Dabbling in Photoshop Elements

I love gifting photographs to friends and family, and nowadays, I’ve started dabbling in Photoshop Elements. It’s pretty easy to create fantastic montages, (slightly gimmicky) but cool jigsaw effects and shadow filters. Here’s how I created this particular picture:

• Start with a picture of your choice. Go to Filter > Texture > Texturizer > Load Texture (from file). Once in the folder view, pick Program Files\Adobe\Photoshop Elements 3.0\Presets\Textures\Puzzle.psd. Pick Scale and Relief values for your picture. The cool thing is that instant previews are available in the right hand side pane. I picked a scale of 150% and a relief of 6 for this example.
  
  
• Once the jigsaw filter is added, using a magnetic lasso, carve out the pieces you feel are kind of central to the theme of the picture. Once the lasso is complete, cut it and copy it on the same picture. Add some shadow effects; I typically like to “hang” the puzzle pieces and then add a heavy shadow to it.

That’s it! Feel free to add any other cool techniques you know or might come across.