For several years I edited my photos with a free program that I downloaded from the internet, called Picasa (http://www.picasa.com/). This program was a joy to use, and so much fun to learn. I consider it the best photo editing program out there, other than the more advanced programs like Photoshop and Lightroom.
I e-mailed one of my pictures to a friend one day and she wrote me back and asked why I didn't remove one of the elements of my picture, as she considered it distracting. I told her that I didn't have that capability, but it did start me thinking about buying a more advanced program, and I was ready for that. Looking into Photoshop, I found that it was far too expensive for me at that time, so I settled for the latest version of Photoshop Elements, which was #8. I ordered it from Cosco for around $83.
I want you to know that I have been having so much fun with this program. There is much to learn, but there's a wonderful new discovery every time I go into the book that I bought to help learn the program (Teach Yourself Visually Photoshop Elements 8).
The pictures that I have posted above are some examples of the kinds of things that you can do with Photoshop. The most fun for me is taking some of the elements from 2 or 3 photographs and creating a whole new picture. The bottom picture I call "Heron at Sunrise". This was taken in St. Petersburg on the water at sunrise. The Heron was taken from one photo and added to the sunrise picture. The 3 parrots are actually 1 green parrot that I've duplicated and changed the colors. The bird on the limb (top) is made from 3 photographs: the sky was in Arizona and I took that one from my car window. The tree around the edges, forming a frame, was from my back yard in Tarpon Springs, and the red bird I found in Wall Springs park on a photowalk there one morning recently. If you are interested, you can check out more of my photos at http://www.trishgreg.com/
