Yesterday when my Mum was visiting me she was asking about how textures work on photos, after seeing my texture Tuesday posts of her garden and of Kathmandu. So I chose a couple of photos and textures and showed her the blending mode menu on Photoshop Elements so that she could play.
Here is what she created from a photo of tulips in my garden
One of the things that I found really interesting was they way that Mum talked about the image and what she wanted to do with it. She thinks like a painter – she has taken classes in oils and watercolour and loves to paint and look at paintings. All of her comments about how she wanted to build up the image were related to how she would approach a painting.
After adding two textures she asked me how she could add some more colour back to the tulips. First I showed her how to remove the top texture from the tulips. Then she wanted to add more colour so I showed her how to paint colour onto the image and select a colour from the original photo. Mum had a copy of the original photo on the screen while doing the painting on of the pink.
I found her painting eye and approach really interesting. I don’t have any painting background so this is not how I think about images. Mum was using the same tools within PSE that I use but in a different way and with different results. A real reminder of the vast range of creativity that is possible in the digi world.
Which led me to think about how digi tools are used on blogs that I visit. And then I wondered about my lovely readers – my lovely band of regular commenters and my valued pool of silent readers. So I set up a survey with one question about how you use digi (if at all) – please take the survey, it is anonymous and won’t take long.
And if you have the energy and time for comments today I’d love to know if you are aware of the way that you think about creating images and if it has been impacted by painting or other classes.
