Cougar

This is one of the photos from our recent trip to Arizona. I took it through a window at the Desert Museum in Tucson. After "cleaning" and cropping, I added a texture by Jerry Jones of Shadowhouse Creations. Actually, I added it twice - the first time at soft light, the second time at multiply with reduced opacity. Then I did some dodging and burning to get his/her face to stand out. Cougars are beautiful animals, but I wouldn't want to meet up with one when there was no glass between us!

Cathedral Rock - Sedona, AZ

When we visited Sedona, Arizona, last month, one of the things on our "to do" list was to get a photo of Cathedral Rock with Oak Creek in the foreground. We stopped at a visitor center on the way into Sedona and asked for directions and got a map. Our first day there was sunny with lovely blue skies, so we followed the directions, but found ourselves on the wrong side of the creek. All was not lost though, we hiked on the Baldwin Trail and got lots of photos, although not the one we wanted. The following day we found the correct spot, but unfortunately it was one of the few days in Arizona that was overcast. We got our photo, and I went to work on it with Photoshop Elements. Isn't it amazing what computers can do!!!!

Before
After

New Kit - Winter

This was done for the January design challenge at Hummie's World. Please, please - leave a comment if you download. They are much appreciated.

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Arizona - Title page

This is the cover page for our Arizona trip album. It's going to take a while to get the pages done. We have about 700 digital photos and I'm waiting for 12 rolls of FILM to be developed. The hard part is going to be deciding which photos to print.

Snowflake Freebie

Here is another snowflake freebie - the same snowflake in five different styles and a grey scale one to use as a clipping mask or template. Hope you like it. If you download, please leave a comment. You can download it       (Sorry, link expired)

Textures

A few months ago I took a free course in framing and special effects from Jessica Sprague. One of the best things I learned was about the use of textures. Jessica shared some links for freebie textures on Flickr, but I have since found out about a wonderful blog from Rita at Coffeeshop. It is called Shadowhouse Creations and features his wonderful artwork, plus some free textures and brushes. It is well worth a visit. I downloaded some of the textures and started playing.

This is the photo I used - straight out of the camera, no adjustments.

This was with tone textures from Shadowhouse Creations - #3, soft light, opacity 50%

Then I added tone texture #4, soft light, opacity 100%

On this one I used the soft translucent tone #9, Shadowhouse Creations, color burn, opacity 75%

On this one, I used tone texture #10, again from Shadowhouse Creations, overlay, 100% then added his painterly effect texture, soft light, 75% opacity.

I love what these textures can do and how they enhance photos.

Freebie Mini Kit

I did these papers back in May for a photo of orchids taken at Longwood Gardens. They were just sitting on my hard drive, so I thought I'd share them. Hope you like them. If you do download, please leave a comment. They are much appreciated. You can get the mini-kit         (Sorry, link expired)