Color temperature is tougher in decorating because you're working with color in a three-dimensional realm. 99.9% of color information available does not addresses color from a three-dimensional scope. That presents many opportunities to deconstruct color and think about it more truthfully and accurately. Someone suggested I start by selecting a "warm" or "cool" palette to help harmonize the rooms. That's one way to look at. Another is to use that level of contrast. Color is about relationships and to make believe that only the cool colors can play well with other cool colors and warm with warm is not the truth of how color works. It's an easier approach, for sure, but it is by no means the only approach. It could be argued that the rule of thumb of cool with cool and warm with warm really isn't a level of color "harmony" at all -- it just matches. It's the very same with intensity. Keeping to all one intensity or chromatic value room to room isn't THE way to do it. It's just one way to color a house. Juxtaposing a clearer color next to a more muted color can indeed make site lines that are interesting and help define architecture -- it's a way to meet certain expectations. how does dark, old woodwork factor into the warm/cool thing? It's a huge factor. Ya know, I'm always saying that paint does not have to be last, you don't have to have an inspiration piece and *pulling a color* is just one way to look at a color challenge. To say that paint color should always be last is implying that it could be first. Paint color can never be first. Not possible. This is where your woodwork comes into play. Like I said before, color is about relationships and you can start building color relationships once you have the non-transient elements established in the room. The woodwork, the flooring, cabinetry, bookshelves, etc. From those non-transient factors, you can build a shell that will gracefully house whatever contents you want to throw in there. Whatever transient elements you choose are going to "go with" the non transient elements of the room -- the shell. You're not going to choose a sofa that pales off once it's set on your hardwoods. So logically, if you craft the wall color to *harmonize* with the known non-transient elements, you're gonna be fine. It's not necessary to have everything in place to paint a room. Can if ya want, but far too many people put off coloring their environment waiting for that last piece of fluff to be installed. It might be right around the corner -- or it might be years off in the future. Waiting on a *thing* that may or may not ever materialize before you bring color into your experience is a waste of architecture, and time, IMHO. You can color for your now. When it comes to paint color per se, you have to be aware of what "warm" and "cool" really means. In situ undertone and color temperature is revealed when the wall color is juxtaposed to the other colors and elements and exposed to the inherent light in the space. What makes a color "cool" or "warm" is determined when it's experienced in the three-dimensional space it will reside. Outside of that experience, on it's own, whether a color is labeled "warm" or "cool" by some other sets of eyeballs is irrelevant to you and your three-dimensional space. Labeling a paint color as warm or cool can be useful but it's not a fact. It's just a temporary way to organize and categorize paint chips for the preliminary stages of coloring. But the blue-greens, which I thought would give the rooms a sense of peacefulness, actually seem to do the opposite when placed up against the dark reddish wood. I'm guessing it's because of the high contrast? According to your tolerance, it's the opposite of peacefulness. To someone else that playing of contrasts would be a spectacular way to set off, highlight, pay homage to the fabulous woodwork. So for you, a calmer flavor of color harmony would be best. For someone else the amped up vibration of the blue-green to the reddish wood is fabulousness. So to say that keeping an even keel of any level of color contrast is the best way to go about coloring environments would be correct in some instances, but not all. What's the saying....??? even a broken clock is right twice a day.... kinda the same thing.

You can see my picture of the Maltese puppy above. I continued to play with it, by adding spruce, gifts and snow picture tubes. When I was finished, I saved it to jpeg. It wasn't until I tried to email the picture to my sister that I realized the file size had grown to 612kb, with the additional picture tubes. Is this normal for a file size to increase with the addition of picture tubes or is there a step I missed? Until just recently, I used PSP 8 only for editing my pictures and knew little about the programs other functions such as layers, masks etc., so I hope my question doensn't sound too ridiculous. Judy

The wet saw is the LAST place to cut corners on a tile job. Great tile jobs are about three things: the tile, the precision lay, and the correctly centered layout. I did stained glass for years and am an expert at score and snap skills, but when I did my tiling I bit the bullet and bought a $100 wet tile saw with DIAMOND blade, even for my ceramic tile. The control you get in precision cuts will make all the difference in how your tile job looks, and you are going to look at that tile job several times a day for many years!!! Just a warning, the $100 saw worked fine, but was noisy and messy. I had to do it in a walk in shower since it was too cold to do it outdoors. The cheaper wet saws (under several hundred dollars price range) throw water when they cut, so just be prepared to have a loud, wet place to do your cutting. Take your time and let the blade work at the speed it can. Keep a water hose nearby to flush the dust off the table surface between cuts and this will help a lot with sliding on the table and keeping tiles from getting scratched from previous fragments. Wet saw - worth every penny in a tile job.

All you need to do is play with the program and eventually you can figure it out. That is how I learned but I do not know everyting. As far as I know you can change the color of the walls in several ways: One way is: Open the photograph select the magic wand tool click in the area to be changed now you can press delete and the area will get white (optional) or just keep the old color under the new layers. When the area is still selected you go to edit/fill and ok. the area automaticly will get the color that you have in the foreground or in the background. You could use the paint brush instead the fill command and start applying the color. (do you know how to select and change colors?) another way is when the area is selected, you go to layer/new fill layer/and solid color or pattern/ok and ok again after selecting the color you want. The advantage of using this way (by layers) is that you can change the layers easily: layer/change layer content/and solid color or pattern/ok and ok after selecting what you want. You can also use the lazo tool to select the area to be changed. If it is an square, the easiest way to select is using the rectangular marquee tool. Hopefully Lindybarts is here later and she can explain it better. good luck