La Belle Assemblie June 1807

Ladies' Monthly Museum, May 1816

I've scanned these pictures and articles from a compilation book- therefore, there is some distortion around the "gutter" area (middle of the book). Luckily, I have a very good scanner and accompanying application for it, which lessens the problems.

The scanner/printer/fax machine is really great. I dropped it when I was moving last October "CRASH! Tinkle-clunk". Goodbye lovely printer-scanner! So I bought another, exactly the same.  Not too expensive, about $150.00 with shipping.

My first ever scanner (1990), which was only a scanner! cost $2,000.00 dollars. It was a bit larger, but other than that, does not compare to my current one.

Ladies' Monthly Museum 1816 April

April 1816 Ladies' Monthly Museum Fashion

Ladies' Monthly Museum Scan

Morning & Evening Costumes for March 1816

February 1816

Scan of Lady's Monthly Museum, Music & Fashion

Creating a Cut-out Lace picture

Layer 3 above Lace Background.

Making a Lace design/insert

I'll start with just a "shape" from the Photoshop Elements shape files.

Open your finished "lace" Photoshop.  It should have 2 layers: the dark-colored background and the white "lace".

1)  Create a new layer (3) above layer 2. 

2)  Make sure your pallet has "white" as the top color.


3)  Use the SHAPE tool to create a suitable insert.  I chose a fleur-de-lis.

4)  Go to LAYERS and apply:  Simplify Layer.  SAVE the object in SELECT filter.

Fleur-de-lis: simplified

5)  SELECT the object (fleur-de-lis)
    
Go to  EDIT filter and assign 50% Opacity.
    
Assign FILL pallet with PATTERN.
    
For the Pattern: Chose the ARTIST's SURFACES pallet, and apply: GAUZE preset (64x64 pixels, greyscale to the fleur-de-lis).  Now the fleur-de-lis looks a bit like Linen.

Fleur-de-lis with "gauze" filter added.

6) Select Object (fleur-de-lis)
7)  Go to EDIT filter and select STROKE.  Chose a width proportional to your design.  On this one I chose 6 pixels on the OUTSIDE the object.
 
Opacity: 100% (of the preset 50% GRAY).  APPLY. 
The outline should be slightly grey.

8)  Save the outline selection, Select the Outline. 

Fleur-de-lis with OUTLINE (greyish) added outside.

9)  Go to FILTER:  Add Noise.  
Set Add Noise to monochromatic, set Distribution: Uniform, Noise Amount:  25%.  

APPLY to outline of object.

10)  Go to FILTER: Motion Blur.  
Set Motion Blur to 0 Angle, 5 Pixels long.  APPLY

Fleur-de-lis with "Noise" added, and then 5 pix Motion Blur

11)  Before next step make your Pallets have the  25% grey on top, 50% grey background.

12)   Go to FILTER: Sketch: BAS RELIEF
        Chose: Detail: 15;  Smoothness: 2

Bas Relief & Sharpen applied

13)  Go to ENHANCE filter.  Apply: Auto Sharpen (or sharpen as much as you like. The outline is supposed to look as if it were embroidered.)

14)  In ENHANCE filter go to: Adjust Lighting: LEVELS.  In the (default) RGB channel, adjust the Far right lightness setting to 215.  
Adjust the Middle Lightness Setting to 0.90 
Leave other settings at default.

LEVELS adjustment added

 15)  To add some wrinkles, Apply the DISTORT: Liquify filter, Brush Size: 100, Brush Pressure: 20  
(Obviously the size & pressure are adjusted with the size & type of the picture you are making). 

Now the Design Image is starting to look a little 3-Dimensional.

Liquify Filter (20%) added.

I'll do something more challenging & fun tomorrow. 

Making Lace in Photoshop/Photoshop Elements 6

I'm going to try to explain how I made the lace & cut-out cover, for those who are interested.

I used Photoshop Elements #6, so I think most anyone could reproduce the effects I managed.

Hmm. Where to start?  Well, let's start with the small (background) lace:

Finished "Background" of lace, without inserts or cut-outs.

STEP 1:  Set pallet to whatever cover background you want, with WHITE as the Top color.

Fill layer with your dark color, then duplicate layer.


On duplicated layer go to "TEXTURE" filter.

Use "Texture": Stained Glass.

Cell size: 8,   Border thickness: 6

Light intensity: 0 

(Border color should be White)

"Stained Glass" filter applied to blue copy of background.

"Select" dark background color, then use "Similar" tool to select ALL of the dark color.

DELETE dark background color (color will show through from the layer beneath).

Switch pallet background color to White, foreground color to Dark or Black

Select the Stained Glass "border".  [ & SAVE in "select" filter.]

Apply ARTISTIC: Film Grain to selected white border (aka: Lace)


Set Film Grain to: 15,  Highlight Area: 4
Intensity: 1

(Note: the "add noise" filter can also be used if you want a coarser-looking Lace)

Stained Glass with "FILM GRAIN" added to White Border.

Apply BLUR Filter: "Motion Blur"

Motion Blur:  Distance 3 to 5 pixels, Angle:  -45

Apply SHARPEN MORE Filter

White border (lace) with Film Grain Blurred & then Sharpened.

(Switch back your pallet with the original dark color underneath the white.)

Filter:

Sketch: Bas Relief  (this gives the lace  3-dimensional look)


Settings:  15,  Smoothness: 2

Apply Sharpen MORE filter again. 

Apply Filter: "Remove Color" to the lace.

BAS RELIEF applied to white border (LACE) before applying LEVELS.

In the LEVELS filter, "Adjust-Lighten" the brightness:

Right Input Levels:  212
Middle Input Level: 1.80
All other levels remain at Zero

"Remove Color" again (in lace) if you wish. Having the "texture" be the color of the background looks very nice, too.

Lace is lightened in "LEVELS" Filter.

AND THERE YOU HAVE YOUR BASIC "LACE" BACKGROUND, just waiting for designs.

You can easily change the background color in the Background layer, and the top white/shadow layer stays the same.

NEXT: Applying different designs!  NOW we get to the really fun part!

Costume Parisien

Book Covers for "Bride From A Hat"

Back Cover

Cover for my story "Bride From A Hat".  It is supposed to look like a lace veil. The woman is taken from a Costume Parisien fashion plate shown elsewhere on this blog.  The story is http://highwaymansclub.blogspot.com/  The blog is named after the London Club begun by the hero. To join, one must rob a coach, but only for a trifle: a lock of hair, a lady's glove, or a kiss from a pretty girl.  All in good fun, tho some grumpy old people have complained...

Early French Revolution Dresses

Some of these dresses were made of such sheer fabric (often muslin) the ladies claimed the entire dress would fit in a teacup.

More Early French Republic Fashion Plates for MEN

Costume Parisien, An. 7.

Costume Parisien, An. 7

Costume Parisien: Men

Costume Parisien An.11

Costume Parisien, very early pub. 1797.

Frenchmen Fashion Plates, Empire

Here are a couple of sexy Frenchmen one of whom seem to be in quite a hurry.

Costume Parisien 1807

Costume Parisien Fashion Plate

A couple from 1814. Gentleman looks like Cary Grant!

Costumes Parisien, 1814

A couple more fashion prints from Costumes Parisien, these with couples. Funny mixture of formal & informal.  That is, who would wear a straw hat and carry a parasol to a Ball?  But maybe that was the fashion then!

Costume Parisien Empire Fashion Plate

French Empire Fashion Plate

While looking thru my files for scans that might make a nice "Regency Valentine's Day Card" I found nested file-within-file a folder labeled "MISC Scans". Full of gorgeous scans, mostly of French fashion plates. So I am looking forward to hours of nit-picky photoshop fun.  Heh.

Georgette Heyer Valentine's Day Card: Powder & Patch

Regency Valentine's Day Card: Jane Austen Pride & Prejudice

Regency Valentines Day Card. Darcy's proposal to Elizabeth

Georgette Heyer: These Old Shades for Valentine's Day

I'm feeling kind of 'meh' today, colors seem washed-out. We had a very pretty snow from last night which meant a "late" day for school. Fun. Then it warmed up a couple of degrees and began drizzling- melted the pretty snow.  So I decided to play around with my favorite Heyer Book Cover, the Pan paperback edition:

"Monseigneur, I would much rather be the last woman then the first."
"Little one," he said very low "since you will stoop to wed me, I pledge you my word that you shall not in the future have cause to regret it."

Photoshop Ice Sculpture

Making A Clear (Ice or Crystal-like)

Object in Photoshop Elements

 1.     Find a picture you’d like to convert.  Like a Regency Mail Coach.

2.    Select & save selected item in foreground, delete background. Best to have individual selections of different parts, such as “selection of horses”, “Selection of Coach WHEELS”, “selection of coach w/o wheels”, “Selection of People”, so you can control the amount and direction of light source.

3.   Use “Sharpen” filter for details you want to be prominent.  Use “Reduce Noise” filter, and/or eraser to smooth out areas you want to look smooth & icy.

4.   Set your pallet Background Color to Dark Ice-Blue/light blue, or Black/light grey. It doesn’t matter what color is on top of pallets.

5.    Select objects.  In this case I just selected the horses.

 6.   Go to “Sketch” filter and apply “Bas Relief”, with “detail” at max and the “smoothness” feature adjusted to your preference (about 1/3 of the way up the scale for this picture).  Use “left” or “right” light-source to highlight.  Other light sources (upper left, bottom, etc) don’t seem to work too well.

 









7.    When you’ve made the whole drawing into a “Bas Relief”, duplicate it 2 times.   Make the 2 top layers invisible.

8.  On your LAYERS Pallet, select the bottom layer (#1) of the Bas Relief Object. Go to the upper right corner of the LAYERS pallet and check “Luminosity” filter. Leave “opacity” at 100% for now.  Later you can adjust it to 75-85% if needed.

 9.   Leave the “Luminosity” layer visible.

10.  Select the layer directly above the “Luminosity” layer (layer 2). 

11. Go to upper right menu on this LAYERS pallet and click on “Screen” if your background is dark.  Slide the opacity scale to about 50% or lower, depending on how much transparent area you want.  This works best with darker backgrounds. This will lighten the already light areas as well as make translucent areas.  If you want completely transparent area you can simply erase or delete the area. 

11b.  If your background will be light, use the "Darken" mode along with adjusting opacity down.

12.  Place a colorful image in the Background.  I chose an old map of England.

13. Here is the stage-coach with a different background:

14.  To add some rainbow-sparkle, SELECT the 3^rd (so far unused) stage coach layer.

15. Go to the “Effects” menu/pallet.  Chose a highly   colorful spectrum Effect.  I chose “Nebula” for this sample, tho I don’t think the latest Photoshop Elements has it (I’m still using #6).

 16.  Lower the OPACITY to around 15-25%.  This can go under or over the other stagecoach filters, whichever looks best to you.

So the important filters to use in making an object

translucent are:  Sketch/Bas Relief, "Luminosity" and/or 

"Screen" or "Darken" with very low (about 15%) Opacity.

 After than you can do anything.