Sites of interest

Browsing as usual I came across some great sites.  Most are tutorials and while I'm using Photoshop Elements 9 some of the tutorials use CS5 and up.  For the CS5+ tutorials, the point of sharing the sites (if you have PSE) is to make you think of a workaround and do some research on missing features.  This will in turn introduce you to features of PSE that you didn't know about or may not have thought about using.

Sounds complicated but if you really want to make full use of your Photoshop you need to learn as much as possible.  Some you may know already but other features might be new to you.  Currently PSE11 has been released but other than a few new features (still not enough for me to spend R1000 to upgrade) the tutorials should work fine with PSE9-PSE11.  Earlier versions, unless the tutorials state, I'm not too certain of.

Have FUN!

http://www.photoshopelementsuser.com/ - this has become a favourite site, doesn't look like we can get the magazine in South Africa although you can order from overseas.  There is a free starter kit with two digital magazine plus videos which cover a wide area of PSE.

http://www.iceflowstudios.com/ - this site has various tutorials for different programs but not for PSE by the looks of it.  Still, the tutorials show you enough to create workarounds as mentioned above.  I always watch tutorials for CS5-6 because some features are shared in PSE.
I especially find the tutorial on creating your own brushes useful: http://www.iceflowstudios.com/2012/tutorials/custom-brushes-in-photoshop/

http://www.digitalcameraworld.com/2012/08/16/photoshop-elements-tips-turn-a-grey-sky-blue/ - here's a quick video tutorial for adding more blue to your sky if your photos suffer from dull skies.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=at0FahxvlCo - Shallow depth of field makes the subject/object stand out more.  Here you are taught how to create Shallow Depth of Field.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bn7xgXxoqek - another tutorial on replacing the sky but in this case Mark Galer shows you how to enhance the sky further.

http://www.texaschicksblogsandpics.com/photoshop-elements-tutorial-problem-photos-open-jpegs-in-acr/ - if you want the control that RAW offers but only have a JPEG image, you can open it in Camera RAW and make changes as if you were working on an original RAW photo.

http://www.marketbay.co.za/?do=index - an online site for buying and selling.

And that's it for now!