How Do I Consolidate All My Photos And Videos Into Photoshop Elements 18

Chapter 1. Finding Your Way Around Elements

Photoshop Elements lets you lot do practically annihilation you want to digital images. You tin can colorize black-and-white photos, remove demonic ruddy-eyed stares, or misconstrue the facial features of people who've been hateful to y'all. The downside is that all those options can brand it tough to find your way around Elements, especially if you're new to the program.

This chapter helps become y'all oriented. You'll larn what to expect when you launch the programme and how to employ Elements to set photos with just a couple of keystrokes. You'll likewise find out how to use Guided Edit way to get started editing images. Along the fashion, you'll find out nigh some of Elements' basic controls and how to go to the program's Help files.

Getting Started

On a Windows estimator, when you lot install Elements (Installing Elements in Windows explains how), the installer creates a desktop shortcut for yous. But double-click that shortcut to launch Elements. You tin can also get to the Start bill of fare and click the Adobe Photoshop Elements 13 icon. (If you don't come across Elements in the Start bill of fare, then click the pointer next to All Programs, and y'all should come across it in the pop-up carte.)

On a Mac, you can launch Elements as the last pace in the installation procedure, or you tin can get to Applications→Adobe Photoshop Elements 13 and double-click its icon there. (Incidentally, the just other thing in that folder besides the uninstaller is a folder called Support Files. That's where you'll detect the Editor application, which you'll acquire about starting on Editing Your Photos.) If you lot desire to brand a Dock icon for future convenience, beginning Elements and then go to the Dock and click the program's icon. Go along holding the mouse push button down until y'all run across a menu, and then choose Options→Keep in Dock.

Note

Elements 13 uses the same light color scheme Adobe has used since Elements 11. Unfortunately, there's no mode to change it if you lot prefer a darker look.

The Welcome Screen

When you launch Elements for the first time, y'all're greeted by the Welcome screen (Figure 1-1). This screen is a launcher that lets you choose which office of Elements you want to employ:

• Organizer . Click this button to offset the Organizer, which lets you shop and organize your image files. It'due south explained in particular starting on Using the Organizer.

• Photo Editor . Click this push to offset the Editor, which lets yous alter images. Meet Editing Your Photos for more about this part of Elements.

Information technology'southward easy to hop back and forth between the Editor and the Organizer, which you can retrieve of every bit the two halves of Elements. But in some ways, they function equally 2 separate programs. For example, if y'all start in the Organizer, then one time you pick a photo to edit, you lot have to expect a few seconds while the Editor starts upwards. And when yous have both the Editor and the Organizer running, quitting the Editor doesn't shut the Organizer—yous take to close information technology separately.

Figure 1-1. Elements' Welcome screen. The images at the bottom are dynamic, meaning they may change, just the buttons at the top and the gear icon for the settings are always the same. Sometimes y'all may come across ads for special offers for other Adobe programs.

At the bottom center of the Editor's master window is a button that you can click to launch the Organizer (or switch over to information technology if it's already running). If you desire to do the opposite—get photos from the Organizer over to the Editor—select the photo(southward) in the Organizer, and then click the Editor push button at the bottom of the screen, or right-click/Command-click one of the selected thumbnails and cull "Edit with Photoshop Elements Editor." Either way, your photo(s) appear in the Editor so you tin piece of work on them. Once both programs are running, you can besides but click the Editor'southward or the Organizer'south icon in the Windows taskbar or the Mac Dock to switch from ane to the other.

One helpful thing to proceed in mind is that Adobe congenital Elements around the assumption that nigh people piece of work on their photos in the following way: First, yous bring photos into the Organizer to sort and keep track of them. Next, you open photos in the Editor to work on them, and then save them back to the Organizer when you've finished making changes. You can utilise a different workflow, of class—by opening photos direct in the Editor and bypassing the Organizer altogether, for example—only you may experience like you lot're always swimming confronting the current. (The side by side chapter has a few hints for disabling some of Elements' features if you find that they're getting in your way.)

Notation

In most countries, the first time you launch either the Editor or the Organizer, Elements presents y'all with Elements Live (a.k.a. eLive), an inspirational and tutorial section explained on eLive. To start organizing your photos in the Organizer, only click the Media tab at the tiptop of the screen. In the Editor, just click any of the tabs at the top of the screen likewise eLive.

Organizing Your Photos

The Organizer is where your photos come into Elements and become out again when information technology'south fourth dimension to print, edit, or e-mail them. The Organizer catalogs and keeps track of your photos, and you automatically return to it for many activities that involve sharing photos, like emailing them (Emailing Photos) or creating a slideshow with them (PDF Slideshows). The Organizer's main window (Figure 1-2) lets you view your photos, sort them into albums, and assign keyword labels to them.

The Organizer got a complete makeover in Elements 11, so if you lot're upgrading from Elements 10 or older, it's pretty much a whole new abortion compared to the Organizer you knew earlier. In Elements 13, Adobe gives you a whole new mode of seeing your photos in the Organizer, called the Adaptive Filigree, which you can run across in Figure one-2. You tin can switch betwixt this view and the former grid view found in earlier versions of Elements. Your Catalog explains how. The next chapter shows you how to utilise the Organizer to import and organize photos, and online Appendix B covers all the Organizer's different menu options (head to world wide web.missingmanuals.com/cds to download information technology). However, it's of import to sympathise that you don't take to apply the Organizer if you don't want to. Lots of people don't, for a diverseness of reasons. Media View explains some of the arguments for and confronting it.

The Photo Downloader

Elements has yet another component that you may have already seen if you've plugged a camera into your computer later on installing Elements: the Photograph Downloader (Effigy 1-3), which helps get photos into the Organizer directly from your camera'due south memory card.

Figure i-2. The Organizer lets you suit and sort photos by the people, places, and events they represent, equally well as assign keyword tags and categories. This is Media view, which is where your photos go when you lot outset import them to the Organizer. (Adobe calls the different areas of the Organizer "views.") This prototype shows Media view'due south new Adaptive Grid manner. Page 44 explains the Organizer'due south viewing options.

Figure 1-3. Adobe's Photo Downloader is yet another program you get when y'all install Elements. Its job is to pull photos from your camera (or other storage device) into the Organizer. To use the Downloader in Windows, but click "Organize and Edit using Adobe Elements Organizer 13.0" (circled) when this AutoPlay dialog box appears. On a Mac, you launch the Downloader from the Organizer past going to File→"Get Photos and Videos"→"From Camera or Card Reader." Afterwards the Downloader does its thing, you lot end up in the Organizer.

In Windows, the Downloader is i of your options in the Windows dialog box that you see when you connect a device. If you lot want to use the Downloader, so just choose it from the list.

To launch the Downloader on a Mac, in the Organizer, go to File→"Get Photos and Videos"→"From Photographic camera or Bill of fare Reader." In that location's no way to make the Downloader run automatically on a Mac—you accept to go through the Organizer to start it.

Yous tin read more about the Downloader in Affiliate ii starting on The Photo Downloader. If you lot programme to use the Organizer to catalog photos and assign keywords to them, and then reading that section can help you avoid hair-pulling moments.

Editing Your Photos

The Editor is the other main component of Elements. This is the fun function of the programme, where yous go to adjust, transform, and generally glamorize photos, and where you lot can create original artwork from scratch with cartoon tools and shapes.

The Editor has four different modes:

• eLive . Elements Live (abbreviated eLive in the tab at the summit of your screen) is a new feature in Elements 13. When you click this tab, you're presented with a multifariousness of tutorials for using Elements and some examples of fancy photography and editing to help inspire you. It's a drove of interesting stuff from Adobe and from many dissimilar Cyberspace sites. This is where y'all start the starting time fourth dimension you launch the Editor. To movement on to working with your photos, simply click ane of the other tabs at the top of the window; they're explained in the following bullet points. There's more most Elements Live on eLive.

• Quick Fix . For many Elements beginners, Quick Fix (Figure i-four) ends upward beingness their main workspace. It's where Adobe has gathered together the basic tools y'all need to ameliorate most photos. You can even add frames, special furnishings, and textures to your photos here. This is besides one of the 2 places in Elements where you lot can have a before-and-subsequently view while you work (the other is Guided Edit, described next). Chapter iv gives you all the details on using Quick Ready. The kickoff time you launch the Editor, you lot starting time out in Quick Ready style.

  

  Figure 1-4. The Quick Fix window. To compare your fixes with the original photo, fire up one of the two Before & After views, which you get to by clicking the View carte in the upper left.

  Note

  In some places, Adobe refers to Quick Fix way as "Quick Edit way" instead. Those are only two dissimilar names for the same matter. This book e'er calls it Quick Fix mode.

• Guided Edit . This window tin be a big help if you lot're a newcomer to Elements. It provides footstep-by-step walkthroughs of popular projects such as cropping photos and removing blemishes; meet Guided Edit subsequently in this affiliate for an intro. Guided Edit also hosts some fun special effects and workflows for more than advanced users (come across Special Effects in Guided Edit).

• Expert . This mode gives you admission to Elements' nigh sophisticated tools. You have far more means to work on your photo in Expert mode than in Quick Fix, and if you're fussy, this is where you'll do nearly of your retouching work. Most of the Quick Fix commands are too bachelor via menus in the Expert fashion window (shown in Figure ane-5).

Effigy 1-v. The main Elements editing window, which Adobe calls Good mode. This is where you have access to all of Elements' editing features. This screenshot shows what yous run into on showtime inbound the Custom Workspace, explained in the next department (page 12). You can customize your workspace quite a bit from this starting bespeak.

You switch modes by clicking the Quick, Guided, and Expert tabs at the top of the Elements window. The residuum of this chapter covers some of the Editor's basic concepts and cardinal tools.

Tip

If yous leave a photo open in the Editor, then when you switch back to the Organizer, you'll see a cherry band with a padlock across the photo's Organizer thumbnail equally a reminder. To get rid of the lock and complimentary up your paradigm for Organizer projects, get back to the Editor and close the photo there.

Understanding Skillful Manner

Once you enter Practiced way (click the Adept tab at the top of the Editor to get at that place), you may be pretty puzzled every bit to how to go along. In that location's a toolbox on the left, a row of icons across the bottom of the screen—and that'southward pretty much it. If yous've ever used old versions of Elements, you may be request, "Where did everything go?" Non to worry. Information technology'south all withal there, you but need to know how to make things work.

Basic Workspace

Expert mode starts out in what Adobe calls the Basic Workspace (Figure one-6), a blueprint that it hoped would be less confusing to beginners. On the left side of the screen is a double-columned toolbox. When you lot open a photograph, a small thumbnail version of it appears in the expanse near the lesser of the window, called the Photo Bin . However, what you see in this area changes depending on what you're doing. When you activate one of Elements' tools, this area is taken over by the Tool Options , where you run into the settings for the tool you're currently using (more well-nigh that on Elements' Tools).

Figure ane-six. When y'all beginning use the Editor in Adept mode, the window looks like this, which Adobe calls the Basic Workspace. The buttons at the bottom right (circled) let you lot switch from one panel to another. You can meet simply one panel at a time, which is i reason why most folks adopt to use the Custom Workspace shown in Figure ane-five. It'south explained in the side by side section.

At the lesser right of the screen are a series of buttons: Layers, Effects, Graphics, Favorites, and More. The first 4 are the names of Elements' most-used panels . Panels let you practise things similar go along track of what you've done to a photograph (with the History console) and apply special effects to your images (with the Effects and Graphics panels). You'll learn most the program's various panels in detail throughout this book.

Hither'southward the affair about the Basic Workspace: When you click one of those console buttons, that panel appears and fills the unabridged right side of your screen (chosen the Panel Bin ) from top to bottom, as the Layers panel does in Effigy one-6. When you're in the Bones Workspace, merely the panels that have buttons at the lesser correct of the screen tin can appear in the Panel Bin, and you can't run across more than one of them at a fourth dimension or resize them. To switch to another panel, you click its button at the bottom of the screen and the previous panel disappears.

But the Editor has many more than panels than but those 4. If you need one of the others, like say the History panel, you bring information technology up by clicking the More than button in the window'southward lower-right corner. This brings upward all of Elements' other panels in one floating group, and you click the tab of the console you desire to piece of work with to bring it to the forepart. You can movement the group around on your screen, just you can't put information technology in the Panel Bin or take anything out of the Console Bin. You too can't remove whatever panels from the group, and you have no command over how big it is—it automatically resizes itself to fit the current panel. You can close the group by clicking the little X at its top correct (in Windows) or top left (on a Mac).

Tip

If you click the tiny arrow on the right side of the More than button, you tin can cull a panel by name, but in the Basic Workspace you still get the whole group. All choosing the name does is brand certain that the panel you desire is the front one when the grouped panels appear.

You can effort using Expert mode's Basic Workspace, but odds are that in near 10 minutes, this setup volition take yous raving and chirapsia your head on your desk. Fortunately, Elements offers a much improve way to use the Editor: the Custom Workspace .

Custom Workspace

If yous've e'er used Elements (or any graphics plan) before, y'all'll exist enormously relieved to know that y'all can brand the Editor work much more efficiently than the Basic Workspace does. The surreptitious is a well-subconscious bill of fare command that restores Elements to its full usefulness. To reach this transformation, just caput to the bottom right of the Elements window, click the tiny arrow on the right side of the More than button, and then choose Custom Workspace.

Voilà! Yous may non see much of a change onscreen, but yous just regained an enormous amount of liberty to set things up the style yous want them. In the Custom Workspace you lot can tear individual panels out of the panel group, put panels into (and have them out of) the Panel Bin, brand your own console groups, and and so on.

Switch to the Custom Workspace right now . The balance of this book assumes that you'd like to come across what you're doing then are using the Editor's Custom Workspace.

Bins, Panels, and Tabs

You lot're not stuck with the way things are initially laid out in the Editor's Custom Workspace (explained in a higher place). You lot can rearrange things quite a scrap from where Adobe starts you out. This section explains the various means you tin customize the Editor when yous're in the Custom Workspace).

Tip

You tin hide everything in the Editor except for your images, the strip of buttons forth the bottom of the Editor'southward window, and the card bar: no tools, panels, or anything else cluttering up your screen. This is handy when y'all want a good, undistracted look at what you've done to a photo. To practice and then, simply printing the Tab cardinal; to bring everything dorsum into view, press Tab again. (This too works in the Basic Workspace.)

The Photo Bin/Tool Options Surface area

In that location'southward a long, narrow strip at the lesser of the Editor window that displays unlike things depending on what you're doing at the moment. When yous first open a photo, you run into the Photograph Bin (Effigy 1-7) in this expanse, which displays all your open files. But if you click a tool in the toolbox on the left side of the Editor window, the Photograph Bin gets replaced with settings for that particular tool, chosen (logically enough) the Tool Options . At that place are buttons at the bottom left of the chief Editor window that let you switch between the Photo Bin and Tool Options, so you tin can always encounter the one y'all want.

Effigy 1-7. The Photo Bin at the bottom of the Editor window holds a thumbnail of every open photo. Click the arrow in the bin'south top-right corner to collapse it, and use the button at the bottom left to bring it back. Clicking the Tool Options push button displays settings for the tool y'all're currently using.

The Photo Bin/Tool Options area is fixed in place: You tin can't motility information technology anywhere else or resize it. However, you tin can hide it past clicking the downwards-pointing arrow at the right finish of the light-gray bar just above it (labeled in Figure i-vii), or past clicking the Photo Bin button (when the Photograph Bin is visible) or the Tool Options push button (when the Tool Options are visible). This gives you more than space, but it likewise hides the settings for your tools, so it's hard to do much work with it hidden. To bring it back, click either the Photograph Bin or Tool Options push button at the bottom of the window. (This beliefs is the same in both the Bones and Custom workspaces.)

At that place's more most how to use the Tool Options on Elements' Tools. The rest of this section is about the Photo Bin.

The Photo Bin does a lot more than than just show which photos you take open up. For case, you can drag photos' thumbnails in the bin to rearrange them if you lot desire to use the images in a project. The bin also has two drop-downward menus:

• Show Files . This menu at the bin's upper left lets you determine what the Photo Bin displays: the photos currently open in the Editor, selected photos from the Organizer, or whatsoever albums (Albums) you've fabricated. This carte even lets you send files from the Organizer to the bin without really opening them. Merely click photos to select them in the Organizer, and and so come back over to the Editor and switch this card to "Prove Files selected in Organizer"; you'll see the photos y'all selected in the Organizer waiting for you in the bin. Double-click one to open it for editing.

• Bin Actions . This menu is where the Photo Bin gets really useful, but it'south not piece of cake to spot: It's the little 4-line square in the bin's upper correct. This carte du jour lets y'all print the photos in the bin or make an album right there in the Photo Bin without ever going to the Organizer. If you don't utilize the Organizer, and so the Photo Bin is a peculiarly great feature, because it lets you create groups of photos y'all can call upwardly together: Just put them in an album hither by choosing "Relieve Bin as an Album"; after that, yous can select the album's name from the bin's Show Files menu to meet those photos. If yous like things to be compartmentalized, the Show Grid menu detail here puts a sparse blackness line effectually each thumbnail.

Note

In the Photograph Bin, y'all may notice little paintbrush icons at the top-correct corner of your photos' thumbnails. They indicate that you've edited a photo but haven't saved your changes.

The Panel Bin

When you're in Expert mode, the right side of the Elements window displays the Panel Bin . (In the Basic Workspace you won't run across this bin until you click one of the panel buttons in the bottom-correct corner of the Editor window.) When you first switch to the Custom Workspace (Custom Workspace), the Console Bin appears with four panels open: Layers, Effects, Graphics, and Favorites (Figure i-8). These are the aforementioned four panels that take their own buttons in the Basic Workspace, only hither you tin shut any of them that you don't need at the moment.

Note

In older versions of Elements and Photoshop, panels were called "palettes." If you see a tutorial that talks nigh the "Effects palette," for example, that's the same thing as the Effects panel.

To pull a panel out of the bin, drag the console's top tab (the one with its name on information technology); you've now got yourself a floating panel. (You can float panels even if y'all haven't turned on floating image windows as explained on Image Views.) Figure 1-9 shows how to make panels fifty-fifty smaller once they're out of the bin past collapsing them in one of 2 ways. Y'all tin besides combine panels, as shown in Figure 1-10; this works with both panels in the bin and freestanding panels you've dragged out of the bin.

Figure 1-eight. 2 different ways of working with the same images, panels, and tools. Yous can use whatsoever organisation that suits you. (These figures prove the Mac version of Elements, in which the master menu bar is up at the top of the screen, out of the motion picture here. In Windows, it sticks to the pinnacle of the workspace.) Summit: The panels in the standard Custom Workspace organization, with the images in tabs. Bottom: This effigy shows how y'all can customize your panels. The images here are in floating windows, and the Tool Options/Photo Bin is hidden. There's no Panel Bin, either, since all the panels are floating.

Figure 1-nine. Y'all can complimentary up lots of space by collapsing panels piano accordion-manner once they're out of the bin. Tiptop: A full-sized panel. Bottom: A panel collapsed by double-clicking its tab (where the cursor is here). Exist sure to double-click the name of the panel, not in the blank surface area to the right of the tab.

Figure 1-10. You can combine two or more panels once y'all've dragged them out of the Console Bin. Pinnacle: Here, the Histogram console is beingness combined with the Layers panel. To perform this technique, drag both panels out of the Panel Bin, and so elevate one of them (by clicking the tab at the top of the panel) onto the other. When the panel yous're dragging becomes ghosted and you see the blue outline shown here, let go of your mouse button to combine them. Bottom: To switch from one panel to some other after they're grouped, but click the tab of the one yous want to employ. Here y'all meet the mouse ready to click the Layers panel's tab to switch over to information technology from the Histogram panel. To remove a console from a group, simply drag its tab out of the group. To render everything to how it looked when you first entered the Custom Workspace, go to Window→Reset Panels.

The kickoff time yous think one of the panels that's not initially displayed in the Custom Workspace (by selecting its name in either the Window menu or the menu that appears when you click the downward arrow on the correct side of the More button), you get the same floating console group that you go far the Bones Workspace (Understanding Expert Mode). Luckily, yous tin can fix this in a jiffy. Just pull the panels you want loose from the clump. After that, Elements volition recollect what you did, and those panels volition appear right where you left them last time. So the first time you recall the History panel, for instance, you become the six-panel group. Simply if you split the History panel from the group, from then on, when you go to Window→History or click the pointer adjacent to the More push button and cull History, all you get is the console you want, not the whole clump. You can put the panel in the bin, go out it floating, or combine it with another console, and that'southward exactly how it will appear adjacent time.

Note

If you lot've floated whatever panels, clicking the More push closes them. Yous can click the arrow on the correct side of this button to display the pop-out card and make choices there, but click the main part of the button and everything is gone. Click the button over again to bring everything dorsum.

To close a floating panel, click its Close button (the Ten at its upper right [in Windows] or upper left [on a Mac]), or click the footling white square fabricated of 4 horizontal lines in the panel'due south upper right, and so cull Close.

Note

Confusingly, Adobe sometimes refers to floating panels as "tabs" in Elements' menus. So, for example, when yous click the four-line square on a floating panel, you come across a Shut Tab Grouping option instead of a Close Panel Group selection.

In add-on, when you lot're using the Custom Workspace, you lot can put floating panels into the Panel Bin. Where you drag the panel determines where it appears in the bin. If you want to come across a console's tab with the other tabs at the top of the bin, so elevate the panel'southward tab onto the other tabs at the top of the bin and permit go when yous see a bluish outline. Since the Panel Bin always fills the entire right side of the screen from elevation to bottom, you lot may likewise prefer to stack panels vertically so that you can run across more than one at a time. You can't actually do that, but yous can get the aforementioned effect past dragging a panel's tab onto the tab of a panel already in the bin. This creates a multi-tabbed panel in the bin. And so take hold of the tab of the panel you lot desire to encounter lower in the bin and drag it directly downwardly. The panel is actually floating, but it will position itself within the confines of the bin, below the contents of the first panel, and so that it's effectively the same as if it were docked below the first panel.

One affair that's a flake tricky about the Custom Workspace is that you may current of air up losing the Panel Bin completely. If yous pull all the panels out of it, the bin disappears. This can exist handy because it gives you lot more space to spread out when working on photos, but if you lot want the bin back, you may observe yourself dragging a console all over the right side of the screen trying to make information technology dock back into the main window. The fob is to move the console over the far right edge of the main Editor window. When you do this, the blue line appears along that edge. Allow become of the panel, and the Console Bin returns with your panel in it.

All this panel organizing isn't equally complicated as it sounds, and information technology's easier to acquire past doing than by reading about it. So try dragging some panels around in the Custom Workspace. If you don't similar the results of your handiwork or yous motility the panels around and then much that you can't retrieve where you put things, just go to Window→Reset Panels, and Elements puts all the panels back in their original spots.

Paradigm Windows

You too get to choose how y'all want to view the images you lot're working on. Quondam versions of Elements used floating windows, where each epitome appears in a separate window that you can drag effectually. Elements now starts you out with a tabbed view—which uses something similar the tabs in a spider web browser or the tabs you lot'd observe on paper file folders; see Figure i-8, top—just you can still put images into floating windows, if you prefer (Image Views explains how).

The reward of tabbed view is that information technology gives you enough of workspace effectually your prototype, which is handy when y'all're working nearly the edges of a photo or using a tool that requires yous to be able to get outside the image's boundaries. Many people switch back and along between floating and tabbed windows as they work, depending on which is well-nigh convenient. All the things yous can do with prototype windows—including how to switch betwixt tabbed view and floating windows—are explained on Zooming and Repositioning Your View. (Incidentally, clicking Window→Reset Panels doesn't do annihilation to your image windows or tabs; it resets only your panels.)

Notation

Because your view may vary, near of the illustrations in this book show merely the image itself and the tool in use, without a window frame or a tab boundary effectually information technology.

Elements' Tools

Elements gives you an astonishing array of tools to apply when working on photos. You lot get almost two dozen main tools to help select, paint on, and otherwise manipulate images, and some of these tools have as many as seven subtools. Bob Vila's workshop probably isn't any better stocked than Elements' virtual toolbox!

Tip

To explore every nook and cranny of Elements, you demand to open a photo (in the Editor, choose File→Open). Lots of the menus are grayed out (unavailable) if you don't have a file open up.

When you're in Good manner, the long, skinny strip on the left side of the Editor window is the Tools panel (Figure i-11). It stays perfectly organized so yous can always find what you want without e'er having to tidy it upward. The Tools panel is fixed in place—you tin can't move information technology, resize it, or brand it into a single column similar yous could in some previous versions of the program.

Figure ane-11. The mighty Tools panel is divided into six categories—View, Select, Enhance, Depict, Alter, and Color—to brand it easier to discover what yous desire. (If you lot don't see these category labels, see Figure one-12 to learn why that is.) Because some tools are grouped together in the same slot (indicated by picayune arrows next to the tools' icons, shown in Effigy 1-12), yous can't ever run into all the tools at in one case. For grouped tools, the icon y'all see is the 1 for the last tool y'all used in that group.

Many of the icons in the Tools panel really stand for tool groups , but Adobe has chosen to play hide and seek with the subtools. Move your cursor over a section of the Tools panel, and you lot'll see teeny, tiny arrows above the icons of the tools in that section that have other tools nested with them (come across Figure 1-12).

When you click an icon in the Tools panel, the Tool Options surface area (The Photo Bin/Tool Options Expanse) displays settings for that tool, likewise as icons for any subtools nested with that tool. If yous forget what a detail icon is for, just put your cursor over it—without clicking—and a label (called a tooltip ) appears telling yous the tool'southward proper noun.

Figure ane-12. When y'all put your cursor over a section of the toolbox that has subtools nested with the visible tools, y'all see these minute arrows next to the tool icons. Hither, for case, you can encounter that all the tools in the Enhance section except the Red Eye Removal tool have more tools grouped with them. Unlike in old versions of Elements, y'all can't right-click a tool's icon or concord the mouse down to see the subtools, merely y'all tin wheel through them by Alt-clicking/Choice-clicking the group's current Tools console icon repeatedly, or just by looking in the Tool Options surface area at the bottom of the Elements window. Incidentally, whether or not you lot see the category names (like the Raise and Depict labels shown hither) depends on your screen resolution. If your screen is so brusk that the Tools console would be cut off if the names were displayed, so Elements but doesn't show them.

To activate a tool, click its icon in either the Tools console (if the icon is displayed in that location) or in the Tool Options area (if the tool is grouped with the currently active tool). Each tool comes with its ain collection of options, every bit shown in Figure i-thirteen. The Tools panel remembers the last tool you used, so if you choose to utilize one of the nested tools, the side by side time you'll run across the icon for that tool in the console rather than the one for the tool that was there when y'all start started Elements. This may seem complicated, but after a while y'all'll get pretty good at remembering where each tool lives.

Effigy 1-13. The Tool Options area displays settings for the current tool. Here y'all see the Sponge tool'south options, and the icons for the Dodge and Fire tools, which share its Tools panel slot. Call back, the Tool Options area replaces the Photo Bin when you click a tool's icon. You can switch between the Photograph Bin and the Tool Options by clicking their buttons at the lesser of your screen.

Other windows in Elements, similar Quick Fix and the Raw Converter, also have toolboxes, only none is as complete every bit Skilful way's Tools panel. Don't worry about learning the names of every tool right now. It's easier to recall what a tool is in one case you've used it. And don't be overwhelmed past all of Elements' tools. Y'all probably have a bunch of Allen wrenches in your garage that you use only every twelvemonth or so. Too, you'll discover that y'all utilize certain Elements tools more than others.

Tip

Y'all tin can save time by activating tools with their keyboard shortcuts rather than by clicking their icons, since that way you don't have to interrupt what you're doing to trek over to the Tools panel. To see a tool's shortcut primal, put your cursor over its icon in the Tools panel or Tool Options area, and a label pops upwardly indicating the shortcut key (it's the letter in parentheses to the correct of the tool's proper name). To actuate the tool, simply printing the appropriate key. If the tool you desire is part of a group, then all the tools in that group take the same keyboard shortcut, and then just keep pressing that central to wheel through the grouping until you get to the tool you desire.

Getting Help

Wherever Adobe found a stray corner in Elements, information technology stuck some help into it. You tin't move anywhere in the program without being offered some kind of guidance. Here are a few of the ways you can summon assistance if yous need it:

• Assist menu . Choose Aid→Photoshop Elements Help or printing F1/⌘-?. When y'all practise, Elements launches your web browser, which displays Elements' Aid files, where you can search or browse a topic listing and glossary. The Help carte also contains links to online video tutorials and Adobe's support forum for Elements.

• Dialog box links . Many dialog boxes have a few words of vivid blue text somewhere in them. (Sometimes you'll run into a question mark in a circle instead.) That text is actually a link to Elements Help. If you get confused most what the Remove Color Cast feature does, for instance, and so, in the Remove Colour Cast dialog box, click the blue words "Color Bandage" for a reminder.

Note

When Elements is busy doing something that takes awhile, it lets you know by displaying a notice in a dark gray oval that says something similar "Undo Paint Bucket" or whatever the particular task is.

eLive

Elements Live (eLive) is a fun new section that Adobe added to both the Editor and the Organizer in Elements thirteen. What'south available on this tab changes constantly, and you need an Internet connectedness to view whatever of it. Information technology's a compilation of articles from Adobe and interesting Elements-related links from around the Internet.

Annotation

In almost countries yous come across the eLive tab and Elements opens to that tab the showtime time yous start the Editor or the Organizer. Still, since what Elements Alive displays is geared to your language and country, it'southward non currently available in every country, especially if you use Elements in a language other than English language. If eLive isn't in your area yet, yous won't see the eLive tab at all, only one 24-hour interval it may spontaneously announced (without yous needing to run any kind of update) when Adobe has information technology ready for your language.

Click this tab and y'all're presented with a smorgasbord of tutorials and inspirational articles. Some of the tutorials are very basic; others are quite avant-garde. Figure 1-14 explains how to filter what y'all encounter so you can focus on the type of manufactures you want. To read an commodity or tutorial, but click on its carte du jour (the graphic and synopsis y'all come across in Elements Live). Elements opens your web browser and takes you to the page you chose. There's too a push on the right side of the screen that you tin click to connect to Adobe support. There are contests and links to interesting material on other sites, like Pinterest.

Figure i-14. Click the card circled here to filter what you see in the window by Everything, Learn (tutorials), Inspire (cool stuff to look at for ideas), and News. So if you're only interested in tutorials, just click Learn and that's all you'll meet.

When Adobe updates the contents of Elements Live, a little red number appears on the eLive tab, showing how many new manufactures in that location are. When y'all click the tab, new cards take a New banner on them. To become rid of the number, just click over to the Everything section, a then click back to where you want to be (if y'all're in the midst of something and don't want to read anything right at present). Doing this also removes the banners from the cards, so if you desire to go back later, y'all won't have any piece of cake way to tell what was changed. (Updates to Elements Live don't appear in Assist→Updates. They merely prove up any time you open Elements with an active Cyberspace connexion.)

Guided Edit

If you're a beginner, Guided Edit (Figure i-15) can be a big assist. Information technology walks y'all through a variety of popular editing tasks, like cropping, sharpening, correcting colors, and removing blemishes. It as well includes some features that are useful fifty-fifty if yous're an old manus at Elements, like the High Key and Low Key edits (Effects). Guided Edit is really easy to use:

1. Get to Guided Edit .

   At the top of the Editor window, click the Guided tab.

   

   Figure 1-15. Guided Edit gives you step-past-footstep help with basic photo editing. Just apply the tools that appear in the right-manus panel in one case you lot choose an activity. When you lot first open Guided Edit, all the different sections are closed. But click the name of a section to expand it and see what y'all can do. When you click another section, the previous 1 collapses. Equally with Quick Set, y'all can change to a Before & After view by using the View menu (circled) to select the one y'all want.

2. Open up a photo .

   If yous already have an epitome open when y'all enter Guided Edit, then information technology appears in the main window automatically. If you need to open up an image, click the Open up button at the upper left of the window or press Ctrl+O/⌘-O and so, in the dialog box that appears, choose your photo. If you take several photos in the Photo Bin, then you can switch images by double-clicking the thumbnail of the i you desire to work on. (If the Photo Bin disappears while you lot're working, only click its button at the bottom left of the screen to bring it back.)

3. Choose what you want to do .

   In the panel on the right side of the Guided Edit window, your options are grouped into major categories like Touchups and Photo Effects, with a variety of specific projects nether each heading. Just click the task yous want to perform, and the panel displays the relevant buttons and/or sliders for that chore.

4. Brand your adjustments .

   Simply motion the panel'south sliders and click its buttons till you lot like what you see. If you demand to suit your view of the photo while you work on it, utilise the Hand (The Hand Tool and Navigator Panel) and Zoom (The Zoom Tool) tools in the trivial toolbox at the pinnacle left of the Guided Edit window.

   If you want to start over, click the Reset Panel icon circled in Effigy one-xvi. If you change your mind nigh the whole project, click Cancel at the bottom of the panel.

   

   Effigy 1-16. Adobe tried to make Elements easy for beginners to utilise, simply information technology's a pretty skilful bet that you won't easily approximate the purpose of this strange little icon, which appears in many places in Elements. This is the Reset button. In Guided Edit and Quick Gear up, it'due south officially called Reset Panels, which is some other way of saying, "Disengage everything I've washed since I entered this window."

5. Click Done to finish .

   Don't forget to save your changes (Saving Your Piece of work). If you decide you don't similar what you did, click Abolish. To close your photo, press Ctrl+W/⌘-Westward; or leave it open and switch to another tab to share information technology or utilise it in a projection.

Tip

Guided Edit shows you quick and easy ways to modify an image, but it doesn't always get you the all-time possible results. It's a swell tool for starting out; simply remember that what you see there isn't necessarily the all-time you tin can brand your images expect. Once you're more comfortable in Elements, Quick Fix (Chapter iv) is a good next footstep. You'll find that most of the tools in that location will be familiar if you've been using Guided Edit.

Escape Routes

Elements has a couple of really wonderful features to help you avoid making permanent mistakes: the Undo command and the History panel. Subsequently you've gotten used to them, you'll probably wish it were possible to utilize these tools in all aspects of your life, not just Elements.

Undo

No matter where yous are in Elements, you can nearly always change your mind about what yous only did. Press Ctrl+Z/⌘-Z, and the last change you made goes away. This keystroke works even if yous've simply saved your photo, but merely while the epitome is still open —if y'all close the file, your changes are permanent. Keep pressing Ctrl+Z/⌘-Z to go on undoing your work, step past step.

If you want to redo what you lot but undid, press Ctrl+Y/⌘-Y. These keyboard shortcuts are great for toggling changes on and off while you decide whether yous want to keep them. The Undo/Redo keystrokes work in both the Organizer and the Editor.

Note

If you lot don't like Ctrl+Z/⌘-Z and Ctrl+Y/⌘-Y, you accept a fleck of control over the key combinations you use for Undo and Redo. Get to Edit→Preferences→General/Photoshop Elements Editor→Preferences→General. In the Preferences dialog box, the Footstep Back/Fwd menu gives you ii other choices, both of which involve pressing the Z key in combination with the Ctrl, Alt, and Shift keys in Windows, and with the ⌘, Pick, and Shift keys on a Mac.

If you adopt buttons to keystrokes, y'all tin click the Undo and Redo buttons in the bottom left of the Elements window instead. And if you desire to use the keystrokes but forget what they are, they're listed at the top of the Edit menu.

The History Panel

In the Editor's Practiced manner, you get even more than control over the deportment you lot can undo, thanks to the History console (Figure 1-17), which you open past choosing Window→History. (In some previous versions of Elements, this characteristic was called the Undo History console.)

Figure 1-17. For a little time travel, just click the stride you lot want to go back to and watch your changes disappear. Keep in mind that you tin simply go back sequentially. Here, for instance, you lot tin can't get dorsum to the Levels adjustment without offset undoing using the Paint Bucket and creating a new layer via copy. Click a step farther down in the list to redo your work.

This console holds a list of the changes y'all've made since you lot opened your epitome. Just elevate the slider upwardly and picket your changes disappear one by one. Like the Undo control, this panel works even if you've saved your file: As long as you haven't closed the file, the panel tracks every action yous accept. Yous can likewise drag the pointer down to redo changes that y'all've undone.

Be careful, though: You can back up only as many steps as Elements is set to remember. The program is initially prepare to record 50 steps, but you lot tin change that number by going to Edit→Preferences→Operation/Photoshop Elements Editor→Preferences→Performance and adjusting the History States setting. Yous can prepare information technology as high as one,000, but remembering even 100 steps may slow your calculator to a crawl if it doesn't have a superpowered processor, plenty of retentivity, and loads of disk infinite. If Elements runs slowly on your machine, and so reducing the History States setting to, say, 20 may speed things upwardly a bit.

The I Dominion of Elements

Every bit you're beginning to see, Elements lets you work in lots of different ways. What'due south more, most people who use the program approach projects in different means; what works for your neighbour with her pictures may be quite different from how you'd piece of work on the very same shots. Only you'll hear one proposition from most every Elements veteran, and it'south an important one: Never, ever work on your original. Ever, always, always make a copy of your image and work on that instead .

The good news is that, if y'all shop your photos in the Organizer, you don't need to worry about accidentally messing up your original. If y'all salve your files as version sets (Saving Your Piece of work), Elements automatically creates a copy when y'all edit a photograph that's cataloged in the Organizer, so y'all tin always revert to your original. Other image-direction programs, like Apple's iPhoto and Adobe's Lightroom, also brand versions for you if you set Elements as your external editor (run across Opening Stored Images).

But, as explained on Organizing Your Photos, yous don't have to use the Organizer. If yous've decided not to use it or version sets, then follow these steps to brand a re-create of your image in the Editor:

1. Open the image you want to copy, and then go to File → Indistinguishable .

   The Duplicate Image dialog box appears.

2. In the dialog box, proper name the duplicate, then click OK .

   Elements opens the new, indistinguishable image in the main image window.

3. Find the original prototype and click its Shut push (the X or the red dot) .

   If you're using tabs (you are unless you've changed the settings described on Image Windows), the Close push is on the right side of the paradigm's tab in Windows, and on the left side on a Mac. If you take floating windows (Image Windows), the Close button is the standard Windows or Mac Close button yous'd run across in any window. Once yous click this button, your original epitome is safely tucked out of impairment's way.

4. Save the duplicate by pressing Ctrl+S/ ⌘ -S .

   Cull Photoshop (.psd) as the file format when you save it. (You may want to cull another format afterward you've read Affiliate three and understand more about your different format options.)

At present you don't have to worry about making a mistake or changing your mind, considering you can e'er start over.

Note

Elements doesn't have an car-save feature, so you should get into the habit of saving often as yous piece of work. Mac folks, pay special attention—Elements isn't currently able to use Bone 10'due south Car Save characteristic. Saving Your Work has more about saving.

Getting Started in a Hurry

If you're the impatient blazon and you're starting to squirm because you want to exist upwards and doing something to your photos, here's the quickest way to get started in Elements: Accommodate an image'due south brightness and color balance all in one step.

1. In the Editor's Expert mode or the Quick Fix window, open a photograph .

   Press Ctrl+O/⌘-O, navigate to the image yous want, and so click Open.

2. Press Alt+Ctrl+1000/Choice- ⌘ -Grand .

   You lot've just applied Elements' Auto Smart Fix command (Figure 1-xviii).

Figure one-18. Auto Smart Fix is the quickest, easiest way to improve the quality of a photo. Height left: The original, unedited film. Top right: Auto Smart Fix makes quite a departure, but the colors are still slightly off. Lesser: Past using some of the other tools you lot'll larn about in this volume (like Machine Contrast and Conform Sharpness), y'all can make things await even better.

Voilà! You should come across quite a divergence in your photo, unless the exposure, lighting, and contrast were well-nigh perfect before. (If you don't like what just happened to your photograph, no trouble—merely printing Ctrl+Z/⌘-Z to undo the changes.) The Car Smart Gear up control is 1 of Elements' many easy-to-apply features.

If you're really raring to go, jump alee to Chapter four to learn about using the Quick Ready commands. But it's worth taking the time to read the next two chapters and so yous understand which file formats to choose and how to make some basic adjustments to images, like rotating and cropping them.

Don't forget to give Guided Edit a try if you see what yous desire to do in its list of topics (Guided Edit). Guided Edit can exist a big assist while you're learning your mode around.

Source: https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/photoshop-elements-13/9781491948132/ch01.html

Posted by: baronmoreary.blogspot.com

Share this post