Collage Sheets and DPI

Collage sheets are worth the money. The images are rich and crisp. The price is reasonable. They are easy to download. The trouble with some free images is lack of uniformity in theresolution. You may have an awesome piece of art; but when you enlarge it one element may break up or become fuzzy and ruin the whole piece.

Okay, get out your calculators.
When buying consider not only the DPI (dots per inch), but also the size of the sheet. A 300 DPI sheet is great, but consider that on a 5x7 sheet that, that is the optimum size for those images. Double the size to 10 x 14. Those images are now 150 DPI.  At that rate things are going to look a bit ratty at 20 x 28.

The 300 DPI is a common standard for printing. So you will have to divide the size of your print by 300. Elements always has the amount of pixels at the top of the new page box. Play around with the DPI and watch the pixel count automatically change.  They are also located at the bottom left of your screen.

Example:
To print a 5 x 7 at 300 DPI

1500 px divided by 300 = 5'
2100 px divided by 300 = 7"

Hoped that helped.

Here's my latest:

© NeonSun Studios. All rights reserved J. Currie 2010

I Redesigned my Blog

I changed my blog around and added some features. At the bottom of the page is my Facebook page. Feel free to join. Also I've added a gadget for my Etsy Shop. My tag cloud resides there as well.
Finally bought some collage sheets from TumbleFish Studio. Looking forward to playing around with the great images.
Also I put up a photo on my profile, so you have a face to go with the Blog.
I'm slowly starting to make art again. I have been using  my uninspired period to collect brushes, patterns and images. Also scanning objects and images from old books including the book covers. I have aquired a very nice collection of tools to work with. A lot of what I have has come from Deviant Art. Some great free images from Flickr. Etsy has some awesome collage sheets.
Here's an ATC that I made today. It's very simple and straight forward.

© NeonSun Studios. All rights reserved J. Currie 2010.

I hope you like it. Have a great weekend!

I Have a Facebook Page & Other Random News

In an attempt to flog my Etsy shop and sell prints I've started a Facebook page. It's working well. I've already had 5 new hits on my page and 17 likes in about an hour or so. You might want to try it for your blog. The like button is on the top right of my blog.
http://www.facebook.com/pages/NeonSun-Studios/118553958205893

I'm looking to buy the full version of photoshop. You'll see another Etsy widget on my blog that I'm trying out. Also I've re-designed my Etsy shop and added a few prints.

There is a new banner on my page. It's for Art Trader magazine. They accept art and print submissions. I don't know if they pay or if, it is for the glory of seeing your work in print on the web.
http://www.arttradermag.com/

Also I've discovered that there is a company that offers cruises and trips for crafters. Yes, lucky you; cruising and crafting. Quite pricey though. Sounds like a great idea to me. Tim Holtz offers yearly craft cruises with supplies included.
http://scrapmap.com/tours/caribbean_0911.html

Last but not least I checked out some You Tube videos on copic markers. I'm thinking of buying some. You can do great things with these markers. This link will get you started.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-sSA6nL_iPI

This is an ATC made for a trade that I could only use magazine clippings. Thank you National Geographic:

©NeonSun Studios. Jody Currie All right reserved 2010

More Info on .png

I thought I'd share this link from the Tumble Fish Studio blog. I mentioned .png in an earlier post and came across this. This studio makes outstanding collage sheets.  Read and learn.
 
http://tumblefishstudio.blogspot.com/2010/10/might-png-image.html

Another site you might like is this one.

http://www.jessicadrossintextures.blogspot.com/

There is a charge for these textures. I usually try and provide free resources for people learning PSE. This site offers some great info on how to work with textures.It has inspired me to do more with my textures. Hopefully it will help you as well.

You may of noticed twitter buttons on some of my posts. I just joined Twitter and don't actually have a clue what to do on it. But like everything else I've done I thought I'd just jump in and figure it out.

No art to go with this post as I've been sick and very uninspired for the last week. Hope you enjoy the links.

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Rough up Your Artwork

http://www.timholtz.com/demos.html

There are some quick and dirty (just an expression) demos . I liked the grunge distressed demos. Of course. They are for Tim Holtz materials. But you can adapt the techniques using whatever is at hand. I used some ink I already had and scraped the excess ink off with paper towel. Then I used the paper towel to pick up some black ink from my stamp pad and went around the edge of my ATC with it for the grunge effect. Clear as mud? That's why God invented pictures. Here's the ATC.

© NeonSun Studios. J.R. Currie All rights reserved 2010

A word about coloured inks. If you haven't used them before, give it a try. I've always used Winsor &  Newton Inks. But check out some others. They always give great results and the colours are very vibrant. Start out with red, yellow and blue because you can mix them. Use a bottle cap to mix them in. A very little goes a long way. Once they are dry, you can stamp on them or use Black Indian Ink on top.

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Making a filmstrip with the Eraser

It's easy peasey. Make a 6"x2" page with a transparent background.
Duplicate.
Fill with black ink using ink bucket.
Select eraser tool.
Select a hard edge square brush.
Adjust the size of the eraser (small for the notches and very large for the frames).
Then use the eraser like a stamp and cut out notches and frames.
I use the grid on the background to line things up.
Then you can add a drop shadow.
You should see the black frame and the transparent background.
Save as a .png. That way you can slide photos behind it.
I did a sample for you with the images inserted behind.

© NeonSun Studios. All rights reserved J.R Currie 2010

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Moving Backwards in Time

It seems I'm moving backwards in time with my art. Next I'll be doing art from the big bang. Hey, sounds good.

©NeonSun Studios. All rights reserved.

Music and Checkerboard Patterns

Oval Frame

Egyptian Bird

YouTube Tutorials

I always love a good tutorial. I found some great ones here.
http://www.youtube.com/user/PhotoGavin Someone remarked that he's the Bobby Ross of photoshop.

Bobby Ross:
http://www.facebook.com/home.php?filter=fl_83975075021#!/group.php?gid=2412227712

Gavin's tutorials are easy to follow even though there are a lot of steps. I would listen and then pause it so I could do the project in Elements. Worked well for me. So you might want to check out his tutorials.  I've put his link in Blogs I Follow in the right hand portion of my blog.
Here's a picture sphere that I made following his directions.

Images: http://www.flickr.com/photos/paperscraps/4268181453/in/set-72157623035244083/

© NeonSun Studios. All rights reserved 2010