"African Map - Woman's Portrait" Corel

African Map - Woman's Portrait

More fantastic files from MorgueFile! I clicked on their freebies and collected some photographs. I had had a comment on one of my images I did of a Woman's Portrait with a Vintage map. When I saw these two photographs I just knew that they would fit together in a unique way.

I opened Corel PSP Pro X3 and layered three layers together, I used differing properties for transparency. The African Map and Woman's portrait also made her eyes just glow in the merged piece.

I saved the large iteration. Then I opened in Corel PhotoPaint. Here I resampled for display. after I had done that I wanted to punch up the colors more.

I used Filter Forge's Photo Effects Vibrancy on the full image. This made the colors just right.

I saved this time Optimized, compressed by 75 and smoothing at 33 for a smaller file size. It was ready for posting.

"A Straw Hat Young Woman Map NYC" Corel

A Straw Hat Young Woman Map NYC

I got this photograph of the Young Woman in a Straw Hat from StockVault. I am uncertain where I got the Vintage NYC Map from, it may have been Dover Publications.

I opened the Young Woman using the Organizer in Corel PSP Pro X3. The EXIF data says it is an iPhone photograph, It was somewhat washed out, but otherwise had nice detail. I ran it through the Threshold tool and made it black and white, I adjusted the image to show enough of the nose and straw hat as possible. It resulted in some full black space, which I liked. I used the NYC Map, from my Dover Samplers Folder, as a layer and had to do a few things to it. I had to enlarge it, to fit, using Curves I gave some more depth to the colors. After I merged those layers to one I added my white signature.

I also used the Saturation Vibrancy to boost the colors of the Map. I merged the Map using the property Darken instead of Lighten, which placed it in the white space of the image. I added a 25 pixel border in black to make the top of the image fit better. I used Image Information to add Title, Copyright, Programs used, etc. Saving the Large iteration I resized for display to 1200 x 1200 pixels.

As always, please click on the image for the larger view. Comments are always welcome! Don't forget to view other Artworks of mine by using the Labels (tag) Cloud at the bottom of the screen, or the Google Search for my Artworks of various styles and kinds. You are always invited to search through my blog for Digital Collage work and Guitars, and various other images found here.

I had time to update my Acoustic Guitar Community Page to match my blog for consistency. If you enjoy Singer/Songwriter Folk/Rock and music in general Visit my page at AGC! Have a listen. You can scroll down the pages there to see the explanation of each song in my Player. Scroll to the song you would like by using the Next or Previous buttons on the Player. to stop a song or pause it hit the Stop button. Very simple player options. Enjoy!

A Man and His Dog

A man and his dog on a cutoff in the mountains. I tried to make a better image with the addition of a sky but it appears that the Pyramid Paint filter made it look too dark.

So I think it looks doctored up. But it was fun to do and so I am sharing it.

I've been working on a mapping project with a friend. So it is an interesting challenge to formulate the maps from resources. It is mostly cutting and pasting and adding street names that don't appear on the resource map.

I've been listening to music, too. Some of my older songs that I may remake using the Toneport to see if I can add an edge to them, or soften them a bit. I may add background vocals as well as some lead playing, although I'm not your best lead player! It's all in fun anyway. And there are always covers to do of other songwriters works.

I've received an invitation to an Opening Reception for the Michigan Plein Air Painters exhibition coming up on November 7th. http://www.michiganpleinair.com/ The show runs until Nov. 29th. It's being held at the Huron Valley Council for the Arts in Highland, Michigan. Not too far from us. The invitation was a large sized postcard with six images of plein air paintings, all very well done. We hope to go to the reception but if not we may go to the exhibition at a later date.