"Beauty and Decay" - PSP Pro X3 - PhotoPaint

Beauty

Decay

I used some photographs taken by my Son, Keir M. Gatzka for enhancing. Both photographs were taken quite some time ago, with our first digital camera, a point and shoot small camera. So I did some searching in Picasa 3 to these older folders (yes I am a digital pack rat!) and found these photographs.

I opened with PSP Pro X3 and applied the Smart photo fix to each as an individual photograph. Then I upped the saturation quite a bit. I browsed the Picture Frame feature and found a Polaroid frame and used it on each as well.

I saved the large files and opened with PhotoPaint to apply the Tone Curve, lightly, to add depth to the images. Then I added my signature, as I am the enhancer of the photographs, and resampled for display here.

Both of these photographs were taken in and around our surrounding area, though the old machinery has been since cleaned away.

Listening --- Santana --- Moon Flower

"!Music Lives" - CorelDRAW - PhotoPaint - Filter Forge - PSP Pro X3

! Music Lives

I started to create an image today, a digital collage, about music and this is what I finished with. I had to search for some free music notation font files online and discovered two, MetDemo and MusiSync. I found a third that had guitar chord charts, Accord.

I took the font Abadi MT Condensed ExtraBold and used that for the phrase "Music Lives" and added an exclamation point from the font Basketcase. I found a photograph while browsing in Picasa 3 folders of a 12-string guitar so I used Little Ink Pot's Thredgeholder on it for line art and added a couple guitars to the piece.

Almost as an after thought I added an image of myself, unshaven, to add something more to it. I adjusted the image of me from a photograph in PSP Pro X3, making it a line art grunge image.

I also used Filter Forge's Photo Effects Grunge, altering some of the settings as before. This created a framed look, too.

Listening --- America --- This Is For All The Lonely People

"It Was Time I Decided" - Verse Perfect - CorelDRAW - PhotoPaint - Filter Forge

COLLIDED

AWAY

I was in the program Verse Perfect which is great for songwriting and poetry, I would recommend it, and it is free online. I wrote some verse and thought I could incorporate some graphic design with it so I opened Picasa 3 and CorelDRAW and found some grunge backgrounds I had saved and copied and pasted them into DRAW. Each one I worked on separately. I copied the verses from Verse Perfect  and pasted them into DRAW.

I played around with small caps, full caps and justification. Then I did some fun tilting and altering of words. I grouped the objects and text and copied to the clipboard and opened PhotoPaint and used File> New From Clipboard>, reducing the size of the large file to 75%of the original.

I fit to screen and applied the Tone Curve, for depth,  as I worked the individual pieces. Using Filter Forge's Photo Effects Grunge I decreased the grunge slider and increased the stains slider, also decreasing the frame slider and applied the effect.

The poem is not a happy one, but one of unreconciled differences in a relationship. All to common, but not the state I'm in, just a fictitious relationship.

Listening --- Bob Seger --- Roll Me Away 

"Up Close and Personal" - Digital Collage - Picasa 3 - PSP Pro X3 - PhotoPaint

Up Close and Personal

Busy day, short post. I created this collage in Picasa 3 of close up photographs of custom cars. I applied my High Contrast workflow to the image for display here. I used PhotoPaint and PSP Pro X3 for the effects and Filter Forge for the film frame.

I really like how easy it is to create these types of collages in Picasa 3, you browse to your folder containing the images and use Ctrl Click to select them from all the photographs. Then you can pick the type of collage you want like the Mosaic one I chose here. You can shuffle the photographs til you get a balance you like and then click Create Collage. I selected what it calls HDTV size and dimensions.

Infographics of gatzkART! - Klout, mentionmapp, Google Analytics, Blogger Stats - Mashup

Grunge Mashup

All together

Current Klout Score

mentionmapp Map

Google Analytics

Blogger Stats

I've become rather fond of Infographics, so I am displaying statistics from differing locations all about my blog gatzkART! The first image is a mashup of all the stats done in PhotoPaint with a Mayang's Texture grunge background.

I grouped them together in CorelDRAW and displayed them next in line. Then I shared the individual stats from each source. All these sources are available to the blogger and twitter online at their named locations. I find them useful and great fun to help me know where my blog is statistically at any given time.

I don't think anyone can find the bridge today.