Can you Say "Break Through"?

Last week, I took the fam to a local gated community to borrow the gorgeous landscaping for some "family photos".   They are getting better about this... they know the more they cooperate, the quicker the process will be and the shorter they have to put up with me.  I'd already scoped out this great location a few days before, but when we got there, guess what?  They had just watered the lawn.  Everything was wet, the grass, the rocks, everything!  So some of my pose plans went out the window, because I'm not mean enough to make them lay in wet grass.  Oh well... anyway, the above shot was the best of the group shot I took of the four kids together.  The rock was cool that they were sitting on, but the sun was behind them, low in the sky, and it left all the lovely sun streaks across the picture.  Once I got home and looked at them on the computer screen, I was sure I was going to have to do a re-shoot. 

But in a sheer moment of desperation, I went to a blog/website that I know has had photoshop tutorials in the past.  I don't have full blown photoshop, but I was hoping I could glean enough info from the tutorial to make a difference in this photo using my lower grade, but still awesome, Photoshop Elements.

I was reading through the post, and enough things were different about the program, that I was starting to think there was no way this would ever help me, when I discovered a note at the bottom of the post.  Some wonderful bloggers took it upon themselves to do some creative work and convert photoshop "actions" to work in PSE. 

So a few clicks later, a few articles later, and one video tutorial later, I was editing my photos in ways I'd never dreamed possible.  Seriously... take a look at the after of the above shot:

Talk about taking a negative and turning it into a positive.... before I hated the sun streaks, now I think they look cool.   Here's one more before and after, taken with my tri-pod... yay... my kids are all old enough now to know where to look for a picture with a tri-pod.  How awesome is that?  And honestly, the before picture I think is pretty good.  But the after picture is so much better.  The colors are so vibrant and rich.  I love it!

I know you are going to be dying to know how I figured all this out, so over the next day or two, I'm going to write a post with links to each blog and or website I found information on.   And I will reveal my favorite edit of them all... which is funny that it's my favorite, because I can't remember how I did it, so I wasn't able to duplicate the effects on the rest of the shots.  I've decided I need to keep a notebook for photoshop projects so that I  can write down each step of the editing process so if I want to duplicate that look on another photo, I know what to do.   Stay tuned for more and exciting info to come very soon!