Playing with Photoshop

I was lucky enough to be given Corel Photoshop/Paintshop as one of my Christmas presents and due to various other time constraints I have only just taken the time to start having a play around with it. I've realised how little I know about the program as a whole, it is a whole new set of 'tools' to mess about with!! After a quick look at the book that came with it (where's the fun in reading that!) there are just so many hundreds of things to do within it, that I haven't yet even begun to touch the surface of what clever photo-enhancement type things that I will...hopefully one day... be able to achieve with some of the pictures I have taken.

So, of course the first 'victim' of my photo editing has to be a picture of Kiah. It was a photo I had taken over the park which as I couldn't get down low enough in front of her, happened to have a load of trees, houses, lamposts and general rubbish in the background, and you can hopefully see the result of how I managed to make it all 'disappear' by using the clone tool. I do get a brilliant feeling when I have taken a photo that I am really happy with, and then that it doesn't need any type of editing (as I think editing should only be done to enhance rather than change), but there aren't many like that, so programs like this can be such a useful - and precise function - to be able to use for those photos when there's a pylon, tree branch or similar coming out of the side of someone's head! For my first attempt on this photo, I'm quite pleased with how it turned out. Now time for more investigating to see what other things I can do!