Digital photographers are always looking to improve their skills behind the lens. Anyone can point and click, but what does it take to take a picture with real depth, meaning, and intrigue? What does it take to move from taking a vacation photo to capturing a moment in time? The following open courseware collections aim to help students move from just playing around with a digital camera to creating works of art.

Here is a screenshot of the site.

One of the features on the wish list of most advanced Photoshop Elements users is Layer Masks. It is one of the key features that separates Photoshop Elements from Photoshop – but it doesn’t have to be that way. It is possible to create faux layer masks in Photoshop Elements if you know how – and today, I am going to show you how.

One of benefits of this approach to creating faux layer masks in Elements is that it uses features built into Elements and it doesn’t rely on a third party plug-in so it works with most versions of Photoshop Elements.

The important lesson to take from this tutorial is not how to do the sharpening, but how to create the faux layer masks that you can use for many purposes.

A video showing you how to non-destructively dodge and burn on a layer in Photoshop.