Instead of Crop or Adjusting colors, sharpening the tendrils of newly formed ice is the critical first task. Using Filters | Sharpen | Unsharp Mask will hopefully bring up the new ice formation.

The "unsharp mask" ? The unsharp mask helps to sharpen by changing the contrast gradient at edge boundaries of an image. But unlike most other sharpen tools, the unsharp moves colors well beyond the edges so it has a much more profound effect on the brightness/contrast of the whole image. So caution is required - lest unintended side effects predominate.

As can be seen from the dialog on the left, users can control the amount, radius and threshold of the unsharp mask. There is a theory to the "unsharpening" - but starting with finding the right radius of action and then controling the amount and threshold settings works well. This tends to minimize color and brightness shifts. As one progresses in digital darkroom work one discovers just as in the wet darkrooms some adjustment can be calibrated and I have seen graphics editors that have built up elaborate tables of values or presets. More dialogs allow users to save those prests. But a lot of work is sheer trial and error just like in the old wet days. The big advantage is that all graphics programs allow almost unlimited undo capabilities.

Using the Lasso tool , the next step masks off the ice so that any filters will only be applied to the ice - not the rest of the image. Then choosing Filters | Artistic | Poster Edges brings out the ice in both color and area.

Now how did we know to use the Poster Edges tool ? Practice. Over time we have discovered that the following Photo Elements Filters: Artistic | Cutout, Artistic | Dry Brush, Artistic | Palette Knife and Blur | Smart Blur smooth or move areas within edges in smooth, nifty ways. The opposite filters, Artistic | Poster Edges, Artistic | Smudge Sticks, and the Brush Strokes | Accented Edges emphasize the edge lines and contours of the image selectively. So from practice one knows the most effective filters for different situations/ purposes - Accented edges produces exactly the look we need.

So strictly from practice one builds up a feel for which filters and effects will be useful in different situtions. Again, it can't be stressed enough - trying thing using the Undo/Redo tools allows quick trial of alternatives and helps build up the photo editing experience curve . As a bonus those steps can be re-used in programs like PhotoShop, PhotoPaint & PaintShopPro as macros or actions.

The final steps for our image is to enhance the contrast, sharpen it up and try some tonal curve corrections. Enhhance | Brightness Contrast | Brightness Contrast pop up the dialog seen at the left. Note as you make adjustments the brightness contrast changes for the whole scene. This is one weakness of PhotoElements. Corel PhotoPaint and Jasc PaintShop Pro provide both before and after thumbnail previews and the full image preview option. These different preview modes certainly do cut down time working on an image.

And to underline the point the last two steps - Filters | Sharpen More and deciding not to make a tonal correction after all would have gone faster if the before and after preview thumbnails had been available. Educated trial and error is speeded up by good preview facilities.