Beyond Beyond, Day 34- Making Magic!

It’s so much fun to get back into Kim Klassen’s Beyond Beyond lessons- I seem to need a boost now and then to stimulate my creativity.  Today’s lessons were how to create “magic” textures using textures that have already been created.  Kim gave us a sample image to play with and then challenged us to make our own magic textures (using one of hers as a base) to add to her image.

Before bringing the image into Photoshop, I cropped it to a square (not sure I like cutting off the cup handle, but I wanted it to look different from hers) and used her preset, dark days.  In Photoshop I used two textures which I had converted to magic textures- dollard and sybil (2 layers). And I added text (with a layer of dollard clipped to it).

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Then I broke all the rules!

The magic texture effect works best with airy images that have a lot of white in them.  But I tried it on a shot I took this morning of the view from our driveway of clouds and approaching rain (it actually started to rain while I was taking the photo). I like how the magic textures (1301 and dollard) gave a kind of canvas-ish effect.  I reduced opacity on both and masked off some of the white strokes that appeared in the image.

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Melinda4 Comments

Monarch

The Desert Botanical Garden also has a butterfly garden; at this time, it was all monarchs, which were great fun to photograph.

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The last one was textured with a sample from Kim Klassen’s Waterfront collection for Texture Tuesday.

Melinda7 Comments

Is Your Mama a Llama?

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No, I haven’t gone crazy since moving to Arizona- at least I hope not.  I am continuing to practice my Photoshop skills and going WAY outside my comfort zone by doing photo compositing (that IS a word!) with THREE photos and two textures to create this image, which is a sort of visual summary of the highlights of our day in Sedona last week.

BTW, Is Your Mama a Llama? is a book that I used to read to my first graders.

Melinda5 Comments

Key

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I spent part of today working on some lessons in the Photoshop Artistry class I’ve just started.  I decided to combine a topic in my Flickr daily challenge group (lock and key) with Texture Tuesday and some of the skills I’m trying to learn (and re-learn) in Photoshop.  The fun part was trying different adjustments and filters and taking snapshots in the History Panel- a technique I tried a long, long time ago and had never really added to my workflow.  Snapshots! I had totally forgotten about using them, and they are a quite useful tool when trying to do something artsy.  This photo has a painted effect AND a texture.  I added text- and ended up having more trouble with that than anything else- go figure.

texture= Kim Klassen’s granny’s cupboard

Melinda10 Comments

The Camera in my Purse

After the first year of doing my Project 365, I stopped carrying my camera with me all the time.  And I always seem to come across beautiful scenes like this one, when all I have is my iPhone. I used to turn up my nose at iPhone shots, but no more.  It is a perfectly adequate little camera, certainly better than not taking a photo at all- so, if my big girl camera is at home, out comes the iPhone.

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I added a texture (Kim’s reentry) for Texture Tuesday, but the basics of the photo (including the colors) are just as recorded on the camera.

Melinda3 Comments

Buzzing

We don’t seem to have many birds in our yard right now. The hummingbirds are gone, and there are just ravens and some little mystery birds flitting here and there. But we do have bees and wasps. . .

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I desaturated this photo, because I didn’t find the colors pleasing, and then added a bit of split toning in Lightroom.  Because it is Tuesday, I added one of Kim Klassen’s textures, 1301 (a favorite of mine), which I also desaturated.  If you go to kimklassencafe.com, you will find links to some beautiful images using her textures.

Melinda6 Comments

Deep Purple

I’m still getting to know the plants and flowers in our “garden” and am on a rush schedule now that it is October.  I’m anticipating that the flowers will soon be gone and that freezing weather will be upon us at some point; this will be the first time I’ve lived with snow.  Yesterday I used my macro lens to photograph this beauty with its deep purple petals. I textured it with Kim Klassen’s cool grunge texture, an oldie but a goodie, and am linking up with today’s Texture Tuesday.

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Melinda10 Comments

Beyond Beyond- Day 29

This is seriously fun!  I have played around a bit with textures before using Photoshop brushes and was never satisfied with anything I did. This time it was frustrating at first, but I kept at it- and finally created a few I might actually USE.

I took macro photos around the house of a few textures- rocks, tile, clouds, carpet, window blinds, screen etc. Then I brought them into Lightroom and Photoshop and played with them- for 2 days off and on.  I changed colors, blurred them, painted over them, added text, used blend modes etc. etc.  The test was to layer them with a photograph and see if they actually did anything wonderful to the photo.  As I mentioned in my last post,  this is where I ran into trouble.  Some of my textures were too light to even show up.  But I played some more today and ended up with some decent ones. I want to do this again, but I have so many textures I’ve bought or collected over the years (and they are so much better than mine)- that I wonder if it is something I will actually do.  It is fun though.

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The textures on top are from a rock and a window blind combined with clouds.

The bottom two textures are both from a tile on my hearth (with different tints).

My husband wants to know what I’m naming my textures. The Downton Abbey collection has been done already by our mentor, Kim Klassen. I have some ideas- I’ll keep you posted!

 

Melinda1 Comment

Echinacea

While I was in Yellowstone, one of my daughter’s friends gave her a small bouquet, which included coneflowers (echinacea).  I love photographing coneflowers (never knew they were echinacea!), because of their spiky centers. This photo I textured with Kim Klassen’s ruemarion and simplistic for Texture Tuesday.

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Melinda8 Comments

Summer’s End

I know summer doesn’t officially end for awhile, but the Labor Day weekend has always seemed like a milestone marking the close of summer.  As I walked around the front yard the other evening, I noticed that, as the daylight began to fade,  the purple blossoms of the Russian sage were fading as well.

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Textured with savor by Kim Klassen for Texture Tuesday.

Melinda5 Comments

Floral

With all the sky-gazing that I’ve been doing, I haven’t taken any time to photograph anything else.  I am hoping to get back in the groove of doing photography in the mornings at some point soon, but for now I’m editing a photo I took in La Jolla a couple weeks ago.  I am missing doing floral photography, and, although I have a yard of mostly rocks, I plan on getting outside soon to photograph the flowers I do have and to get a shot of the hummingbirds that frequent the yard.

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I used 3 layers of Kim Klassen’s new savor texture- love this one!

Melinda1 Comment