I've been testing a trial version of Adobe's Photoshop Elements 9 (PSE 9) for the past few weeks. PSE is a great way for digital photography enthusiasts to not just tweak their photos, but transform them in ways that give them new life.
PSE 9 offers a long list of "guided" photo edits to help with photo retouching and editing tasks. Among them are five "Fun Edits"—step-by-step guides to apply eye-popping effects to photos. While the scripting of these particular effects is bound to make them become cliché, they're great leaping-off points for learning how to apply the tools of PSE more creatively.