About this blog...

Hi,

I'm a long-time Paint Shop Pro user who is trying to shift over and learn Photoshop Elements. Why? I do mostly 3-D related art these days. While I'm very comfortable with PSP and generally love it, sometimes it just doesn't stand up to what I need to do. Paint Shop Pro 9 has a brush size limit of 500 pixels and that's just sometimes too limiting, considering I'm addicted to Photoshop brushes now (which are huge most of the time). While I have a later version of PSP, it still has a small brush size limit of 999 pixels--and I really like PSP 9 better. I've tried all kinds of work-arounds for using larger brushes. Including exporting the Photoshop brushes to PNGs with abrViewer and abrMate, including colorizing them and using them as overlays or saving them as Paint Shop Tubes. A lot of the time, one or the other method works fine and is sufficient. However, at other times, neither cuts it--especially when working with texture maps for Poser.

So, I'm moving on, at least for some of the things I do. I can't afford Photoshop itself, so I decided to try Photoshop Elements again (I tried an earlier version). So, I've begun experimenting with Photoshop Elements 11. So, why blog about it? Well, honestly, hopefully so I stay motivated. I honestly believe the best way to learn--and retain that knowledge--is to experiment and write things down. Maybe something I learn while plodding along will help other "newbies" too. At times, unless your a digital scrapbooker or amateur photographer, there isn't a lot of information out there for Photoshop Elements users. So, I figured it couldn't hurt to put my personal journey with PSE "out there."

I'm not sure where this will lead. Whether this blog with just record my observations and tips... Or whether there will be full-fledged tutorials along the way... I don't even know if a single person out there in cyberspace will care to read along. But it should be an interesting journey, even if I do wind up talking to myself. ;0)