Cuddly Snuggles

There's nothing quite like snuggling up to a cuddly toy after a busy day taking Mr Slowcoach for three walks and hunting for frogs and mice in the garden:

 

 

 

 

 

MondayMacro - Guess What

Congratulations and virtual Midmarsh Gold Stars to two people this week. Wilma and Glo were certain it was a knife blade:






Let's see how you get on with this week's mystery photo.
Guess What:


As always please leave any guesses in the comments.
They will be revealed, along with the answer, next Monday.
No prizes, just for fun and maybe a virtual Midmarsh Gold or Silver Star.

Serif Affinity Photo - 3rd attempt

My grateful thanks to Adrian (Adrian's Images) for suggesting that holding the shift key when painting would give straight lines. Working on the 'rainbow' layer I erased the previous 'rainbow' and chose a different brush, Simple Watercolour. It was then an easy job to choose the size and colour, tap where I wanted to start a line, hold the shift key and tap where I wanted the end of the line. Bingo, a straight line is automatically drawn. Keep changing the colour and adding new lines from the Sun to the title:



I am much happier with this result. I think I will have no hesitation in purchasing the final version of Serif Affinity Photo when it becomes available in the Mac App store. It will be a very worthy replacement for my old copy of Photoshop Elements 10.

Affinity Photo Beta - 2nd Attempt

This time I went for a sort of sparkly rainbow effect built up on its own layer:



At the moment it's more like an oil painting effect but getting nearer to what I want.

Affinity Photo Beta - Practice

Every now and then I have a session with the free beta version of Serif's Affinity Photo.

A simple title picture for the blog:


Lettering produced and saved with a transparent background in Art Text 2.
First the background photo was dragged and dropped on Affinity Photo.
Cropped to the shape I wanted.
A new layer made and the lettering dragged and dropped on that layer.
Adjust position and size of text.
Export as a jpg.

Getting a bit more ambitious:


Photo and lettering added as above.
Round shape added and coloured to make an artificial Sun.
Section of a cloud outlined, copied and moved to cover part of the sun.
Next the part I haven't mastered yet - using a brush to add gold dust / sunbeams from the Sun to the title. Fiddle as I might I can't get the brush colour to do what I expect. There are lots of choices so I'll have to keep playing to see which is the correct combination. On reflection it's probably a case of making the brush work on the correct layer or maybe a new layer.

Friday at the Flicks - Starlings and the Mealworm Treats

I found a pack of mealworm treats which are mixed in tallow. Very sticky stuff to handle. I put some on the bird tables and settled back to see which birds would go for them. No surprise when the Starlings were the first, and only, birds to gobble them up:



Have a great weekend observing the behaviour of the wildlife around you.


I saw one report that when Serif's Affinity Photo finally appears on the Mac App store it will be $50, less a cent or two, which will include free updates for two years. With the facilities it contains and the amazing speed it works at it should be well worth the price. I don't know what will happen with the free beta versions. Maybe they will be disabled. We will just have to wait and see.

Serif Affinity Photo Beta

Reported on DIY Photography was a new Mac app from Serif, Affinity Photo. At the moment it is possible to download a free beta copy which appears to be fully working:



Needless to say I downloaded a copy to see what it is like. I have used Serif products in the past on the PC. This program is only for the Mac. It looks as though it could be a good alternative to Photoshop as it has very similar facilities.

I gave it a quick looking at last night and used it to remove part of a photo which was spoiling its overall look. I had tried to do this in a couple of other programs in the past with variable, but poor, results. This time I think it has worked reasonably well.

 

 

That was working with a jpg file.
Today I loaded a 70D RAW file to see how that would be handled:

 





Not the sharpest of original photos but still quite an acceptable result.

If you are interested then the beta and more information about Affinity Photo can be found on the Serif site HERE.