I thought I couldn’t love photography any more, but after spending the last couple of years learning the ropes with Photoshop Elements, and even adding a few editing actions from the fabulous Florabella Collection, over the weekend I was blessed by my husband with an upgrade to Photoshop CC. I did not get the full Creative Suite, just the one product, which was the lowest price I could get. I don’t know if I’ll ever be up to for spending $50 a month on photo software, but I am excited to give this upgrade a try – and for $20/month for a year (that’s the length of the contract) you better believe I’m going to do everything I can to get my honey’s money’s worth.
I’ve been messing around with it some, and then yesterday and today I discovered the world of textures that is available **for free** – and I am finding myself very literally adrift in a whole new world, and way of thinking about photos. It’s very hard to wrap my head around the idea of covering up a photo that I’ve worked so hard to learn how to do well – it feels a little like vandalism! But as I began to download what turned into a few hundred textures today,my heart began to race because they were just so pretty, and the endless possibilities unfolding before me were fairly breathtaking.
After I decided I had more than I could ever possibly use, I then had to watch a few video tutorials to even BEGIN to figure out how to make them work. I have a whole new level of appreciation for the photographic artists out there who do graphic art and artistic renderings with these kinds of edits. It is a hugely complex undertaking, and you really have to know a lot in order to find just the right combination of layers and textures and opacity to achieve your vision. I am a lonnnnnnnnnnnnnnnng way from achieving any kind of vision, I can tell you that, but it felt like being in school today: learning, learning, learning, and practicing, practicing, practicing.
Here are a few of my baby-step efforts, taken from a couple of different recent ranch trips. I included the original untouched shot, then my original edits, and finally the texture added creations. Please don’t judge too harshly – I hope to make good progress in the next few months to where I will be completely satisfied with things like natural skin tones and such… oh so much to learn.
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