Layers

I bought Photoshop Elements 6 for Blake a couple of years ago as a father's day present. He was always messing with landscape and wildlife pictures he had taken in our Kodak software, and I wanted to upgrade for him. I don't think he's used Elements except maybe once.

I have been afraid of it. It's pretty complicated and I wasn't sure how to use it. I could do graphics on it (I made the header of the blog with it), but I was scared to use it when in it came to pictures.

Then I found The Pioneer Woman: http://thepioneerwoman.com/. She's a woman who was from the city, met a cowboy, got married and had lots of babies, and now they all live happily ever after on a ranch in Oklahoma. She cooks and homeschools and takes lots and lots of pictures. She has these contributors on her website, and they have all these tutorials about using Photoshop. I am learning to adapt some of their instructions for Elements since I don't have the full blown version of Photoshop. I am learning slowly but surely.

I made Cooper and Evan's birthday invites with Elements. This year's Christmas card was made in Elements after I figured out how to fade black around the photos.

And now, I am learning more about layers. Here's what I did to a pic of Cooper this morning. It started out as an average shot of Cooper with his face painted...

And then I added a layer, made it black and white, then used the eraser tool to erase the color in Cooper's eyes and on the snake...

Cool, right? I know, it's nothing you haven't seen before by someone else. But, I did it. After having the program for two years. It is an accomplishment, I promise.