Throw Back Thursday: Gran Canaria Gem

 Happy New Year everyone! I hope 2021 has been treating everyone better than 2020 ended up being. If not, I'm sure peace will come soon to everyone, at least we hope. I decided to start this new year with a throwback to 2013. I made this shortly after coming back from Spain, but I don't think I ever posted this one. While I was in Spain, I went to the Canary Islands for about 4 months. While I was there, there were stunning views of the ocean and the island from some local beaches. I was fortunate to capture some of that beauty on my camera, as you can see below.

When I got back home, it took a while to get into the groove of things since it took some adjustment to regular life in the USA. I made a few different images, and I decided to then revisit a tutorial I had done with Heatstroke a while ago to make a gem. If you wanted to give it a try, you can find that tutorial on the Paint.NET Forums here. I chose the stock photo above and created the image you see below called Gran Canaria Gem.

You can refer to the tutorial to see exactly how I did it, but since I was on my parent's old Windows XP computer, I would save it every time I made a change. It was difficult to get it right, but at least everything saved without issue. I hope this year is better for everyone and that the virus will stop its rampage everywhere so we can all return to normal life. I'll see you on the next one.