Photoshop Elements.

I am loving playing around with Elements. I can take a snapshot, a decent shot but one where the background is too busy, or the whole thing is in focus instead of just the subject, or one that is cute but not fab, and whammo!

Suddenly the busy background is gone, the focus is on the subject, not the stuff behind them, and that cute snap is a great framable shot.

Like these:

Downtown Anchorage has salmon sculptures. I really like this one:



But it's on a busy street and there is no good background. So I did this...

A little weird, but the focus is definitely on the fish sculpture. When I have some more time I am going to experiment with photos and images of water and photoshop the sculpture onto them.

I like this picture of Tess, but it's a too dark and gloomy, and when I tried to lighten it up, Tess' red shirt got way too bright for the rest of the photo.

I messed around with it for a while, and managed to dull down just a bit her red shirt, while brightening her face (I am not thrilled with the dodge and burn tools, because they don't seem to work the same way twice. I am sure that is me, not the program...).

I also sharpened it to give it a grainy feel. I didn't originally plan to make it that grainy and sharp, but I really like the way it turned out.

There are also some really awesome tools that completely change a photo. I have this shot of a path through the woods. Nice shot...



I used the Posterize filter and the result is kinda fun, the birch tree trunk is suddenly turquoisy:

Then I noticed the impressionist brush tool. My new favorite toy!

I am sure you will see more of landscapes altered with that impressionist brush, because it's so much fun to play with.