Pixeladies Photoshop Class

For the last two months I have been busy working on Photoshop Elements Essentials 1 and 2 with Deb Cashart and Kris Sazaki, who are also know as the Pixeladies. They run these fantastic on-line courses for Photoshop Elements that are suited to Textile artists.

Now I have done these classes before, quite a few years ago but I decided to upgrade to the new 2019 Photoshop Elements. Pixeladies also offered a discount to those who had done the classes previously. I loved the classes, they explain everything so well, with videos showing you the way, step by step. They also answer questions and you can see what the others are doing by logging in every day.

There are some great new features in the latest Photoshop Elements that make things so much easier. I found it much easier doing the classes again because I already knew all about layers and resizing photos etc. Saying that, there was still lots to learn!

Here is a recent photo I had taken of friends at our recent Waverley Patchworkers Retreat.

See that annoying sign behind them, ruining the photo?

Now the sign is gone! So much better.

One of the lessons was about playing with filters. Now that is a rabbit hole where you could play for hours and hours.

I used my latest little art quilt called Windows.

Windows by Linda Steele

Here's what it looked like after I had added some filters. For those who may be interested, the filters I used were Twirl, Mosaic Tiles, Polar Coordinates and Hue/Saturation.

Windows with filters applied

We learnt how to take a section of a photo and add it to another background. I had a photo of my granddaughter Savannah who had recently been to the snow. So, I cut her out using one of the Selection Tools and made a snowy background for her with the brush tools.

Savannah in the snow

We also had to make a postcard using all different photos. I had lots of photos of my granddaughter Anna's recent 1st birthday and so I used them to make a fun postcard. I also used the text tool to write Happy 1st Birthday

Anna's Postcard

Another lesson was adding photos to text, so I used photos that I had of my grandson, Jack. I couldn't leave Jack out after using photos of the two girls!

Jack's Postcard

Well, that was fun and I am so glad that I did the classes. Although the lessons are over and I have the printed lessons to look up instructions if I forget how to do something, the classroom and all the videos are open for another 6 months. So I plan to go over all the lessons again and make sure I remember how to do everything.

I use Photoshop mainly to resize and crop photos but I realise that I could use it so much more than I do for planning quits etc.

I highly recommend the Pixeladies classes, sign up to their newsletter and you can find out when their next classes are.

Bye for now,
Linda