Papercut House

Here's the finished piece. The finished size is A3.

I think my favourite bit is the back yard with the girl on the swing. And my favourite room is the bedroom with the dressing table and wash-stand.

Black & Spiro Today

We installed a new window display at Black & Spiro today. There's lots of pretty colour in the lovely fabric drop we have hung and a beautiful Antique piece of furniture sits in front with a few bits on top including my favourite Staffordshire Dogs. Also a few people have been asking about the fabric on our lovely Antique chairs. It is a Mexican embroidered Otomi. We have this textile in quite a few colourways. It is divine.

Course Notes 4 - Selective enhancement

Heather moorland above Haworth (view large)

I am intrigued by the difference you can make to an image by some careful selective enhancement, and I keep experimenting with this. The art seems to be in not going OTT - you need a good eye as well as an understanding of what Photoshop can do. In this image I selected in turn the sky, the foreground and the middle ground and tweaked levels, saturation and colour balance on different layers, until I liked what I saw. I've also been trying different blending modes and in this case I used 'Colour Dodge' at about 50% opacity, just on the heather in the foreground, which added quite a bit of 'zing' to it I think.

Judge for yourself - the original image is here, it suffered from trying to balance the bright sky and much darker moorland, so that it all looks a bit dull. Any comments? I'm learning.