CATURDAY ART ~ A CHRISTMAS BAUBLE

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This has to be one of the "most fun images" we've done with Photoshop in a long time!  So, of course, I have to talk a little bit about it ... it started with an image of Zoey over a stock photo of Santa. Then I started adding beads and ornaments and gift packages and just about anything holiday-ish that I could think of ... then I added double borders of red and green with sparkles.  Still not satisfied I smart-blurred the whole picture, deepened and brightened the colors.  It was already an image with about 16-photoshop layers!  But seemed too ordinary and average.  So I started playing with the shape, and when I made it into a fish-eye shape realized it would fit into a circle and a circle is - of course - an ornament!  Fun!  But putting it into the ornament was the hard part.  So the ornament went to the "back" and was made dark, and a copy of the ornament was brought to the front with about 50% opacity, with the fish-eye image as flattened Layer 2, now in the middle.  Play with the inner shadow tools some; play with the outer shadow tools ... blur and soften the edges ... add a little light flare.  Is it perfect?  No.  Is it done?  Never.  Nothing in photoshop is ever really done, you can (like the energizer bunny just keep going, and going ... unless you're a professional, which I'm definitely not).  And in my mind, none are ever perfect either ... there's always a way to make an image bettter, or different ... just try and try again.  Whatever ~ this crazee bauble was tons of fun!