Julian Adams

Tried to make one as clean and simple as possible.

On 11/30/2023 at 3:45 AM, Daniel Hess said:

 

The font for the "month" is Handycheera.  The one I used for days of week is "a dripping marker".  Not sure exactly where I got either of them...I THINK I got Handycheera from Creative Fabrica.

 hope you don't mind stealing that font for October too!

Occtober

3 hours ago, Michele said:

Does the dafont version have the glyphs? Oftentimes the free ones don't.

Yes, it does.

I figured out how to make a template for the boxes with rounded edges from watching Carole's Discovery Center Tutorial.  After I deleted the square boxes and colored the rounded ones, I deleted the black outline of the boxes.  I wanted no black on the upper left corner.

You cant see it at this resolution but I also added an inner Bevel to the dates numerals!

3 hours ago, Daniel Hess said:

My last one...finally finished October.  

Wow!  Splendid!  

May I ask what font that is?

Thank You Donna for getting me started with bevels!

I noticed yours have rounded edges.  How did you do that?

I had a heck of a time learning how to select the boxes to add the bevel.  I eventually figured out the boxes needed to be filled with a color in order to put a bevel on them.  I tried filling the boxes but it covered up the numbers.  I eventually made two copies of the boxes with dates.  I filled one copy with color and put the outline with dates on top so I could see both layers.  Is there an easier way?

28 minutes ago, Donna Sillia said:

Julian, here are pictures of the settings that I used for the bevel and drop shadow. I couldn't figure out how to do a screen shot with the bevel screen up so I had to take camera pictures. They are sort of rough looking.

Thanks!  I'll give that a try!

FWIW there is usually a key on a windows keyboard called print screen.  I took a photo of where mine is located.

You press the key and the screen gets copied to the clipboard as an image.  Then go to PSP and select Paste as a New Image and you have a copy in PSP.  You probably will want to crop it, resize it, and save it as a jpg.  It's really easy!

7 minutes ago, Donna Sillia said:

Thank you, Julian. I like your resized page better than mine with the border. I am going to try your dimensions. Thank your for your thorough explanation.

How did you get that lovely 3D effect on the dates Donna?  I was aiming for something similar but yours looks much better.

I also wanted to print these borderless but I hadn't thought to fill in borders with a pattern.  Carole laid these out to print 8"x10.5" at 300 dpi and I wanted to print 8.5"x11".  I wanted to keep it at 300 dpi just because that's the standard resolution for printing. That meant increasing the image size instead of reducing it.  I decided the image could stand a little increase because the elements were so high quality and I changed the image size from 2400x3150 to 2550x3300.  Even at that size when I dragged it onto the page layout I still had to futz around trying to get the borders perfect.  That was  very time consuming!  I decided to add a few extra pixels to both dimensions.  That meant when I dragged the image onto the page layout I got the message my image was too big and I could sit back and let PSP resize those few pixels to make it fit perfectly with no time consuming futzing.

If anyone is interested the final image size I came up with is 2556x3307.  That prints 8.520"x11.023" at 300 dpi which gave me a tiny bit of wiggle room around the edges so it fit perfectly with no borders after PSP resized it in the page layout.  I'm sorry this was so long winded.  You can tell I work as an engineer!  

I really want to thank Carole and everyone else for this workshop.  I learned a huge amount having never worked with layers, or masks, or gradients and a whole bunch of other new things before!  Each new calendar month I learn something new.

Here's my May Calendar resized to print on 8.5"x11" paper.  

12 minutes ago, Ann Seeber said:

I understand the manufacturers add a lubricant that is patented so it can't be used by the generic companies. That prevents the clogging.

I always did use Epson ink. This was when inkjets first came out.  Before that all you had was dot matrix.

11 minutes ago, Ann Seeber said:

My own choice would be the first version. Nice job, Julian.

Thank you for the kind feedback Ann!  There are so many advanced users here.  I've used PSP for a long time on single layer photography but I am very new to layers, masks, transparency and all the other techniques we are using here so I am like a kid in a candy shop.

I have a hard time stopping tweaking these calendars.  I have a new version of April.  I'm curious which one people like better. 

19 hours ago, Ann Seeber said:

My Epson is just a personal size. I think the largest would be 8.5x14. I use the print option in PSP which seems to work well. I always struggle with the print being too dark, which I can adjust, so I'm pleased with the quality. It's binding my work into a calendar this time that has me looking to outsource. I've never had a clog.

Maybe the reason I had problems with clogging is that I was buying them when they first came out and I was also buying the cheapest ones at the time.  Glad to hear they are reliable now.  I always thought they did marvellous color prints.

3 hours ago, Ann Seeber said:

Have found Epsom printers to be very reliable if I stick to Epsom ink. My tech told me the generic inks are missing an ingredient to keep everything smooth. I always print my monthly Wild Cat calendars just for my own refrigerator. I do want better quality for this Christmas gift. 

 

 

What size do you print?  I used to have a computer generated fractal art web page and had a friend with a large format Epson print a few 16X12's for me which came out beautifully. 

Epson for many years was the gold standard.  The one thing I didn't like about them is I found the heads got clogged and once they couldn't be cleaned anymore you had to throw the whole printer out.  You are right using Epson ink helps, but I still went through several Epson printers because the heads got clogged and I couldn't use them any more. 

That was in the very earliest days of inkjet printers so maybe Epson is better now, but I switched to Canon and still use them.  What I like about Canon is the print head is built into the ink cartridge and every time you change ink you get a new print head.  The most harm that happens when you get a nasty print head clog is you have to buy a new ink cartridge.

March!

I think this is the final version.  Thanks for the ideas everyone.

On 11/20/2023 at 8:49 AM, Corrie Kinkel said:

Yes I have used blendmodes to all the images under the date boxes and for some background gradients too. I have used different ones because different colors needs  different blendmodes to get the effect I want. I always check in the layers palette which one I'll choose and very often I reduce the opacity too. I have PSP 2023 and in this version you can scroll along the blendmodes and see on your image what it would look like. For me one of the great assets of this version.

I gave it a try.  I put the background image underneath the date boxes and experimented with different blend modes and opacity.  I'm very curious that with some blend modes the image completely disappeared!  Why's that?

I went here for vacation this year.

4 hours ago, Anja Pelzer said:

my next 2 pages are finished

 

Absolutely beautiful textures!  That and the effects on the numbers make this one really stand out.

May I ask how you added effects to the numbers?  Did you modify Carole's or used your own?

On 11/18/2023 at 2:58 PM, Corrie Kinkel said:

Here are my finished pages for November and December. I intended to use the same technique of "find all edges" on a duplicate of the photo, but I found that it works great on some photos and their pages but not on all! I want to be consistent so I skipped that  idea and did something else instead. I search through my stock for images relating to the particular month or season and put that image under the boxes. Of course I have to use a blendmode to give the desired result and the blendmodes are different for each page depending on the colors of the image and the gradient on the page. For December I maybe overdid it with all the decorations but it is the month you can go over the top! Now again I have to alter my other pages as well, luckily I hadn't done them all yet! After that I have to alter some of the pages from German to Dutch and not all the extra holidays are the same. But that will be peanuts. Only the German calendar has to go in the international mail, the rest stays here and I bring those with me when we meet the intended recipient.

I love the images on the mask!  Is that what you were talking about when yo mentioned blend mode.  Which mode did you choose?

I see the menu but have no idea what it does! Which image(s) were they used on that people are commenting on? 

15 hours ago, Ann Seeber said:

It's the one feature of PSP2023 that I really appreciate. I can just scroll through the filters and see the effects quickly. Similar to scrolling through the fonts. 

May I ask what is a filter and where do I find them?  T.I.A.

This is sort of a gag for my best friend Don.  It rarely snows where I live but one year we got a good snowfall and while I was wandering in the park I saw this - a dumpster with the words "Don is Love" spray painted on it.  What an odd thing to spray paint onto a dumpster!