Here are the shorts I FINALLY finished making. Hopefully I'll be faster in the future.

Patterns

I made a couple of patterns in Photoshop. I just learned how to use define pattern to make a custom pattern. Nothing special, but they were fun to make.










This is how you make a custom pattern:

1. Just open a new image and make it's size something small - like 15 x 15 px or 20 x 20 px.
   
   
2. Draw some shapes in the image. You have lots of options. In one pattern I made circles in the corner. In another pattern I drew my own lines.
   
   
   In another I made a square by selecting the layer, choosing Blending Options, choosing Stroke, changing the pixel size to 1 to make it thin, changing the color, setting position to center to make it thin.
   
   
3. Once you have the element you want in your small image you choose Edit -- Define Pattern -- and give it a name.
   
   
4. With the lacy image that I created by drawing lines. I created another image to put the line image in flipped in different directions before creating my pattern.
   
   So, I selected the small image (CTRL-A) and copied it (CTRL-C) into my new image. I then chose Image -- Rotate Canvas -- Flip Canvas Vertical. The image will now have pixels that were at the bottom at the top. I will select and copy this new image and paste it into the separate image waiting to hold all four small images. I will Move the smaller flipped image to the top of the other image so the pixels at the top of the original image line up with the pixels on the bottom of the line up with the pixels and the bottom of the vertically flipped image.
   
   
   Now I will go back to my small image and flip it horizontally, select and copy it and move it to the upper right corner (so it sits to the right of the image I just flipped vertically and upper right kitty corner to the original image).
   
   
   Finally, I will go back to the small image (which has been flipped first vertically and then horizontally), and I will flip it vertically again (Image -- Rotate Canvas -- Flip Canvas Vertical). It will now be used the the right lower section of my new image. My new image should consist of four of my original images and it should be twice as wide and tall as my original small image. I will crop it down and now I will define it as a pattern.
   
   
   I'm not much of an artist, but I imagine for someone drawing more intricate designs this would be a really handy exercise, since it will make you image flow smoothly as a background image.
   
   
5. Now open up an image you want to fill with the pattern. You could select a new image that is say 750 px x 750 px.
   
   
6. Go to Edit -- Fill. Choose Use: Pattern, and select your pattern which you have just created. You can also choose your opacity. If you would like to make your background lighter, lower the opacity.
   
   

Marionberries

My daughter loves Marionberries. She can pick them faster than I can. She picks two handed and is great at spotting fresh berries. She will do it all for the promise of a few berries and some Marionberry jam at the end of it. So I thought updating this photo would be fun. I saw someone at our local fair do something similar with a bowl of Marshmallows and some faces.



How this was done. Well it was easy of course.

1. I opened up the Marionberry picture and cropped it so that mainly the berry was showing.
   
2. Separately I opened up a picture of my daughter that was nice and bright.
   
3. I resized the picture so my daughters face would fit nicely in an individual round berry section.
   
4. I then used the polygon outline tool from the toolbar to select just around my daughters face.
   
5. I then chose Select -- Modify -- Feather and chose 2-4 pixels to soften the edges of the selection.
   
6. I then copied (CTRL-C) the image.
   
7. Then I clicked on the berry image and pasted (CTRL-V) the image. I moved the image onto a round berry section. And I adjusted the layer to an opacity I liked, say 60% (an opacity that didn't stand out to much, but didn't blur too much into the picture).
   
8. I repeated steps 5-7 until I filled up most of a Marionberry. I sometimes adjusted the Select -- Modify to select a smaller image that would fit on different sections of the berry better. I sometimes changed the opacity.
   
9. I merged all layers and saved the image.
   

Photoshopping The Chicken Picture

This is a picture I took of my daughter about a year ago. Isn't she adorable? She is so gung-ho about everything. Notice the typical dirt on her hands and face.




Here I have Photoshopped the photo. This is what I did:

• Image > Adjustments > Shadow/Highlights and played with the setting until the shadows look less dark, but the picture still looks natural.
  
• Selected the center of the object using the Elliptical Marquee Tool (round selection tool) from the toolbar. I made my shape an oval.
  
• Pressed Q while the center is still selected. This applies a Quick Mask.
  
• Chose Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur to soften the edges of the Quick Mask area.
  
• Pressed Q again to undo the Quick Mask.
  
• I then did one of my favorite Photoshop options, which is CTRL-SHIFT-I, which selects the everything that you don't have selected. This can also be done by going to Select > Inverse.
  
• Chose Filter > Blur > Radial Blur. In the options box I selected Zoom for my Blur Method, 20 for my Amount, and Best for my Quality. I would play with those options and see how they look with the image.