Calendar Workshop 2023

[Lynda DiGregor]

Very nice Monique, Where did the photo come from? Looks like a re-enactment.

 

Lynda

[MoniqueN.]

Lynda, it's from the tv series Outlander, adaptation from the books written by Diana Gabaldon. :)

[Ann Seeber]

Here's May & June, featuring the women who have made our country great. For May, featuring a sculpture of the original Suffragettes, I used a gradient on the background and then hit it with Kaleidoscope. For June, featuring an oil painting of four of our female Supreme Court justices, I also used a gradient and then used the Blinds texture.

[Lynda DiGregor]

Monique,

 

I haven't watched that show so I know nothing. :-) I'll have to check it out.

 

Lynda

[Susan Ewart]

Who says you cant put a circle (flower) in a square (glass) in a circle (mask)....or a circle in a star in a circle? ?

 

All kidding aside.  First off, Dawn, thank goodness for your result.  The "C' word is scary.

 

Here is my March and April works in progress.  I am playing with each month with colors, fonts.  April's front is nice but ugh, the color looks like bad bruise, so it will change, thought you'd get a laugh over it.  I will keep experimenting with color, font, texture and after the workshop I will choose what I liked the best.

 

Carole, I had something weird happen with using the glyphs.  Not sure if it's the font program (Font Base, subscription version) or just how some fonts are.  I copied and pasted the glyph and some of it is cut off.  Have you seen it before?  Is that just something that happens?  I did choose another font.

 

I like the masks, they are interesting.  At first I thought I shouldn't have the white space around images that were shot that way (I have other photos of the star one, shot on different colored backgrounds that I made sub in later), but now I like that white space.

 

Oops, forgot to add the fonts.  April is Prida02Calt.  March is PridaEmCooper.  I'm not sure where I got them.

[Cassel]

Susan, I have had something like that happen, and it seems to be font related. It seems to happen only with SOME fonts. Can you try a different one?

[fiona cook]

All the best to Corrie and Dawn.

 

I love the circular frames used for the templates Carole. It makes a change and surprisingly photos composed in a rectangular format seem to easily fit.

 

Lynda, how did you add the days to the dates? I agree, it makes it more concise.

 

I have created the first 6 pages but have been contemplating adding quotes to match my photos. The photos are mine but the quotes that I would match to them are other people's.  Not sure where to put the quotation text though.

 

I dragged the text layer for the month name across from one file to the new one.  I was thinking I would save myself a bit of bother but when I drag it in, the text does not slip into the same position on the new page. I had to put guidelines on each new page.

 

 

[Susan Ewart]

Thank you Carole.  I did use a different font that worked.  It's good to know that happens and it's not something I did.  My computer was working slow because I had been looking at 100's of photo and the cache was full.  Did a re-boot and it was all happy again.  My husband works from home and uses the computer too, with very big files, and said after I use PSP he has to dump the cache as his program works slow.  It's good to know what to do when that happens.

 

Fiona!  Wow!  I lOVE your layouts.

 

Off to work now....I've decided I dont like working any day that ends in a "y"....hahahaha

[Lynda DiGregor]

Wow, Fiona, I just looked at your calendar pages and your photos are beautiful

 

Lynda

[Anita Wyatt]

Thank you Lynda. I like your your January page showing the Mitchel Corn Palace too, it is beautiful. The castle is called Neuschwanstein and it is one of King Ludwig's Castles. It is nestled in the Bavarian Alps, south of Munich and inspired Walt Disney to create the  Sleeping Beauty Castle in Disney World.

[Anita Wyatt]

I love Diana Gabaldon's Outlander books.

[Cassel]

Cindy (#83262), it looks like you fixed the issue of the black and white image.

 

Susan (#83266), sometimes, going out of your comfort zone is a way to experiment and maybe find something new you will like. What font did you use for the months?

 

Anita (#83270), drop shadows on a new layer have always been linked to the layer it is shadowing. Wasn't it doing that in other versions for you?

 

Ann (#83273), it is great when the theme of the calendar has a particular meaning. (#83317) Have you considered straightening the painting image? Based on the mirror in the back seems obviously angled.

 

Gerry (#83284), do you have enough people with birthdays in each month?

 

Cristina (#83287), is that an overlay on the background layer? I like that font. Maybe one I'll have to go grab!

 

Lynda (#83298), that is a good idea to add the days of the week. Since the templates were generic, I could not offer that, but you certainly have a great idea and executed it well too.

 

Monique (#83309) I am glad to see you tweak the template to make it vertical AND with boxes. A great example of how one can customize a given template to suit their preferences.

 

Fiona (#83328), yeah, when you copy and paste, it will always be centered in the project. If you want to add a quote, you can easily place it at the bottom if you want. Did you try different locations?

 

If you have not posted yet, is it because you want to wait until the end? Or are you having any difficulty? Don't hesitate to ask if you have any questions. We are all here to help (24/7, there is someone around!)

[Anita Wyatt]

Carole, you are right about the shadow  and the link. The text in my PSP X9 was so small so when I started with PSP23 last week I was able to increase the text and the link icon on the shadow layer was so much more visible now. I should have double checked my old PSP one more time. It just looked strange to me when I saw it. I will try to get my February page up soon. You mentioned the UWP character map, where can I get one of those. The character map I have on Windows 10 is hard to read the letters are very small. I may be behind a bit with my calendar pages as I just started a course in Criminal Justice at work, but I will do the best I can. I love looking at everyone's beautiful calendar pages.

[Susan Ewart]

Carole, I added the font names to my March/April post.  thanks for the reminder.

[Cristina]

Carole, you have an eagle eye! :D

 

I checked the file again and remembered I didn't use the Overlay in the end.

 

I tried it (halftone 05 overlay), but I decided to go the same route you showed in the video.

 

New Layer > Flood Fill with a lighter shade of the background color + Grass Texture.

 

I thought the result was a bit too dark, so I duplicated the Texture Layer and changed the Blend Mode to SCREEN.

 

-------------------------------------------

 

I loved your tip: Flood Fill Active, hold the Ctrl Key, and it changes to Dropper Tool.

[Ann Seeber]

Carole said: "(#83317) Have you considered straightening the painting image? Based on the mirror in the back seems obviously angled."

 

I'm showing you the original photo I had to work with. What you see in my calendar is the best I could do with the angles, never mind fitting it in the mask!

[Ann Seeber]

I think I'm finished with March & April, unless I add some more text. My March background is a double layer from the Textures tool. I made an interesting discovery, the Sculpture texture has tons of pattern choices and some are my own plaids, etc! I used the pale Elegant texture overlaid with the Cracked Plaster and then multiplied. My April background is a gradient called Calm Skies and Water. I used the gradient Cougar for all the text and applied an inner bevel to the month.

[Harmony Birch]

So many interesting calendars and so many different approaches.

 

I have gone with more blocky fonts and one that has an extrusion option for the titles. My backgrounds are all the same image but some versions are colorised and some have the HSL tool used on them. Here is my Maarch so far. My theme is family

[Chris Schults]

Oei I registered and just downloaded Day 4 the pages and the video's.

 

Do not have enough time these days, so I will later looking at the vid's

 

 

[MoniqueN.]

Dawn, I think I missed your post, but hope you will be able to participate and your health will be better soon. :)

[Ann Seeber]

Here is July and August, finished. I got patriotic with July, since Laurey gave me a photo of the Declaration of Independence which was signed July 4, 1776. I used the USA split font so you can use 2 colors. I placed a mat behind it as the background is busy. I tried to add an Outer Bevel to the Photo/Mask Group, and it came out well, I think. August is Abraham Lincoln's memorial, photo shot at night and from a distance so it was quite grainy. I tried to improve it and think it looks a lot better now. The background is a texture called Letters, which I found appropriate for Lincoln who was known as an effective orator. We had to memorize one of his speeches when I was in high school, "Fourscore and seven years ago ..." ;-)

[AprilDawn]

Hello Cristina, Fiona, Susan and Monique... Thank you so much for your kind well wishes for my health.

 

Still working on my calendars but had not settled on what I wanted to do with them until today .  Every one has done lovely work on their calendars and it is has been good to view them.

 

best wishes to everyone.

 

Dawn.

[cindy harris]

I love you all's work :)

[AprilDawn]

I had a bit of a light bulb moment on what to do with the calendars as usually we have calendars with boxes for writing events . .. so decided to see how they would look as a background calendar for my computer desktop . finished the calendar placed it on a 1920x1080 pixel page so it would leave room around for desktop icons etc.  tested it out and it looked good and my hubby was so keen on the idea he wants to have them also...  image below  is how it will look on computer hope it is not to blurry as of course  had to reduce the size

 

Dawn.

[Gerry Landreth]

More work in progress.

 

Dawn - Using the layout as the desktop background is a great idea. After such a difficult period, I'm glad that you joined this workshop.

 

Carole - "do you have enough people with birthdays in each month?" There are a couple of months where there are no birthdays and a couple of others that have multiples. For the former, I'll use a group shot of the great-grandkids for one and a group photo of the "older" members of the family for the other. The audience for the calendar is my mother, who is dealing with dementia. I did the same for last year's calendar, and the visual helped her more than I would have thought.