More Special Effects in Photoshop CS3

I'm still working through the lessons for Jessica Sprague's online digital photo editing class, "Photo Editing: Frame-Ups & Special Effects." This morning got through lessons 2, 10 and 11. Here are my efforts!

Selective coloring

digital brushes and burned edges

combination of adding textures, an overlay, and type

I'm having a blast with this class. Most of these techniques I have used before...but it's always good to practice AND I'm learning better ways to do some of them.

I love having a lot of techniques in my "toolbox" for when I'm creating digital scrapbook layouts, either for myself or my clients.

What photos do you have that would lend themselves perfectly to these techniques??

Fun Garden Mosaic Digital Scrapbook Layout

When I have a lot of photos of the flowers in my garden I like to make mosaic-style layouts for my album. However, I had not made one since I stopped paper scrapping several years ago. How well I remember sitting for hours with scissors cutting my photos into small squares (ack!) and then tediously gluing them onto my background paper. I always loved the results, but it was only once in awhile that I would take the amount of time necessary to put a mosaic together.

Well, a couple of days ago I came across Vinnie Pearce's totally cool Blocks Page Mask. All I had to do was position my photos on top of the mask, re-size as desired, and then use a quick Photoshop CS3 shortcut (CNTL-G) to "clip" my photos to the mask. That's IT! The mask also came with a "dirty edges" layer. I removed the dirty edges from the blocks that show my flowers, but left it on for the title blocks. I like how it looks! I then added a dirty edge to my background paper to tie it all together. Kinda reminiscent of what my hands look like after I've spent the afternoon in my garden!

I hope the weather is as pretty in your neck of the woods as it is here in California.

Happy Spring!