The Magic Of Photoshop

I bought the Photoshop Elements program several months ago and I am just now starting to learn how to use it. Unlike Mom and her camera, reading the instruction manual has not helped. When I first bought it, I thought it would be neat to make different collages of all the photos I have taken of our yearly trips to the Oregon coast and of family gatherings. I installed the program and thought "no problem". I've used other photo programs before with no problem, but this one was very different. I skimmed through the manual, but there was so much information, it was confusing. Then I thought maybe I could figure it out without the manual. WRONG! I'm fairly computer savvy, but this program really got to me. So I gave up trying and that was that. Until.... Thanksgiving. I had taken all these photos of the family and there were so many good ones to share. They couldn't stay hidden on the computer forever. Yeah, I published some on an on-line photo album site, but that is so impersonal. I wanted them to be more personalized and have more meaning. I decided one day to use some of my computer skills and put together a DVD of Carter for Eric and Jennifer for Christmas. I got all the pictures uploaded to the computer and "created" a DVD....music included. But it needed and "Title" page. I contacted my sister Michelle to create something for me. She has, however, created all the headers for all our families blogs. I asked her how she created them and she told me she used the Photoshop Elements program. The same one I had given up on several months earlier. We talked about it and discovered we had similar troubles with the instructions. She also said she took an online tutorial for digital scrap booking, using Photoshop. She created the page and emailed it to me along with the link for her "class" and several websites that sold digital kits. I did a lot of research with those links and several others I found, but didn't want to pay for classes. So.......I confronted this program that had scared me away all those months ago. I bought a couple different kits and went at it. I clicked on this and clicked on that. This was easy! Why did it scare me away before? I didn't need any classes. All I needed was patience and a little practice. I've done a few simple layouts using simple techniques including my own header for my blog. But today I tried a couple of different elements of the program and turned

this.......

Into this.......

I hope you like it. TTFN..............