-
More Fun With Filters In Photoshop Elements
When you’re down and troubledAnd you need some love and careAnd nothing, nothing is going right… Carole King Since you can’t visit your friends, why don’t you open a photo in Photoshop Elements and just play with the filters. (Sorry Carole King and James Taylor.) But don’t be satisfied with using just one filter, try…
-
Happy New Year 2021! Registration & Recipe
Are you as happy to see 2020 in the rearview mirror as the Pixeladies? We are hopeful that 2021 will see us back in the studio working together at the same time! So let’s ring in the new year with class registration and a recipe. Registration Registration for classes starts on January 1! We don’t…
-
Happy Holidays 2021 . . . The 1998 Throwback Edition!
We write our Happy Holidays post this time of year, usually with photos of our time together during the season. Deb is famous for her wine tasting parties, but not this year. Kris’s husband Neil makes a mean egg nog to share, but not this year. We Pixeladies are hunkering down for what will be…
-
Photoshop Elements 2021
Finally! We’re back to review Adobe Photoshop Elements 2021. PSE has been out since October. And as of this posting, it’s even on sale. So should you purchase this new version? We think so, but it really depends on what version you currently have and what parts of the program you actually use. PSE Editor If…
-
Make Never-ending Cards Using Photoshop Elements
2020 has been a crazy year, so why don’t you try something different this gift-giving season. With a never-ending card, you can capture wonderful memories for that special someone. And Deb’s cool instructions take never-ending cards to the next level using digital images. Along with the written instructions, we have links to a demo video…
-
2021: Get Ready, Get Set, Take Photoshop Elements Classes!
Here’s to 2021! We are ready to start our next round of Photoshop Elements classes. It looks like we’ll all be homebound for a few more months, so let’s take advantage of the time and work on our Photoshop skills. Pick the class that’s right for you. The Schedule We’re starting with the beginning class…
-
Thanksgiving 2020: Try Origami Turkey Napkins!
Well, our thanksgivings are going to be quite a bit smaller this year, but we are still thankful that we have the ability to stay home on what is the native land of the Nisenan, Zoom with our families, and teach online. We’re thankful for the medical frontline workers, the farmworkers, and the emergency workers.…
-
Colorize Photos In Photoshop Elements
One of the latest trends in photography is to shoot black and white photos. Of course in this digital age, the photos start out in color and then the color is removed with some program or app to create the b/w version. Look at this example from SmugMug. Hand-Coloring of Photographs It doesn’t seem that…
-
The New Mississippi State Flag And Our “Mrs. Hamer”
During all of the hullabaloo of our recent presidential election, states managed to pass new laws or make some historic changes to their state. The citizens of Mississippi, for example, approved a new design for their state flag. Why, you may ask, was this historic, and what does this have to do with our work?…
-
November Already? It’s Furoshiki Time!
November signals the start of the holiday season, especially for those of us who make our own gifts. In the case of the Pixeladies, we start thinking of gift wrapping with the super useful furoshiki. What we love about furoshiki (Japanese for fabric wrap) is that the object actually determines the type of wrap you…
-
Happy 100th Birthday, Wayne Thiebaud!
This is Kris, writing to say the Pixeladies are taking a break from our Tech Tuesday posts to wish a happy 100th birthday to Wayne Thiebaud. He is a fellow graduate of Sac State University. Okay, so he graduated several years before either of us was born, when the place was called Sac State College,…
-
The Anatomy of Adjustment Layers
We recently had a student ask what she thought was a dumb question: “Do adjustment layers apply to all visible layers, all visible layers below the adjustment layer, all layers, or some combination thereof?” Well, here at the Pixeladies Studio we think there is no such thing as a dumb question. In fact, understanding how…
-
Creating Custom Gradients with Adobe Color
Creating color gradients using Adobe Color is a lot of fun. Last week I (Deb) showed you how to create color swatches from a photograph using Adobe Color. You can read that post here. Today I’ll show you how I used the same photo to create a color gradient. Why Color Gradients? A color gradient…
-
Lift Your Mood With Adobe Color
Has staying at home got you feeling kind of blue? Click over to Adobe Color for a change of scenery. Adobe Color is a website that lets you play with color.
-
Textile Talks And The Importance of Words
We think it’s pretty obvious to our readers by now how important we think words are. They are the underpinning of our art, so when we moderated in a recent Textile Talk, which is sponsored by a consortium of fiber arts organizations, we weren’t surprised the topic arose again. Deeds Not Words The irony doesn’t…
-
Basketball and Art, Part 2
After five months of being in a creative and general funk, and with pro basketball shut down, I joined a critique group with eleven other talented, creative, intelligent, articulate artists. We’ve only had two virtual meetings, but I really enjoy them. I had met several of the women in person, known others by their work,…
-
2020 SAQA Benefit Auction: Kris’ Dream Collection
Every September I look forward to the SAQA Benefit Auction, where you can bid on some really fantastic artwork. There’s a tradition of creating your dream collection from the hundreds of available artwork. Deb created her dream collection a couple of weeks ago. Mine is below. Why don’t you build your own dream collection? Click…
-
Pixelady vs. Pixelady: The Zoom Tool in Photoshop Elements
We at the Pixeladies Studio think the best Photoshop tool is the Zoom Tool! Why, you ask? Is it because our eyes are getting old? Maybe, but it’s that attention to detail that makes your image unforgettable. But are there really different ways to use the Zoom Tool? Yes, that’s the little secret of Photoshop…
-
Digital Stencils the Photoshop Elements Way
This is Deb with a post on what we like to call “digital stencils.” In an earlier post, we showed you how to use the Cookie Cutter tool in Photoshop Elements to “cut” your photos into shapes. But you can also create your own stencils by creating “masks.” You can use many tools to create…
-
2020 SAQA Benefit Auction: Deb’s Dream Collection
See Deb’s Dream Collection of SAQA Benefit Auction Quilts.
-
Tablet Settings in Photoshop Elements
Did you know that you can control the characteristics of your brush if you use a drawing tablet with Photoshop Elements (PSE)? Here in the Pixeladies studio, we use a Wacom tablet instead of a mouse.
-
Pixelady vs. Pixelady: Cropping
We’re back with another episode of Pixelady vs. Pixelady. This one is about two ways to crop images.
-
Stitching Fannie Lou Hamer
This is Kris with a little update on our Fannie Lou Hamer (FLH) project. We introduced this project in a couple of earlier posts. (Links to them are at the end of this post.) Today I thought you’d like to see how the actual quilting is going. I sometimes think the quilting is the hardest…
-
Shirley isn’t the Only Color
Pixeladies discover “Shirley” cards and uncover their own invisible racism.
-
Quilt Stories with Lisa Walton
Woohoo! Another 15 minutes of fame. Well, really 24 minutes and 54 seconds. Our friend and colleague, Lisa Walton, has created a series of videos called Quilt Stories where she chats with quilters and artists about one of their quilts. Lisa’s talks include traditional quilters and art quilters from all over the world. Deb has…
-
Because It Bears Repeating: Black Lives Matter
This is Kris with some more thoughts on the Black Lives Matter movement. It has been a little over a month since George Floyd was murdered by a police officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota. We already wrote about our support of the movement here, but we wanted to share a couple of our artworks again within…
-
File-Name-Limitations-Length, Or Check Your File Names
This is Deb with a short but very instructive Tech Tuesday Post. Recently my dear husband (DH for short–even though he’s not short) was helping a friend transfer her photographs to a new computer. Things were not going as planned in this project. Some files weren’t being copied to the new computer. After muttering some…
-
7 Things To Remember About Photoshop Elements Organizer
We love Photoshop Elements (PSE) Organizer. It’s flexible and grows with you as you organize more and more photos. There are times, however, when it tries our patience. So here are 7 things to remember when working with Organizer. 1. Place Tags File this under “Ugh, I hate upgrades!” Let’s face it, software companies make…
-
Finding Duplicate Files
We just offered our class on Photoshop Elements Organizer, and many of our students wanted to know how we deal with duplicate photos. Yes, once you get started organizing, you might find you have the same photo in multiple places on your computer. We wrote about this issue in 2017 (you can read those blog…
-
Mark Your Ballot Because Black Lives Matter
Let’s not equivocate: Black Lives Matter. If you are familiar with our art, you know that we have often addressed the issue of race. Take our Language of Color Series: various compositions of colored pencils that expose, upon closer inspection, the often tortured relationship between the races. But this subtlety might be lost on some…