when you live on an island

...you can expect rainy days and drab photos, but that doesn't keep me 

from taking a lot of them, even roadside flowers out the car window.

 I enjoyed making my photos look a little better with Photoscape, as it

was very simple to use.

Well, now there is a better version that does a lot more than I ever wanted!

The new version of Photoscape X took very little effort to transform 

the shot (above) from rainy and drab to a flowery photo 

I would gladly post on my blog (below).

They have short videos to show you how each feature works. 

I could even take the cows out of the picture with one click on each one, 

but I decided to leave them in.

So, now you know what I'll be doing in my spare time! 

If you are looking for a good (and free) editing program, 

click 'photoscape x' .

I bought the Pro version as a way of support for using the free version all these years and it has even more of everything for a very small price.

it's all in the editing

For those that have asked about some of my 'larger than life' photos, rest assured that it's not because my camera is super-expensive or has special powers :) It's all in the post-editing.

I took these 11 photos of a huge tree beside a building (yes, I repeated one to fill in the small squares of the mosaic) and used autostitch to combine them into one beautiful scene. Click here for the autostitch download.and/or more information. *EDIT* The mosaic was done in photoscape, too.

Of course, the finished scene is not perfect, so I cropped the shot to include what I want to have in the final photo.

Then I used the clone brush in photoscape to fill in the edges. Click here for the photoscape download and more information.

And...voile!!

Of course, sometimes, I just can't leave well enough alone, so I used the 'threshold' button on photoscape to create this:

Please feel free to ask any questions about any of these processes in a comment or email me at tenfootheart (at) gmail (dot) com.

I admit it....I'm a snob

As most of you know, I have a photoblog and I loooooove taking pictures. At times, I am amazed at the colors and textures and such on other folks photos and I gaze in wonder at them--until I find out that it's not their prowess at photography or their super-duper great cameras that make the photos so cool, it's some program they have used to enhance their work.

Now, even though I am a purist of sorts, I'm not at all adverse to these things. I just can't justify the money for something that I would rarely use.

And all that leads to my confession of being a snob.

Each time that I read about a new 'something' that someone is thrilled about on their gizmo (be it a phone or ipad), I check my old faithful program and, sure enough, I find something that I could use as comparable.

That program is a free download called photoscape.

As I recall, it was probably the very first free program that I downloaded and it seems to work well with my limited technical vocabulary. Having learned  some of the phrases and terms that are used in such programs, subsequent downloads were still beyond my older-than-dirt mentality and I alway go back to my old faithful photoscape.

I don't do a lot of fidgeting with my photos, but I know that I could if I wanted to.

And I think that makes me a snob.....



Here are some pics that I had some fun with on photoscape

taped corners

blurred except for rocks

cute cube

                       outlines

all kinds of add ons

And, finally, proof that you can't believe everything you see on the internet...

And all this is just in the 'editor' portion. There a lot more stuff but I'll save that for another day!