Blood Red Gypsy Moon.

There’s something about a blood-red moon. The moon is my confidante, my lover. “Moon” is the first word I ever uttered, choosing it over the requisite “da-da”.  This original digital piece is fiery when printed on glass.

On the Mid-Autumn night when the bright moon sheds light over the Miao villages, after a family gathering in the house, every household will come to a vacant field in the mountain forest to sing and dance under the moon.

According to a legend of Miao ethnic group, the moon was a simple and honest young man who was hardworking and brave. A beautiful lady named Shui Qing fell in love with him despite of proposals made by 99 young men from 99 states. After trials given by the sun, she finally tied the knot with the moon and lived happily ever after. In order to remember their love, every generation of Miao minority will dance under the moon, referring to the custom as “Tiao Yue”, or moon dance. The unmarried men and women will look for their love during the dance. Once found, they will express their feelings and vow that their love will stay pure and last like the happiness between the couple – Shui Qing and the moon.

Why can’t I show off this glass tray?

You won’t mind, hopefully, if I show you a tray that we just produced that came out *really* nice.

In case you didn’t know, we can take any image from Vintage Art Download or Vintage Mural and print it on any one of our beautiful products–from glass tiles to clocks to trays to tote bags.

This is an art pastiche I created using old, vintage images. We then printed it on a glass tile mural, and hand-adhered it to one of our newest items–a wooden serving tray with a black satin matte finish. For more information about the tray, click the image. The customer gave it as a wedding gift to her best friend, who loved it.

Favorite Font Sampling

“I am a fontaholic.”  Hand me recovery literature, tell me to keep coming back and take one day at a time. It’s a sickness like any other. With over 100,000 fonts backed up, and 3000 loaded into Windows, it’s safe to say that I love typography–and have nothing but respect for the artists who can spend hours upon hours on each little swash, each delicate flourish.

Like any other typographical twelve-stepper, I have my favorites that tend to pop up overly often when I design. Certainly these fonts aren’t appropriate for all design projects, but I must admit that I have about fifty or so fonts that I will try first “just to see” if they work.

I am a long-time customer of My Fonts–excellent selection, customer service and even their newsletters are terrific. I can play all day with their font previewing feature, and their “What The Font” service has enabled me to identify a couple of very old and obscure fonts for my design projects.

My Fonts has also saved my bacon more than once. After a few devastating computer crashes, I was able to login to my account and download all my past font orders. Sweet.

This sampling is by no means comprehensive. There are probably at least fifty more I could have included, such as Zapfino, but here is just a smattering of some fonts that really rock my world.

Tips for making good high resolution scans

If you want to scan either your own personal art and digitize it for printing, or want to scan/enlarge vintage art for digitizing and/or printing, here are some tips you may find helpful.

First: if there is any digital retouching to be done, do it before you scan–not after. Save the digital file in .tif, not .jpg format, and print it out on the very best printer you have available–preferably laser as opposed to inkjet. (If you are scanning from a physical piece of paper, then obviously this does not apply).

If you only have an inket printer, make sure you print it on matte, not glossy, paper. Go into your printer preferences (rightclick your printer in your control panel) and set the printer on its highest settings (ie resolution).

Now, I have heard it said that when you get into the high range DPI arena, that there is no difference between 1200 DPI and, say, 3600 DPI. Bah-lone-y. Don’t believe it, because it’s simply not true. I have done extensive testing and comparison between the various resolutions, and there is indeed a marked difference between a 1200 DPI and 3600 DPI scan.

If you are scanning a relatively small image (postcard size) as opposed to a larger image (8.5 x 11 size), then you’re going to need every extra pixel you can grab–so go as high resolution as you can. If your computer has the RAM to handle it, scan those small images at about 3600 DPI, or, at the very least, 2400 DPI.

If your scanner has a relatively sophisticated interface, try and configure it if you can by setting the filters to minimize noise, and set the levels (darkness and lightness) by sliding the bar to where the image has the best contrast level. If your TWAIN interface is old or doesn’t offer any filtering, try some of these free TWAIN downloads.

Make sure your scanner’s glass is clean with every use; I use lens cleaner pads. You can also use a soft rag with alcohol. Make sure your print is as even/straight as you can make it–the last thing you want to do is fuss with rotating it around in Photoshop, so avoid that if you can.

After your scan is finished, open it in Photoshop. Depending on the amount of RAM your computer can handle, this can take anywhere from a couple of seconds to many minutes. (To increase the amount of RAM assigned to Photoshop, go to your edit > preferences panel. Also make sure you have at least one scratch disk assigned to Photoshop, ie, a drive other than “C” upon which Photoshop can write temporary data. (I have five scratch disk drives, but most people probably won’t need that many!) This will help speed up Photoshop during heavy duty RAM-sucking jobs. To add a scratch disk, go to edit > preferences > performance, locate the drive you want to use a as a scratch disk and assign it there.)

Look at your scan in 1:1 size. You will see dots, or a moire pattern. There are a couple of ways to get rid of this. I do two things. First, I go to filter > noise > median and adjust the sliding bar until the moire, or dots, blur or dissapate to my satisfaction. Every image will be different, but for extremely large scans I find “5″ a good median number. For added power, however, I use a nifty noise reduction program aptly called “Neat Image.” You can use Neat Image as a standalone software or as a Photoshop plugin.

Don’t forget to embed a color profile in your image. Most popular is sRGB, which is the standard color profile. I use Adobe 1998, which does tend to pump the color up slightly. Go to edit > assign profile in Photoshop. Resave.

Whatever you do, make sure you save your scan in .tiff or .psd format–never .jpg. Jpgs are for web use and quick loading; to prevent loss of data, it is not the proper format in which to save high resolution files. Remember, every time you open and re-save your .jpg file, you lose data. Every time. So make sure you only use .jpg for emailing, web use, etc.

Save your original, untouched scan on a DVD disc.

Questions? Problems? Let me know!

Twitter Contest: Free Giclee Print for Retweets!

Use Twitter? Follow Color Bakery (@ColorBakery) and retweet Color Bakery tweets to win a free Giclee Art Print, 8.5″ x 11″, any Color Bakery image of your choice. (Visit Color Bakery to see all the art gallery choices. Click “select art” from the top navigation menu to view all the galleries). Whether you love stained glass, art nouveau, vintage, dreamscapes, zodiac art, florals or butterflies, Twitter your way to a beautiful free signed print from Color Bakery. Check out our “Dreamscape Series”, our signature collection and our best sellers.

Each giclee inkjet print on 8.5″ x 11″ glossy premium paper. Signed by artist.

Retweet any Color Bakery product or promo tweets ten times and get your free print. Contact us for more information! Limited offer. Ends April 30.

Art Nouveau Zodiac Series

Talking about Art Nouveau, I thought I’d share a relatively new art series based on the Signs of the  Zodiac.

I have long loved the idea of doing an art Zodiac series with an art nouveau and vintage flavor. It’s been in my head now for years to do my own interpretation of the Zodiac, remaining true to the symbolism behind each of the Signs, but with my own take on it. I wanted to bring the personality of each sign into each image yet keep a common flavor throughout. I studied each sign carefully so that the art would remain true to each sign as far as symbolism, color, planet and mood. Of course, some artistic license as far as interpretation came into play

Here, you can see the full Zodiac Art Nouveau Series in larger size. All the images are available for all our custom Color Bakery products.

Color Bakery is our main company, where we print both my art and the work of many other artists on beautiful, custom products–home decor accents, tiles, tile murals, art gifts and art wearables. I know a lot of people may not want the Zodiac Sign keyword on the artwork, so we’ve made it optional. Here are thumbnails of the full series:

Art Nouveau Vectors (freebies!)

It’s safe to say that art nouveau is my favorite art genre. If you enjoy art nouveau and love to create, you’re going to love these beautiful art nouveau vector files. Twenty-six in all, they include art nouveau ladies, birds, motifs, corners, fruit, florals and more. The vectors are in .eps format. Click image to download zip file, and enjoy.

About Photoshop CS4-for those of you on 64 bit.

If you have a 64 bit machine and install Photoshop CS4, there is an option of installing both the 64 and 32 bit versions. Install both, but use the 32 bit version–not the 64. Here’s why:

1. The 64 bit cannot access as much RAM as the 32 bit version. In other words, you have more RAM at your disposal if you run the 32 bit version. This means faster response time with each command.

2. Most likely, your plugins and filters will not work with CS4 64 bit.

From everything I’ve learned and read, there’s simply no reason (as of this writing) to use CS4 64 version. Less RAM, fewer (or no) filter/plugin support. Stick to 32.

Freebie Vintage Opera Poster Download: Musee Grevin

On Vintage Art Download, we offer a huge selection of beautiful, turn of the century French poster art, or “Les Maitres de L’Affiche” (the art of the poster) by the download. (Of course, we have many other categories as well, from botanica to ephemera to adverts to the masters such as Klimt and Van Gogh). And that’s just a small representation of what we offer.

Opera posters in particular are very sought after works; in fact, we print many of these beautiful pieces on tile for our customers as well. And it is an opera poster that we are offering to you today for your enjoyment.

Unlike any other digital download vintage art site on the web, there are no usage restrictions. The only thing we ask is that you do not resell them in their current digital format. That is our only requirement. But other applications are freely permitted. You may print them and sell the prints, make derivative works from them and resell them as many times as you want, design commercial websites and logos with them, etc. There are no licensing or commercial fees. No draconian terms. You can use the art without worrying about a lawyer looking over your shoulder.  And the quality of our images is unparalleled. Nobody else even comes close. Our average resolution is 300 dpi, and our average printout size is 10″ on its long side. However, many of our images are scanned in 2400 dpi, so that means not only amazing prints, but enough data to enlarge safely without lossy.

Click the image below to download the large size. We hope you visit Vintage Art Download often, as we are constantly adding new additions all the time. If you’re an artist (ATC, collagist, digital, scrapbooker, decoupager, crafter) or a commercial printer, historian or simply love to collect beautiful historical art, you’re in for a treat.