By Hand or Adobe Photoshop?

Card made by hand

A couple of weeks ago I started taking a online class called Hands on Print through the wonderful San Diego Continuing ED. The teacher is Jane Newcomb and I had taken some of her classes before on site at the North City Campus.

Throughout the semester we will study Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign and Acrobat. Right now we are on the Photoshop unit. The second assignment was to make a collage using layers and Photoshop. Since I have been making all my aunts this year, hand made cards in celebration of their birthdays, I decided to have a go at doing one on my computer.

I decided to make a comparison by using most of the same elements in both cards - on done the old fashioned way with paper, glue and ephemera and one scanning theses elements in to photoshop and manipulating them and making backgrounds from scratch.

The above example is the card I actually sent to my Aunt Sonie today. She will be 89 March 3. (be sure to click on the photo to see it up close). Only my mother and the youngest of the sisters have died. That leaves seven with the oldest living. Aunt Jean, having celebrated her 95 this past January and the youngest, Aunt Lee. celebrating her 78 birthday Feb. 23.

I essential used paper and glue and a metal charm. I printed out a photo I had of my Aunt Sonie after sizing it in Photoshop and cut it out and glued it on. One of the background papers had little metal rivets and added texture. The bird was cut out from a napkin. I could not adjust the colors, their brightness or the hue and saturation. It was made to fit a standard 5x7 card.

Photoshop Card

This is the card made in Photoshop. One of the first differences is that I did not cut out Aunt Sonie's image with a pair of scissors. I "extracted" her image using Photoshop tools. I also added a shadow to her image. I scanned in the ripped brown box material and had to resize it because our canvas for class had to be a 7x10. I should have darkened the shadows in the corrugated material. . . I added an addition sticker with the "Come Sail Away" and stretched it and enlarged the sun sticker. The green background I made exclusive in Photoshop from scratch. I was able to sharpen everything and brighten the colors. Each image was on it's own layer so I could manipulate them independently.

The final evaluation: I believe that each was created and looked best in the venue it was created. I love the card I sent that was made by hand. But, on the computer screen, the card that was created in Photoshop looked best on the screen. The one made by hand and scanned looks washed out on the screen, but looked great as I slid it into an envelope that had a short Happy Birthday note included and sent it off to Florida. Happy Birthday Aunt Sonie!