sharon thompson

Day 7 - There is just something fun about polka dots..... No problems with this one. I used a soft light blend mode twice on the dots for the paper. The bow is from Pngitem.com & the font is Script MT. As for that day 3 assignment that gave me so much trouble, it was, as suggested, a mistake on my part. I did click on greyscale rather than negative image and that was my undoing. I did redo the image but, to be honest, the blood splattered paper that I wanted to use did not compliment the rest of the elements. The error ridden image one that I posted earlier is, in fact, the better result. So much for happy accidents or, in my mistake, stupid blunders. Thank you to Casell for all the great mask lessons. Now if you have any beginners brush lessons.......... Many thanks. Sharon

Are you actually installing all your fonts? I loved the older versions of PSP where you could open a font in your workspace & it would show up for your use in your PSP font menu. When you were finished with it, you could close your project, including that open font. That way fonts did not have to be permanently installed. When newer PSP versions no longer had that neat trick, I snagged a freeware thing called FontLoader. You use it as a little stand alone program and browse to your fonts folders and add the fonts that you want to use to it then tell it to load them. It loads them into the font part of windows so they show up in any program that is set to use windows fonts. So, if I put a font into FontLoader, it will show up in PSP, Photoshop, Word, Wordperfect, Open Office etc. When you finish your project and shut down the program you were using, you then unload the font from FontLoader. That way, you can have thousands of fonts stored in a file somewhere, and only temporarily load the ones you need. It keeps your font lists inside programs short and manageable. And, since you can organize your fonts anyway you want in your computer files, it is easier to find a suitable holiday font, handwriting font, grunge font, fat font, etc. I also use FontRunner to show me samples of what all the fonts in a specific folder will look like (using "the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog" sentence as the sample). Both of these freeware programs are small and very simple to use so you can manage thousands of fonts easily. You probably don't need an intervention as much as these two little portable tools.

I convert abr files to a series of pngs using the abrMate freeware. Then I manipulate the pngs with all the PSP tools like any other png. For some things, brushes make more sense and are easier to use but, a lot of the times, pngs are easier to use since you don't have to deal with all those brush settings. Plus, if you have a lot of brushes, you can easily find a specific png in your files rather than scrolling through all the imported brushes. Just a personal preference. I am sure that there are many who adore brushes & can use them with ease.

Day 5 - I loved that linoleum effect though I had to make it a bit more subtle as I was using the same color as the photo background and mask. Added a small frame to make things pop out a bit. I don't remember where I got the butterfly photo, probably from a naturalist site, but the kaleidoscope of butterflies (yes, that is what a group of butterflies in flight is called) is from Pngitem.com and the font is MingLiu from Fontsgeek.

Day 5 - Am caught up now. Unfortunately, paint brushes are not my favorite tool. All their specific settings can be frustrating at times. Maybe that is why I make pngs of all my brushes & use them that way. Anyway, I had to do this assignment three times in order to get snowflake brushes as part of the mask. The photos are from Pixabay and HClipheart,, the background paper is from Freepik, the snowflake brushes are from Deviant Art, and the font is MingLiu from FontsAddict.

Day 4 - Am a bit behind but hope to finish 2 assignments today to catch up. I used a watercolor brush from Sweetpoison over at Deviant Art (they have such intriguing names there). It took a couple of tries to get it right and I did cheat by placing the photo to one edge. Then I got the bright idea of using another photo as a background paper. The background that was being masked out was a bit dark so it doesn't really blend that well with the background photo but at least I got the concept right, I think.

Thanks for the help Julian. My optimizer box is set up a bit differently but it does the same thing. When I took my first PSP course, the first lesson was on how to set up the workspace, arrange all the icons, and what settings to establish as the usual ones to use. I never changed the compression rate after that and forgot all about it. Just goes to show that I really should have bought the PSP for Dummies book after all. Again, many thanks. Sharon

I said that I didn't care for the Kaleidoscope effect but that doesn't mean that I didn't try it out. Interesting results but too busy for my papers. The 600X600 pixel jpgs were large for some reason & would not load so I resized the to 400X400.

I tried that and I still was stuck. Even if I add a colored image above it, the colored image turns to greyscale. I saved then exited the image and then reopened it and got the same thing. There is decidedly a gremlin somewhere . I decided to make it into a jpg & work from there.... more restrictive than I would have liked but you work with what you have. I shall try again from scratch later tonight or tomorrow morning. Sometimes the little grey cells need food and sleep to function better.

Day 3 - Still can't figure out how I locked that color palette for my project but decided to work around it. If anyone can help sort that for me, I will redo the project but with a colored background paper as originally planned. I flattened the image & exported to a jpg and then reopened it, treating it like any other jpeg & then finished the lettering & border. That restricted my background to b&w instead of the red bloody splattered grunge paper that I wanted but, it seems to work. I did have to change the quote though as my original choice went better with the bloody paper. The film style mask is a snag from Pinterest, the monster collage is from a horror movie archive, the paper texture is from Freepick, and the font is Anger Styles from Dafont. I am not a fan of the kaleidoscope effect but that is just a personal preference. I am too busy making more plaid patterns from yesterday's lesson.

Day 3 - Yesterday good..... today not so good. I am alright making & using the mask but I did something stupid & I am not sure what nor how to fix it. I merged my mask group so I could add various papers and move the masked image around. I should tell you that the mask group is all black & white (yes, I went retro). When I went to add a colored textured paper, that paper became black & white and the color palette is also only in black & white. If I work on a completely separate image, i have the usual color palette. However, when I go back to my project, I am locked into a black & white color palette. Screen shot is attached. Help please. Thank you.

Orange LET font is available free from Dafont, Fontsgeek, & wFonts