After exploring the Effects menu we then worked with original photos to turn them into paintings. Then we made frames for those works of art. I used two duck pond photos taken this spring outside my office. I've used colors in the frames to coordinate with the 'paintings'.

That was so much fun that I used one of my favorite duck pond photos for next painting. The frame has been colorized according to the lesson to better complement this painting.

I wanted to try one more image, this one a snow scene, to see how the effect would work. I took the photo last January one morning when I let my dog out. A new snow is always so pretty. When I did the painted version you'll notice that I added some color - a tubed cardinal, since I see them down there all the time. Unfortunately, they do not stay put long enough for me to run in and get the camera!

I made two versions of the frame shown. The one shown below is the darker outer frame as I felt that it forced the view inward into the painting. The other one, made first, has a lighter outer frame and that seemed to draw my eyes outward toward the edges. The frames are made on three layers. Each has a drop shadow with vertical and horizontal of 0, opacity of 55 or 65, and blur of 11 - 13. For the outer frame I used a darker gray and the bark texture. Then I added a soft bevel preset I have in Super Blade Pro.

The two versions of the frame are shown in below.

If you would like my dark bark frame, you may download it HERE. Place this frame in you PSP7 Frames folder.

If you would like my lighter bark frame, you may download it HERE. Place this frame in you PSP7 Frames folder.

The last part of the lesson was on various text effects. The first was on doing cutout text where the first one did not have the fill box checked and the second version did. I used a complimentary color for that one.

We also made a motion text, without the use of external plugins - imagine that! It actually makes me a bit dizzy to look at it!

For the next text effect we experimented with both the outer bevel and inner bevel. Since I don't often use the outer bevel this was good to be doing the comparison. While I've added a tube of Choctaw's head to both the examples, I learned that I could only add an inner bevel to the tube as it would have to be a selection on a background in order for the outer bevel to work. So, poor little Choctaw has only received an inner bevel on each of the examples.

For the last part of the lesson we made metallic text. After doing the first, or basic gold, I then accepted the challenge to do some with texture effects. The first texture used the Mosaic - Glass effect and the second used the Sandstone effect - Custom 3 preset.

This was a fun class and I learned many new things - but then I always do. Thank you Sally and Ron for all you do to share your knowledge with us - and for making it so enjoyable along the way! I'm looking forward to the Master class in November. In the meantime...