Chocolate Photoshop Lessons

So I love photography, always have.  It turns out I love photographers too, but that's another story.  When I was in high school I worked at a camera store.  I even did a business project on starting my own camera and photography business.  Yep.   I still have the project board to prove it.  It's at my mom's house in the guest bedroom.  It's not on display of course, that would be weird.  ANYWAY.   So I love photography.  That means I like taking the photos.  Now, that love kinda got pushed to the back burner when I MARRIED A PRO .  Yeah.  Carrying around your little point and shoot while the boy carries around the heaviest camera I've ever seen and talks about foreign lingo like "f-stop" and "raw"... well it makes you feel like you really don't need to carry that point and shoot anymore, after all, you have your own personal photographer now.  Needless to say, it's been a few years since I've uploaded hundreds of photos to my computer at one time.  It's sad I know, but I'm coming back!  I've recently taken over one of Shane's cameras... hehe.  I'm excited about reclaiming an old hobby.

I'm learning a few things.  In my old life, "photoshop" wasn't anything I'd ever heard of.  Sure, I would lighten pictures and fix some contrast here and there with the uploader, but it was nothing serious.  Now I've become a Mac convert.  Why not keep packing in the knowledge.  Overload?  Who cares!  My interest is peaked.  I want to know everything about making all pictures beautiful.  I learned a little about layers, opacity and the command+j function through some research tonight but I couldn't really make any of my stuff look cool. I decided to get serious and ask my in-house teacher a little about this thing called Photoshop.  I was going to blog about the above photo's subject, chocolate covered pretzels, but I'll save that for another day.... this is about the photo itself.  This photo hasn't been cropped.  I like it like it is, as far as it's border goes.  It is a little dark though.  That's where the boy came in and showed me some ropes....

Whether I remember those ropes tomorrow.... well we'll see.  I think a Photoshop for Dummies book is in my future.  Do any of you use Photoshop?  How did you learn?  This may take a while, as I'm still trying to master the PowerBook!

~Fran