Photoshop Beginners Article #2 Photo Editing.

One of the first things you might want to do when learning how to use Photoshop is to transform some of your old photographs making them into colourful new creations you might want to use these as gifts or just for your own creative amusment .There are hundreds of ways to do this using some of the applications found in Photoshop.There are a few main tools that will help you to do this so here I will try and introduce you to a few that I have included in these photoshop tips for beginners

The Filter Menu .
The filter menu allows you to discover all kinds of wonderful effects you can use on your photos.
 You might want the picture to look as though it was painted in pastels or oils for this you can go to Filter/Artistic/Roughpastels for example. The artistic sub menu in Photoshop CS5 has fifteen different effects, so play around and experiment a bit. The Brush Strokes menu has lots of effects to offer aswell . You can blur a background using the Blur option or you may want to use Sharpen there are endless possibilities.

The Smudge and Clone Stamp tools.
These tools can both be found on the tools menu usually found on the left hand side. They both come in handy when touching up a models appearance ,working on things like wrinkles ,scars ,spots ,and moles.The Smudge Tool does exactly what the name implies and will blur and smudge the area ,whereas with the Clone Stamp tool you can copy say a clear bit of skin to cover a pimple. Your subject is guarantied to be smiling with the results.

Image Adjustments.
If you go to the Image menu at the top there are also many things you can use to alter you photo.You can turn an image to black and white or go to Hue/Saturation and alter the amount of  colour in you picture,you can play with the Levels or Curves options or the Vibrance until you find a desired effect for your project.

There are literally thousands of different effects you can achieve using Photoshop CS5 like anything else practice makes perfect ,and you will no doubt have hours of fun along the way.