Paintshop Pro X4 - WHOOHOO!!!

I finally upgraded my Paintshop X to Paintshop Pro X4 and WHAT A DIFFERENCE! There are so many amazing things that can be done. I've been scouring the internet for tutorials, forums and tips/tricks to help me out with it. I thought I would share my very rudimentary beginnings on some of these special effects. I know that I probably could have done the same things in PSP X, but it would have been much more time consuming.
Now, don't laugh.... I did say "rudimentary beginnings" !

The Alter Ego actually was time consuming and probably would not have been if I were more experienced at doing this. I had to first remove the entire background, then extract just his head and neck. Then I did the rest of the effects. It was really fun to do.

The Skulls were actually sitting on a TV tray with a pencil in the mouth to hold the jaws open. I had to erase the background and remove the pencil. I used a "fur" effect for the red background. I might go back and add some shadows to give it the depth that it needs.

My lovely sister and brother-in-law had their photo taken while they were sitting at a table with a backdrop of a Harley Motorcycle (they were at a bikers shin-ding) I decided to put them inside a Limestone Cave for St. Paddy's Day - gee it looks like they had alot of fun!

All this started because I wanted to learn how to make more realistic shadows so that my digital objects (especially flowers) would look like a "real" scrapbook page.