Mask Workshop 2023

[Ann Seeber]

7 hours ago, Lesley Maple said:

(Another client pooch)

Lesley, what sort of occupation do you have that entails dogs as clients? Sounds like a dream job! ?

[Mary Solaas]

6 hours ago, Anja Pelzer said:

here is now day 4 

with my Sister and my Daughter in 1988 visiting our zoo in Aachen

paper made with the same brushes I used for the mask

strips made from the paper

I love what you do with the brushes.  I'm going to have to work on that.  You do beautiful work.

[Julie Magerka]

Just got a chance to work on Day 4 project. Photo is a wee foster dog I had for the last two years of her life. She lived, barked, and loved with the pack here. Masking the photo is a good way to use a pic with a cluttered background to soften it.

 

[Sue Thomas]

6 hours ago, Ann Seeber said:

Yes, that is my usual method, too. Thanks

I hadn't considered the reason  that Carole gave, but it does make sense to me.  Sizing down from 3,600 to 600 pixels is  such a huge reduction in size.  I adopt another way to resize.  

[Susan Ewart]

40 minutes ago, Julie Magerka said:

Just got a chance to work on Day 4 project. Photo is a wee foster dog I had for the last two years of her life. She lived, barked, and loved with the pack here. Masking the photo is a good way to use a pic with a cluttered background to soften it.

 

Oh, Julie, this is so sweet.  Giving her the best life at the end of hers, what a gift.

[Susan Ewart]

7 hours ago, Anja Pelzer said:

here is now day 4 

with my Sister and my Daughter in 1988 visiting our zoo in Aachen

paper made with the same brushes I used for the mask

strips made from the paper

I agree with Ann, this is the kind of brush work I will strive to do.  I love that there is layers of color in the different strokes.  It's beautiful Anja.

[Ann Seeber]

51 minutes ago, Sue Thomas said:

I hadn't considered the reason  that Carole gave, but it does make sense to me.  Sizing down from 3,600 to 600 pixels is  such a huge reduction in size.  I adopt another way to resize.  

I'm surprised I haven't encountered "banding" until now. Those specs have been used with almost every full-sized layout of mine for the last 2-3 years. And I use gradients quite frequently. ?

[Hank Sobah]

Day 3 Mask Workshop, with Instant Effects, textures, additional mask layer for shadow, and illumination

[Linda Larsen]

Loving learning this.  So much fun!!

[Tonimarie]

Hello, here is my Day 4.

I stayed up half the night on Paint Shop Pro! This was amazing. I can't wait to become a Diamond member. I'm just waiting for the kids to get out of school so I have all the time in the world to use it! Homeschooling is a lot on top of two babies under two. ?

[Ann Seeber]

I think I need a Q & A on how to adjust the brush variants. They seem to jump with a mind of their own! I don't understand the settings very well. This cutie is one of my favorite bird photos. He looks a lot different when mature, a drab black with orange beak and spinning huge, pulsing murmurtions in the sky rather ominously. The trees are brushes from Sheila Reed that I used with the eraser to punch down to a lower gradient layer that I made from the bird's colors.. The font is "The Hardcover-Personal Use" (yes, really, and I don't know where I got it ?)

Edited February 17, 2023 by Ann Seeber

[sharon thompson]

37 minutes ago, Ann Seeber said:

I think I need a Q & A on how to adjust the brush variants. They seem to jump with a mind of their own! I don't understand the settings very well. This cutie is one of my favorite bird photos. He looks a lot different when mature, a drab black with orange beak and spinning huge, pulsing murmurtions in the sky rather ominously. The trees are brushes from Sheila Reed that I used with the eraser to punch down to a lower gradient layer that I made from the bird's colors.. The font is "The Hardcover-Personal Use" (yes, really, and I don't know where I got it ?)

Hi Ann. I also have trouble with brush variants which is why I try to avoid them whenever I can. As for that font, it is from Creative Fabrica so you probably got it sometime as one of their daily freebies. I gave myself a premium subscription to that site for my last birthday when they had a subscription sale. Sharon

[sharon thompson]

I now have a profound respect for people who make those ornate masks as it certainly isn't easy. I couldn't quite get what I was going for in this lesson but attempt 5 was better than its predecessors. The bottom text is not fully centered as I prefer to offset text a bit if I am using elements in only one corner. I probably should have stayed with a watercolor brush for the dog and just kept the snowflake brushes for the corner as the dog was on a dark background. Anyway, I compensated a bit by adding a white drop shadow to the masked image. The paper is from Rawpixel, and the font is Cotton Candies. The "Magical Snowflakes" brush set is by Papercaptain on Deviant Art and is still available for a free download of anyone wants them.  

 

[Susan Ewart]

Day 3 Diamond Extra.  I call this new baby of 2022 Spider Squirrely, the second.  Because after some trial-be-panic learning it became adept at scampering along the rock/glass chip siding of the garage. Remember that stuff from the 60-70's, hurt like crazy if you scraped yourself on it?  Turns out, it's great for Squirrels and birds to cling to.  I came up from the basement and looked out the window to see the neighbours cat chasing it, and up the wall it went.  You could see it was rocky.  I was banging on the window and hubby was out the door to yell at the cat.  It's only the second squirrel we've seen do that.  If I had been able to take a front shot it would have been Super Squirrel as he is in the super hero pose.  As it might turn out, he could be a she.  The one in our feeder right now looks pudgy, so might have some babies (in our closed-in shed off the garage - there's been several families in there over the years). 

I think I tried every wrong way to isolate the brackets of the mask and finally remembered about Preset Vector shapes (yay for all the master classes, Q&A's and tutorials - I remember about the preset shapes!).  Once I did that I could add a bevel to that shape that I intended to do right from seeing the mask.  This layout is similar to other Day layout, they are a set, since it's the same squirrel on the same day.  I did the same type of thing for the Kaleidoscope background.  Black layer below it, then lower the kaleidoscope layers opacity.  this was also set to a small size and I think I did 30% angle.

Edited February 17, 2023 by Susan Ewart

[Susan Ewart]

8 minutes ago, sharon thompson said:

I now have a profound respect for people who make those ornate masks as it certainly isn't easy. I couldn't quite get what I was going for in this lesson but attempt 5 was better than its predecessors. The bottom text is not fully centered as I prefer to offset text a bit if I am using elements in only one corner. I probably should have stayed with a watercolor brush for the dog and just kept the snowflake brushes for the corner as the dog was on a dark background. Anyway, I compensated a bit by adding a white drop shadow to the masked image. The paper is from Rawpixel, and the font is Cotton Candies. The "Magical Snowflakes" brush set is by Papercaptain on Deviant Art and is still available for a free download of anyone wants them.  

 

AWESOME Sharon, just awesome!

 

[Ann Seeber]

44 minutes ago, sharon thompson said:

As for that font, it is from Creative Fabrica so you probably got it sometime as one of their daily freebies

Hi Sharon, I found the site for the font. It's 1001 Fonts.

[MoniqueN.]

Finally, my day one? I originally wanted to use my granddaughter as subject, but I have to blur everything I make during this workshop, not so nice to look at, so I changed to Outlander , didn't want to use flowers or photo's from our trips in the Netherlands. Well anyway my first project:

 

[Donna Sillia]

Mask 4 The background color was a color I picked from his face and overlayed with a glitch overlay from deeezy.com. The font is Hornswaggled with a layer styles bevel, rastered then drop shadowed and bevel again. The skis are from DS Janet Kemp. I used the Cass lifted up script and filled them with red and a brush pattern. The photos are my own of my grandson, Thomas.

Carole, any comments on my use or lack of use for the drop shadows would be much appreciated.

[Gerry Landreth]

The Knockout Rose bush always showed out every season with spectacular blooms. At the end of this season, it died. A new little bush has taken its place. Soon we will see if it can fill the roots of its predecessor. 

The decorative font is Beauty Reason from Creative Fabrica. The top and background papers are from Annie Digital. The middle is a simple flood fill using a color from the background paper. The corner punches and heart brushes are from Cassel.

Edited February 17, 2023 by Gerry Landreth

[Corrie Kinkel]

And here is day 5.  When making the selection for the mask I used an octagon because of the shape of the mushroom in the photo. This photo was taken in the fall hence the leaves in the mask. The background is made of 2 papers that had the same colors as in the photo with the blend mode set to color and a slightly reduced opacity. After that an overlay with leaves, 2 frames with one over and under the other, thank you Sue T for that idea! The font is Chalk and Friend 4.

[Leslie Jostes]

I'm already off to a rough start...where do I find a .psd template? I downloaded the Escale Amoureuse - Parts 1 and 2... and the Greeting Card template.  Help!   .... Obviously I need more help than I realized - I thought that I had posted this comment back on Monday or Tuesday!  

[Corrie Kinkel]

Sorry posted the wrong one that wasn't quit finished, the frames were not correctly crossing each other.

[Donna Sillia]

Another ski picture. I really don't care for the mask snowflakes but I did the best that I could. The background is a gradient from group that I downloaded from Resource Boy(free on his website) called 80's gradients. The font is Jelly Bean that I believe that I downloaded from Creative Fabrica. The snow is from a brush that I downloaded many years age for Photoshop and just imported into PSP. The snowflakes are from Hawksmont. All the brushes were free.

[Donna Sillia]

Carole, regarding my Eva project, I used a mask, but added a red raster under her picture. It was really an experiment because I didn't like the black mask. I was not happy with the antique paper that I made so I will keep trying to perfect it.

[Cassel]

1 hour ago, Leslie Jostes said:

I'm already off to a rough start...where do I find a .psd template? I downloaded the Escale Amoureuse - Parts 1 and 2... and the Greeting Card template.  Help!   .... Obviously I need more help than I realized - I thought that I had posted this comment back on Monday or Tuesday!  

Two paragraphs below where you found the links to the Escale Amoureuse, you will find a mention of Alinamaria's template and a link to her blog. There, scroll down a bit until you find the word TELECHARGEMENT under the template. That will bring you to Mediafire, a hosting site. You will see the big blue button saying DOWNLOAD (37.29MB) on the right. That is where you click to download it. I have to admit that Mediafire, like many other hosting sites can be a nightmare to navigate!  Let me know if you find it.