Photoshop Video Series - A Beginner's Guide to Photoshop Elements

Many people think that the Organizer is a place to store and organize digital files, and it is, but it’s capable of so much more. From importing photos from your digital camera, to rotating them, adding keywords for easy reference, and the ability to store them neatly into stacks and albums, Photoshop Elements is the real-deal when it comes to organisation. There’s no reason on earth not to use it!

If you’re new to Photoshop Elements then the Quick Fix and Guided Modes are for you! Designed as a gentle introduction to image editing, these modes offer a workspace that walks you through the process of improving digital photos with no more than a few simple movements of the appropriate sliders. Whether you’re correcting for color, dark shadows, bright highlights or a soft focus, these modes are the fastest way to see better looking images.

Having covered the theory of the Quick Fix mode in the previous video, it’s time to correct colour, brightness and focus of a real-world digital photograph. Almost all photographs taken on a digital camera require some degree of adjustment to make them look good, and quite simply put, the Quick Fix mode is going to be the fastest and easiest way to get the job done.

The Full Edit mode unleashes the full power of Photoshop Elements in the form of layers, a full set of tools, full ability to select and move pixels, color adjusting and retouching tools beyond the realms of your wildest dreams and much, much more. This is where things start to get interesting. Follow me on a virtual tour of the workspace and rest assured that by time we’re done, you’ll choose power over ease-of-use any day of the week.

At first glance, it may seem that we’re revisiting the same things we looked at way back when we explored the Quick Fix mode, but on second glance, we’re correcting the same problems only this time with way more accuracy, detail and control. Instead of the one-slider solutions offered in Quick Fix mode, we’ll look at more robust options such as the levels command to fix brightness, contrast and colour issues, as well as confining our changes to certain areas using masks, keeping our edits non-destructive with adjustment layers and adding saturation to make the colours of a photograph appear more vivid. This is where the real power of photo correction makes its long overdue debut.

Anyone can make selections inside Photoshop, but it takes a good knowledge of the selection tools, and a little practice, to get on the road to mastering it. As we strive to achieve our ultimate goal – selecting and moving a gorilla into another photograph – we’ll visit the lasso tools, the marquee tools, quick selection, the magic wand and the magic extractor.  We’ll also employ the move tool to move selected elements around, the transform controls to resize the gorilla, and layer blending options to make the composition as realistic as possible. This is just the beginning to the art of image manipulation.

Ever downloaded a photograph to find blemishes and minor imperfections bugging an otherwise perfect shot? Ever wanted a photograph of the real world….to look better than the real world? If you have, then be aware that Photoshop Elements comes equipped with cloning and healing brushes that can banish even the worse defects to the history palette, never to be seen again…..unless you want to of course! The crop tool can also be used to crop away details, or to focus in on what you want the viewer to see, and if that’s not enough of a hint, then you can hide or highlight a subject with text using your favourite fonts and colours.

Effects and filters can be used to correct or complement an image or individual layer by changing pixels in a predefined manner, subject to the controls inside the selected effect or filter.  Photoshop Elements has a wealth of these, allowing you maximum control to warp, twist, blur and distort until your heart’s content. This also brings us to the subject of sharpening – itself a filter – that brings the image into tighter focus by making details within the image stand out. It’s something that every image needs, and every image benefits from.