Yesterday was the first time I have ever, in my life, edited a photo. Two or three days ago I was in need of some photo-editing and I turned to my man, as I have in the past when I've needed to. After all, why do something when you can have someone do it for you, right? 

And then I saw the art contest that Papa-Pepper is hosting and after scrolling through a few of them I thought, How hard could it be? I might have forgotten the thought, my thoughts can be quite fleeting as I have a tendency to get distracted, but then Papa suggested I try a Meme. Well now I felt a bit committed. So I went online and found Pixlr. Thanks to steemit I am already proficient at uploading photos, so that part was easy. But easy ended there. After much @#$! I finally figured out how to place the text, change the color, etc. and made my first meme, hooray! 

After this I was feeling somewhat cocky, now that I new how to place text and change color I was a pro and made some memes for my friends and family. 

I decided to put in my entry and went back to Papa's page and clicked on the wrong art contest. Rather than immediately exiting I found myself scrolling through the winning entries thinking, Hm, this looks fun. How hard could it be? I mean, initially I might @#$!, but now that I could Meme, surely I could do anything.

Well I am here to tell you that editing photos is WORK. After a full hour of attempting to draw on a picture and make it look like I envisioned in my head,

(Guy Fawkes, yup that's what I was going for)

 I gave that up and tried something else. Overlaying one image onto another. Quickly I realized that the only way it would look good is if you somehow erase parts of the picture you're trying to insert. Except that I found erasing the background leaves you with a white box and does not produce the desired effect. 

This led to more @#%!ing 

After admitting to myself that I needed a little help I was given a brief tutorial by my exceptional man on background transparency. I finally had the basic know-how. And after two straight hours I was able to come up with:

(The re-occurring man is my Uncle, he has great appreciation for all things silly)

And this is how I gained respect for photo-editing. In the end it was a great deal of fun and today I learned how to make a post with my own photo-edited art. I will continue learning this craft and while I may never reach the level of @nonameslefttouse, I'm confident I will be able to hang with the amateurs.

Previous winners of @papa-pepper's wild and strange art contest: @ballinconscious (round 1) and @rigaronib (round 2)