Photoshopping for dummies like me

I don't know about you but I mostly learn software by trying it. The best tactic of all, I find, is to set myself a mission and attempt to figure out how to do it by any means possible. Mostly that means trying lots of things and occasionally - in desperation only - reading help files or web sites that I stumble over.

These bicycle pics illustrate that taking a fairly ordinary item and choosing to frame it just so and then to crop and alter it for impact can result in some interesting images. These were all 35mm film shots, mostly from the 1980s, using a Pentax K2 SLR and Ektachrome.

This gallery also takes some mundane but interesting (to me, anyway) pics from the 1970s and Photoshops them to death, until they are almost unrecognizable. (You could use any similar program, such as the GIMP, of course.)Well I like 'em anyway. They demonstrate the use of filters, mostly, and give you a hint of how trial and error can take you places.

For example I go from here... to here... and end up... there.
I've adjusted contrast and brightness, used a few fave filters like dry brush, cutout and plastic wrap and bingo!




And I go from here to there! And so on. It's infinite, really. I end up with a few new skills, some ideas and a new batch of images I didn't have before. Some of them will get reused in various ways, and the insight I gained in making them will be used again on other images. And I had fun as well.

And when I have fun there's no stopping me. There are many more examples of what can happen when you go crazy with filters, layers and contrast... and someof them are absolute rubbish. But gee I've learned something, anyway ;-)