The results are in for the creative family photo competition for January.
Corel Most Creative Family Photo Competition
Results of the January Competition
Well we have a winner for January of the Corel Snapfire software: Ursula Freer of Santa Fe, New Mexico, with the work Galicia
Galicia (the place I was born, Poland then, Russia later, Ukraine now.)
This family photos is a composite of some ancient badly faded photos of my ancestors, their home and scans of old letters. Since the photos were beyond repair I decided to keep the frame, background and mushrooms (all reminiscent of the surroundings) similarly soft to they would work together.
This work struck everyone here as a great way to present family photos in a very powerful way.
A runner up I want to feature is by Lindy Leslie-Bitterli of Sykesville, Maryland with her work 4th Birthday 
These are pictures of my little boy which I took with a digital Olympus camera on his 4th Birthday.
I took each photo, resized them by 50% and then using the FREEHAND SELECTION tool, feathered by 40, extracted the part of the photo I wanted to use. I created a blank transparent canvas, then copied each selection and pasted onto the new canvas. I also use the ONE STEP NOISE REMOVAL tool to get rid of any graininess in the photos. I then applied a DROP SHADOW to each photo. I created a gradient, using the colors from the pictures, flood filled my background and then added a paper texture to the gradient background. I added his name, selecting a font that I thought was most suitable, an extra picture which I tubed (the snake) and lastly added a border.
It is a great way to combine images in a way kids and family will love. Well done.
Get your entries in for February.