I. Am. Overwhelmed.

Let me explain. I asked for Photoshop a couple of years ago for my birthday and have been slowly learning with each occasion to use it. It's Photoshop Elements 5.0 and apparently that's a little different from regular Photoshop.

Like I said, I've been learning bit by bit and have recently found myself very interested in actions. If you know what these are you know what I'm talking about. If you know what a macro is, they're kind of like that. If you don't know what either of those is, let me explain. If you have several steps that you use regularly that you'd like to simplify, you can combine them all into an 'action'. So that when you hit 'go' on said action it runs a bunch of steps with one stroke and speeds and simplifies your process quite a bit.

When I started looking, I found that there are LOTS AND LOTS of actions for regular Photoshop. There are not many out there that are for Elements but they've been slowly popping up. I know next to nothing about actions and once I found them I didn't know how to get them on my computer and use them. So, that brings me to my point. I have been learning bit by bit about Photoshop via Pioneer Woman's tutorials. I just discovered a couple of sites that have PSE (Elements) actions and tutorials. What wonderful sites! I'm so grateful for these women throwing this great information out here for free! I have neither the time nor the money to indulge in actual classes about Photoshop, so these are invaluable to me.

Texas Chicks Blogs and Pics

CoffeeShop Photography

So! To wrap this up. As I learn I'm going to post before and after pictures, well just because I like to torture you and because I'm enjoying them so much I can't help myself. And, I'd like to document my progress (I hope).

And to make sense of my title. There is SO MUCH to learn. My head is swimming. I'd like to learn how to:

Create my own actions

Learn how to use layer masks so I can use other actions to their full capabilities

Better use my camera

That's all I've got right now, but the list is ongoing.

This is what I did today. Not much and it should be subtle. First I adjusted the exposure and then added a little hard light (PW's favorite trick). Not a big difference but I like it.