"Vintage Postage Stamps from Greece 2" Digital Collage - CorelDRAW - Plus

Vintage Postage Stamps from Greece

These "Vintage Postage Stamps from Greece," were found in my Cigar Box Stamp Collection. As I am sorting the stamps I have found most of them to have been canceled, used. A slight disappointment for the values of vintage stamps are higher if they are pristine, never been used at all, except for collection.

Using my Canon MP495 I scanned the stamps in at 300dpi. I used Corel PhotoPaint as my "holding pen," then I opened CorelDRAW to align them and to resize them. I copied and pasted each stamp into DRAW. As you can see that they are not original sizes. I wanted to make a real digital collage with them, so I adjusted to my eye. You may notice that some of them were on Airmail envelopes, I left them like that for the realism.

After I adjusted them I copied to the clipboard and pasted them back into PhotoPaint. I used the Tone Curve to deepen the colors. Then I used the Wand selection tool for the white space and then selecting a background tile I filled with the Fill tool that space. I saved the large file and resampled for display. I added my signature and saved this iteration.

Listening --- Lifescapes --- Postlude

"Vintage Grecian Postage Stamps" Digital Collage - Corel PhotoPaint

Vintage Grecian Postage Stamps

I began this image with a photograph of White peeling paint. I opened from Picasa 3.9 with Corel Painter Photo Essentials 4 and auto painted it. I used the Impressionistic feature with rough paper and random brushstrokes, setting the color for Saturation. I saved this large file.

With Greece in the News so much I searched through my Cigar Box Collection of postage stamps from Greece. I scanned them into Corel PhotoPaint and adjusted the color with the Tone Curve. I tried to fit to the real size of each stamp, but found that challenging so I did my best to make them legible. I did use the Feather feature on each to get the perforations to show more clearly and less of the scanned background of the stamps.

I browsed my Dover Clip Art and found a piece of stained glass and placed it in the center of the Digital Collage of Vintage Postage Stamps. I used the property Subtract for transparency. I saved the large file and resampled for display.