I took a bunch of photos out of the window on the drive back today. The fields looked so pretty. Most of the photos are not “stand out” in and of themselves, but quite a few will make great back drops. I created a thank-you card for a friend which I’ll share tomorrow. And, I played around in Photoshop and created this for Daddy. She is proud to have lost her third tooth on Thursday night.

I hope this helps some of you that were wanting to know how I created the image:

1. The bottom layer of this Photoshop file is the picture shot from my car window. I increased the contrast and saturation on the picture first. Then I applied an “artistic filter.” The filter you select will depend on your photo. But I used “Palette Knife” here and like the very painterly effect on the wildflowers. The great thing is that even if your car window photos are blurry, once you apply one of these effects you’d never know!
2. Next I stamped a large Rhonna Farrer swirl in an off white at about 50% opacity on a new layer above the photo. Use the eyedropper tool to select a colors from your photo.
3. To digitally distress the edges I used two brushes from “Sketch Fettish” on the Two Peas site. The pinkish brown color was applied all around the edge and then a very dark brown was applied on each side. Remember to decrease the opacity so that the picture shows through just a little.
4. Next I opened a photo of my daughter and with the oval selection tool and feathering set to 50 pixels I copied her face and pasted it on a new layer in my photo collage document. Notice how you can see the flowers through her hair. If you don’t like that effect on your photo decrease the feathering and select your subject with more “breathing room”.
5. On a new layer I typed my caption then I selected it and copied it for the next step.
6. Add a layer under that layer. Use your type tool and paste the word. Then select it and go to Layer/Type/Convert to shape. Then Layer/Rasterize/LAYER (don’t rasterize the whole image.) Now just hit the up or down arrow and it will turn it into a selection. Save the selection, Select/Save Selection. With the selection loaded hit delete to delete whatever color is in the type. Then go to Edit/Fill and select your new color with the opacity at about 40 to 50%. Move your shadow to the desired location under your caption.

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