Monthly Archives: December 2019

Photography

Take your Creativity to the Next Level with Adobe Photoshop Elements 2020

Partial Sketch Photo

The reviewer has been compensated in the form of a Best Buy Gift Card and free product. All opinions are my own.

I was going back through my blog posts to one from this day in 2010 where I was working with Adobe Photoshop Elements 7 but was then upgrading to Adobe Photoshop Elements 9. I’m pretty sure that my first ever version of the software was Adobe Photoshop Elements 4.0. I have been using some version of Adobe Photoshop Elements on a daily basis for well over 10 years now and I am excited about using Adobe Photoshop Elements 2020. Adobe Photoshop Elements has always been very accessible for novices to professionals. I love the interface and have learned so much over the years. I took a few Adobe Photoshop classes that have enhanced my knowledge of this program but now so much of what I know how to do can be done with the click of a button.

Exploring this product for this post has made me realize that I have been under utilizing the tools that are included with this product. There is so much more that I can do with it besides cropping images and making thumbnails for my YouTube videos. There are so many built in tools that make turning your photos into something even more amazing super easy. I was playing around with a few and came across the Meme Maker. I found a photo of my kids from the Granite State Comicon this past September. They were both in their costumes looking totally rough and tumble, ready to take on, or save, the world. So I made this image.

mememaker

You can easily pull in one of your exisiting photos and create a meme type image very quickly without having to pull it all together yourself. There were very few steps involved in making the meme. I did edit in in expert mode afterwards to move things and crop it down more, but I could have kept everything as is. There was even an effect called “Poster Edges” that I applied to give the kids more of a painted look with deeper black colors and smoothed features. To me the effect looked like a painted page of a comic book.

I am the keeper of our families photos. I coordinate everyone’s photos online and try to keep everything organized. I’ve also been called upon in the past to scan hundreds of family photos that were very old. Some photo restoration had to be done, too. Luckily there are tools for that as well in Adobe Photoshop Elements 2020. The tool is called Restore old photo and there is also a tool to help you take care of scratches and blemishes. These tools would have saved me so much time in the past where I did it all myself with the expert tools in the program. I usually run in expert mode and try to do everything myself. However, I think that in the future I will take the time to try out the tools that will help me to things quicker. I tried a few of them and was very pleased.

PopOuTWings

One of the Fun Edits that I tried was Out of Bounds. This one is very cool for making action type images from your existing ones. This would be great for sports shots and jumping photos and so much more. I thought that it would be cool to use on this image of Eva and these wings at our local BBQ joint.

I’m merely scratching the surface of what the new Adobe Photoshop Elements 2020 can do. You can also create beautiful images with photo effects, slideshows, and collages powered by the Adobe Sensei AI technology. The Adobe Sensei technology can also help you automate your photo-editing process. Here’s something I could have used early on when I started taking photos of Eva as a baby. See, I kept every single photo as if they were Eva herself. That means every really bad photo, blurry photo and bad expression photo was kept. With the auto photo curation based on quality, faces, and subjects that is powered by Adobe Sensei that would help me clean up all those extra photos that should have been cleared out when I took them in the first place.

Adobe_PhotoshopElements_Fuji_products

With all of my photos I could make many personailized gifts directly through the Adobe Photoshop Elements 2020. I am able to generate, and order over 140 photo gifts and prints, such as wall art, mugs, and phone accessories with the Prints & Gifts service. You simply open the images that you want to use to make your gift. Then you go to the Order Prints option and this brings you to prints and gifts. There you can choose so many options. This is a definite time saver and with all the built in features of Adobe Photoshop Elements 2020 you’ll be sharing your creativity in so many unique ways.

Photo-A-Day

Christmas is for Kids 2019 Donation – Our 11th Year!

Christmas is for Kids Donation

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #00343

For the past 11 years we have given a donation of toys to Christmas is for Kids. This is a local charity that is run by the Council for Children in our city. The need is a great one and Christmas is for Kids serves over 900 families each year with so much. Because I receive many toys for events, for review and often out of the blue I found it important to give back. I also found it important that as a family we save a little money each month to go on a shopping trip to get additional toys from us. The reason I do this part is so that the kids have a sense of ownership of the process and the donation. I also want them to understand that they are helping a child who would have gotten nothing on Christmas morning.

As a family we have been very fortunate and we want to help spread joy and cheer to those who may be less fortunate. For me, joy comes from toys. Growing up I received some of the best toys in the world, Transformers. I would be able to transform every one by Christmas morning (I opened gifts from my grandparents on Christmas Eve). I played with those toys all year long and still have them to this day. I hope that some of these toys here spark that joy and imagination in a child who may receive the toy this Christmas.

We are very grateful to the many companies who have sent us toys to review this year. Some of the toys that we donated were extras from the reviews. Some came from events such as The HoliDAY of Play ad Sweet Suite. Being a Toy Insider Parent writer has made it possible for me to receive so many extra toys this year and many of those went to this donation. We probably have well over 200 toys to donate this year. So much so that we had to move some to the hallway instead of just the stairs. There are even more toys inside the boxes on the side there, too. I can’t wait to deliver them!

After this shot we boxed up all the toys as tightly as possible and we ened up with 8 uge boxes of toys and will probably have to make two trips to make the donation!