Sunday, May 16, 2010

A Few Digital Photo Experiments


It was a very busy weekend.  We drove to New Jersey and back to collect our son for the summer.  It is so nice to have him home again.  We also had a graduation party today and saw lots of family members.  I was too tired to work in my studio but I did spend some time with my laptop doing more digital experiments.  I have been trying out various digital effects and have all sorts of ideas about how I can combine some of these with my Cricut cuts and Design Studio files.


We had fabulous weather and beautiful blue skies both in Massachusetts and New Jersey this weekend - sunny, a bit on the cool side and not a bit humid.   I took some photos of the sky with the idea that I could create digital page backgrounds with the photos.  I really like to use a photo as the background for a page.


This is a sample from last year when I was doing digital challenges for another site.  Here is a LINK to the original post.  In this case the photo is part of the story.  I am also interested in creating more abstract backgrounds from photos.


I used my Creative Memories StoryBook Creator Plus 3.0 software and applied a filter to "posterize" the image of the sky.  Isn't this interesting?  I think it looks like water splashing now and I could use this for summer photos at the pool or beach.


I also tried applying a texture to the image using one of the surfaces built into the StoryBook program.


I cropped the image to the top left corner and here is my new background.  It is pretty hard to tell that this started as a photograph of the sky!


Here is another photograph of an orchid.  I have already done some photo editing to adjust the colors and cropped the image to a square.


After I applied the posterize filter the image looks like this.  I think this would be lovely centered on a Cricut cut frame with a few words added for a sentiment.


Next, I applied the "sphereize" filter and this was the result.

 

I cropped the image to leave just the newly created sphere.


Finally, I added some words along a text path and matched the color to a shade of pink in the photo.  I did have "fun with photos" and I now understand a few more things that I am able to accomplish using this software.

My next step will be to combine my image with a Cricut design for a totally unique and personal card.  I hope to work on this tomorrow.  I do have several big projects going on - one in particular that I think many of you will be excited to know about (but I can't say what it is just yet...).

10 comments:

  1. Diane, Your Digitized photo projects are awesome. I hope one of you big projects is making a DVD. Put me on a list to preorder it. Marilyn Mae

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  2. Like your new look. I like orchids. My dad raised orchids when he was alive. smgoodie

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  3. These examples are wonderful. I think about doing digital items but am so intimidated by the program. I guess I'm just going to have to sit down and learn it. Thanks for the incentive.

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  4. Diane,
    If I remember correctly you are a cm consultant. I have memory manager 2.0 and see they now have an updated version of that software. I was online looking but was unable to find the differences in the software. Do you by chance know?
    Thanks,
    Molly
    buddy23018 at hotmail dot com

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  5. Hi Molly,

    Yes I am a CM consultant - the link to my CM site is under the "Shop" tab at the top of the page.

    In the Help Zone section of the site there is info about the improvements to Memory Manager in the upgrade to 3.0 - I will email you the link (it isn't working in the comment form).

    One of my favorite things is that you can send pictures to StoryBook Creator from Memory Manager directly (no need to put them in a desktop folder).

    You can clone from one image to another, have multiple fonts and colors in a journaling box, there is notification of duplicate images when importing and the basic layout is like the StoryBook program with Ribbon Technology.

    I find it very easy to use and also quite sophisticated in the editing you can do.

    I hope that helps.

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  6. Wow these are gorgeous photos!!!! Barb

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  7. What an inspiration, to create background papers from photos! I love the graduation page you did. I definitely have to try this as I live right next to Descanso Gardens in Calif. Looks like weather this weekend would be great. TFS

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  8. I love viewing your many talents. You truly are an inspiration to try new things. Digital is something I would dearly love to learn. I need someone to sit by side and walk me through it, so far I haven't found anyone. lol

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