Good to Wow: Winter Edition, Edited

I've had a lot of fun over the last few days playing around with my new toy. There is still quite a steep learning curve ahead with Photoshop Elements, but because I've worked with Corel Paint for the last 2 years some of it is familiar to me.

I know layers from Corel; however, layer masks are new to me. You know how you can have something on the tip of your tongue? That's how it is with layer masks for me: they're right there on the tip of my knowledge pool. On the edge, just dipping their feet in. I'm hoping 1 or 2 more YouTube tutorials will shove those masks right in with a splash.

That being said, I did nothing fancy with my photos from Monday. But I like how they turned out.

Picture #1:

A reminder of what the SOOC looked like:


I went a little overboard in my first edit, but I still think it looks kinda cool:

I increased the saturation (obviously!). And then I created a layer to which I added a blue hue. I placed that layer under the first layer and then erased the little stream so the blue would show through. I realize that is opposite what you are supposed to do in PSE where you use a mask and paint on black or white, but I did it the Corel way. I'll learn, I know I will.

This next edit is more subtle, and I like it better:

I did the same thing, just not with such intensity.

Picture #2:
The SOOC:


I did several different edits with this one because it was my favorite of the two (don't worry, I'm only going to share a few!).


OK...hold on to your hats! With this one, I applied a Coffeeshop Vintage action. I know! I am proud of me for figuring out how to download and install actions too! Of course, it would probably be prudent to learn the basics before jumping to all the fancy stuff, but, in the words of my oldest daughter, "That is just the way I roll."

So anyway, I applied the action and then I also applied a PSE texture, Old Photograph, maybe? Something like that.

Here's the second edit:

Nothing fancy with this one: just intensified the color and balanced a few things.

And the last. Sort of.

For this one, I used the Guided Editing feature in PSE9 and I performed the Style Match.

I said "sort of" before because this last one is the same exact photo, just framed.

I actually used layer masks for this one, though I couldn't even begin to tell you how to duplicate it. I did it step-by-step while watching a tutorial on layer masks. And, through the tutorial's host, I picked up a bunch of free frames!

So that is it. Maybe next week I'll have the knowledge to be fancy. OR I'll just use some of Ashley's wonderful tips to edit. I probably should have waited on these to edit them using her tutorial, but I was too impatient to play!