Starting a Gallery Wall (Learning Photoshop Elements 11)

I've used Photoshop in the past, but it just seemed completely overwhelming. Maybe because I was so new to editing photos, or possibly because it just IS overwhelming. I've decided to give it a try again. Like I said, it really can be overwhelming (at least to me), but this time it didn't seem foreign. I've used many editing software over the past couple of years so my knowledge has grown quite a bit since my first go round. At the moments my faves include: Photoscape, GIMP 2, Inkscape, and PicMonkey. Those are all great {free-except PicMonkey now has a premium package}editing sites that I highly recommend  They all allow you to do a huge variety of things to your pictures, and also have some features similar to Photoshop, so I was able to navigate much easier this time. I downloaded a free trial of Photoshop Lightroom and Photoshop Elements 11

(Click HERE to find to all of Adobe Product Trials). One big reason that I was so interested in Photoshop are the actions. I'm sure that some of you have heard of actions, either from blogland, or from using them, but I hadn't actually ever tried them. An Action is a series of steps to achieve a certain look in a photo that is saved as a set. Instead of having to do every step, every time, you just hit the play (►) button and the work is done for you. It is AWESOME!! I haven't made any actions myself, but from what I have read, it is supposed to be pretty easy. What is even better, are there are a ton of places that allow you to download free actions! A few that I use are this one, this one, and this one; which also gives a great tutorial on how to install and use the actions. Today I worked on a photo gallery of my kids. This is what I have so far. I put them into collages for this post just to lessen the photo overload, although of course there's still a lot. I'd love to hear what you think!! 

Nick

 Drew

I'm torn on which one of these to use or if I should use either one at all...any opinions???

Gabriella

The 2 above are a work in progress. Not exactly how I want them yet.

Today was my first day, so I am sure that I will look back at these in the future and probably think "I thought those were great??". But for today I love them and know that I will be purchasing when my trial is up :). I have them printed, and I am going to probably apply the photos to thin wood, instead of framing them, but I probably won't have time to do that project for at least another week. I'll keep ya posted! Do you have any favorite actions that you use??

Here are just a few other pictures I was playing with. There are so many things...you can really spend hours!

Have a great St. Patrick's weekend!! Make sure to get your free St. Patrick's Day printables HERE!!