Photoshop Digital Scene tutorial with John's photos of his Micro Town

 This was so much fun to work on yesterday. I created a digital scene with John's 3 photos of his micro 1:144 town.  You can see the 3 photos together in the previous blog. For those of you who use Photoshop you might like to know how I did it. I opened a layer and added a scenic photo from Pixabay which is a great place to download images because they are copyright free. I enlarged the scene and moved it so that very little of the sky is showing and it was mostly a green landscape. I opened the 3 sets of photos John had taken of his micro town and turned their backgrounds transparent. Then I added the 3 transparent photos to the scene on their own layers. I moved the top photo down to look more realistic behind the 2nd photo. Using the clone tool I saved various images of the soil and added it to the background scene to make roadways for between the buildings and added them to the front to look more in scale, less rocky, more dusty looking. Then I went to each building layer and added shrub looking plants from the cloned background and a mossy look with transparencies in front of the buildings . The horses were downloaded from Pixabay as well. I created transparencies, cropped them and applied styles and adjustment layers to change the colour and added inner shadows. then placed them between the second and third layers. Fun moving them here and there to see what was the best fit. It was interesting to extend the railroad and add dust here and there too. Thanks for looking, Mini Hugs, Jean. .

2014 A Year of Choices with free printable

2014 A Year of Choices and Free Printable Above

We have so many choices in our lives and I’m always very aware of these at the start of a New Year! For the New Year I would wish for you joy and happiness. 

Joy and happiness are choices, especially with everything that is available on the web or to watch on TV. This year I’m going to try even harder to just watch TV shows and movies that are filled with laughter and joy. My choices should reflect the best part of who I am.  I would like to be more generous. I like to express this through free projects or printables when time permits for AIM magazine as well as my blog. Quite a few years ago I chose to sponsor two children through World Vision, every time I look at their pictures and wonder how they are doing, it makes me feel good to know that I have maybe helped them in some way.

   

Another choice that makes me feel good is taking time each day to read a good book, a book I have chosen, not because it is on the best seller list but because the author is enlightening and makes me feel good.  Ballroom dancing brings joy to our lives as well both physically, socially and mentally, entertaining, and spending time with our children feels so good too. Going to visit beautiful gardens and long walks is refreshing and so uplifting to my spirit.

Finding more time and ways to be creative is so important too. Designing for my miniatures and digital downloads, sewing and cooking. Last year I tried to take time each day to learn something new about Photoshop that was a great choice that has really had lasting benefits.

Whatever your choices are for the New Year, I hope they make you feel great!!

You can find a higher resolution version of the printable page on 4shared with other images you might like to download. Please note that the download link is near the bottom of the page.
http://www.4shared.com/folder/ILtK6LJE/_online.html

All the very best, Cheers, Jean

Happy Valentines Free Printables and New Years Resolution

A lovely friend of mine gave me the sweet Valentine card this year that is the first image and I just had to share it with everyone. She knows I love vintage cards. I am also offering a larger version of thee Valentine Gift card that I offered in 1910 that you can also find on one of my blogs smaller as a previous free image. You can right click on the images to same them for printing.
If you do a search on my blog for Valentines, you will see other freebies I have offered for Valentines in the past.I also put a larger version of the first Valentine gift card if you prefer to right click and save.

My New Years resolution this was to learn something new in Photoshop and my other programs everyday. I would say that this resolution has had the largest impact on my life of any I have made.  I usually use the same painting techniques and creating techniques in the programs. Corel Draw, Photoshop, Painter and Corel PSP are my favorite programs and each has so much to offer. To learn some of the techniques, I creating photomontages and collages from stock photos in Photoshop recently. It has been very exciting and so creative. I use Photoshop all the time for my digital downloads but like any computer program there is always so much more to learn. Here are a  few I have been working on, the last is a freebie Valentines card too.