A Digital View

Make Your Own Card

Take a Camera
Here's a photograph of Ewelme Church, taken with a low cost digital camera/web cam (Winter 2001). It doesn't exactly provide the most professional reproduction, but for around £75 with a capacity for 128 pictures and no further film processing costs, has got to be quite good value for money! When used as a web cam connected to a PC, it has been possible to set up on-line video conversations with contacts around the world, including New Zealand. However, that is a subject for discussion in another part of this site.

Take a PC
When a picture has been downloaded from a camera to a PC, it is usually saved in IPG format. This is what is known as a compressed bit map, and is supported by most picture editing programs, and used extensively for the publication of pictures on web sites. Such editing programs are able to provide the means to modify opened pictures or drawings, which is extremely useful if you are not much of a photographer or artist!

The picture below has been digitally enhanced in such a way to give the impression it is a pen and ink sketch. This was done using a Microsoft program called PhotoDraw, which is included in the Office suite of programs. O.K., so this may be regarded as a bit of a cheat, but on the other hand, I didn't have the time to spend an afternoon with my easel trying to reproduce something which would probably have been completely out of proportion, let alone lacking perspective, personality, .......

Prepare your Palette
Now comes the hard bit. By using the same program or similar painting package, you now try to turn it into a watercolour, or even an oil painting if you wish. As you no doubt can tell, there is some little way to go to before all the necessary skills have been fully acquired. On the other hand, you would be surprised at how good this looks when printed on the front of a folded piece of A5 card, and after all, it's hand made!

Of course, the picture doesn't have to be derived from a digital photograph. A suitable scene could be scanned from a book or magazine. So, now you have been given all the inside secrets and you know our address, we look forward to receiving lots of interesting Christmas Cards this year!