"Blue Eyed Woman in Red with Book and Tea" Corel

Blue Eyed Woman in Red with Book and Tea

I found on the Internet, another free photograph site called Unsplash. I subscribed to their site and I selected a "Blue Eyed Woman in Red with Book and Tea," photograph to create today's image.

Being that it was a large image I cropped to focus upon the Woman and details. I did this in Corel PhotoPaint. I saved the cropped photograph. I wanted a Pastel look and feel to the piece.

I opened it in Corel Painter Photo Essentials 4 and used the Pastel Drawing set, not changing any of the settings. I touched up the eyes with the Soft Edge Brush. I saved that large iteration.

Opening in Corel PSP Pro X3 I used the Smart Photo Fix tool, deepening the Midtones and increasing the color. I added more punch to the Red with the Saturation Vibrancy tool. I saved again, then added my signature, resized for display and saved the final image for posting.

"Taylor Guitar Player Pencil & Texture Blend" Corel

Taylor Guitar Player

I looked through some of my photographs from the Taylor Road Show, at Motor City Guitar, I selected this one. I opened it in Corel PSP Pro X3. There I decided to use some of the Effects available and I selected Pencil for the base image. It created almost an embossed look and feel to the photograph. All my Show photographs were taken with my Canon Rebel XTi DSLR.

I then looked through some new Textures I had received from Friday Freebies StockVault. I grabbed this incredible Blue Texture. I did this the other day and I believe I used the blend property of Multiply with Opacity adjustments.

I also applied Saturation Vibrancy for a slight boost to the colors. I added a black border and my signature, and merged all the layers, saving the large iteration. I added Image Information to the EXIF properties. All the work was done in PSP Pro X3. I resized for display here but did not mess with the default compression or smoothing.

"Blue Eyed Lady Watercolor Texture" Corel - Filter Forge

Blue Eyed Lady
(Click on for Larger View)

I garnered another portrait of a Woman from MorgueFile, along with a few other portraits. I selected this one because of the Blue Eyes and Full Mouth. It is also asymmetrical. More of the focus on her face on the right hand side of the image.

I opened it in Corel PhotoPaint and used the Threshold tool. This actually gave me quite a bit of black on the left side and surrounding the face. I decided to alter that. I found a Texture and using Corel Painter Photo Essentials 4 I auto painted it with saturated water colors. I added this to the image, then realized I needed to use the Wand tool to select the face first, so I did that. I layered them together. I used the Fill tool for the face with a gradient set on radial.

I then reopened the original Woman's portrait and cut the Blue Eyes and placed them one at a time, I also did this with the mouth. I merged all layers and applied Filter Forge's Photo Effects Vibrance to boost the colors and show off the Texture of the Watercolor Brushstrokes.

I felt it needed one more thing. I grabbed a Dover Publication Clip Art Frame with birds. I added my signature to the image and merged layers again. I saved this file with 75 compression and 33 smoothing, an optimized jpeg.

"Old Times Two" Corel - Filter Forge

Old Times Two

As I had mentioned in my previous post I had found these "Old Times," photographs in my files. I expected to do at least two of these for "gatzkART!". These contain visages of my wife's family and friends.

Here is the second as promised. I opened with Corel PhotoPaint two photographs. I cropped the larger one and then copied and pasted the second (Mother with baby.) I erased around the Mother with baby to add only them to the Tug of War photograph. I merged them and used Filter Forge's Photo Effects Colors to create the blue image. I had adjusted the Tone Curve a bit as the Mother with baby stand out starkly against the larger photograph, with little success in matching them.

I really love these older photographs that I scanned in. They are Circa 1950's I believe. They have a certain character to them that makes them stand out. My simple approach to using the separate photographs to "build" an image in blue is not new, but a timeless one.

Please click on the image for the larger view, thank you.

"Old Times One" Corel - Picasa

Old Times One

I found some older Photograph scans I had saved to my external HDD of some of my wife's family. I cropped the beginning photograph in Corel PhotoPaint and saved the file.  I opened a secondary photograph of her father in the navy. I added it in Corel PhotoPaint by pasting and erasing around him. I saved that iteration.

I opened the crop in Picasa 3.9 and applied a Blue Tint to it. I also used the Lomograph effect to give it a slight vignetting. I saved that file and posted it here for your enjoyment. I have a few more of these that I now need to search for and create a background of her father with a placement of her mother to it.

I want to create "Old Times Two," using the same steps applied here. I love the look and fashion of these times, probably in the late 1940's early 1950's. So I will plan on doing so for the future.

I also inverted my signature and copyright and added that to the image. It is the original size pixels wise, click on the image for the larger view. Thank you.