Playing with Photoshop

I had heard that Adobe is allowing people to download their CS2 suite of programs free!! It is old software but does everything that I can think of needing.
Here is a link about it. However, there is a link on this page to an article that says Adobe is NOT offering it free.  So see if it works for you, if you are interested.
Here is a link to Adobe.
Lucky me, I got Photoshop when I was a student and it was cheaper. Photoshop is an amazing program that has all sorts of applications that I could never use, or even think of discovering (if you know what I mean).

Here is a simple example of some of the amazing things you can end up with, with very little effort.

Original photo

Cropped from top of original

Playing with Hue and Saturation

Hue and Saturation, then Posterise

Then I went back to the original cropped image and played with the gradient map tool. The colours are dictated by the program, not chosen by me.

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I can't remember if I posterised this one or not, it certainly looks like it.

One thing I find very interesting about these images is how the dark and light centre seems to be receding or protruding, depending on the tone and colour.
I could spend hours playing around with the effects. I just need to think how I might use the images and with what technique.