More Scenic Color Cards

These may be the last ones for awhile, but I do so love to create them :)

 Ocean Waves: A California Beach next to California waves...

 Pumpkin Row: My parents' porch. A lovely fall scene...

 Muted Rainbow: I was surprised to see what colors came out of this photo. I expected brighter, but I love the muted tones...

Robin's Egg: A sure sign of Spring. A scene from a trail run...

Nature Inspired Color Cards

If you can't tell, I've had plenty of time to play on the computer while cuddling a fussy little Peanut. I hope to sew or craft soon :)

 Lake Sunrise: From an early morning at XC camp. I love waking up early to see the colors that the sunrise paints in the sky :)

 Lilac Love: My favorite flower. I love the smell and I love the colors.

Mountain Hikes:  This was a gorgeous day with plenty of photography inspiration. Here is some bear grass with a glacier lake in the background. Love.

Three Wedding Color Cards

 Green Wedding: A picture from a friend's wedding day shows the multiple green hues with silver and black accents. A beautiful wedding :)

 Muted Bouquet: This came from my brother's wedding... with a few tweaks in photoshop!

Muted Glitz: Golds and reds were center stage at my cousin's fall wedding. Perfect for autumn!

More Color Cards

It's been awhile since I posted color cards, but I found these while I was cleaning folders off the computer (Peanut is asleep in my arms again!). These are made using my own photography in Photoshop.

 Garden Full: Perfect for the Spring and Summer... purples and greens are my favorite colors, plus this combo reminds me of my wedding. I didn't care what the shades were; I just mixed and matched all shades of purple and green... I like to think it created more depth than if I had just stuck with one shade of each. :)

 Golden Flight: I come from a big bird-watching family, so I was excited when I got a great picture of the common Goldfinch as it ate from one of my dad's many birdfeeders. I think this combo would be a great color scheme for a sunroom.

 Gravel Road: Yes, this is an actually picture of a gravel road. I grew up in the country, and I look forward to moving back to the country soon. This scheme is full of great neutrals...

 Mini Exotic: I still don't know what type of plant or bug this is. I took this shot in McCrory Gardens in Brookings, SD. This combo would be great in a kids' bathroom or even a bedroom or playroom. Bright, saturated colors!

Tree Rings: I've always loved taking macro shots of tree stumps trying to get as much detail of the rings and cracks as I could. "Tree Rings" is another neutral color scheme, perfect for a muted lap quilt or for a rag rug... understated details in a simple room.

Greens and Yellows

While writing up this tutorial, I enjoyed making a few more colors cards! 

Now, I had two of these posted previously; however, because I do not know how to spell bouquet (who knew it had two u's!), I had to delete them, fix them and re-post them. Yes, I'm blushing. I'm just glad I caught my spelling error before anyone else did! 

*That is why I save my color cards as a Photoshop file (.psd) AND as a JPEG file (.jpg). If I notice something I want to change as I'm posting the JPEG file, I can just delete it and reopen the Photoshop file, making the changes and then save it again. Pretty handy.

I attended several weddings last summer, so it was fun remember those special events while creating these two bouquet cards.

This may be one of my favorites. I used to "help" my parents water the flowers and the garden with my little watering can... isn't it so cute?!

Photoshop Tutorial: DIY Color Cards

Let me start with this... I am not a Photoshop wizard. I took one class in college on photography and we dabbled in Photoshop. Last year, I was able to play a bit more in Photoshop on the Macbook provided by the school I taught at. This past summer, Grizz and I bought our own Mac, and we splurged by buying Photoshop, too.

I love pictures - I love taking them, I love editing them and I love adding words and lyrics to them. And if I've learned anything by my Photoshop dabbling, it's that you need to do some trial and error to get what you want. Just keep pushing buttons to get the affect you want, don't be afraid of the "Undo" button, and learn as you go.

With all that said (thanks for sticking with me), I am going to try to show/tell/blab about how I made these Color Cards :) Here we go!

*Note: you can click on the photos to make them bigger if they are hard to see!

File > New > Blank File

Start with a new file [File > New > Blank File] I start with an 8" x 11" white background at 72 pixels/inch (this should be around 600 x 800 pixels which is what I like my blog pictures to be at).

These tools will be used a lot in this post.

Then, I search through my "artistic" photos and drag one into Photoshop - it should come up as its own file (if you are unfamiliar with dragging photos into Photoshop, you can also open a new file through Photoshop. [File > Open]) Once your photo is open, using the Rectangular Marquee tool, click and drag around the area that you want to use for your Color Card. Copy this. [Edit > Copy]

Rectangular Marquee to copy from the original picture

Head back to your "new file" and paste [Edit > Paste]. You may need to drag the corners to make it smaller so it fits on your background. No worries :) Also, if you chose a horizontal picture, you will have to rotate your background before pasting the picture. [Edit > Rotate]

The grid!

About this time, I like to put the grid up [View > Grid]. This will help line everything up nicely and makes you sure that everything is centered.

Ok. Let's get some colors on there!

This is on the right-hand side of your screen.
It shows what layer you want to use/edit.

Make sure your background layer is highlighted. Using the marquee tool again, click and drag a rectangular shape below or beside your picture (depending on if you have a horizontal or vertical color card). Try to eye the size of it so you can fit 5 of these rectangles in the blank space of your color card. (You can always adjust them later, or crop your background layer if things aren't lining up - use that grid!).

Rectangular Marquee Tool

With the rectangle still showing - go up and [Edit > Copy], [Edit > Paste]. You just made a new layer for one color! Go ahead and "Paint" it whatever color for right now so it doesn't blend into the background.

After painting the copy/pasted rectangle

Rectangular Marquee around your new colorful rectangle and Copy/paste this again... paste it 4 times, so there are 5 rectangles. Slide them around and try to center them on your color card. Sometimes, when starting with a new file for these, I end up cropping the background to help the rectangles fit just right. [Image > Crop]. Once you have made one of these cards, however, you never have to mess with this part again - you can just change the picture and colors and then save as a new file!

5 rectangles, all centered!

Now for the fun part!!!

After painting the rectangles

Using the eye-drop tool, pick out a color from your picture that you want highlighted on your color card. Click your picture with the tool and then paint one of your rectangles, always making sure that the rectangle you want to paint is highlighted. You can rearrange these later if you want the colors in a different order.

After rearranging the rectangles

You can be done here if you'd like... but I like to add a title with a text box and I put a little label/copyright on as well. If you have questions about how to do either of those, feel free to comment or email me!

Final Product :)

I same my color cards twice - I first save it as a Photoshop file (.psd is the extension). When it is a .psd you can still edit it in Photoshop if you realize you want to change the colors or perhaps you spelled a word wrong... I save it again as a JPEG (.jpg). This is what I upload to the blog. Once you save it as a .jpg you can no longer edit it in Photoshop!

Like I said earlier, when learning a new software (or trying something new on an old software), you cannot be afraid to mess up... the little "Undo" button is there for a reason! It's like the seam-ripper to a quilter :)

Again, if you are unclear about a step, or you get stuck while trying this yourself, feel free to contact me! Good luck and have fun!

Color Craze

 After Spring Break last week (4 days of lovely sewing fun-ness), I took a bit of a hiatus from sewing for a few days... which is one reason that I have so many WIPs. Those projects were all things I probably could have finished easily, but the sewing break was nice! No sewing meant that I had time to play with my pictures again.

 On Pinterest, you will see similar pictures to help you decide on color combos for painting rooms or sewing quilts. I thought I'd try my hand at creating my own color cards!

 These are all made in Photoshop with my own photography. I'm still learning a lot in Photoshop, but these projects are a great way to keep learning!