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The Red Cedar Stump

Historic image of an old car under a red cedar stump in 1920

Had fun with this great image from Shorpy’s – the historical photo archive site. This image was called Pacific Highway through a Washington Red Cedar Stump and was taken in 1920. Here is a link for info on this stump which is still standing in the State of Washington. Is this guy really looking at his phone????

Recently I did a Fun Photoshop blog called How to Convert Black and White Images to Colorful Paintings with Topaz Studio 2. This image followed this technique except a different Look that was created in Studio 1 a long time ago was applied. Three filters were in the Look: Color Themes, AI ReMix (used Wave of Color Style), and Precision Contrast. Also HSL Color Tuning and Details (with settings in the minus to give a painterly effect) filters were added. Back in Photoshop Viveza was used to balance it all out. Last step involved adding a bit of a vignette so car and man stood out. It was a nice image to colorize. ….. Digital Lady Syd

02/11/2020 | Categories: Photo Art, Topaz Studio | Tags: | Leave A Comment »

Sneaking a Quick Snack

Here is Gulliver, one of my favorite animals at the Jacksonville Zoo. He loves to perform for all the visitors and is always available to entertain you. Just thought I would give him a little bit of Joel Sartore, the famous National Geographic photographer) clean classic style. His PhotoArk images are currently being displayed all around the Jacksonville Zoo which was a real treat. A perfect selection of the subject is essential to get this effect. It took me a bit of time to get the edges just the way I wanted them with no discoloration from the green background – used a brush with sharp edges and cloned away the bad parts. (See my How to Save a Photoshop CC2018 Regular Brush as a Different Tool blog which tells how to create this fur brush.) Then a very small blender mixer brush was used to fix some of the hairs around his body. The other crucial part of this type of image is getting the lighting on the animal correct. I had taken this image through a plastic smeary glass with some glare, so the contrast had to be really adjusted to get a clear look. It was pretty labor intensive but worth it when you get a final image you like…..Digital Lady Syd

01/29/2020 | Categories: Photoshop Tools | Tags: , | 1 Comment »

The Rag-a-Muffins

Enjoyed painting this image but it took awhile to figure which way to do it. I actually ended up using Jessica Johnson’s Pattern Stamp technique using her brushes also (see my What About the Pattern Stamp Tool? Not Bad! blog). Clean up was done Gavin Phillips smudge brush, which is actually a regular brush but does a great job. An Impasto Layer was created to give a more painterly look (see my How to Create an Impasto Texture Layer Style blog). Otherwise that was about it. Lots of fun!…..Digital Lady Syd

01/21/2020 | Categories: Photoshop Painting | Tags: | 1 Comment »

Landscape of Old

Finally got back to painting. A lot I have forgotten and a lot more to learn but it was nice to get back into Corel Painter. If you have Painter, check out Davey Baker’s Painter 2018 Awe-Inspiring Environment Painting. The video was actually done in 2017 I believe, but Corel has re-released it and runs for almost an hour. He only used one brush called Wet Brush (check out his short video called How to Create Custom Wet Brush for more on this). I changed my brush from his slightly and created two more variants to do the detail work. What I did learn was that to be able to do this, you need to understand how to use the brush so practice with it on a separate layer before painting. Davey’s video had several tips on painting and other things. In Photoshop I actually used Grut’s FX Cloud Lumens (the best Cloud brushes ever made) to create the clouds as I did not like how mine looked using Dave’s Wet Brush settings in Painter. Also used Perfectly Clear v3 Magic Hour preset to adjust the exposure correctly. For final clean up work, used Fay Sirkis’s (a Corel Master but she also did PS videos and brushes at one time) Precious Oil Diamond Blender Mixer brush that I have used for years (the only place her brushes are still available is on KelbyOne – if you are a member, do a search for her name – she has 5 webinars, which are still great, and brushes can be downloaded). This was so much fun but it took several hours to complete……Digital Lady Syd

01/15/2020 | Categories: Corel Painter, Photo Art | Leave A Comment »

Checking Out the Visitors

This guy resides at The Smithsonian Zoo in Washington, DC (check this cool Lion live web cam to see what is happening). He seemed to be enjoying watching the crowds come by for a visit. I decided to do a monochromatic treatment. In Lightroom the sepia tone used is similar to that used by the famous wildlife photographer Nick Brandt. In Photoshop Perfectly Clear was used to adjust the exposure where a preset called Fill Flash was used – it really brought out the details in the face. A Dodge and Burn layer was also used. I love to visit the Lions at the zoo!…..Digital Lady Syd

01/10/2020 | Categories: Lightroom | Tags: | Leave A Comment »

Fishing at Flagler Beach

Image of fishing pier at Flagler Beach, Florida.

Had some more fun using Sparkle Stock’s free action called Inception. This time used a fishing pier and added some birds from PixelSquid. This image turned out to be a gig in size as the action tends to really make the file large. I just created a stamped layer and used it to start an new document to finish up. To get the yellow color, a Color Lookup Adjustment Layer preset called Edgy Amber was applied at 74% layer opacity. A few of the fishermen had to be adjusted so they did not look exactly the same. Otherwise, pretty easy to do……Digital Lady Syd

01/07/2020 | Categories: Photoshop Actions | Leave A Comment »

Butterflies

Image of several butterflies on a textured background

Ended 2019 with a butterfly graphic image. Had fun just trying some of the new techniques from this year. Mainly trying out a little blend if technique to remove the backgrounds from the butterflies. A couple Color Lookup Adjustments Layers and a Gradient Map Adjustment Layer were used to add in a little more effect. The original background texture is called Butterfly Flutters by French Kiss and the font is one of my favorites, Argentina Script. There is so much that can be practiced with Photoshop……Digital Lady Syd

01/02/2020 | Categories: Just Being Creative, Textures | Tags: , | Leave A Comment »

Happy New Year

Image of beautiful butterfly wishing everyone a Happy New Year

Yes, this same beautiful butterfly (Palamedes Swallowtail) is showing off for New Years. This time she is covered with confetti created by using an old set of brushes from Morgan BW called Confetti and Streamer. The font is called Castile Inline Grunge. The Magnifier effect is from a free action called Adobe Looking Glass Actions – both actions in the set were used to create the effect. Also, the Pattern Stamp Brush was used to get the brightly colored background – I actually created the background pattern for this image using more free Pattern Stamp brushes from Jessica Johnson.

Happy New Years to Everyone! Thank you for following me here on my blog and on my Flickr account. Hope you have a great year ahead of you!…..Digital Lady Syd

12/31/2019 | Categories: Photoshop Actions | Tags: | Leave A Comment »

Edinburgh Lunch

Image of lunch at an outdoor restaurant in Edinburgh, Scotland

This image (a favorite of mine taken of a little street in Edinburgh, Scotland) was used to try out a new Photoshop Action downloaded from Adobe Create Magazine. It is called Painterly and is very flexible as to how it can be used to make a very nice artistic effect of an image. The action was created by BlackNull (or Nuwan Panditha) and also included brushes and patterns needed to run the action. There is a very informative 6-page PDF file that explains everything you need to know on how to get good results. It was a lot of fun to do and only took an hour or so to get this final image. A couple of my regular tweaks in Photoshop were done after applying the action, but overall the effect was from the action. One disadvantage is that the image, which was set to 8-bit, became over 1 Gig in size. Since I had turned off many of the layers while adjusting the action, I just right clicked on the Layers Panel upper right pop-out and selected Delete Hidden Layers. Then it became much more manageable. Anyway, thought I would present the action as it was really nice to try out. Enjoy!…..Digital Lady Syd

12/19/2019 | Categories: Photoshop Actions | Tags: , | 1 Comment »

Enjoying the Holidays!

Image of a butterfly in winter background

My image of this beautiful Palamedes Swallowtail Butterfly was converted to a wintry scene and put in holiday apparel. Butterflies like to dress up. To get her to this point, Perfectly Clear was used to do an overall exposure and sharpening effect. The background had a chain-link fence that looked terrible and a couple extra flowers on the left side. To get rid of all this distraction? Just select an 80% hard round brush set to 5% Flow and paint ed it away. If you accidentally paint over the edges, can either choose a small eraser or add layer mask to remove it. This is how the butterfly lines could be shown so clearly. It is amazing how easy a clean color can be achieved. Elements were added on each side to give a nice frosty look. For the right plant, used Sweet Floral Watercolor Bundle by Mnuk with a clipped Curves Adjustment Layer using the color channels to get the colors needed. The left element is Watercolor Leaves by Sunny Illustrations with a clipped Curves Adjustment Layer with both the RGB and Color channel color changes. Foreground leaf was covered up with a leaf by Sweet Floral using a Selective Color Adjustment Layer clipped to get the correct color. The font is called Alberobello Script and the free snow brushes were from Serge Ramelli (the best out there). It did take some time to do, but it was a lot of fun……Digital Lady Syd

12/17/2019 | Categories: Just Being Creative, Photoshop Filters | Tags: | Leave A Comment »

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