In the meantime, we’re turning our focus for the February Photo Challenge to our most intimate space: our homes.

For many of us, our homes are an extension of ourselves. But with that familiarity, comes a form of blindness. Because we know our homes so well, we often don’t truly see what’s around us—including the everyday beauty of simple objects and treasured spaces.

My son adopted this moving box as his home shortly after we moved last year.

For the month of February, train a photographer’s eye on the space you know best. Try to see it as a stranger might, including the textures, colors, and patterns. Or see if you can create an image that evokes the feelings of warmth and safety that your home gives you. If the place where you sleep isn’t where you consider home, feel free to relocate. After all, one man’s home is another man’s toolshed.

If you’re feeling stumped by this month’s theme, here are some ideas to get the wheels of inspiration turning:

steam by westy559, on Flickr

Take a photo of the spot where you feel most at home. Is it at the stove with a warm pot of soup cooking? A favorite reading chair with a cup of tea? Wherever it is, think of your shot as a portrait. That means you’ll want to pay attention to your lighting, framing, and anything that distracts from your subject.

Take a photo of your home from outside. Give some thought to the time of day when your house looks most interesting. Is it the morning light? In the evening when the lights are on? Should you see the whole thing or just an interesting detail?

Capture your life at home. What is it like to be a member of your family? Are there kids jumping on the bed? A cat asleep in the bookcase? A favorite board game?

This month’s challenge is ultimately about rediscovering the mystery in the objects most familiar to you—whether that’s an old boot, your child’s toys, or the castle at the bottom of your fish tank. Although this seems like a simple task, it’s one of the hardest things a photographer does.  Here are a few things to keep in mind as you’re framing your shot:

• When in doubt, get up close. Then get even closer.
• Clear away the clutter. Before you snap the shutter, look for anything that shouldn’t be there—an empty coffee mug, a cat’s tail, a crumpled newspaper. Make sure we know what it is you want us to see.
• Think about your light. Good light can make even ordinary objects look interesting. And when it comes to good lighting, overhead lights are usually your enemy. Look for diffused natural light (such as a window) or a nearby outlet to plug in a lamp.

Most importantly, enjoy the process!

The Details

Any subscriber can participate in the monthly P.E.T. Photo Challenge. In addition to photographs, you can also submit collages or other images you’ve created in Photoshop Elements. Submissions must follow a few simple guidelines:

• You must take the photo within the challenge month (after all, there’s not much challenge in digging through your library to find an old photo).
• You must own the rights to any image you submit. (If you use third-party frames or embellishments, please make sure this usage is allowed under the sale terms.)
• You are encouraged to interpret the theme creatively, but keep in mind that photos that seem entirely unrelated may get overlooked.

You can submit your entries to either the P.E.T. Gallery or Elements Village Gallery. When uploading your image to the Elements Village Gallery, please enter the phrase “Photo-Challenge” exactly as shown (without the quotes) in the Keywords field. For the P.E.T. Gallery, please enter “Photo-Challenge” in the Caption field when uploading the photo.

When the month is over, we’ll showcase our favorite entries on the website. A few entries may also be featured in the magazine. (You can see the top picks for all of our past photo challenges.)

Good Luck!

To help get you motivated, we’ve got a special treat for you this month. Each of our Top Picks for the January Photo Challenge will receive a free copy of The Photoshop Elements 10 Book for Digital Photographers by Scott Kelby and Matt Kloskowski. This great book offers step-by-step tutorials for the most common photo-editing tasks. And Scott and Matt aren’t just wonderful teachers, they are also skilled photographers. This is a great addition to any photographer’s bookshelf.

To be eligible, your photos must be submitted by February 1st. We’ll announce the winners around February 15th. You can find all of the rules here. Best of luck to everyone!

Don’t forget that the January Photo Challenge is going on right now. The theme is Black&White. Get your entries in my February 1st to be considered. As a special incentive this month, KelbyTraining is awarding free copies of Matt Kloskowski’s The Photoshop Elements 10 Book for Digital Photographers to each Top Pick in the January challenge. So get shooting!

Judges were intrigued by the pattern of light and contrasting textures in this abstract photo by Patricia Satkofsky.

We like way the colors and geometry combine to illuminate the plane against a pitch black background in Micki Bowne’s photo.

 With the lovely bokeh effect in Susan Horn’s image, it’s easy to imagine that this dedicated little nutcracker is out braving a cold night to watch over the presents.

The suspended stars create an interesting composition in this photo by Frank Binder.

We love the composition of this image by Anton Prestele and the way the sun’s rays direct your eyes towards the droll little cherub.

The beautiful wash of color to the right and the little sparkles in the snowman add a touch of magic to this sweetly nostalgic image by Pamela Headridge.

Winner: Nothing says “lights” quite like the Vegas Strip. We love the visual chaos of streaking car lights, uplit buildings and giant signs in this night shot by Steven Digirolamo.

Congratulations to everyone!

1. Liz, I am looking for a watercolor tutorial for Photoshop Elements 9 please, as close to a realistic look as I can possibly get. -Rose

• On our website, we have a great tutorial by Liz Ness called From Photo to Painting. She did a great job and the effect is subtle, yet lovely.
• I spent a bit of time scouring the internet and found a fantastic tutorial on creating a watercolor from a photograph. It’s from the Photoshop Essentials website, and though it was not specifically written for Photoshop Elements, every step is possible inside of Elements. After finding it, I tested out the tutorial on one of my own photographs and was very, very impressed with the results. One quick note: don’t forget that you can change the Opacity of all of the layers you create for this technique!

2. Liz, I take a lot of underwater photos and backscatter is a common problem. Do you have any suggestions on good ways to fix it? -Cindy

• Thank you so much for this great question, it’s definitely not one I hear very often – I’ve never done underwater photography, so I’d never even heard of backscatter!
• After scouring the internet for examples of backscatter, I discovered a fantastic tutorial for PSE exclusively that may help with the issue. Take a look at it here on YouTube, but the basic synopsis is this: make a duplicate layer of your background, select and feather sections of your photo and use the Dust & Scratches command (go to the Filter menu, than to Noise) to help get rid of the more obvious spots. It may require some clone stamping and spot healing after you’ve already completed the Dust & Scratches command, but it definitely seems like a much better place to start.

3. Liz, can you point me out to a reference or give me a quick tip on the best way to remove power lines from a photo? – Ron

• Dave Cross just finished a video about exactly this topic – How to Cover Up Power Lines! It’s a fantastic video and has some good techniques that will hopefully help you cover up some pesky power lines.

4. Liz, I really could use a video on how to replace sky when a landscape photo was taken when the weather wasn’t cooperating. Can it be done when there are trees sicking up into the background? -Gene

• Separating a horizon line with trees jutting up into the sky is one of the most difficult things to do well in Photoshop Elements, so I hope I can help you out! Before I make a video about the topic, I wanted to point you to two videos that have already been done that may be helpful:
• Selecting Hair by Dave Cross – Dave does a fantastic job showing you how to select hair and creating a mask. A tree-ridden horizon line is extremely similar to a subject with wild hair, so I would definitely suggest giving his technique a shot!
• Place a Subject Seamlessly on a New Background by Matt Kloskowski – Once you’ve made a selection, Matt’s video does a great job of showing you a few tricks on making it even better.
• Hopefully, with the aid of these two videos, you’ll be able to separate you downer-sky from the rest of your landscape and give it a face lift! Many of the techniques Dave and Matt use can be transferred from portraits to landscapes with a little imagination.

I’ve had such a unique array of emails coming in and hopefully a few of these answers can help out other subscribers on their quests for removing backscatter, deleting power lines, replacing skies and creating photographic watercolors! Happy editing!

To send a question my way, send it to our Ask Liz email address.

For the January Photo Challenge, we’re focusing on the basics: Capture and process a beautiful black-and-white image. That’s it! The subject matter of the photo is up to you, as is the method you use to process it. (I recommend shooting in color, even when you plan to create a black-and-white image. The extra image data will give you more options in the post-processing stage.)

framed by Björn Bechstein, on Flickr

Keep in mind that there’s more to creating a compelling black-and-white photo than just taking away the color. Once you remove the distraction of color, elements like composition, contrast, and focus become all the more important. You’ll want to pay particular attention to the interplay between light and shadow in your photo.

Elements offers several ways to convert a color image to black and white, including the Convert To Black And White command (under the Enhance menu), desaturating the image (via a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer), or a gradient map (Layers>New Adjustment Layer>Gradient Map). Each will produce different results. It may take some experimenting to find the right approach for your image, but that’s part of the fun.

To help you get started, here are some video and magazine tutorials we’ve done on converting to black and white—as well as a few links to get you inspired. These are great techniques to have in your toolkit, even if you don’t participate in the challenge.

• To kick the year off with a bang, our first video is Matt Kloskowski’s Get Better Black & White Images. Matt’s technique is an easy and quick alternative to Elements’ stock conversion—which he’s not a big fan of, and he shows us why.
• In his article Strategies for Better Black & White Photos (March/April 2009), Ben Long explains how to convert images in Elements using a couple of different methods. He also shows how to fine-tune the results by adjusting the tones in different parts of the image independently in his companion piece, Advanced Black and White Editing.
• Liz Ness demonstrates an alternate method for controlling the tones in your black-and-white image in this handy video tutorial. Liz’s method combines Gradient Map and Hue/Saturation adjustment layers—with wonderful results.
• The Digital Photography School website offers some helpful tips for shooting black-and-white photos, including an explanation of why you shouldn’t use your camera’s grayscale mode when shooting black-and-white JPEGs.
• If you’re in need of a little inspiration, check out this Flickr pool or Smashing Magazine’s Beautiful Black and White Photography collection.

The Details

Any subscriber can participate in the monthly P.E.T. Photo Challenge. In addition to photographs, you can also submit collages or other images you’ve created in Photoshop Elements. Submissions must follow a few simple guidelines:

• You must take the photo within the challenge month (after all, there’s not much challenge in digging through your library to find an old photo).
• You must own the rights to any image you submit. (If you use third-party frames or embellishments, please make sure this usage is allowed under the sale terms.)
• You are encouraged to interpret the theme creatively, but keep in mind that photos that seem entirely unrelated may get overlooked.

You can submit your entries to either the P.E.T. Gallery or Elements Village Gallery as you would for Subscriber Showcase. When uploading your image to the Elements Village Gallery, please enter the phrase “Photo-Challenge” exactly as shown (without the quotes) in the Keywords field. For the P.E.T. Gallery, please enter “Photo-Challenge” in the Description field when uploading the photo.

When the month is over, we’ll showcase our favorite entries on the website. A few entries may also be featured in the magazine. Our selections for the December Lights Challenge will be online around the 15th. You can also see the top picks for all of our past photo challenges.

By the way, if you have ideas for fun photo-challenge topics, feel free to suggest them in the comments below.

Have fun!

We’re just now coming out of our Christmas holidays, and I wanted to let you know that the PDF of the January/February 2012 issue has now been posted online for downloading; you can find it on the website’s Magazine page, along with the 51 other back issues that are available free to all members. (It seems crazy to me that we’ve published 52 issues, along with more than 1,100 tutorials here on the site.)

If you haven’t yet received your issue (and you were a subscriber prior to Dec. 1), you should receive it by Jan. 8 (US), Jan. 15 (Canada), and Jan. 22 (UK, Australia and other locations). If you subscribed after December 1, 2011, we’ll be sending out the second mailing of the January/February issue at the end of this month.

We’ve also posted our first video of the new year, Matt Kloskowski’s Get Better Black and White Photos, which is a great alternative to Elements’ Convert to Black and White command. I find that techniques like Matt’s give you so much more control over your photos, and really help make them pop.

We have a bunch more articles and videos tagged with black and white; you might find them helpful, especially since the theme for this month’s PET Photo Challenge is “Black & White.”

Take care, and all of us here at Photo One and Photoshop Elements Techniques wish you the best for a peaceful, happy and trouble-free 2012!

As the holiday season enters its peak, it’s a great time to take and share pictures with the people in our lives who mean the most to us. Despite the often oppressive weather and flurry of last minute responsibilities, this is an excellent time to capture beautiful moments both inside and out, if only we remember to look for them.

From all of us at Photoshop Elements Techniques, thank you for being part of this community, happy holidays, and we wish you the best in the New Year!

Here are the judges’ top picks for the November Challenge:

The bright, graceful arc of falling water contrasts beautifully with the night scene in this photo by Steven Digirolamo.

The radial blur in this image by Anton Prestele does a great job of emphasizing the woman’s upward movement.

We love the interplay of color, motion, and texture in Frank Binder’s fluid image. The breaking waves manage to keep the photo from becoming entirely abstract.

The heady joy of being a dog! This nicely executed panning shot by Ron Abbott offers a lovely combination of blurred background, flowing fur, and just the right touch of sharpness in the dog’s features.

We felt a little dizzy after looking at Dorothy Ford’s creative take on the theme. The off-center yellow balloon adds just the right pop of color to the moody surroundings.

The ghosted bicyclist in Stephanie Bunch’s photo adds a nice sense of urgency to an otherwise static scene.

There’s an impressive amount of energy pent up in this beautifully lit and well timed photo by Pamela Headridge.

You can almost feel the adrenalin in Christell Faul’s wonderful action shot, which beautifully mixes sharp details and motion blur.

Winner: We love that this photo by Jim Chisholm evokes two forms of movement: The movement of our eye down the spiral ramp; and the motion blur of the people moving through the scene. The one motionless couple at the center adds a wonderful contrast to all of the surrounding movement and helps anchor our gaze.

Kudos to all of our winners—and to everyone who took the challenge!

Photo by Liz Ness

With the winter darkness quickly taking over more and more of my day, the holiday season always comes as something of a relief. Just as I start to feel truly blue about the 5pm sunset, small twinkling lights suddenly begin appearing all over town. They dance between light poles, twirl around trees, and light the way home. It’s hard to be blue when the whole town seems to be prepped for a party.

For this month’s P.E.T. Photo Challenge, focus your camera on the light sources around you. From twinkling strands to streaking headlights, giant billboards to a solitary candle, there are so many interesting ways to add light to a scene. See what happens when you turn the light itself into your subject.

If you’re shooting buildings or other outdoor scenes, keep in mind that lights often look their best just before the sun has set—when there’s still enough light to make out the scene, but it’s dark enough to see the effect of the lights.

If you’re in need of a little inspiration, here are some good places to start:

• This is a great opportunity to try your hand at capturing bokeh (seen here in Liz’ photo). The soft, dreamy, out-of-focus light can add a lovely touch of whimsy to a photo—and is in perfect keeping with the season. Check out Laurie Excell’s article “Bokeh: Getting the Perfect Soft Background” from the September/October 2008 issue. If you’re ready to get more creative with it, read Liz Ness’ fun tutorial “Transform Your Light“ (September/October 2011).
• Photos tagged with “lights”  at 500px.com.
• Photo tagged with “ holiday lights” on Flickr.

Most importantly, have fun!

The Details

This month’s newsletter includes some thoughts on my regular year-end organizational tasks for my photo library; an update on our monthly Photo Challenge; how I got schooled in Photoshop Elements by my daughter (leading to our new “Ask Liz” idea); and lots more.

If you’re on the opt-out list, or aren’t a subscriber, you can check out this month’s edition, as well as all of our previous newsletters, via the Letter from the Editor homepage.