I’m participating in a new challenge with quilters from the US, France, and Japan. There are 90 quilters, with 30 from each country. Each quilter creates a 50 cm quilt based on one of 30 poets, which means each poet will have three quilts. I chose Emily Dickinson whose work I adore. We were asked […]
My “Final” Final
We had a “final exam” for Part 2, just as we had for Part I of the Pixeladies Photoshop Elements Course. Our goal was to combine a number of the tools we had learned and put them to use in a single image. I interpreted the term postcard loosely. For mine, I opened one of […]
Special Effects in Photoshop Elements
There are several special effects you can achieve, such a filters, drop shadows, and bevels. Here is a photo of a begonia from a basket on my front porch. I selected the flower from the photo, moving it to a new blank file. Then I used a pattern in filters called Angled Spectrum for the […]
Gradient Play
We worked with gradients today in our Photoshop Elements lesson. There are an infinite number of gradients you can create given the number of colors available and the variety of gradients within PSE. Colors and patterns can be gradated vertically, horizontally, in squares, or bullseyes, which is the gradient in commercial ombré fabric. You can […]
More Ways to Fix Photos
We covered more ways to correct problem photos. This involves using the adjustment layers. Some filters within this tool correct the entire photo. For example, if your photo has a blue cast, you can use a warming filter, with three to choose from. There are also three cooling filters. I don’t have any photos with […]
Fix Your Photos
Today’s lesson was how to repair photos which are less than perfect due to scratches, power lines, unwanted elements, or you simply didn’t take a good photo in the first place. I didn’t have a photo fitting this description so I used the sample provided. You can see hands in either corner, a face at […]
Filter Effects
Our final lesson for this week, we have one week to go, was filters. You can skew and changes colors in your photos by using filters on them. What makes filters most effective is stacking one on top of another. I have up to six filters on some of these photos. What I learned after […]
Photoshop Progress
I had a two week break after completing part one of Photoshop Elements (PSE) lessons with the Pixeladies. Part two started last week. In the first seven lessons, we’ve learned to do all sorts editing, using tools in a more complex series of actions. I am starting to put together how I will use what […]
Frame Your Photos
We learned how to “add canvas” to a photo, which allows you to manipulate your image for certain adjustments. A nifty use for this additional canvas is to create a frame around a photo in your desired color. Here’s a photo I took of a hillside village during a trip to France a couple years […]
A Final Exam! Really?
Our final lesson in Pixeladies Photoshop Elements on-line course was to select a photo we hadn’t worked with before and make at least five adjustments. I picked a photo I had taken of a wall hanging by my friend Mary Telford during our Oregon Garden exhibition. Here’s the original: As you can see I did […]
Printing Your Own Fabric Designs
A lot of quilters and fiber artists are printing their own designs on fabric for use in their own work. Our final lesson covered why and how to prepare images for test prints from print-on-demand companies, such as Spoonflower. I selected a photo of a stamped swatch I had created and a photo of a […]
Three Reasons to Sharpen Your Images
Your photo is out of focus. Keep or delete? There is a sharpening tool called auto sharpen. Frankly, it doesn’t seem to do much. Instead, a better tool called, funnily enough, the Unsharp Mask allows you to make effective manual adjustments. The goal is to sharpen as much as possible without over doing it. When […]
Abstracting Photos for Quilts
I cannot say how much I found this lesson useful in turning photos into patterns for quilts or other types of art. You can do the same thing using pencil and paper or by projecting an image onto a wall, both of which I have done. But PSE makes the process so much simpler. Plus, […]
How to Brighten Your Images
In lesson eight of Photoshop Elements, we learned how to brighten images. For me, the course is about fabrics and how I can use the tools of PSE in fiber art. But brightening an image you want to use as inspiration can help you see it more clearly, so it is useful in ways beyond […]
Auditioning Fabric Colors
Photoshop has an easy way to audition colors in your quilts. It probably one of the easiest things to learn in the program. You can change the hue and saturation of an entire image or change colors individually. You can also “colorize”, making your image monochromatic. I chose this sample block for its variety of […]
Auditioning Fabrics
You can audition fabrics using Photoshop Elements in two different ways. One is to scan fabrics you own and drop them into Photoshop. The other way is to copy fabrics you are considering from the internet onto a “clipboard”. In this way, you aren’t buying fabric you ultimately don’t end up using. We learned how […]
Tracing and Quilting Lines
Lesson five of Photoshop Elements sounds simple. Not so much. Our exercise involved how to trace an image or audition quilting lines for a quilt. It’s so much harder than it looks. And here is one of my images to show just how challenging it is. I use a tablet and pen. I’ve tried drawing […]
Watermarks–important?
Lesson four in Photoshop Elements with the Pixeladies is how to overlay watermarks or other text on your images. As I mentioned, this is my second time taking the course. It’s exciting to see how much more I’m getting out of it. So while I knew how to do watermarks and text, I haven’t been […]
The Miracles of Photoshop
I’m taking the Photoshop Elements on-line course again through Pixeladies. (I thought they called themselves the Pixieladies for the longest time, and I couldn’t figure out why they picked that name. I’m sure they would have loved that. I misread their name the first time, and it stuck in my brain). Anyway, I learned a […]
Drawing on My Computer
I mentioned in a previous post I was taking an on-line course called Digital Design from the Pixeladies. The ultimate goal of the course was to use a tablet and Photoshop Elements (PSE) to design fabric that you could have printed from one of the on-line printing companies, such as Spoonflower, or at home using […]
Road to California Finale
A friend and fellow certified judge, Linda Rasmussen, serves as the awards clerk each year at Road. This year she also coordinated a special exhibit called Stringy Fowl based on the vintage quilt below owned by collector Julie Silber. Quilts were created by Road’s Judging Floor Staff. This first quilt is by Linda herself. The […]
