What with all the work that I have put into these last three shows I was bound to learn something new. And I did. So I thought I would share a couple with you.

1.This is an old wood working trick. I had several matted prints that had very noticeable dings on the faces of the mats. Normally I would just cut a new mat, but these were 8-ply and really expensive and really hard to cut. What I remembered was that in wood working if you take a small amount of water and apply it to the dented area and then used a steam iron and clean soft cloth you could raise the dent as long as the fibers are not broken. So I took a Q-tip, wet it and dabbed distilled water on the dented areas and let it soak in. I then took my steam iron, set to the highest temperature, and proceeded to apply steam heat through a clean soft white towel. After a few minutes the dents were gone. I don’t know how often you get dings in your mats, but the next time you can try this solution.

2. For white mats a white gum rubber eraser will remove most finger prints and accidental dirt spots.

3. This is for Photoshop. While working on an image I just couldn’t get the colors toned down to what I wanted. They were just too punchy and unrealistic. I tried all the standard methods, desaturation, selective color, curves. Nothing gave me what I wanted. I was really frustrated and just groping around trying different things. What I found completely by accident follows:

Create a new layer at the top of the stack and fill with white. Change the blend mode to “color”. You’ll be really surprised at what happens. You will have a pretty decent grayscale image. Go figure. Now here is where it gets really interesting. When you set the opacity to 20% you will have toned down your colors substantially. Use the opacity slider to adjust the colors to your liking.

I haven’t figured out how this works yet, but I’m going to make an action for it because it is really useful. Let me know if you are interested in the action and I will post it. I hope to have a tip on using the threshold function for masking soon.

Best to all.

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What an experience. From start to finish if something could go wrong it would go wrong. What is indelibly etched into my psyche is that you should test every aspect of your display, down to the smallest detail, before you leave home.

All in all, it was a great experience. From building the display panels, to figuring out a support system, to actually setting up at the art festival. I received very good response to my work and had very good sales, even though the regulars said that they couldn’t remember a festival that was this slow.

I was invited back for the Christmas art festival and will start working on getting ready tomorrow. I found that I could have used a lot more inventory. So in the next few days I will go into more detail as I am just dog tired from this ordeal….it took over a month to get everything done.

Hope that everyone is well.