When I saw the pictures from the photo contest in a recent issue of model railroader I thought that I would download the 30 day trial of adobe photoshop 7.0 which is what those pictures use. Does anyone know how to use this program and make smoke, backrounds, clouds, light,etc that I could put on my pictures I have on my computer?
Try PhotoShop Elements 2.0 first. It’s like PhotoShop lite but there is enough to get you going to do what you need to do. I use Elements for the scrapbook scanning portion of my business - www.twinimaging.com
Sean
There is a really good book publisher out there that creates these books called “xxxxx-Bible” There may be a “Photoshop 7.0 Bible” available. I would suggest getting it if your serious about learning PS.
You can find TONS of tutorials online by searching google with “Photoshop 7 tutorials” as the subject matter.
I would be happy to explain how to do these effects you speak of BUT, a forum is not the place to do that. Maybe over a instant messenger or phone but not a forum.
I speak from experience, I use PS at least 8 hours a day during a 5 day work week. In the web development world that program is the equal to having car keys (you can’t drive without them).
Hope this helps
Elias, hang out in the photoshop forum (http://forums.fark.com/cgi/fark/comments.pl?IDLink=603784) on www.fark.com to get tips on all of this stuff. Photoshop is not that easy to learn on your own. It helps to have a group of more experienced people helping you out. We can pretty much tell you exactly how to do certain things, if you ask politely enough… The forum is linked on the right hand column of the main web page, the link should be in yellow. When you set up an account to post, there is a 24 hour waiting period, but it’s all free. And we all have pretty great senses of humor. That and multiple photoshop contests every day along with all of the odd and whacky news stories that make up the main bulk of the site’s content. (and which morning talk show radio hosts rip off our jokes.)
To do smoke, try drawing several white/gray lines parallel to each other (in their own layer), then use the smudge and blur tools to spread them out a bit. Then decrease the layer’s opacity to finish.
Example: 
the shirt is also added as is the water pipe and glassy stare.[;)][;)]