"Steps to This: Path To The River" PE5

Path To The River

Back to a Pathways image for today! I selected a Stone and Brick Pathway photograph to work on. I opened in Picasa 3+ and applied the HDR effect, Radius at 50% and Strength was Medium. I saved that file. My next step was to open this file in Corel Painter Essentials 5 (PE5).

I picked the Impression Painting set with the Acrylics, Oils Fine Camel Brush to digitally paint. I added back in some slight details with the Soft Cloner Photo Brush. The Impressionist palette really makes this image stand out. I saved this piece.

Corel PhotoPaint allowed me to apply the Tone Curve adding a slight depth to the colors. I applied Saturation set to 10. Added my signature layer and merged the layers saving the large file.

I used the Filter Forge Frames for a Film Frame on the image. I saved the large file again. I next Resampled the image for display. Set at 72dpi 768 X 1024 pixels, Anti-alias and Maintain the Aspect Ratio I saved to an Optimized JPG Compression at 75, Smoothing at 25 for display size.

A piece of advice for all who work on Digital Visual Artwork. Save your working file frequently! It saves a lot of grief if the program freezes or your computer acts up and you lose some of your steps already taken. If you like to save to the working programs native file format for recovery if the worst happens.

"How To: Hewn Stone Steps" Corel

Hewn Stone Steps

Another Landscape diversion for me. I believe I got the photograph of the Hewn Stone Steps from Morguefile, but my records are not always accurate. So bear with me about the source of the file, please.

I opened the Stone Steps in Corel PSP Pro X3 and I adjusted it with the Smart Photo Fix, upping the color, decreasing the highlights, and a light brightening. I used the Curves to add depth to the colors. Then I applied the Saturation Vibrancy set on 33. I saved that iteration.

I liked the end result of my last Landscape so I opened this photograph in Corel Painter Photo Essentials 4. Here I selected the Classical Oil Painting settings to paint with. I also tried the Pastel Drawing, Watercolor Sketch, and Modern Painting settings, but my favorite was the Classical Oil.

I saved that file as a JPG, with my compression off. I opened the file in Corel PhotoPaint and added my signature. I attempted to rid the image of a small red object with the standard paint brush in PhotoPaint, but in Windows 10 OS the paint brush painted a inch line on the Steps, this had never happened before. I tried to eliminate the red object to no avail in PhotoPaint. So you may notice it in the painting.

I resampled the 300dpi image to a display size, saving that with compression set at 75 and smoothing at 25. I decided to try one more thing to get rid of the red object. I have done little painting with PSP Pro X3's tools, I reopened the display image in PSP Pro X3. There I selected the color-picker and chose some colors around the stone wall area. I selected the Airbrush tool and painted out the red object with a few differing colors. That was better.

I saved the file again and posted this for today's viewers.