Need experienced eyes - suggestions

Hey Gang,

No sooner did I start learning Photoshop than my first need to use it ouside the scope of the tutorials popped up. I've been given several images by a mother who'd like to see something nice done with them.

I don't know her very well but I'd like to see them come out really nice too. She's one of those moms who's 'been through a hard time' so to speak. So, I'd really like to create something nice for her.

I'm feeling fairly confident using Photoshop now. Still need a lot of tutorial help to create what I'm after. But I think I'm getting there. For instance I recreated this lil diddy last night.

http://spider-food.net/photoshop/zona.htm

But of course, that's starting out with a tutorial and a perfectly posed graphic for the effect. What I have here in 'real life' is a bit different. So, I'm wondering then if some of you who've been working with PS a while can take a look at these images and tell me if any artistic ideas pop out at ya.

I have a couple, but again - my eyes are still very much untrained.

Anyway - here's the link.

http://azedia.com/member/photos/alinna/


Keepin da faith,
Jatava

the first thing I'd do is make a copy of each image you plan to play with.
then, boost the contrast and saturation. Under Image / Adjustments (or Adjust, on PS version 7 and below) you'll find several areas to play with.

after that, sharpen the images using Filter/Sharpen/Unsharp Mask. Play with each adjustment bar, so you can see how much is too much - be careful, sometimes you can kill a good photo by over-sharpening!

have fun!

awww..those babies are cute!

It looks like some of those images need sharpening, and others don't. I wouldn't sharpen the first one, the rest I would play with sharpening to make them look more crisp.

Also, as graphicsguy suggests, play with the options - especially those under the image menu, and image>adjust menu.

If you want the images in there original form just do the above, if you want to be more creative, you can start using a combination of filters to produce some neat effects (many tutorials around).

Also, in case you haven't checked, I think this website has some photo enhancing tutorials.