"Swan Lake"

This week’s Sunday Postcard Art challenge was “Swan Lake”. My postcard consists of several layers. One of the tools I use is Serif PhotoPlus Version 6.03. I created the lake water in it using a Gradient Fill with Difference. I added an Art Deco border (that I colored) on top of the water, set to “Overlay.” I added a postcard size rose on top of that, set to “Dodge,” to create the surreal appearance of it floating under the water. The foreground is two swans and a lily pad. While I create all of the layers in PhotoPlus, I export them (in this case, as a background and foreground image) and overlay them using a different program, to create the final postcard image.

FYI: It looks like Serif has a newer version of PhotoPlus on their website: Free Image & Photo Editing Software Download – PhotoPlus SE.

Technical notes to myself: I fixed some of the problems I was having when switching between image manipulation programs and image formats (gif, jpg, bmp). Color resolution loss and colored pixels appearing where they shouldn’t are no longer a problem, but there are still circumstances when they can occur, so I need to be aware of that. I’m also still seeing a “ghost affect” from pixels near the edges of the items I’m “pasting” into the postcard. They should get “whited out” but they’re not (even though they look white). This is an ongoing problem I’m having with jpg files, but the “ghost affect” doesn’t always show up, which is good. (To see the edge affect that’s causing these problems, “fill” the jpg image and observe that there is a square edge all around the image, that doesn’t fill.)