Our WInner will also get ...
Good Luck and we look forward to 2017 in having you as our continued guest. Enjoy poking around and talk to you soon!
What do we use on our Freebie page? We use the majority of JPG files and occasionally PNG files. So what are they and why are they safe? Both JPG and PNG files are image files that have been compressed. They are not an executable files that would require you to run anything on your computer nor install a program, they are image files. Every file you download off our freebie page is safe. We have scanned the images ourselves and or opened and reworked them and they have gone through many virus scans before getting to you and once again JPG and PNG file extensions are safe. HOWEVER... This does not mean that in the process of downloading files they could not have passed through some third party trying to do you malicious harm. Never get a file of ours through another site such as Pinterest. It is safest to get it from us directly. So how can you tell if the file you downloaded is safe? If you are SURE it is a JPEG/PNG image (after checking the REAL extension of the file) then it poses no threat. To be able to view files' true extensions you must click "Tools" in the upper left part of any explorer window then click "Folder Options". In there you must go to the "View" tab and uncheck "Hide extensions for known file types". Always make sure that someone has not renamed the .JPG or .PNG to .jpg.exe or .png.exe You can also check the files from where you downloaded them to to ensure no file extensions have been added to them. The likelihood of this is extremely slim. Still not sure? Your virus program can also run a scan on the file. Our Zip files; which you will come in contact with through ours stores is a way for us to package many files together so you only download one file package instead of several. Our Zip files contain a text file, and any of the following; PNG/JPG files, AI files, EPS. AI files are for Adobe Illustrator and EPS files can be opened in Corel, Photoshop and AI. AI and EPS files are vector files that are also image files just like a JPG or PNG but instead these files can be resized in the programs mentioned without losing pixel clarity. AI and EPS files are mostly what are called Vector files. Zip files from us are safe because of all the above mentioned and contain no executable files. Good luck with everything and remember to ponder provenience, size and name of any executable you download before you run it. So lets answer the first question. I use EVERYTHING. Yup. WHY? Because I am a graphic Artist that is my business and sometimes I need the versatility of a broad range of graphics programs. Some may do the same thing but one may do it better etc... I use the following; Corel Products, Photoshop Elements, AI (Adobe Illustrator), as well as some additional elements like 3D renderers etc. Now on to the other questions from above. For the general user who likes to scrapbook, card make, Journal Creation, Pocket Letters (TM) etc...Pic Monkey will be great for you. First because its free. Yep free. And if you do more than 1 to 2 images a month than you can join the Pic Monkey Royale. The Royale version gives you more editing tools, its a subscription and they are letting you try it right now for free! The best part? Its super easy to use. Here's the other cool factor; I love the Graphics Fairy Site and get a lot of cool tools and inspiration from Karen & Emily over there. These two ladies use Pic Monkey all the time and do some awesome tutorials on how they did stuff using Pic Monkey. So if I show you how to use it/get it you can use her tutorials and get more stuff as well. So its a win win. Using Pic Monkey you will also be able to use/edit and create with all of the wonderful packages I offer in the store. So first lets start with finding Pic Monkey. Wait what is Pic Monkey again? Simply it is an online website where you input an image, edit it through an online interface, and then save it back to your computer. You are not opening software stored on your computer or downloading anything; it’s all done online. What is super awesome about this feature is that having extensive software programs not only takes up a huge amount of space but also uses a gross amount of memory. This can cause your computer to freeze up and a need for a reboot. Unless your a Mac user in which case that rarely happens lol. I use a PC because I like headaches... … . . . … Uh Yeaaaah ok moving on... Lets get back to where to find Pic Monkey... We are going to start by opening it in another window for you so you can go back and forth from here. Once you have it open be sure to book mark it so you can find it again easily. Click on the words here: Pic Monkey
When pausing over/choosing either Edit, Touch Up, or Collage you will see the screen options above that let you choose where to pull the image you want to edit from. Your computer, Facebook, One Drive or DropBox. When hovering over the Design Choice you can choose a canvas size to start with. If you choose custom, you can make any size. Note you wont be able to do it in inches it will request pixels. Thats ok! We will help you through that. First it will be important to understand the following. If you want to create something that looks great printed you want to use 300 DPI. If you are creating an image for the internet/web commonly you will use 72 or 98 DPI. this will help in determining the quality of the image you wish to create. Now lets convert inches to pixels. The easiest way is using this tool, click on the words... Pixel Tool. Don't forget to book mark this page too. Plug in the inches of the creation you want to make on the inches line. So in this case I want my image to be 2X2 inches (but if you want your image to be say 2X4 you will need to plug in the 4 to get your other axis which is 384). As soon as you plug in your inches the converter will tell you how many pixels and 192 pixels equal 2 inches. Now I know that when I choose Custom on Pic Monkey what to plug in for my pixels when it asks. If I want 2X2 I will type in 192X192 or if I wanted 2X4 I would type in 192X384. You with me? It will look like below! Now click on Make it! Your image sized work space will show up and your editing tools on the left. It will be fun to play around with the different options available so try all kinds of things. If you wish to edit an image that I give you for free off the freebie page you will choose the Edit option instead of custom. So which do I choose for my project? Here are some guidelines.
Which button should I use to get started? I personally use the Edit and Design buttons the most. Here is how to choose one option over another.
This will hopefully give you a clue as to what option; free or paid Pic Monkey would be best for you. It's around $33 for a year for the Royale paid subscription which is the best for the money, you just can't beat it. Now the other option which is not free but you buy a copy and its yours to work with forever and that's Corel Paint Shop Pro. I use this a lot and its my go to Program I LOVE IT. I will be showing how I do things using both Pic Monkey and or Corel most of the time. Pic Monkey because its free and Corel because its very inexpensive compared to Photoshop and just as strong. You can pick it up for around $30-$70 at Corel.com depending on the constant sales they have. I appreciate you stopping by today and hope this helps you determine what will be best for you to work with. Save one of the images you like off the freebie page to your computer and try playing around with it in Pic Monkey. I will give you more tutorials later. Show us what you came up with in Pic Monkey please do by sharing through the contact page you image and how you did it.
I chose Evelyn for her extraordinary beauty. She was 16 in this image and became what would be known today as a supermodel. You can read more about her on other images in the store. I hope you enjoy her. Took a while to get it just right but its still not perfect.
Winner of April Challenge! I am starting to get involved with monthly art challenges for fun. They increase web traffic but most of all it stretches the mind and the artistic talents to try and develop items around these challenges. This particular challenge was to use a special blank template that has 8 squares and a circle center for the image as you see above. The idea is to use a digi stamp from DigiStamps4Joy which in this case is the cute image of the park bench in the center and using the template build something around it. Now my idea was to create a card front that you can print out and color however you like to give to whomever or you let the person you give the card to color it themselves if they are an artist. Adult coloring pages are the rage now and I thought it would be fun to create a card around this craze. The cover prints out onto half of 8X10" paper so that you can fold it in half to make a card like you see above. The other thing of important note is that the image I used from DigiStamps4Joy has specifications on how you can use the image. It states you cannot show the image without it being colored in. This of course is to keep people who didn't buy the rights to it from getting the image. However it presented a problem for me based on how I wanted to create my card as I wanted it to be a coloring image. So I decided wouldn't it be fun to colorize the bench put it center and then let you color the rest of the image. That way we appease our wonderful hosts that their image is safe and we accomplish the look we want as well. Plus it hopefully gives you inspiration on coloring the rest of the card which contains all hand drawn elements. I hope you like it as it was a super fun challenge. I will have the card for sale in the store soon so that you can download it. It will have a white background so the images can't be extracted again for protection of our guest image in the center "the park bench"created by Margy. Note just the bench was created by Margy and all imagery around the bench was hand drawn by me. By the By this card also matches our wonderful Garden Series of Adult coloring pages on purpose! What do you think of it? |
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Life in general is an art and I will show you how to find the beauty in everything you see and do. Subscribe and receive a free weekly download and updates. Archives
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