Picasa

One of the things I find when teaching Photoshop Elements is that for many people it is just too overwhelming and too feature rich.  After an intensive 2 day course, some users walk away dazed and almost unable to remember anything.  The majority of people on the street just want to be able to crop their photos, remove redeye and improve the lighting.

I am now looking at giving one day courses using Picasa which is really all that most people need to clean up their photos.  It's not good enough for serious photo manipulation but it's amazing how you can create some really fun versions of a photo that look very professional.

On our recent trip to Indonesia my husband took some wonderful pictures of dragonflies.  The photo I am using here is really sharp which is always my main criteria for producing good quality results.

Here is some variations using Picasa:

With this first version I went through the follow steps:

1. Soft Focus under the first Image Processing tab.
2. Cross Process under the second Image Processing tab.
3. I cropped it using the photos current ratio (first tab).
4. Finally I exported it by going to File>Export Picture to Folder..., reducing the size and adding a watermark.

With this version I:

1. Added a Soft Focus under the first Image Processing tab.
2. Then I applied a Focal B&W.
3. Upped the saturation by going to Saturation.
4. Finally cropped the photo and exported it with a watermark.

With this version I:

1. Cropped the picture first using the photo's ratio.
2. Applied a beige vignette Image Process.
3. Finally I exported it and added a watermark.

With this final version I:

1. Applied the Image Process HDR-ish.
2. Cropped it using the photo's ration.
3. Applied the Image Process Museum Matte.
4. Finally exported it and added a watermark.

Not bad for a free piece of software!

Dragonfly

What I love about PSE is that even if you have a picture which perhaps isn't the best you can still do something interesting with it.  I managed to get this picture of a dragonfly with my little point-and-click camera and I was disappointed that the leaf was obscuring part of it but I wanted to see what I could do with it.  It's a beautiful summer day in an otherwise wet season so I wanted something to reflect summer.

Here is the original:

Here is what I did:

I made it look like an old vintage picture and I would be quite happy to print that on a thank you card and send it to a friend.  The texture is by Jerry (and if you use a lot of his textures don't forget to leave him a donation - he does great work).