My First Digital Collage

I realize that it has been almost a year since I posted about printing on fabric, and since I don't have followers yet it might be a good time to try blogging again.  I am new to the blogging arena and I have much to learn on how to upload pictures, link to other blogs and Facebook.  If you are just joining me I ask for your patience and thank you for it ahead of time.

I have been learning the vector drawing side of the Corel Draw X5 program for a few years now and have only scratched the surface, but I am comfortable with the tools I need to accomplish my tasks.  So now I turn my attentions to the photo editing side of the program.  I also own Photoshop Elements 9 and since I don't have classes near me I have to collect my own library and cull YouTube for videos.  There is so much information written about Photoshop that I figure if I can learn terminology and principles of graphics here I can translate them into the Photo-Paint.  Call me crazy, but my mind seem to work this way.  I find commonalities of both and the differences and use them to their advantages.

I started the book "Layers" by Matt Kloshowski.  It is written for Photoshop, but it will help me understand layers and the different things that can be accomplished when using them.  I got through page 14 and created my first digital collage.

I took these 3 pictures:

Glacial Bowl in Glacier Park

Mom and I

Fall Garden

I layered the pictures in the order you see them here with the Glacial Bowl on the bottom and the Fall Garden on top.  Matt said to use the eraser tool at 30% opacity, which means that the eraser is almost transparent, the object being is to blend the three pictures together with very soft edges.  I realize the lights in the pictures are coming from different sources, but I wasn't going for realistic but a blended collage of pictures.  Here is the result:

I really enjoyed the process and look forward to the next lesson in the "Layers" book.  For the last few years my photo subjects have been about texture and what might make interesting fabric.  I think I will now widen the subject matter to objects and maybe people.