My sister sent Joe and Will her old video camera.  I promptly forgot about it, but this week, Mark mentioned it, and of course the boys wanted it.  They haven’t done much in the way of movies, but they’ve taken a bunch of stills.  After I taught them how to import the photos onto the computer, one of them remembered that I had let them play with Photoshop one time.  I think he was particularly taken by the distortion effects.  I showed them how to get the photo open in Photoshop, told them not to save over their original file and pretty much walked away.

Here’s Cocoa straight out of the camera, contemplating the great outdoors:

And here’s Cocoa, contemplating a black hole:

Here’s a picture that Will took of the McD’s toy he got Thursday night:

And here’s Joe’s version, that he titled Dragon Slayer:

As I said, I walked away, he figured out all of that on his own.  I can’t wait to see what he comes up with as he continues to play.

Today’s Photoshop/Photoshop Elements/Any photo editing software tip:

As long as you don’t save over your original image file, you really can’t mess it up.  Use the undo, use the history feature to back up, use layers if appropriate, and just CLICK on the buttons and try them out.  Don’t be afraid to dive in and try things out.