Playing with Pictures

Okay...so I finally took one of my Christmas gifts out of its box. What can I say - priorities. There were a lot of other pressing items that needed my attention. Technically, there still are but I just needed to take a break.

I was blessed with the gift of Adobe Photoshop Elements 8 and Adobe Premiere Elements 8. No it isn't the coveted Adobe CS4 but budget is important and I thought this would give me plenty to play around with right now.

Here is something I started with. It's not much...but it was fun.

I think the original picture was already pretty good...

...so I didn't play around too much. Just fiddled with the contrast a bit, then the sharpness and cropped it. I kind of like it.

Then I got a little crazy with one of my other favorite blooms...my deep purple iris. Wait until you see.