This freebie took entirely too long and my head is throbbing. I thought it was a good idea but the more I think about it I made it much harder than it had to be. ** smiles ** Story of my life! I doodled some flowers and leaves in Illustrator and printed them out on 8 x 8 textured cardstock. Then I cut them out and photographed them under harsh light to give them a strong shadow. I then brought the photos into Photoshop where I cropped, desaturated and adjusted the levels of each. I then used the pen tool to trace around the shapes and extract them. I then created a shadow layer under the flower layer that resembled the real shadow produced in the original photograph. The idea was to make the flowers and leaves look as much like real cardstock as possible. But I couldn’t flatten them because when you recolor the flower, the shadow would be recolored too! So in this set are 10 flowers and leaves and 10 matching shadows to place under them. You can leave the shadows off if you don’t want to use them and if you like you can adjust the opacity of the shadows if they are too harsh. Here’s an example of how you can layer them and I added one of my buttons to it (click on picture for BIG view).
Does it look realistic? Are the shadows too strong? I’m not convinced. But anyway they are all in .png form and greyscale, ready for you to recolor or add a pattern to!
Also, I have one tiny tiny request. If you have any questions regarding my TOU, how to use the freebies in Photoshop or PSE, or anything else – can you please drop me an email? Sometimes it is hard to track you down when you comment on the blog with a question and I find it so much easier to respond to emails. Speaking of which, I have several to answer right now so I’m gonna post this and get to them so I can head to bed!
37 comments:
Me again - I just love your site! I stumbled upon it be accident - what a happy accident! I really like these flowers and think they look pretty dang real! Thank you!
Too cool, thank you!!
Thanks for sharing. HUgs! (terri - hawaii)
Thanks for sharing. They are very beautiful!
WOW!! that was a lot of work! but it does look awesome!! you did a great job! thank you so much!
You are one talented and generous lady. Thanks muchly!
These are great--all the hard work was definitely worth it. Thanks for sharing!
Way cool, Deb! Thanks!!
These are great - thank you for sharing!
Thank you again for your hard work. They are awesome!
I love these. Thanks. You do such a great job designing.
tyvm Deb for sharing with us and I think the shadows look really good. It's hard to get them to look right sometimes. I usually use the color tool and go a shade darker than the item color and do about 75% opacity. But each thing brings a new challenge an I have never done it with cardstock like you did. What a great idea but you are full of them and I am very thankful for it. Have a great day!
These flowers are fabulous - thank you so much (and for all your hard work)! Love the shading and texture - never thought of going through all that work, but they came out amazingly real!
Wow, that was a lot of work! I think they turned out great though!! Thank you for sharing so much of your time & skills. I just love your stuff!!
They look great! Thank you for the freebie!
Wow, Deb! All that work sure was worth it! And the shadows are (IMO) just as they should be. They look real as can be. Artistry takes work and you are an artist...thank you so much for the time and talent.
Thank you so much for this Freebie. I want to let you know that I posted a link to your blog in CBH Digital Scrapbooking Freebies, under the Page 2 post on Oct. 17, 2009. Thanks again.
love these!!!
Thank you for all the hard work you did to create these really wonderful flowers. It is one of the reasons I really love your freebies. You put so much love and time in to all of your creation. Thank you again for being so generous. You are the best.
Thanks so much for the fun flowers and leaves! :)
Thanks! I think they look great and shadow boxy.
thank you...I think the shadows look good
Deb, thank you very much for sharing your fabulous flowers and leaves. Your hard work and talent are awesome!
Thank you! Your blog post will be advertised on the DigiFree Digital Scrapbooking Freebie search engine today (look for timestamp: 17 Oct [LA 06:00pm, NY 08:00pm] - 18 Oct [UK 01:00am, OZ 11:00am] ).
These are so fun!! Thanks
Barb in Australia
These are so cute and I just know I'm gonna get a lot of use from them. Thank you for your generosity!
they look great Deb, thank you
Wow! Thank you for going to all that time and trouble for us! I think they look great and really appreciate it. Hope your head stops throbbing...you are a true perfectionist :)
So cool! Thank you!
It's going to be fun playing with these; thank you!
Thanks Deb!
I really like the cardstock idea...thanks so much for all your time in creating something that looks wonderful!!!
Love them! Thank you!
Thanks so much for this beautiful freebie.
Thank you!
These are wonderful!
THX, much,
:) Mags
magsgraphics.com
I really like these flowers and think they look pretty. Greatly admire your work. This blog is a must visit for me daily. Thanks for all you do. One of the best of the best. Hope you get enough.
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