Experimenting with photoshop

I am starting to think about the images I would like on my magazine and will need quite a few. I thought I should take a few test pictures that I could possibly use and see what I can do with them on photoshop. Here is an example of a picture i took.

I didn't really think the photo was that good, you could see around the image so firstly I needed to crop these parts away so the focus was on the soundboard. This is the result.

Now the image has been cropped and the focus is on the soundboard I can experiment with different filters to make the image a bit more interesting. To do this you go to filter and select the effect you want. I chose filter>artistic>dry brush and this was the result.

It doesn't look that different but i think it makes the photo look that bit better than before. Experimenting with your pictures like this creates the nest possible pictures to make our magazine look good and professional.