Photocraft: Creative Mixed-Media and Digital Approaches to Transforming Your Photographs by Susan Tuttle and Christy Hydeck covers everything from how to take a great picture to how to create a mixed media project. Digital techniques use Adobe Photoshop Elements and some iPhoneography apps which can help you sharpen up your digital print, remove unwanted pixels, fix exposures and much more. The best part is the creative arts part of the book which shows you how to alter a photo using not only digital techniques, of which there are many, but using good old fashioned ‘tools’ such as pastels, inks, wax and cheesecloth! Guest artists include Claudine Hellmuth and Samantha Harding.


My favorite project? Creating a realistic-looking watercolor painting in three easy steps. I will share this much: Digitally apply the charcoal filter to turn your photograph into a sketch. Print onto watercolor paper and then brush on washes of watercolor paint! Of course it sounds simple but the authors tips-prompts-variations section covers much more and the list of digital and actual materials and numbered instructions provide step by step help...so I guess you will have to check the book out if you want to play with your photos! SG