Trees in an Artificial Sunset

Scanned Japanese washi paper and a B&W treatment of trees shot in Seattle make for a happy marriage. 

Having Fun with Photoshop Neural Filters

Photoshop has a new feature where you can run an image through a filter to make it look like another style of art.  Top:  Sam in Greece with a neural filter from an old "at the beach" watercolor.  Bottom three: I took a photo of two roses in a blue vase, and ran that through a filter of an original fabric design, done in illustrator, of a Paenibacillus bacteria, and ended up with the 2nd to top image.  Endless possibilities!  So many ways to avoid housework!

Sam at Limantour with Found Lego Toy

 Playing with layers put the waves in the sand dunes at the beach.  

Playing with Photoshop's New Sky Replacement Tool

 

Always in the mood to learn something new, while not wanting the end result to to be like anyone else's, I decided to experiment.  Photoshop's new Sky Replacement tool has a number of nice sky presets.  But when I use them, I'm using elements I didn't create, and that anyone else can use, which is never my first choice.  So, I figured out how to insert another image into one of the Sky Replacement layers to create something that is all original. 

Top to Bottom:

1.  The original, edited photo, of a king tide shot in Bolinas, California in Jan 2018.

2.  That same shot with one of the Photoshop sky replacements.  

3.  A photo of mold growing on one of my lemons.

4.  The original photo with a close up of lemon mold replacing the Photoshop sky.  Looks like the fire sky we experienced for too long this past summer!

Playing Around With Old Photos, Patterns and Neural Filters in Photoshop on a Gray Day

 Top to Bottom

Photo shot in Seattle, September 2011 with Amber, Cole and Wilson - as shot

Same photo with B&W filter and some Photoshop Beta Neural face smoothing

Same photo with a different Neural filter and a pattern overlay of a repeating self portrait painted by my father, the late, great E.A. Autrey

Same photo toned down a bit by re-layering the original photo over the 3rd photo.

Since I am no longer travelling up to Seattle on a regular basis, this makes up for it a little.

New Fabric Designs and a Contest Entry

I'm back doing more fabric designs, which are available in my Spoonflower shop here:  https://www.spoonflower.com/profiles/lucy_autrey_wilson. 

 Some of the new designs are not yet available but will be soon.  They can be seen by clicking on the "designs not for sale" button.  I have to buy test samples before I can sell.   Some of what's new is described below

 Top to Bottom

1.  New coronavirus repeating fabric design.  The viruses were created with Illustrator and Photoshop, then layered on top of a photo of a chain link fence in front of a garden which was modified to more closely appear like an electron microscope scanned viral specimen.

2.  I painted a Dodo with pen & ink and watercolor, put it on a watercolor rainbow painting and added scanned cheesecloth. 

3.  An old fabric design of a bacteria.  Face masks made with bacteria and/or virus image fabrics seems like something that makes perfect sense.

4.  Last, but not least, I created a Poster Tea Towel image (to be printed on linen) as my entry into a Spoonflower contest.  I painted the image (actually a larger version of it) while on one of my many Ibiza vacations.   Voting starts Oct. 22.  You can vote here:  https://www.spoonflower.com/design-challenge

 

Marilyn Monroe, Floral Fantasy, and Photoshop CC Collide

I've been compulsively editing my best floral photographs, out of the thousands I've taken since I went digital.  This has given me the opportunity to not only go down memory lane, but to experiment with as many digital techniques as I can come up with to try to bring out the essence of each photo. Lately, I discovered a pattern feature in Photoshop CC I was unaware of.  Having done some fabric design previously, it was with excitement I realized I could create offset patterns in Photoshop using my illustrator art.  This has opened a whole new area in which to play.  In these four pictures I started with a beautiful field of flowers shot in Salem, Oregon in 2016 (bottom).  Moving up from there, I've combined the original photo with three alternate patterns based on my Marilyn Monroe vector drawing.

So Many Photo Options. Which Would You Choose?

Photography used to be a lot simpler.  You had to worry about what ASA film to buy, whether B&W or color, slide or print, and a few other things when shooting the picture.  Usually a lab took it from there.  Now there are an explosion of options from what you select on your DSL camera, when taking the picture, to a thousand things you can do in post production.  Above is one picture as shot (top), slightly manipulated in Lightroom (middle photo) and more manipulated in Photoshop (bottom).   But which one is best?

Playing Around with Textures

Twins Cole and Wilson Taylor, shot with my Canon Powershot G14 in Seattle, in July of this year, below. The end result, above, was modified using various photo texture layers in both Photoshop CS5 and alien skin exposure 7 software.  An enjoyable way to spend hours I was supposed to be spending doing something else!

Evolution of a WW II Multi Media Painting

Bottom layer, original watercolor of flower cast shadows, painted at Jean's house, in a family painting session with nearly 96 year old mother and 3 sisters, on Mother's Day 5/10/2015
Next layer, added scratches as a texture overlay using Alien Skin exposure 7
Next layer, added a pattern layer in Photoshop of Korean army boots, drawn in one of the art classes I took with Chester Arnold at College of Marin
Top layer, added photo of E.A. Autrey in front of his army barracks in Oklahoma in 1942, after he was drafted during WW II