Happy New Year!

A very Happy New Year to all family and friends everywhere! Hope you will have a healthy and happy 2011!

What's next?

Hope you all had a great Christmas and are enjoying the holidays!

To family and friends!

Let it snow!

Hope you are all keeping well and warm while this cold weather lasts!

Back again!

It's snowing again and the temperature has dropped! Here's a topical image and the original photo. Off to get warm!

Good news!

Snail's pace

I finally got round to finishing the squares panels which I started last summer - but at least the colours are seasonal! All I need to do now is to add the backing and the hanging sleeves. Hopefully it won't take till next summer to do so!

A new tool for the (digital) toolbox

I've always found replacing a sky very difficult until we were shown a good "trick" at our camera club - have a try - if I can do it, anyone can!

http://www.pxleyes.com/tutorial/photoshop/1272/How-To-Mask-A-Tree-In-3-Minutes.html

More confusion ...

.... but the birds like it!

Even the trees are confused

It's no use being in denial any longer, it has snowed, it is snowing, it is going to snow .... It does look lovely but it is very inconvenient if you want to get around. Apparently we get a different sort of snow here in the UK which brings (nearly) everything to a standstill. Roll on summer!

Snowed in

I should have been at the Harrogate K & S show today but the weather conspired against it (6 inches of snow and more to come). Instead I thought I'd show you a photo taken of an old railway carriage door and the two images which came from it. I used PSP here as I am still coming to grips with PSE. One of the biggest frustrations is that the files saved as psp images can't be opened in PSE. I haven't been able to find a solution so if you can help ...!

Crazy colour

Now I don't do "Vintage" (although I love the work of bloggers who do) and I don't often do pale and atmospheric (ditto) but I do love vibrant colour and patterns (although I know it's not everyone's cup of tea so to speak). So to show you what I like I took a photo of old railway carrriage connecting doors and played about with it, using selection and move tools, with a bit of glowing edges. displacement and saturation thrown in. One of these days I may even get around to printing it onto fabric and adding stitch. But don't hold your breath ...

Framed!

I'm having a go with Photoshop Elements for the first time - like it a lot but Paint Shop Pro is better for some things. Jury's still out!

Those trains again!

I make no excuse for taking photos in railway museums or preserved railways because I love the sense of storytelling these old steam engines and carriages tell. I think of the pride of the craftsmen and engineers as they made the huge engines and painted them with such care. I imagine the excitement of passengers as they took a journey for the first time and I think of the scores of volunteers often fighting a losing battle to restore and reclaim the magnificent pieces of engineering. That's why I like taking the pics (and I like rust too!)

Autumnal animals

I'm not in the habit of taking photos of animals but these rather splendidly coloured rams were too good to miss as we drove down a deserted track in the Northumberland countryside. They had a good stare before getting bored! I copied and pasted parts of the image, added one of my textures and a frame. Wonder what they were thinking. (Do animals think?)

Trees and a plastic bag

This is the first time I've dyed a plastic bag! Didn't mean to but the fabric which was being dyed was inside it, and it was too good to throw away. Instead I used it as a texture to go with this tree -


- which became this image using this "recipe":
one of my brown textures - overlay 97
plastic bag texture colour 100
copy of tree normal 72




I opened a new page and copied and pasted selections of the image, duplicated the background and moved it, changed a few colours and added a frame, ending up with an abstract image.

This, and then that

I find I am continually coming back to my original photo of the seedheads taken at Inverewe Gardens on the west coast of Scotland. and then playing with it in psp.
This is the recipe, this time using a couple of (free) textures from jerry.
I usually use my own textures but he produces such lovely ones which give a good effect:
From the top of the pile of layers downwards -
texture 1 burn 67
texture 2 difference 59
copy of original normal 71
original image
merge all and boost saturation and add a frame.
(Ps I'm still thinking of mouse-overs!)

Surreal sunset

Two rather ordinary photos plus a script made with the text tool, some "jiggery-pokery" in psp and ...

Scottish rose

More shapes

Another image worked in psp from the photo of pottery waiting to be painted.

Playing with shapes

A photo of pottery waiting to be painted at the Highland Stoneware factory in Lochinver ended up slightly differently after using selection and move tools in Paint Shop Pro!

Tanfield again

All of these engines have a story to tell if we only knew. I like the way there are "pictures within pictures" where each has a separate part to play. ( "You're getting into the realms of fantasy there Jones") ...

Number 6

An old engine at Tanfield Rail open day, slowly melting ...