Early Morning Learning

I'm usually awake early in the morning, ahead of everyone in my house and probably earlier than most, especially for a weekend.  I've been trying to use this quiet time to get ahead in my day (check all my "stuff" online, start washing clothes, etc.), but lately I've been learning even more more tricks/tips that apply to photography - mostly post processing.  I have updated/installed the camera raw plug-in for my photo software (only took me 2 tries), and I found an easy way to make bookmarks from pictures.  This is something I've been wanting to do - easy gift ideas or gift tags.  I haven't printed it on card stock yet, but I'm hopeful it will be as good as it looks on my computer.  I may print on photo paper, then glue onto really heavy cardstock (not sure that weight of paper will feed through my printer) for extra durability.  I'm not always crafty, but this I can do. 

the hands of a dressage rider

This section of the picture is actually placed on 1/2 of a 4x6 size image, so you can get 2 different bookmarks out of 1 printed photo.  I didn't figure this out for myself - I found someone online who explained it in a few steps.  You can find it here:  http://flyingsamphoto.com/digital-photo-guide-article-009.shtml  (My personal notes:  I rotated the original photo, then cropped out what I didn't want in Windows Photo Gallery, then reopened photoshop elements & resized the cropped picture - not exactly the way it was explained, but worked for me.  If someone would like exact steps I followed, let me know & I'll post).  I'm finding that several of the things I would like to do require the photo to be processed through several different photo processing sofware packages - my own shortcuts.  I'm sure the PSE7 that I have does it all, but I just haven't mastered it.  So, if you are on my Christmas list - you may be receiving something like this.... of course I'll need my days to be 48 hours long each... Christmas is getting here too quickly.