See How Easily You Can Create Your Own Holiday Ornament Digital Art Embellishment

Creating Digital Glass Ball Ornaments

in Adobe Photoshop CS2
by Sue Kristoff, Creative Team Member

Creating a digital glass ball ornament is a fun way to play around with lighting effects in Adobe Photoshop CS2 and an easy way to learn about Photoshop filters.


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This glass ball ornament consists of three shapes: a filled circle, a crown and a ring. The filled circle I drew using the circle tool, and the crown and ring were shapes from the Custom Shapes palette.

• Start with the circle representing the ornament. Draw a circle to the size you desire, then fill with your color of choice.
  
• You will be applying two different filters to this shape to get the effect of a shiny sphere. The first filter is Filter>Render>Lighting Effects.
  
• For my example, I chose the Omni light source from the drop down menu.
  
• Then adjust the location and size of the reflection.
  
• I also moved the sliders for Gloss and Material to the far right to represent a shiny metallic surface.

The second filter is Filter>Distort>Spherize. This filter will give your shape more of a three dimensional look.

• The next step is to create the top of the ornament.
  
• I first created a crown shape from the custom shape palette and rotated it 180 degrees.
• I chose a bright gold color to fill the shape, then I applied the same Lighting Effects filter that I used on the main part of the ornament.
  
• I then moved the crown shape into place at the top of the ornament.
  
• Finally, I created the ring at the top of the ornament by using a filled ring shape from the custom shape palette, filling it with the same gold color I used for the crown, then applying the Lighting Effects filter to the ring.
  
• I then moved the ring into place, and now I have a complete ornament!

If you save this image as a .png file, you now have a digital element you can add to your holiday layouts.


Layout Credits: November Sponsor April Staker Jolly Holiday kit

How to Achieve Artistic Effects with Your Everyday Photos

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Today we continue our focus on Photography, and what to do with everyday photos once they are uploaded to your computer!

Installing and Using Filters in Adobe Photoshop CS2
by Sue Kristoff, Creative Team Member

Featuring Free Software from optikVerve Labs

While the first step in creating stunning photos is in your camera, the second step is in your post processing. One way to improve your photos, or to create artistic effects with your photos is to use filters. Photoshop does include some built in filtering, but there are several third-party filtering suites that can be used to perform a variety of effects.

One set of filters that I use is {the free program} Virtual Photographer by optikVerve Labs. Virtual Photographer is a Photoshop plug-in that adds filtering schemes to the Filter menu. These filters cover both color and black and white schemes. The Virtual Photographer filters are actually complex combinations of several Photoshop functions, and together they allow you to quickly and easily transform your photos. Virtual Photographer is a free application, and can be downloaded from the optikVerve website. In addition, this plug-in is compatible with Photoshop Elements, Paint Shop Pro and other image editing software.

After downloading and extracting the installation file for Virtual Photographer, copy the entire directory into the Filters subdirectory of your Plug-Ins directory for Photoshop CS2. (Note: Installation location will vary depending on your specific software. See the optikVerve website for additional installation details.) The next time you open Photoshop, the Virtual Photographer filters will be available in the Filters menu. (See Figure 1.)




When you open the Virtual Photographer plug-in, you have the option to preview and apply 50 different preset filters, or you can play around with the different settings manually. (See Figure 2.)



The following figures show the effects of several different preset filters.

Figure 3: Raw photo (no filters applied)

Figure 4: Newspaper (B/W)

Figure 5: Photocopy (Color)

Figure 6: Less Tungsten (Color)

Figure 7: Character (B/W)

Figure 8: "Paparazzi" Focal photo created with "Newspaper" filter from Virtual Photographer by optikVerve Labs.

Other materials:
Patterned paper: 7Gypsies
Cardstock: Bazzill Basics
Letter stickers: American Crafts
Letter stamps: EK Success
White Ink: Colorbox


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