Calling all Photoshop-challenged

Is there anything in your photographic practice that might benefit from a bit of post-production improvement?  Is there anything in your fiber art practice that might benefit from being able to audition compositions, colors or shapes?  Most pathetic, is there a copy of Photoshop Elements already loaded on your computer but you don't know how to use it?

If you're like me, you can answer yes to all three questions, but even if you aren't that bad off, you might very well benefit from a class that will teach you how to use that program in your art and your life.  I enrolled in two classes this winter and I am so pleased with what I learned and what I was able to do with it.  Let me show you just one of my new tricks:

My fiber art pal knew she needed to make radical changes to this work in process.  She thought maybe she would cut off the fire section at left and move it to the bottom, radically changing the composition -- but obviously she was reluctant to hack it to pieces if that wasn't going to work.  So I took a picture:

And went home to show her six different alternatives, including:

putting the fire on the bottom

slicing and staggering the landscape section

 adding a new section of burned ground

 adding stylized burned trees

 reversing values

In  an hour on the computer I was able to audition several different approaches, some of which looked crappy and others of which had promise -- all without touching the original.  As you can see, as the afternoon wore on I got more enthusiastic about playing with the program, silhouetting the raw edges, drawing new shapes, simulating more burn.

This is just one thing I learned in my online classes with the Pixeladies, aka Kris Sazaki and Deb Cashatt.  I wrote several posts about the class while it was going on, and I return to the subject because they have just opened the enrollment for a new series of the same classes, in June and July.  I can't recommend this strongly enough and urge you to check out their website and sign up!

These women are not my sisters-in-law and they're not paying me a kickback for referring students.  I'm just a very satisfied customer who thinks you might become another one.