Okay, people, bear with me while I work out the new love in my life.  I have these two photos...actually, it is one photo.  The one on the right was manipulated using Picasa 2 downloaded for free from the internet.  I took the photo on the left and sharpened the image, and used the saturation effect on the photo.  I think it make it much more dynamic.  Don’t you?

Using Picasa, this is something called a gradient fill.  On the left is the original photo.  On the right is the fill.  I would like to see it be more of a gradient...meaning, not such a line mid photo—but I have to work on that a little I guess!

This is my darling Audrey.  Using Photo Impact I cleared all of her facial imperfections, and the oreo on her chin— then I faded the background in what I like to call the Barbara Walters effect...thereby drowning out her little sister’s head.  I also added sparkle to the eyes.  And, it should be noted she hates this photo. 

Here is our posse of skating this week.  I accidentally deleted the original photo, but below is taken right before this one so you can get an idea of how I cropped, saturated and sharpened the image using Picasa. 

Using PhotoImpact on this photo of Harbour I took out the goopy eye, and swirled the background.  Newfs are very hard to photograph, especially ALL black newfie boys.  I think it may look better warming up the background...but I haven't figured out how to do that yet. 

I used photoshop on this picture of Audrey.  I followed the instructions on Pioneer Woman, but they didn’t get me very far.  I have been working for an hour, and still cannot figure out how to get the fade to black corners on the pictures.  I did figure out how to turn it to black and white, then change the opacity to make it look sort of colorized, or faded. 

This is a great photo of Cade.  I have no idea what I am doing, I cannot seem to control that elliptical tool very well...and I STILL don’t know how to make the corners fade to black...but, it reminded me of a faded old photo.

These two bottom photos I manipulated in Picassa after hours in photoshop.  I used sepia and soft focus on the left side.  On the right, I used black and white with a color focus, and a soft focus around the edge.