An Exercise in 'White Space'

[hmca]

Thanks for the directions Lillias......not being a scrapper, I find them very helpful

[Lillias]

To try and help further this is an exploded diagram of the items I used to put together my Kingfisher page on the first page of this thread.

Top right is the photo and the custom shape to which I clipped the photo.

Below that is two grungy pieces which I coloured and placed under the clipped photo. (Again you could use splatter, grungy, watercolour brushes here)

On top of that I placed the frame and using a mask on that layer I brushed out the part of the frame which covered the Kingfishers beak.

Then I took the other elements and placed them in a cluster around the bottom right of the frame giving each item a shadow of varying degrees.

[Moto]

cats4jan,

I nearly gave up on my recent posted Tripych image. Then I took a step back and thought out why it wasn't working out. The Tripych part was dull and didn't standout from the bkgrd. I sharpened it and increased the drop shadow distance. Now the image worked. Stepping back and thinking it out worked.

I thought about your image. A white space image needs a needs a strong focal point. Four things seemed wrong with your image.

The foto is dull. Fix = Levels.
The frame color doesn't work with the bkgrd. Fix = Hue & Lightness.
The foto frame/setting still didn't work for me. Fix = added a texture different from the bkgrd texture.
The overall image is dull. Fix = Levels.

[Sydney]

Mar 3, 2017 12:38:10 GMT Lillias said:

I hesitated before doing this as I don’t know if it’s wanted or not – also I am not used to doing this so hope you will make allowances for me…

Just a few tips as to how I put this next page together.

First I chose a background and you could get one from the Graphics tab within PSE. This one is called ‘Spring Flowers’.
Then I chose the photo I wanted – in this case from Pexel and I clipped it to Crop Shape 33.

I placed another Crop Shape 35 under the first Crop Shape and gave it a Hue/Sat Adjustment colour and a shadow.

Then from the Frames section of Custom Shapes I chose Frame 31 and put it on top and gave it a Bevel and a mild shadow.

You can build on this by adding say a watercolour brush as I have done here or an embellishment etc; I coloured it and turned the opacity way down. There are plenty of free brushes on the Internet.

Just let your imagine run free…and surprise yourself.

Also if you look at my first two pages in this thread you will see it’s not necessary to put a mask on your pics but using a mask just gives another way of doing this. It’s all about choices…

I hope this helps.

Thanks very much BillieJean for the insight as to how you put it together. It will help me to get out of the starting blocks with my next project.

[Lillias]

Mar 3, 2017 20:09:37 GMT Sydney said:

Thanks very much BillieJean for the insight as to how you put it together. It will help me to get out of the starting blocks with my next project.

You are welcome Sydney. Please feel free to ask anything you are not sure about. I don't claim to have the answers for everything but if I can help I will be only too pleased to...