A Measham Robin

I've tamed this one so any time you want a lesson, Jim, pop round.

How to Make 5 Holes in a Perfectly Good Picture

This involves quite a few steps and if I tell you I'll have to kill you.


So fasten your seat belts, or preferably buy yourself the highly recommended Scott Kelby Adobe CS4 Book which it comes from. 

You have to have a picture in mind that you're going to use, that'll work as a 'banner crop' or letterbox shape.
Make a new, blank document. I made this one 9cm x 6cm at 300dpi.
Add a new layer.
Drag a small square with the Rectangle tool, I made mine 1.4cm square. Holding Shift as you drag keeps the square square, if you see what I mean.

Press D to set foreground to black.
Alt -Backspace fills the square black.
Press Ctrl-Alt-Backspace brings up Free Transform, then drag the square copy over to the right. Holding Shift keeps it in line.

If you do Window>Info you can see the size of the square you are making.

Press Enter to  confirm.
Press Ctrl-Alt-Shift-T for another copy. Repeat until you have 5 squares.
Centre the two layers by selecting both by holding down the Ctrl key and clicking both.
Then use V (Move) and select Align Horizontal Centres.

To add the picture, select the background layer. Then go to File>Place and select your picture as a Smart Object. Move it so its a bit larger than the boxes. Press Enter to lock.
Drag your photo to the top of the pile of layers.

Then go to Layers>Create Clipping Mask.

You can still move around your photo to get the best position if required.
Then I put the text in.

This took me ages before I'd cracked it and the Scott Kelby book describes it in much better detail.
Happy Clipping Masks.

Making Your Own Custom Blog Background

Here's one way to make your own background for your blog.

Select a suitable image, this one came from our trip to Birmingham, the wall by the canal that Steve made us photograph because he liked the texture.

Open it in Photoshop and select the crop tool.

Set the crop size to 1800px  X  1600px (pixels) this is the max size for the background image.

Make your crop selection and confirm.

Save As (in a place you can find it) your picture at a quality setting that makes it below 300K in the Image Options box.

Sign in to your blog and go to the dashboard.

Go into Design>Template Designer>Background

Click on the side arrow alongside the Background Image box.

You can then upload the image by browsing for it. 

Taking the tick out of the 'scroll with page' box means the background picture stays where it is as your blog text scrolls up and down.

I like my wooden planks and I like my flaking paint, but which one is better? There's only one way to find out.Fi i i i i i i i ight!

'Escape Exhibition' at Burton Hospital

I delivered the 8 mounted prints and frames to Queen's Hosp Burton. They were delighted. The poster above goes into a matching 30x40cm frame with the others.

Their fire regs don't allow glass, as we'd suspected, but they are going to change them over to plastic.

They'll be back in touch to arrange a press release when they're in position.

They looked great as a set, so a big pat on the back for us. 

Bacchus, Roman God of Intoxication.

After a surreal evening at the Burton Photographic Society, I'm thinking of starting a new religion.

This is Bacchus, Roman god of intoxication and a lovely chap, who I'm sure did not know what he'd got himself into.

Thanks very much Bacchus and Jim (a demi god) for the lights.

It was over all too quickly and with a 3, 2, 1 we were back in the room.  But I did have the pleasure of helping him take his toga off after elbowing everyone else out of the way.

Shirazians or Chardonians?

Burton Photographic Society annual Exhibition

Burton Photographic Society Annual Exhibition at the Priory Centre, Church Road, Stretton. Sat 13 and Sun 14 Nov.


This exhibition is open for viewing by the general public over the whole of the weekend from 10am to 4pm with the official opening on Saturday at 2pm by the Deputy Mayor of Burton on Trent.

http://www.burtonps.co.uk/annual%20exhibition.html