Finishing the ATC
page four of four about creating ATCs, by aisling d'art ©2005
The card was very nearly finished. I liked the colors and the general design of the image, but it needed just a little... something else. I didn't know what, yet.
This is the part of the process that can take forever, since it's trial and error. There's a feeling that you're almost there, and it's only working with a set time limit that prevents the card from becoming a two-week continuing project.
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I remembered an ATC that I made earlier, with a photo of a little girl and her teddy bear. Suddenly, the new card was about a frail and elderly woman, remembering her days as a "flapper" and transposing it over memories of her childhood near San Francisco when she and her father would go to the pond by the Palace of Fine Arts, to feed the birds. |
I still had the layers from my earlier card, so it was easy to copy the layer with the little girl and position her on this new ATC. I liked the effect immediately. |
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Before flattening the layers, I selected that band of natural color where the water meets the land, and I
increased the saturation.
Then, I chose the inverse selection and lightened it, reducing contrast as well.
Finally, I flattened the layers and reduced the image size to fit on a 3" x 5" ATC.
I added the border and text, using the P22-Monet font. I deliberately overlapped the text and the image a little, because I wanted it to look like the lady had written this on the card herself.
Here is the completed card:
right-click on the card to save it to your hard drive
You can print this card at 150 dpi to create you own copy of this 3" x 5" ATC.