So You Think You Can PhotoShop

The reviewer has been compensated in the form of a Best Buy Gift Card and/or received Adobe PhotoShop Elements + Premiere Elements 14 at a reduced price or for free.

What you can’t see in this beautifully edited family portrait is the frustration caused by a husband who is never home because he goes to school after working all day, a dirty house because his wife would rather spend her lack of free time with the boys, her constant battle with her physical limitations, and children who want nothing more than to have their parents’ full attention during the week.

That’s our story. The very real story of our life at this moment.

Which is why I’m transitioning… again. I’m streamlining my life… again. It’s taken me close to a year to get to the second purge because I’m not about cold turkey, unless it comes with bacon and a crispy leaf of lettuce, but it’s time for the next phase.

Over the next few months, you will see a decrease in blog work and more videos on my YouTube channel. I get my kicks from straight grinding through work projects but the kids are starting to notice when this or that project spills out of my office hours and into their time. I even got the whole, “Mommy will you play with me? I want you to play with me. You can work later.” talk a week or so ago.

Outside of working on one of my shindigs, I spend a ton of time editing, resizing, and watermarking pictures. I take SO many pictures and all of the personal pictures, like my sister’s delivery, Leah’s dedication, etc., get pushed aside as I wait for the proverbial window of free time.

I don’t know why it took me so long, but I have started to utilize the process multiple files feature in Adobe PhotoShop Elements 14 and I love it. It helps me resize and watermark my pictures in a few clicks.

I dig it. Processing multiple files at once is HUGE in my picture heavy line of work.

And then I fell down the rabbit hole for a hot minute. (OK, OK, OK! It was more like a day or two, but still.) I’m crushing on the Photomerge feature so I thought I would sort of show you how simple it is to use.

I started with the above picture.

I played around used the guided edit tab to make Michael’s rake disappear. (Just so you know, I am no PhotoShop expert and still managed to make the rake go poof!)

And I ended up with a picture sans the distracting rake!

Please refer to me as Magician Mallery in all email correspondences from here on out. Kthanks.

There are plenty of features worthy of a mention, like the haze and camera shake removal, but I would be here all day if I told you about them and we both know your kids will find your hiding spot in about… oohhhh… 3 seconds.

Just rest easy knowing there is a fancy crop suggestion option in case your husband frames the shot on the tripod before running back to his spot, and a way to organize your pictures by person or activity. Chock-full of features, guys.

Poor Maverick. He had no idea what was going on.

But what really greases my gears is Adobe Premiere Elements 14 because I can FINALLY make pretty videos. Once I fall down another rabbit habit hole, of course.