickford and then Bristol's Blithewold Mansion Gardens. The second photo shows the corner of a shop window in Wickford used as the 'gallery';
2. The framed photo is a studio portrait done when Danny (grandson)graduated from high school. This is the third attempt at the frame and I am finally satisfied. I needed to place the white in the middle of the gradient to get the metallic shine!

The Postage Stamp

Making the stamp was really fun. The blue in the color mask was sampled from Keomi's eyes. I painted into the mask with black to remove the color around her face and then used brushes of flowers and butterflies in the mask.