Tag Archives: photomanipulation

Mallard

Major Happenings in Pompyland – please read on….

Leave a reply

Don’t worry, you’re not in the wrong place, it’s just that, as I am in a particularly good mood today, I have decided to temporarily adopt the company nomenclature bestowed upon us by our friend and radio station owner Mr Kenny King. Why the good mood you might think to yourself, “Is Mintlaw basking in sunshine with Sid giving out free beer at the shop?” I hear you asking. I think that you are aware that the chances of that happening are somewhere between the chances of me winning the lottery (see earlier posting) and none at all. So why the good mood?  Continue reading →

Lost Valley

A New Addition to our Art Gallery

Leave a reply
Pet Mermaid

Pet Mermaid

I have spent some time now trying to get photomanipulation artwork for our blog from one of my very talented friends on deviantArt and now, after a long wait, I am pleased to be able to offer you a few pieces of work from one of them. Late last night I created a gallery of 15 images made by my Turkish friend Beyza Yildirim, who works in a very dark surrealist style. Please click on the image (right) to be taken to her gallery.

All the artists featured here would very much welcome constructive comments from you and, as you can log in using your Facebook and Twitter accounts, you should have no problem leaving them your thoughts.

Tutorial – Creating your own Photo Clip Art – Part 4 (Finishing off)

Leave a reply

This article is part 4 in a tutorial. It is recommended that you read the first three parts first.

So far we have made a roughly cut-out version of our daffodil flower floating on a transparent background. If you zoom in to the edges of the petals, what I mean by rough-cut becomes all too apparent – this mosaic like effect, with occasional bits of background and a few bits of petal missing can now be ‘healed’ by working on the transparency mask that we set up in the last part of this tutorial. Continue reading →

Tutorial – Creating your own Photo Clip Art – Part 3 (Using the Alpha Channel)

Leave a reply

This article is part three in a tutorial. It is recommended that you read parts 1 & 2 first.

In part 2 of this tutorial, I explained how to use the scissors tool to produce a rough selection around the daffodil flower. This selection area is now going to be used to produce a mask that we add can add to the alpha channel of the image. By working on the mask, we can obtain a smooth transition from opaque (the flower) to transparent (the background), with no jagged edges. Continue reading →

Tutorial – Creating your own Photo Clip Art – Part 2 (Starting out)

Leave a reply

This article is part two in a tutorial. It is recommended that you read Part 1 first.

Selecting your Photograph

In order to produce a good quality piece of clip art, you must always start with a good photograph. The old adage about not being able to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear holds very true in all matters graphic. You would be amazed at the amount of customers that give me ‘Black cat in coal cellar’ and want me to turn it into something akin to a David Bailey original! This is not possible. Continue reading →

Tutorial – Creating your own Photo Clip Art – Part 1 (Introduction)

2 Replies

As promised over the last few weeks, I have put together this small tutorial, designed to help our customers to produce quality photo clip art using their own photographs and Free Open Source Software (known as FOSS). My aim is to get as many people as possible contributing to this blog and as a consequence, helping us to produce a helpful resource library of images and clip art that can be used by our customers, artists, children, and anyone at all who enjoys producing digital images for pleasure. In order to make it as palatable as possible, I have split it into ‘bite-sized’ chunks, as I intend to go in depth on most of the topics covered. This first part is designed to serve as a ‘Prologue’ in the hope that it will gather a bit of interest amongst our readers. Continue reading →

Steve Allen

March 20, 2012

Avatar of Steve Allen

Believe it or not, this blog is not a random collection of posts about whatever takes my fancy, interspersed with Billy’s offers and customer feedback, but is actually planned a few weeks in advance. (Hard to believe, I know, but true none the less)!  :-)

By way of proof, if proof were needed, here is a list of what is coming up over the next few weeks:- Continue reading →