Photoshop Elements 6 For Dummies E-Book

Barbara Obermeier

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 544

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

Want to get more fun from your photos? To edit and enhanceyour pictures, fix flaws, and create greeting cards or cool photoprojects to share? What about turning out some really professionalprints with simply stunning color? Photoshop Elements can handleit, and Photoshop Elements 6 For Dummies gets you up andrunning on Elements in a hurry. Photoshop Elements 6 is a reasonably priced, full-featured,powerful image-editing program for Windows (Adobe stoppedsupporting Elements for Mac with version 4.) This colorful guidehelps you make the most of all its coolest features. You'll quicklyget familiar with the work area and all the tools; be able to find,organize, and manage your images; correct common mistakes; andexplore fun ways to share your photos. You'll discover howto: * Acquire images from your camera or scanner * Organize your files and photos you so can quickly find whatyou're looking for * Crop and straighten pictures, fix exposure, and clean up dustand scratches * Create sharp and colorful images for printing * Correct color, contrast, and clarity * Combine multiple images into creative collages * Use filters to create different effects * Turn your photos into slide shows, movie files, or Web-hostedimages Elements has something for everyone, from beginning dabblers toserious photo hobbyists to professionals. With plenty of full-colorillustrations that show what you can achieve, this friendly guidewill help you use Elements to make the most of your digitalphotos.

Leseprobe

Photoshop® Elements 6 For Dummies®

by Barbara Obermeier and Ted Padova

Photoshop® Elements 6 For Dummies®

Published byWiley Publishing, Inc.111 River St.Hoboken, NJ 07030-5774www.wiley.com

Copyright © 2008 by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana

Published by Wiley Publishing, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana

Published simultaneously in Canada

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Manufactured in the United States of America

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About the Authors

Barbara Obermeier: Barbara Obermeier is the principal of Obermeier Design, a graphic design studio in Ventura, California. She is the author of Photoshop CS3 All-in-One Desk Reference For Dummies (Wiley) and has contributed as author or coauthor on numerous books on Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, Illustrator, and PowerPoint. She is currently a faculty member in the Graphic Design Department at Brooks Institute.

Ted Padova: In addition to writing several books on Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator, Ted is the world’s leading author of books on Adobe Acrobat. He is also a co-author of Adobe Acrobat 8 PDF Bible, Adobe Creative Suite Bible, Color Correction For Digital Photographers Only, and Color Management for Digital Photographers For Dummies (all from Wiley). Ted spends most of his time writing and speaking at conferences and expos nationally and internationally.

Dedication

Barbara Obermeier: For Gary, Kylie, and Lucky, who constantly remind me of what’s really important in life

Ted Padova: For Arnie

Authors’ Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank our excellent project editor, Kim Darosett, who kept us and this book on track; Bob Woerner, our great Senior Acquisi- tions Editor; Andy Cummings, Dummies Royalty; Dennis Cohen, technical editing wizard, who made what we wrote sound better; and all the dedicated production staff at Wiley.

Barbara Obermeier: A special thanks to Ted Padova, my co-author, and friend, who always reminds me there is still a 1 in 53 million chance that we can win the lottery.

Ted Padova: My first choice always in coauthoring a book is to do the job with Barbara Obermeier. There’s no one I’d rather work with, and I thank Barbara for initially putting together this project and asking me to join her.

Publisher’s Acknowledgments

We’re proud of this book; please send us your comments through our online registration form located at www.dummies.com/register/.

Some of the people who helped bring this book to market include the following:

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Contents

Title

Introduction

About This Book

Conventions Used in This Book

How This Book Is Organized

Icons Used in This Book

Where to Go from Here

Part I : Getting Started

1: Getting to Know the Work Area

Getting Around in Full Edit Mode

Changing Workspaces

Using the Project Bin

Retracing Your Steps

Getting a Helping Hand

Taking Charge with Shortcuts

2: Getting Ready to Edit

Controlling the Editing Environment

Controlling the Organizing Environment

Customizing Presets

Getting Familiar with Color

Getting Color Right

3: Working with Resolutions, Color Modes, and File Formats

The Ubiquitous Pixels

The Art of Resampling

Choosing a Resolution for Print or Onscreen

Go Ahead — Make My Mode!

Saving Files with Purpose

Part II : Getting Organized

4: Getting Your Images

Digital Cameras versus Scanners and Film Cameras

Grabbing Images from Your Camera

Using a Scanner

Getting Files from Storage Media

Using Online Services

Phoning In Your Images

Creating Images from Scratch

A Basic Primer on Camera Raw

5: Viewing and Finding Your Images

The Many Faces of the Organizer

Moving Around the Image Window

Sorting Your Photos

Using Search Options

6: Organizing and Managing Your Photos

Organizing Groups of Images with Keyword Tags

Cataloging Files

Creating Albums

Hiding Files That Get in the Way

Sticking Digital Notes on Your Photos

Automating Your Organization

Protecting Your Photos

Part III : Selecting and Correcting Photos

7: Making and Modifying Selections

Defining Selections

Creating Rectangular and Elliptical Selections

Making Freeform Selections with the Lasso Tools

Working Wizardry with the Magic Wand

Modifying Your Selections

Painting with the Selection Brush

Painting with the Quick Selection Brush

Working with the Cookie Cutter Tool

Eliminating with the Eraser Tools

Using the Magic Extractor Command

Using the Select Menu

8: Working with Layers

Getting to Know Layers

Working with Different Layer Types

Tackling Layer Basics

Moving a Layer’s Content

Transforming Layers

Flattening and Merging Layers

9: Simple Image Makeovers

Cropping and Straightening Images

Employing One-Step Auto Fixes

Editing with Quick Fix

Cloning with the Clone Stamp Tool

Retouching with the Healing Brush

Zeroing In with the Spot Healing Brush

Lightening and Darkening with Dodge and Burn Tools

Smudging Away Rough Spots

Softening with the Blur Tool

Focusing with the Sharpen Tool

Sponging Color On and Off

Replacing One Color with Another

10: Correcting Contrast, Color, and Clarity

Adjusting Lighting

Adjusting Color

Adjusting Clarity

Part IV : Exploring Your Inner Artist

11: Playing with Filters, Effects, Styles, and More

Having Fun with Filters

Working in the Filter Gallery

Distorting with the Liquify Filter

Correcting Camera Distortion

Dressing Up with Photo and Text Effects

Adding Shadows, Glows, and More

Mixing It Up with Blend Modes

Using Photomerge

12: Drawing and Painting

Choosing Color

Getting Artsy with the Pencil and Brush Tools

Filling and Outlining Selections

Splashing On Color with the Paint Bucket Tool

Working with Multicolored Gradients

Working with Patterns

Creating Shapes of All Sorts

13: Working with Type

Understanding Type Basics

Creating Point Type

Creating Paragraph Type

Specifying Type Options

Editing Text

Simplifying Type

Masking with Type

Stylizing and Warping Type

Part V : Printing, Creating, and Sharing

14: Getting It on Paper

Getting Pictures Ready for Printing

Working with Color Printer Profiles

Printing to Epson Inkjet Printers

Printing to HP Inkjet Printers

Printing to Canon Printers

Submitting Files to Service Centers

Using Online Printing Services

Exploring Other Print Options

15: Showing It Onscreen

Getting Familiar with the Elements Sharing and Printing Options

Creating a Slide Show

Writing Creations to CDs and DVDs

Showing Your Files on the Web

Flip ’Em Over with Flipbooks

16: Making Creations and Sharing

Getting a Grip on Assembling Creations

Creating a Photo Book

Greetings!

Creating Calendars

Creating Personal Postage Stamps

Creating CD and DVD Labels

Spreading the Love through Sharing

Part VI : The Part of Tens

17: Ten Tips for Composing Better Photos

Find a Focal Point

Use the Rule of Thirds

Cut the Clutter

Frame Your Shot

Employ Contrast

Using Leading Lines

Experiment with Viewpoints

Use Light

Giving Direction

Consider Direction of Movement

18: Ten More Project Ideas

Wallpaper and Screen Savers

Flyers, Ads, and Online Auctions

Clothes, Hats, and More

Posters

Household and Business Inventories

Project Documentation

School Reports and Projects

Wait — There’s More

Introduction

What was once a consumer-grade, low-level program for beginning image editors and a junior cousin to the powerful Adobe Photoshop program has evolved and matured to stand on its own merits now in version 6.0 for Windows. As of this writing, Elements is available on the Mac only in version 4.

You won’t find much comparison between Adobe Photoshop Elements and Adobe Photoshop in this book, nor will you see any suggestions that you should consider using Photoshop for one thing or another. We don’t make suggestions, simply because Photoshop Elements is a powerful tool that satisfies many needs of amateurs and professionals alike.

Why should you buy Elements (and, ultimately, this book)? The range of people who can benefit from using Elements is wide and includes a vast audience. From beginning image editors to intermediate users to more advanced amateurs and professionals, Elements has something for everyone. We’ll even stick our necks out a little and suggest that many Photoshop users can benefit greatly by adding Elements to their software tool cabinets. Why? Because Elements offers some wonderful creation and sharing tools that Photoshop hasn’t yet dreamed of supporting. For example, in Photoshop Elements 6 on Windows, you can create post cards, greeting cards, calendars, and photo albums with just a few mouse clicks. You can place orders with online service centers that professionally print your photo creations. All these opportunities are available in Elements, and we cover these and many more creation ideas in Chapters 15 and 16.

One downside to the Photoshop Elements program is that version 6 is supported only in Windows. Adobe has apparently abandoned Photoshop Elements for Mac users. Therefore, this book is intended only for Windows users of Photoshop Elements.

To set your frame of mind to thinking in Photoshop Elements terms, don’t think of the program as a scaled-down version of Adobe Photoshop; those days are gone. If you’re a digital photographer and you shoot your pictures in JPEG or Camera Raw format, Elements has the tools for you to open, edit, and massage your pictures into professional images. If you worry about color profile embedding, forget it. Elements can handle the task for you, as we explain in Chapter 4, where we talk about Camera Raw, and in Chapter 14, where we talk about color profiling and printing. For the professional, Photoshop Elements has just about everything you need to create final images for color printing and commercial printing.

If you’re a beginner or an intermediate user, you’ll find some of the Photoshop Elements quick-fix operations a breeze to use to help you enhance your images, as we explain in Chapters 9 and 10. And, when it comes time for you to print some homemade greeting cards, calendars, and photo albums — whether you’re a beginner, an intermediate user, or a professional user — Elements provides you with easy-to-follow steps to package your creations, as we cover in Chapters 15 and 16.

About This Book

This book is an effort to provide, in about 400 pages, as much of a comprehensive view of a wildly feature-rich program as we can. There’s a lot to Elements, and we try to offer you as much as possible within our limited amount of space. We begged for more pages, but alas, our publisher wants to get this book in your hands in full color and with an attractive price tag. Therefore, even though we may skip over a few little things, all you need to know about using Photoshop Elements for designing images for print, sharing, Web hosting, versatile packaging, e-mailing, and more is covered in the pages ahead.

As we said, Photoshop Elements has something for just about everyone. Hence, we know that our audience is large and that not everyone will use every tool, command, or method described in this book. Therefore, we added a lot of cross-references in the text, in case you want to jump around. You can go to just about any chapter and start reading; and, if some concept needs more explanation, we point you in the right direction for getting some background when it’s necessary.

Conventions Used in This Book

Throughout this book, we point you to menus where commands are accessed frequently. A couple of things to remember are the references for where to go when we detail steps in a procedure. For accessing a menu command, you may see a sentence like this one:

Choose File⇒Get Photos⇒From Files and Folders.

When you see commands like this one mentioned, we’re asking you to click the File menu to open the drop-down menu, click the menu command labeled Get Photos, and then choose the command From Files and Folders from the submenu that appears.

Another convention we use refers to context menus. A context menu jumps up at your cursor position and shows you a menu similar to the menu you select at the top of the Elements workspace. To open a context menu, right-click the mouse.

A third item relates to using keystrokes on your keyboard. When we mention that some keys need to be pressed on your keyboard, the text is described like this:

Press Alt+Shift+Ctrl+S

In this case, you hold down the Alt key, the Shift key, and the Control key and then press the S key. Then release all the keys at the same time.

How This Book Is Organized

This book is divided into logical parts where related features are nested together in chapters within six different parts of the book:

Part I: Getting Started

If you just bought a digital camera and you’re new to image editing in a program like Photoshop Elements, you’re probably tempted to jump into fixing and editing your pictures. The essentials usually aren’t the most exciting part of any program or book. That’s true with this book, too: The more mundane issues related to understanding some basics are assembled in the first three chapters. Although some bits of information aren’t as exciting as in many other chapters, you must understand them before you start editing images. Be sure to review the first three chapters before you dive into the other chapters.

In Part I, we talk about the tools, menus, commands, preferences, workspaces, and features that help you move around easily in the program. The more you pick up in the preliminary chapters, the more easily you can adapt to the Elements way of working.

Part II: Getting Organized

In Part II, we talk about getting photos in Elements, organizing your files, searching for files, and grouping your photos, and we give you much more information related to the Photoshop Elements Organizer. The Organizer is your central workplace and knowing a great deal about using the Organizer window helps you move around much faster in the program.

Part III: Selecting and Correcting Photos

Part III relates to creating and manipulating selections. There’s a lot to making selections in photos, but after you figure it out (by reading Chapter 7), you can cut out a figure in a picture and drop it into another picture, drop different backgrounds into pictures, or isolate an area that needs some brightness and contrast adjustment. In Chapter 8, we talk about layers and how to create and manage them in Elements. In many other chapters, we refer you to Chapter 8 because you need to work with layers for many other tasks you do in Elements.

In Chapter 9, we talk about fixing image flaws and problems. That picture you took with your digital camera may be underexposed or overexposed, or it may need some work to remove dust and scratches. Maybe it needs a little sharpening, or some other imperfection requires editing. All the know-hows and how-tos are in this chapter.

In Chapter 10, we cover how to correct color problems, brightness, and contrast. We show you ways to quickly fix photos as well as some methods for custom image corrections.

Part IV: Exploring Your Inner Artist

This part is designed to bring out the artist in you. Considering the easy application of Elements filter effects, you can turn a photo image into a drawing or apply a huge number of different effects to change the look of your image.

In Chapter 12, we talk about drawing and painting so that you can let your artistic expression run wild. We follow up in Chapter 13 by talking about adding text to photos so that you can create your own layouts, posters, cards, and more.

Part V: Printing, Creating, and Sharing

One critical chapter in this book is Chapter 14, where we talk about printing your pictures. If your prints don’t look the way they do on your monitor, you need to read and reread this chapter.

If screen viewing is of interest to you, we cover in Chapter 15 a number of different options for viewing your pictures onscreen. For slide shows, Web-hosted images, animated images, photo viewing on your TV, and even creating movie files, this chapter shows you the many ways you can view your Elements images onscreen.

We wrap up this part with Chapter 16, in which we describe how to make creations and share files. You have a number of different options for making creations to share or print.

Part VI: The Part of Tens

We wrap up this book with the Part of Tens chapters. We offer ten tips for composing better images and give you ten more project ideas to try with Elements.

Icons Used in This Book

In the margins throughout this book, you’ll see icons indicating that something important is stated in the respective text.

This icon informs you that the item discussed is a new feature in Photoshop Elements 6.

A tip tells you about an alternative method for a procedure, by giving you a shortcut, a workaround, or some other type of helpful information related to working on tasks in the section being discussed.

Pay particular attention when you see the Warning icon. This icon indicates possible side-effects you might encounter when performing certain operations in Elements.

This icon is a heads-up for something you may want to commit to memory. Usually, it tells you about a shortcut for a repetitive task, where remembering a procedure can save you time.

Elements is a computer program, after all. No matter how hard we try to simplify our explanation of features, we can’t entirely avoid the technical information. If we think that a topic is complex, we use this icon to alert you that we’re moving into a complex subject. You won’t see many of these icons in the book because we try our best to bring the details to nontechnical terms.

Where to Go from Here

As we say earlier in the Introduction, the first part of this book serves as a foundation for all the other chapters. Try to spend a little time reading through the three chapters in Part I. After that, feel free to jump around and pay special attention to the cross-referenced chapters, in case you get stuck on a concept.

When you need a little extra help, refer to Chapter 1, where we talk about using the online help documents available in Elements.

If you have some questions, comments, suggestions, or complaints, go to

http://support.wiley.com

We wish you much success and enjoyment in using Adobe Photoshop Elements 6, and it is our sincere wish that the pages ahead provide you with an informative and helpful view of the program.

Part I

Getting Started

In This Part . . .

H ere you have it: a computer book specifically designed to help you get the most out of a computer software program — and not just any software program, but a powerful one with many complicated features. You probably want to jump in and perform some spiffy editing operations to get that prize photo looking the best you can. Inasmuch as we try to accommodate you in setting forth a how-to book in a nonlinear fashion, where you can freely move around and read about the techniques you want to use without having to read each chapter in linear order, you have to understand a few basics for editing your photos.

In this first part of the book, we talk about some essentials to help you fully understand all the parts ahead. We first talk about your Photoshop Elements working environment and describe the many tools and features you can use for all your Elements sessions. We also cover the very important task of getting color set for optimum viewing on your computer monitor and describe some essentials you need to know about color as it relates to photo images. Part I contains some important information that you should plan to carefully review and understand before going too far into all the Elements features. Don’t pass up this part. Turn the page and start getting acquainted with the Adobe Photoshop Elements basics.

1

Getting to Know the Work Area

In This Chapter

Understanding the Elements workspace

Changing workspace views

Working with the Project Bin

Using the Undo History panel

Accessing Help documents

Using keyboard shortcuts

In the Elements work areas, you find quite a collection of tools, panels, buttons, and options. Just a quick glance at the Elements workspace when you enter Full Edit mode shows you some of the power that Elements offers with just a click of your mouse. With all the possibilities, the Elements workspace can be intimidating. To ease your introduction to the many options for editing your pictures, we break them down for you in this chapter.

Elements has several work areas, and we start off by introducing you to the one you’ll likely use most often — Full Edit mode. In this mode, you can be creative with all the tools and features Photoshop Elements is known for, such as filters, drawing tools, layers, and more. We then introduce other work areas and tools you may not be as familiar with — Quick Fix mode for making common corrections to photos; Creation Setup mode for collecting your photos into creations, such as calendars; and the Project Bin for navigating among all your open images.

Before you start working in Elements, you’ll find it helpful to know how to undo edits so that you can start over easily and find additional sources of help within Elements. We also explain one of the handiest ways to select tools and enter common commands: keyboard shortcuts.

Elements 6 also has the Organizer, a powerful tool for acquiring your images and keeping them organized. The Organizer includes features that help you view and search for images, too. We introduce the Organizer in Part II.

Getting Around in Full Edit Mode

Full Edit mode offers bundles of tools for editing your images, from correction tools for fixing color and clarity to filters, layers, and more for changing existing photos or creating entirely original images from scratch. But all these tools also make Full Edit mode complex.

Figure 1-1 shows Elements in Full Edit mode, highlighting all the tools and features we discuss in this section.

Jumping to Full Edit mode

You can move into Full Edit mode in a couple of ways:

From the initial Welcome screen, click Edit and open a photo. Your Elements window appears in Full Edit mode, as shown in Figure 1-1.

From the Organizer, click Editor to open the drop-down menu and select Full Edit.

If you used Photoshop Elements 5, the Options bar’s Edit drop-down menu has been transplanted to the top-right corner of the Elements window and renamed the Editor menu.

When you launch Elements 6, by default, a Welcome window opens where you can choose to enter various editing modes, such as the Organizer, Full Edit mode, the Creation mode, and the Share mode. You can return to the Welcome window at any time by clicking the Welcome button represented by a house icon in the top-left corner of the Elements window.

Examining the Image window

Not surprisingly, the Image window’s tools and features are most useful when an image is open in the window. To get an image into the image window (as shown in Figure 1-1), follow these steps:

1.Choose File⇒Open.

The standard Open dialog box appears. It works like any ordinary Open dialog box you find in other applications.

2.Move around your hard drive by using methods you know to open folders and select a picture.

If you haven’t yet downloaded digital camera images or acquired scanned photos and want an image to experiment with, you can use an image found in your My Pictures folder that was installed with Windows.

3.After selecting a picture, click Open.

The photo opens in a new image window in Elements.

Figure 1-1: The Photoshop Elements workspace is shown when you open a file in Full Edit mode.

You can open as many image windows in Elements as your computer memory can handle. When each new file is opened, a thumbnail image is added to the Project Bin at the bottom of the screen (see Figure 1-1), and the image windows are stacked, with the current active image in the topmost window. To bring another open file to the foreground and make it active, click the respective thumbnail in the Project Bin.

Here’s a quick look at important items in the image window, as shown in Figure 1-2:

Figure 1-2: The image window displays an open file within the Elements workspace.

Photo courtesy Corbis Digital Stock

Scroll bars become active when you zoom in on an image. You can click the scroll arrows, move the Scroll bar, or grab the Hand tool in the Tools panel and then drag within the window to move the image.

The Magnification box shows you at a glance how much you zoom in or out.

The Information box shows you a readout for a particular tidbit of information. You can choose what information you want to see in this area by choosing one of the options from the pop-up menu, which we discuss in more detail later in this section.

When you’re working on an image in Elements, you always want to know the physical image size, the image resolution, and the color mode. (These terms are explained in more detail in Chapters 3 and 4.) Regardless of which menu option you choose from the status bar, you can get a quick glimpse at these essential stats by clicking the Information box, which displays a pop-up menu like the one shown in Figure 1-3.

Figure 1-3: Click the readout on the status bar, and a pop-up menu shows you important information about your file.

The Size box enables you to resize the window. Move the cursor to the box, and a diagonal line with two opposing arrows appears. When the cursor changes, drag in or out to size the window smaller or larger, respectively.

You can also resize the window by dragging any of the other corners in or out.

Click the Minimize button (the _ button in the upper-right corner of the image window), and the window hides from view. The window’s still open; you just click the image in the Project Bin to maximize the window.

If you click the Maximize button (the button with the box-shaped icon), the Title bar shown at the top of the window disappears and provides you with a little more room for viewing images in the window.

You can click the Close button (it’s shaped like an X) to close the active image window and keep Elements open. Alternatively, you can use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+W or choose File⇒Close to close the active window.

After you’re familiar with the overall image window, we want to introduce you to the Information box’s pop-up menu, which enables you to choose the type of information you want to view in the Information box. Click the right-pointing arrow to open the menu, as shown in Figure 1-4.

Figure 1-4: From the pop-up menu on the status bar, you select commands that provide information about your file.

Here’s the lowdown of the options you find on the pop-up menu:

Document Sizes: Shows you the saved file size.

Document Profile: Shows you the color profile used with the file.

Document Dimensions: As shown in Figure 1-4, shows you the physical size in your default unit of measure, such as inches.

Scratch Sizes: Displays the amount of memory on your hard drive that’s consumed by all documents open in Elements. For example, 20M/200M indicates that the open documents consume 20 megabytes and that a total of 200 megabytes are available for Elements to edit your images. When you add more content to a file, such as new layers, the first figure grows while the second figure remains static.

Efficiency: Indicates how many operations you’re performing in RAM as opposed to using your scratch disk. When the number is 100%, you’re working in RAM. When the number drops below 100%, you’re using the scratch disk. If you continually work below 100%, it’s a good indication that you need to buy more RAM to increase your efficiency.

Timing: Indicates the time it took to complete the last operation.

Current Tool: Shows the name of the tool selected from the Tools panel.

Don’t worry about trying to understand all these terms. The important thing to know is that you can visit the pop-up menu and change the items at will during your editing sessions.

Moving through the menu bar

Like just about every program you launch in Windows, Elements supports drop-down menus. The menus are logically constructed and identified to provide commands for working with your pictures (commands that you don’t find supported in tools and on panels). A quick glimpse at the menu names gives you a hint of what might be contained in a given menu list.

Here are the ten different menus:

File: Just as you might suspect, the File menu contains commands for working with your picture as a file. You find commands in the menu list for saving, opening, processing, importing, exporting, and printing. We cover saving files in Chapter 3 and printing or exporting for other output in Part V.

Edit: As you might guess, the old-fashioned Copy, Cut, and Paste commands are located here. Additionally, you have some important file settings commands on the menu, including preferences, which we cover in more detail in Chapter 2.

Image: You use the Image menu when you most often want to effect changes to the entire image, such as changing a color mode or cropping, rotating, and resizing the image. For details about sizing and color modes, check out Chapter 3. For more about cropping and rotating images, flip to Chapter 9.

Enhance: Just the name of this menu should tell you what commands to expect here. This is where you go to change the appearance of an image, such as changing its brightness and contrast, adjusting its color and lighting, and doing some other smart fix-up work to improve its appearance. On the Enhance⇒Adjust Color submenu, you find a number of commands that offer you a variety of color adjustments. Look to Chapter 10 for some detail on correcting color. In Chapters 9 and 10, you find out how to use correction tools so that your images look their best.

Layer: As we describe in great detail in Chapter 8 (a whole chapter just about layers), most kinds of editing you do in Elements are best handled by using layers. Elements neatly tucks away most of the relevant commands associated with working in layers right here.

Select: Of just about equal importance to layers are selections. Whereas the Image menu contains commands that are applied to the entire image, you can edit isolated areas of an image by using the commands on the Select menu. To isolate an area, you need to create a selection, as we explain in Chapter 7. This menu contains commands to help you with many essential tasks related to working with selections.

Filter: The Filter menu is where you find some professional photographic darkroom techniques, or you can completely leave the world of photography and explore the world of a fine artist. With tons of different filter commands, you can create some extraordinary effects. Find out all about filters in Chapter 11.

View: Zooming in and out of images, turning on a grid, exposing horizontal and vertical rulers, adding annotations, and checking out the print size of your pictures are handled on the View menu. Chapter 5 unearths secrets of the Zoom tool, rulers, and more.

Window: Elements supports a number of different panels, as we explain later in this chapter. Elements has so many panels that keeping them all open at one time is impractical. Thanks to the Window menu, you can easily view and hide panels, reopen the Welcome window, tile and cascade open windows, and bring inactive windows to the foreground.

Help: We hope that you get all the help you need right here in this book; but just in case we miss something (or your neighbor has borrowed it, fine book that it is), you have some interactive help, right at your mouse-tip, on the Help menu. The menu also offers links to the Adobe Web site for more information and a little assistance, courtesy of the tutorials accessible from this menu. (Find a little more detail about accessing help later in this chapter.)

Uncovering the context menus

Context menus are common to many programs, and Photoshop Elements is no exception. They’re those little menus that appear when you right-click, offering commands and tools related to whatever area or tool you right-clicked.

The context menus are your solution when you may be in doubt about where to find a command on a menu. You just right-click an item, and a pop-up menu opens. As you become familiar with Photoshop Elements and struggle to find a menu command, always try to first open a context menu and look for the command you want in the menu list.

Because context menus provide commands respective to the tool you’re using, the menu commands change according to what tool or feature you’re using at the moment you open a context menu. For example, in Figure 1-5, you can see the context menu that appears after we create a selection marquee and right-click that marquee in the Image window. Notice that the commands are all related to selections.

Figure 1-5: A context menu for selections.

Using the Tools panel

Elements provides a good number of panels for different purposes. The one that you’ll find you use most is the Tools panel. In panel hierarchy terms, you typically first click a tool in the Tools panel and then use another panel for additional tool options or use the Options bar (which we describe later in the chapter) for fine-tuning your tool instruments. More often than not, clicking a tool in the Tools panel is your first step in most editing sessions.

Tools can be easily accessed in Elements by pressing shortcut keys on your keyboard. For a quick glance at the Tools panel and the keystrokes needed to access the tools, look over Figure 1-6.

Figure 1-6: You access tools by clicking the tool in the Tools panel or typing a keyboard shortcut.

Notice in the Tools panel that several tools appear with a tiny arrow pointing right and downward in the lower-right corner of each tool. Whenever you see this arrowhead, remember that more tools are nested within that tool group. Click a tool with an arrowhead and hold down the mouse button, or for a faster response from Elements, just right-click a tool. A pop-up toolbar opens, as shown in Figure 1-7, and offers you more tool selections within that group.

To select tools within a tool group by using keystrokes, press the Shift key and strike the respective key (as shown in Figure 1-6) to access the tool. Keep the Shift key down and repeatedly press the shortcut key to scroll through all tools in a given group.

Whether you have to press the Shift key to select tools is controlled by a preference setting. To change the default setting so that you don’t have to press Shift, choose Edit⇒Preferences⇒General or press Ctrl+K.

The shortcuts work for you at all times except when you’re typing text with the cursor active inside a text block. Be certain to click the Tools panel to select a tool when you finish editing some text.

Figure 1-7: Click and hold the mouse button on a tool that has a tiny arrowhead, and a pop-up toolbar opens.

The tools are varied, and you may find that you don’t use all the tools in the Tools panel in your workflow. Rather than describe the tool

functions here, we address the tools in the remaining chapters in this book as they pertain to the respective Elements tasks.

User interface nomenclature

Before you read any further in this book, we want to clarify one little item in regard to what we, and Adobe, mean when we talk about panels. If you’re one of our returning readers who purchased an earlier edition of Photoshop Elements For Dummies, you might remember that we called the panels on the right side of the Elements workspace palettes. We did so because Adobe referred to these items as palettes in help documents and publications related to working in the program.

Adobe has revised the nomenclature for such interface items not only in Photoshop Elements 6, but also in all the Adobe Creative Suite applications. Palettes no longer exist as a term, and they are now referred to as panels. However, a few changes in the user interface still remain to be revised in Photoshop Elements. As of this writing, we still see a mention of the Palette Bin in the lower-right corner of the Full Edit mode window, and we find some references to palettes in menu items, as you’ll see in Figure 1-13. We suspect that eventually the text will change to a consistent and uniform description of the items in question.

To avoid confusion and maintain consistency in this book, you may find the text in the chapters ahead occasionally different than the text used in a few figures. Be aware that when we mention a panel and you see a figure with the word palette, we’re talking about the same item.

Playing with panels

Elements provides you with a bunch of panels that contain settings and options used to refine the tools you select in the Tools panel and tasks you perform to edit images. Assume for a moment that you want to let your creative juices loose and create a Picasso-esque painting — something that you can do easily in Photoshop Elements.

You first click the Brush tool and then click a color in the Color Swatches panel. On a new canvas, you begin to paint. When you want to change color, you click again in the Color Swatches panel on a different color. This kind of interactivity between the Tools panel and another panel is something you frequently use in Elements.

Panels are accessed from either the Project Bin or the Window menu. Many options in panels are intuitive. To become familiar with various panel options, just poke around a little, and most of the options will become familiar to you.

Selecting tool options from the Options bar

When you click a tool in the Tools panel, the Options bar offers you choices specific to a selected tool. Figure 1-8 shows the options available when the Clone Stamp tool is selected.

Figure 1-8: The Options bar provides attribute choices for a tool selected in the Tools panel.

Juggling all your interface options

With all the settings you can use for any given tool, trying to figure out exactly where to select an option for the edit you want to make can become downright frustrating. To help simplify the process of using tools and selecting options for the tools, here’s what you might do in your normal workflow:

1.Select a tool in the Tools panel.

Obviously, you need to know what task you want to perform, so selecting the proper tool to complete the task is important to know upfront.

2.Take a quick look at the Options bar.

Before moving to other option choices, be certain that you look over the choices on the Options bar. If you want to use a tool like the Brush tool or the Clone Stamp tool, perhaps you want to make a decision about what size brush tip you want to use. This choice is specific to the selected tool and therefore appears as an Options bar choice.

3.Open a panel for more options.

If you want to use the Brush tool, for example, to apply some color to an image, after selecting the Brush tip on the Options bar, open the Color Swatches panel and select a color.

4.Open the More menu.

Maybe the color you want to use doesn’t appear in the Color Swatches panel. Your next stop is the More menu. This menu appears when you click the down-pointing arrow on the Options bar. By using the menu choices, you can load different swatch libraries that provide more color options.

5.Get some help.

When you hover your cursor over a tool, you see that tool described in blue text. Click the blue text, and your default Web browser opens, displaying a page on Adobe’s Web site where help information and tips describe using the respective tool. You’ll also find blue text in the More menu. Seeing the blue text immediately alerts you to help information that can be shown in your Web browser.

Try following the same sequence when you want to edit images in Elements by first selecting a tool and then checking out the Options bar, opening panels related to providing choices for the task at hand, clicking the More button for additional choices in the panels, and getting some help when you need it.

Looking at Shortcuts

You find Shortcuts to the right of the Options bar and below the Edit, Create, and Share buttons. Shortcuts, as shown in Figure 1-9, serve several purposes:

Figure 1-9: Shortcuts appear to the right of the Elements window where buttons offer options to engage in different editing modes.

Quick access to editing tasks: Buttons permit you to quickly access the Full Edit or Quick Fix modes. The Guided button is used for accessing quick help on common editing tasks.

Quick access to other Elements functions: Buttons appear for quick access to other Elements functions that involve creating calendars, photo collages, online galleries, and slide shows while the Share button offers many options for sharing photos online, via email attachments, ordering photo prints online, and replicating CD/DVDs.

Depending on your editing mode, such as Full Edit, Quick Edit, or Create and Share, the panels change to reflect editing options for a given editing mode.

Shortcuts contain tools and buttons grouped as follows:

Click the Edit button to toggle the Full Edit and Quick Fix modes or access the Guided Help.

Click the Create button to create Photo Calendars, Photo Collages, Online Galleries, and Slide Shows. Click More Options in the Create panel to access additional creation options.

Click the Share button to access options that offer many different ways to share your photos with others. In the Share panel, you find options for creating an Online Gallery, sending photos via e-mail attachments, using Photo Mail, ordering prints online and sharing them with friends, and writing CDs and DVDs of photo collections and slide shows. Clicking More Options in the Share panel offers additional options for sharing photos.

Changing Workspaces

When you’re in Full Edit mode, which we discuss in preceding sections, you can apply any kind of edits to a picture, improve the picture’s appearance, and apply all that Elements offers you. This mode is the richest editor in Elements in terms of accessing all features. Because Elements has so many different kinds of editing opportunities, the program offers you other workspace views, tailored to the kinds of tasks people typically want to perform.

Using Quick Fix mode

Quick Fix mode is designed to provide you with just those tools that are needed to prepare a picture for its intended destination, whether it’s printing, onscreen viewing, or one of the other organizing items. Use this mode to make your pictures look good. You don’t find tools for adding text, painting with brushes, or applying gradients in Quick Fix mode. Rather, what you find is a completely different set of panels for balancing contrast and brightness, lighting, and sharpening, for example. This mode is like having a digital darkroom on your desktop, where you take care of perfecting an image like you would in analog photography darkrooms.

To enter Quick Fix mode while you’re in Full Edit mode, click the Quick button adjacent to the Options bar; the view changes, as shown in Figure 1-10.

Here are several differences between Full Edit mode and Quick Fix mode:

Completely different sets of panels are docked in the Panels Bin. All the panels in Quick Fix mode are related to adjusting brightness controls and are designed to improve the overall appearance of your pictures. In addition, all the Windows menu commands for accessing panels are grayed out. While you work in Quick Fix mode, Elements insists on limiting your use of panels to just the ones docked in the Panels Bin. Moreover, you can’t undock panels from the Panels Bin by dragging them out, as you can in other modes.

The Tools panel disappears. Quick Fix mode offers only these tools in the Tools panel:

• Zoom

• Hand

• Magic Selection Brush

• Crop

• Red Eye Removal

None of the other Elements tools is accessible while you work in this mode.

Multiple viewing options are available. Notice in Figure 1-10 that you see two views of the same image. The Before view on the left displays the raw, unedited image. The After view shows you the results of changes you make with panel options and menu commands. You select different viewing modes from menu choices in the View drop-down menu below the Image window.

If you want to return to Full Edit mode, click the Full button.

Figure 1-10: Click Quick in Full Edit mode, and the workspace changes.

Using creation tools

To organize your pictures for display in a variety of different ways, you begin by clicking the Create button. The Panels change in the Panels Bin to support different creation options. Click one of the listed options for making a new creation or click the More Option button to select from additional options. In Figure 1-11, we clicked the Create button and then clicked the Photo Collage button to start a new creation for a photo collage. As you can see in Figure 1-11, the Panels Bin changed to reflect options available to us for creating our photo collage.

Figure 1-11: Click Create and then choose an option for the type of creation you want to edit.

We cover each option available in the various creation panels in greater detail in Chapter 16.

The options you have for creating and sharing photos now appear in Elements 6 in panels. In earlier versions of Elements, you worked with wizards to make creations and share photos. The wizard windows were accessed in the Shortcuts bar via drop-down menus. The new user interface in Elements 6 has simplified toggling different editing modes, has made the editing tasks much easier, and is more intuitive than earlier versions of Elements.

Using the Project Bin

The Project Bin displays thumbnail views of all your open images. Regardless of whether you work in Full Edit or Quick Fix mode, you can immediately see a small image of all the pictures you have open at one time, as shown in Figure 1-12. You can also see thumbnail views of all the different views you create for a single picture. Find out all the details in this section.

Figure 1-12: All open pictures and new views are displayed as thumbnails in the Project Bin.

If you want to rearrange the thumbnails in the Project Bin, click and drag horizontally to reorganize the order of the thumbnails.

Creating different views of an image

What? Different views of the same picture, you say? Yes, indeed. You might create a new view when you want to zoom in on an area for some precise editing and then want to switch back to a wider view. Here’s how you do it:

1.Double-click a thumbnail image in the Project Bin.

The respective photo appears in the image window as the active document.

2.Choose View⇒New Window for <filename>.

Note that <filename> is the name of the file in the image window.

3.Zoom to the new view.

A new view appears for the active document, and you see another thumbnail image added to the Project Bin.

To zoom quickly, click the Zoom tool and click a few times on the picture in the image window to zoom into the photo.

4.Toggle views of the same image.

Double-click one thumbnail and you see the opening view; double-click the other thumbnail and you see the zoomed view.

Hiding the Project Bin

The Project Bin takes up a lot of room at the bottom of the image window, and you’re not likely to want it open all the time while editing some pictures. Fortunately, Elements provides you with several methods for hiding the Project Bin when you want to create a little more editing real estate.

To temporarily hide the Project Bin, do one of the following:

Place the cursor over the separator bar between the Image window and the Project Bin. When the cursor changes to two horizontal lines with vertical opposing arrowheads, drag down to collapse the Project Bin. When the bin is collapsed, drag up the separator bar to open the bin.

Double-click the separator bar to hide the Project Bin.

Click the Hide Project Bin text at the bottom of the Project Bin.

Open a context menu (right-click) and choose Close at the top of the menu.

Using Bin Actions

A nice new feature in Elements 6 is the new Bin Actions menu at the top of the Project Bin. Click Bin Actions and you can choose to start a new creation, share photos, print all the files open in the Bin, and save the bin files as an album.

To the left side of the Bin Actions menu, you’ll find another new feature in Elements 6. The Show Open Files (shown by default) is another drop-down menu that offers the default option for showing open files, showing files from the Organizer, and showing files opened within the last six months. Make a menu choice for the second and third options, and the files are added to the Project Bin.

Retracing Your Steps

Ever since Apple’s Macintosh brought a windows interface to the masses, the Undo command has been one of the most frequently used menu commands in every program developed. You make a change to your document, and if you don’t like it, you simply choose Edit⇒Undo or press the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Z.

In Elements, your options to undo your work have expanded, as we explain in this section.

Using the Undo History panel

Elements takes the Undo command to new levels by offering you a panel in which all (well, almost all) your changes in an editing session are recorded and available for undoing at any step in an editing sequence.

Each edit you make is recorded in the Undo History panel. To open the panel, choose Window⇒Undo History. Make changes to your document, and each step is recorded in the panel, as you see in Figure 1-13.

Figure 1-13: The Undo History panel is shown with the fly-away menu open.

If Elements slows down and you’re moving along at a snail’s pace, open the More fly-away menu in the Undo History panel and choose Clear Undo History. Elements flushes all the recorded history and frees up some precious memory that often enables you to work faster.

We said almost all steps are recorded because the number of steps the History panel can record is controlled by a preference setting that tops out at 1,000 steps. If you choose Edit⇒Preferences (Windows) and look at the Performance preferences, as we explain in more depth in Chapter 2, the number of history states (times you can go back in history and undo) defaults to 50. You can change the number to the maximum 1,000, if you like. But realize that the more history states you record, the more memory that Elements requires.

To undo the last edit, you can use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+Z. When you want to undo multiple edits, open the Undo History panel and click any item listed in the panel. Elements takes you to that last edit while scrubbing all edits that follow the selected item. If you want to bring back the edits, just click again on any step appearing grayed out in the panel to redo up to that level.

All your steps are listed in the Undo History panel as long as you remain in Elements and don’t close the file. When the file is closed, all history information is lost.

Reverting to the last save

As you work away in Elements, always plan on saving your work regularly. Each time you save in an editing session, the Undo History panel preserves the list of edits you made before the save and up to the maximum number of history states defined in the General preferences.

If you save and then perform more edits and then want to return to the last saved version of your document, Elements provides you with a quick, efficient way to do so. Choose Edit⇒Revert, and Elements eliminates your new edits and takes you back to the last time you saved your file.

When you choose Revert, Revert appears in the Undo History panel. You can eliminate the Revert command from the Undo History panel by right-clicking Revert in the Undo History panel and choosing Delete from a context menu. This command returns you to the edits made after the last save.

Getting a Helping Hand

You can reach for this book whenever you want some details about accomplishing a task while working in Elements. However, for those little annoying moments, and just in case some coffee stains blot out a few pages in this book, you may want to look for an alternative feature description from another source.

Rather than accumulate a library of Elements books, all you need to do is look at Elements itself to find some valuable help information quickly and easily. If you’re stuck on understanding some feature, ample help documents that are a mouse click away can help you overcome some frustrating moments.

Using Help

Your first stop for exploring the helpful information Elements provides is on the Help menu. There, you find several menu commands that offer information:

Photoshop Elements Help: Choose Help⇒Photoshop Elements Help or press the F1 key to open the Elements Help file. You can type a search topic and press Enter to open a list of items that provide helpful information about the searched words.

For quick access to the Help document, type the text you want to search into the text box on the right side of the menu bar in Full Edit or Quick Fix mode.

Glossary of Terms: While you read this book, if we use a term that you don’t completely understand, open the Photoshop Elements glossary. There, you find definitions of terms commonly used in photography and image editing as well as terms related specifically to Elements.

Online Support: This menu command launches your default Web browser and takes you to the Adobe Web site, where you can find information about Elements, problems reported by users, and some work-around methods for getting a job done. Additional Web assisted help information is available by clicking Photoshop Elements Online and Online Learning Resources. The vast collection of Web pages on Adobe’s Web site offers you assistance, tips and techniques, and solutions to many problems found with editing images. Be sure to spend some time browsing these Web pages.

Using PDFs from the installation CD

A number of bonus files are stored in PDF form on your installation CD. PDF files require the free Adobe Reader program or one of the commercial Acrobat viewers. Adobe Reader can be installed from the CD during the installation process.

Depending on when you purchased your Elements installer CD, the version of Adobe Reader on the CD may be outdated. If you want to stay with the latest upgrade of Adobe Reader, open your Web browser and type this address on the Location bar:

www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readermain.html

Adobe Systems provides easy, step-by-step instructions for downloading the most current, free Adobe Reader program and installing it on your computer.

Using ToolTips

While you move your cursor around tools and panels, pause a moment before clicking the mouse. A slight delay in your actions produces a ToolTip. Elements provides this sort of dynamic help while you move the cursor around the workspace and pause before moving to another location.

Taking Charge with Shortcuts

As Emeril says, “It’s time to kick it up a notch.” Kicking it up a notch in Elements terms means leaving the pick-and-poke editing method of the novice and graduating to techniques used by the swift keyboard master.

Using keyboard shortcuts greatly reduces your time in Elements and makes you much more proficient. The upside is that most of what you can do by moving the mouse and clicking a tool or menu command can be performed right from your keyboard by using combinations of keystrokes. The downside is that because Elements has so many keyboard shortcuts, remembering them all is nearly impossible.

The best way to remember keyboard shortcuts is to practice using them. After that, you may want to browse the resources where shortcuts are defined. Here are some considerations to help you remember shortcuts and find more information about them:

For common tasks, always take special note of ToolTips and commands on a menu.