Old Slides and Negatives and Family History...

Oh, the things I have discovered that I can do with my iPad and new HTC Sense with its cool digital camera. I have thousands of old slides and negatives that I have put off purchasing a slide/neg scanner for but now I do not have to! You can also use a light table but the iPad acts like one with a little app called Hello Photo which works quite well with my HTC cell phone camera.

This is a slide strip of my daughter Julie that is over 25 years old.

This is cropped, tweaked and enhanced. Not very good for making prints straight on but might make a nice transfer and other mixed media. 

Since most of the negatives I have were large, I used my Light Tracer table for these. I grouped them together and took the photo with my phone camera.

This was a photo negative that I cropped out of the group.

This is what I got after inverting image in Photoshop:

Again, images are not crystal pristine but I am loving what you can create even with the negatives themselves!

In my very next post (maybe later today) I will show how and why I got involved in going through my stacks of slides in the first place.

Hint: It involves the murder of a family member and is a spooky read for this time of the year! 

Dreaming Away

Ah, yes, midnight swims are the very best. Especially after a long day in front of the computer organizing photoshop and picture files long overdue. Put my Epson Workforce through a workout as well and made me proud. Will show you soon. Right now its lovely talking to you on my iPad, on my patio right after a refreshing dip in the pool. Wish you were here...

Torn Between Two Lovers

Acting like a fool....

Something I may not have told you before: I am a fool for poker. Specifically tournament no-limit hold-em poker. It gets in the way sometimes of my art and quilting time. Especially this time of the year when the WSOP is in full gear down at the Rio. Fourteen minutes (I counted) from my front door. Seems like I am on the computer more than ever trying to win a satellite to the big games. So in between games I try to squeeze in some Photoshop time so that when things get back to normal (hummm, not sure what THAT is) I will have a few more techniques in my repertoire.

I am using the clipping mask tools with a free mask from Coffee Shop a swell site for great tutorials, frames and masks. Thank you Coffee Shop. My great new Quirky Handpainted Labels from Mary Ann Moss and my brand new BAMBOO that I love.

This is as addicting as the I-pad and Instagram, each one gives me ideas for yet another. 

I ask you - is it wrong to have two lovers?

Why I-Pad?

Truth be told, I would probably never have gone out to buy this small piece of electronica with such a big price tag. It landed in my lap by way of a barter exchange three weeks ago and I have hardly put it down - that is, if I can grab it from the man's hands. After a week of nothing but Scrabble, Angry Birds and watching all three of the foreign version of Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, etc., on my Netflex App,(in bed.at night.scary-good)I decided to see what else this little gem of a toy could do. Already had Kindle for PC so got the App for Pad and started reading again. What a pleasure. Read the 'Future of Us' in 2 days and am into 'The Night Circus' right now. Got my shelves full of future reads. I love Flipboard and Zunio for my Google Reader and digital magazines and newspapers. Took Pad to kitchen and used Safari to find perfect orange marmalade recipe and kept it nearby while I whipped up 8 half-pints. Found out good stuff about my orange tree and how to make it happy at the same time! There are ka-jillions of Apps out there. I have Sketch Book for drawing/painting that if I like will get the pro version but others I want to try. Photoshop Express is great for taking the noise off the photos you take with the Pad - and you do get a lot of noise! Other photo editors I like are Photo Toaster and Effects. For a cool visual on how to make a painting (she used I-Phone but the same App is available on Pad)go: HERE

We recently purchased a new car that has Bluetooth and I-Pad connection but no GPS. Well, viola! There is an App - I got Gps Drive HD. With a nice big screen hopefully we will not get lost anymore. HA!

The last thing is how to blog and send other stuff from the Pad. Used Pocket Cloud to send previous post connecting my desktop! But find it a little cumbersome. You can do on your Pad anything you do on your desktop - in fact, you are on it! But the mouse and scrolling give me a headache. So I purchased BE Write HD which seems to have great reviews so will do my next blog from there. 

So, you get my drift, it is a keeper. Stay tuned for more evidence. In the meantime I just have to share with you this poem my sister wrote:

A Game With Passers-by 

by J.S. Colley

They turn their heads

When I drive by

In my little red car

I toss them a smile

And they high-five

And shoulder bump

As if they’ve just won

Some great victory

You don’t understand

My husband says,

You never have

Yes…I do

I want to say

But what good is it?

Except for a lark

A game with passers-by

So I stow it

In the back of my mind

Because I know

Whatever it is

It won’t last forever

And I’m afraid

When the time comes

I won’t want to let it go

  

Remembering warmer days.

Things I Cherish