Ohhhh...that's hot!!!!

So I finally finished my English class and am now back into an actual art class. My current class is Digital Manipulation II which is a class dedicated to learning Adobe Photoshop. I am in the first week of the class and am actually pretty excited with what we are doing so far.

Last night I had a bunch of assignments due and after two and half hours of working on the one I am quite pleased with what I was able to accomplish. We were given a photo of a jalapeno pepper and then required to use some layer masking to change the color of the pepper and then the color of the shading. I think this is probably pretty basic for most versed in Photoshop manipulation, but for me it was the first time working with layer masks. Once I figured out this technique I had a blast working on the assignment.

Digital Scrapbooking?!?!?!?

The other day I came home and my wife was working on our computer and for some reason she was very excited with whatever it was she was doing. She immediately wanted me to come and take a look at her newest project. As I looked closer to what she was doing I was blown away by what I saw. She had some how changed her desktop background to the coolest looking scrap book page. I asked her if it was a new page she had created, thinking she scanned it in. Nope, I was wrong, she explained the scrap booking page was based off of some material she downloaded, it's called digital scrapbooking?!?!? (Didn't know scapbooking could be digital, maybe it should be scrapblogging.....) Anyway, I guess there are a number of sites out there dedicated to the newest and modern form of scrapbooking, don't ask me what they are, that's my wife's department =)!

While I am not much in to scrapbooking myself...ok I am not in to scrapbooking at all, I do think it was absoletly amazing what my wife was able to do. She used Photoshop to put it all together and lately she has been learning a lot of cool applications that she has been teaching me as well. So, being bored with my background, I decided to create my own background from scratch. In trying to learn more about Photoshop I have learned alot from free online tutorials, some of my favorites are ones that use a "grunge" look to create websites and blogs. I surfed around the internet looking for some images I could use for my new desktop, downloaded some free brushes for use in Photoshop, and some new fonts. The end result....I must say I was pretty proud of myself for the first "grunge look" attempt. I just hope this doesn't mean I am turning into a digital scrapbooker.....=-) ?!?!?!?!?