Happy St. Patrick's Day!!!

Celebrating St. Paddy's Day the best that a mom can do... this morning went to my dentist, the offices of Dr. Bruce Hartley, got my teeth cleaned and x-rayed all while soaking my hands in a parraffin wrap and receiving a warm neck message. I call him, "my celebrity dentist." Not bad for a dentist visit, huh? The best in the Bay Area!!! He restored my two front teeth from damages acquired during college (um, I won't go there, use your imagination :)) Went home, had a fabulous lunch, now sitting here listening to the Drop Kick Murphies and sipping on some Irish Coffee. Not bad... Life is good and I'm LUCKY!!

Now, for all of you....what is at the end of your rainbow? Well, using Photoshop, it can be anything that you want. Read on to learn how to make a rainbow in photoshop:
(ref: Creating a Rainbow in Photoshop)

This tutorial teaches you to create a rainbow using the gradient tool in photoshop.

STEP 1: Open an image on which you want to add the rainbow. Press D to set default foreground and background colors. Create a new layer by clicking on the 'create a new layer' icon on the layers panel (top for elements, bottom for photoshop)

STEP 2: With the new layer selected, click on the Gradient tool on the tool bar. Now make sure the gradient properties have been:
radial configuration / linear light mode / opacity 100% / dither checked / transparency checked/ (can also refer to the reference to get a visual)

STEP 3: From the presets on the Gradient Editor, select the rainbow looking gradient.

STEP 4: Below the presets, you will see the colored bar with tab stops. Drag the color tabs to reduce the width and opacity using the opacity tabs above the bar. Experiment with them to see what happens. You can also remove tabs as well. It is all about experimentation. I'm still experimenting with this step....

STEP 5: In this step, you can add an orange tab to make a true, ROY.G.BIV rainbow. Honestly, I skipped this step for now because I had to get a refill of Irish Coffee.

STEP 6: All the color tabs should be squished to the right side of the color bar (refer to ref.)

STEP 7: After creating the new gradient, click OK.

STEP 8: having the New Layer highlighted on your layers palette, select the radial gradient from the gradient properties, place the cursor at the bottom left corner and drag it to the top middle edge of the image (play with this one as well, using different positions. You may want the rainbow on the right side of the image instead of the left side)

STEP 9: On the layers panel change the opacity to 30% or lower....I also played with using the soft light blend mode. In the final image if you wish to erase any part of the rainbow that appears out of place, use the eraser tool using a soft brush at around a 50-70% opacity.

And there you go.... a rainbow!!!



And what is FREE??? Doing this paper reminded me of my days during elementary school playtime when we would search the clover patches for that lucky four leaf clover. My daughter and I did that on Saturday, but unfortunately, we did not find any four leaf clover. But after taking the images, I thought that this would make a great background for paper while creating some St. Patrick's Day cards.

So here you go. I hope that you will find some use them. Commercial use allowed (Photographer/S40 regulations and credit is optional; available for limited time). Enjoy!!

Sweet Clover Paper Green
Sweet Clover Paper White
Sweet Clover Paper Unsaturated
Sweet Clovers PNG