joys of photoshop...

I met up with a girlfriend today that for whatever reason I hadn't seen in months. Too long. She's the one I met up with in Europe, used to joke with at work, sung songs with at work, talked about boys with.. Suppose she's the closest thing I'd have to a 'Maid of honor' if I go down that route.

Anyhoo, I saw her today and she said she wanted to get me an engagement present for when we have our party, or even give us money if that will help. Well, it would, but we'd probably be lame and spend it on petrol or something stupid.
So as we browsed some homewares in a couple of different stores, and oo'ed and aah'ed over picture frames, a thought struck me.
She's a great artist, as far as I know. I've seen her drawings, and they're pretty fantastic. One of my favourite things about my house is that I have actual paintings up. Except for the canvas picture we got from ikea, we have actual hand-painted pictures. Granted, some were bought from Hong Kong by Nic's Dad from mass-producers, but it's ok. I can handle that. The bright blue and red Snoopy picture is cute. It goes with our couch.
Anyway, I mentioned this to her, and how, if it wouldn't be a huge huge effort, I would love to have more artwork in my house. Particularly painted by her. What sort of art? She asked. I figure, abstract can be nice, but I'm picky, and sometimes it just looks like a whole lotta not-much. Landscape? Yeah, that could work. Then I thought about some of the photos I've taken on our travels and thought- well, that could work! So I need to print her a picture to use.
And I'm looking through my pictures and being a bit whelmed by them all, but I stumble on a couple from one of our first Grampians trips that I must have deemed 'unsalvagable'. As in, they're nice, but clicking "Enhance" in iphoto doesn't make them spectacular.
I found one with this beautiful mountain-range in the background but it was washed out and kinda crummy... So thought I'd put it over in photoshop and just have a toy around.
I've taught myself how to use photoshop, so I'm no pro, and it's probably way overdone and saturated, but... it's better than it was, I think. So here we go, before & after:

Hazy mountains & stupid weird rock in the foreground otherwise spoiling what could have been a nice shot...

 Rock still there but not so noticeable. Sky a crazy shade of blue, and rocks the colour of the rocks in the Grampians.

Anyway, I doubt I'll get her to paint that one in particular, but it was fun playing around, particularly since it took me all of 15 minutes. Then I got distracted by making the clouds pink 'like dawn', or putting a magenta wash over it. Haha.

Happy weekend, all!