Making my own Texture for photo overlay...

 I collected a photo of the clouds from earlier in the summer...layered that over...

 a photo of leaves that I'd shot just last week...  I monkeyed around with opacity of the layers... and added some 'noise' in the form of grain [Elements filters] and came up with this.

Next I took a prospective shot that I'd like to try a bit of my own layering on.
Original:

Surely these do NOT look like a combination should do anything.  But I decided to try anyway.

What I ended up with was something a bit warmer and nicer than the original shot and if you look closely you can see some texture.  I did use a layer mask to bring out the bright red of the leaves on the lower right and the true color of the berries.  I think it is nice and subtle.

Final:

Art through photos

At first I thought it would be a piece of cake.
Sure, take the photo and then drop it into any processing program and viola......ART!
Here is the original:

 

That was pretty boring right?

So I dropped it into Elements 5 by Adobe and decided to run it through Topaz Adjust 5.

Dang.

Still not very exciting.

 Then I though perhaps if I added some 'far' out textures and colors it I may come up with something interesting.

I added a painted texture and another 'painted' texture.  I used overlay for the layer blending and adjusted how much would show through.

Now I wasn't sure I really 'loved' it, but this photo was beginning to grow on me.

This photo taken with a point and shoot Pentax Optio...don't ever underestimate a pocket camera or what you can do with it.

Next thing I did was grab a so-so photo and run it through Corel Essentials 4, free when you buy a Wacom Tablet [which I did a year ago].  I painted it in 2 different layers and then blended them together.

Here is the original:

Here is the painted version:

I ended up liking the painted version enough to put it in my 'calendar' shots for this coming year.

This shot was taken with my FujiFilm Finepix HS 30 EXR.

My conclusion, do NOT underestimate what you can create with a non-DSLR camera! 

Making a dramatic sky

First you need to start out with a sky shot that has potential.  I shot this photo with my old point and shoot camera on the way home from work.  The sky opened up and let rays of light through.  Unfortunately this did not show up on the photo I'd taken.

So these are the steps I used to create this:

Step one:

I loaded this into Adobe Elements 5 and made 3 layers of the same photo after I used Topaz BW Effects to get the color and adjustments I wanted.

 I chose the middle layer to adjust for the 'faked in rays'.  Here it is already done.  Below are the steps.

Choose the layer and change your levels to one end of the spectrum or another.  It takes experimentation to figure out which will work best for the photo you are using.  I chose to go very dark and use the light colors for the rays.

 

After choosing my levels, I next went to Filters>Blur>Radial Blur and did the following:

I used Ctrl F about three times to get the proper 'whisps' of light.  I also made sure that the 'whisps' flowed downwards instead of from the center of the photo.

Since this was the middle layer, I had to adjust the top layer's opacity and a bit of adjustment on the middle layer to get the effect I wanted.  

Did I want to go realistic?  Or did I want to go a bit more dramatic?

This is not hard to do and can add quite a bit of interest to any sky shot.  I've done this with sunrise and sunsets.

It is pretty fun and sometimes can save a rather BLAH photo.