Adobe Photoshop Elements 3.0

Bad News > Macintosh Users: Ya know I love ya and I am sure Adobe does as well. However, the photo organizing and sharing features are not available in the Macintosh version of Elements. The main reason is most Mac users will be using iPhoto to organize and share their photos.

Organizing > Photo Organization

If you want to add and organize your photos in elements, click the View and Organize Photos Button from the splash page.

Photoshop Elements allows you to add photos into a photo organizer. Once they are added you can the take advantage of some nice features to help you find your photos quickly. To add photos, look for the camera icon within your photo browser. Once you click on it you will see choices for how and where you want to ad your photos.

I think most of the options here are self explanatory. A nice feature is the ability to choose a folder. If you choose a folder, all of the images inside that folder will be added to your photo browser.

Organizing > Taking a closer look at the Photo Browser

Here are some of the key areas you will use in the photo browser of Elements 3

1. Adding Photos: Already mentioned above, this area is used to add your photos to the photo browser in Elements

2. Photo Thumbnail slider: This allows your to change the viewing size of your thumbnails. You can make it as small as a postage stamp or as large as looking at a single image on your screen.

3. Date View: This is a really nice feature. Elements will organize your photos based on the date they were taken or if they were scanned in, their creation date. As you can see in this pic, there is a listing of years (2000, 2001 etc) and 12 bars next to each year. If you want to see a specific year/month, simply click on the corresponding bar and the photo browser will take you right to the pictures that fall into that corresponding month.

4. Date View: Another nifty feature. Date view will change the view into a standard looking monthly calendar. Elements will then place the photos that correspond within that date into the calendar. You can then click on the individual date and see a small slideshow of the pictures taken on that date in the upper right hand corner.

Organizing > Organizing Your Photos with Tags

1. Date View. Clicking this will bring you here to calendar view

2. If you took pictures on a particular date, they will show us as small icons in the calendar view. Clicking on the date will bring up the date slide show on the right hand side of your window.

3. You can see a slideshow of the pictures taken on a particular day by clicking on the date with the picture then clicking on the slide show viewer.

4. You can either click the arrows or right click on the month or year to go to other months or years in the calendar. If you choose to right click on the month or year, Elements will put a little icons next to the months or years that have images in your Photo Browser

Organizing > Organizing Your Photos with Tags

With digital cameras allowing us to take more and more photos it is getting tougher and tougher to organize your photos. Photoshop Elements offers something called tags which will allow you to quickly organize and find your photos fast.

Think of tags as file folders. We will create a tag then place the folders into the tag.

Tags 101:

You can have one photo in more than one tag. For example, you have a picture of a student playing soccer. That picture can be part of a students tag set, a soccer tag set and a tag set for the particular student.

You can also have categories and have tags that fall into a category. Elements has already created some tag sets for you (people, places, events, other etc). You can also add your own categories.

Creating your Categories and tags, step by step

To create a category: 1. Click on the new icon 2. Select New category

This is the Create Category dialog box. All you have to do is give your Category a name and an icon or color. Once you click Ok the Category will be listed with the other categories.

Creating a tag is just like creating a Category Just select New Tag. As you can see on the left, you can choose the Category your tag falls under.

Adding your photos to a tag is simple. Select the photo or photos you would like to have in the tag set and drag the photos to the tag set.

You can see just the items of your tag set by double clicking on the tag set.

1. Do you want to see more than one tag set in your result list? Click on the gray square to the left of the tag. You will Serbian appear. You can then do the same thing to another tag set. As you can see in the screen above, I am looking at two tag sets, cars and soccer.

2. The top of the browser window will let you know what tag sets you are currently looking at.

3. You can also tell Elements to show you the items that are in both tags sets or unique to each tag set. In this example, it is showing all of the images in both tag sets.

4. Click on Back to All Photos to go back to your Photo Library

Need to change your Tag? All you have to do is right click on the Tag. A popup menu will appear which will allow you edit the tag, delete the tag and even change the tag to a Category

Want to remove tags from photos? Simply right click on the photo. Not only will you find a nice way to remove and add photos to tags, you will find a pile of other things you can do to photos like rotate, date and time adjustment, and photo editing shortcuts.

Photo Stacks

Chances are your photo browser is going to fill up if you take a lot of photos. If this happens, you can stack like photos together. All you have to do is select the photos that you would like to stack and right click on one of the selected photos. Select Stack from the pop up menu. You will see choices for stacking photos, un stacking photos and reveling photos in the stack.

Editing Photos

Editing Photos > Quick Fix

Quick Fix (PC only sorry Mac buddies) is a quick and easy way to clean up your photos.

Mac Users: In the Enhance Menu you can find Auto Smart Fix which will do an instant fix on your photo.

To Quick Fix photos, select the photo or photos you would like to fix and click on the Edit Menu.

A Look at the Quick Fix

1. The Photo Well. A swanky feature. Any time you open a photo in Elements (be it Mac or PC) the photo will appear in the photo well. No more frustration when you move window after window around looking for your photo. All you need to do is click on the photo you want to work on in the photo well. Once you click the photo will take center stage in Elements.

2. View: I would suggest changing this to Before and After view so you can well, view the before and after! Funny how that works out.

3. Edit Areas. You have many many options here. The "do it for me" option is to click Auto under Smart Fix. If you want to take a little more control of the situation, use the sliders. You can use the Quick fix slider to change the overall look of the image or your can go to the individual edit areas (lighting, color and sharpening) of the dialog box. Once you make a change, you will see a little cancel icon (looks like a circle with a line through it). If you don't like what you have done, simply click the cancel icon and it will revert the image back to its original condition.

Editing > Photo Cleanup without Quick Fix

Here are the top 3 things to do to a photo if you decide not to use Quick Fix

Editing > Photo Cleanup without Quick Fix> Auto Color

Many factors can cause your images color to be incorrect. Florescent lighting, bright sunlight, etc. To fix this problem, use Auto Color Correction located in the Enhance Menu. I recommend using this command every time you open an image for the first time. You can always use the Edit . Undo command if you to not like the correction it creates.

Editing > Photo Cleanup without Quick Fix > Levels

This is one of those items that makes peoples jaw drop when I show. Many times we have taken a photo that is over exposed or underexposed (too bright or too dark). Many of us will toss the pictures while the more determined will use the Brightness command only to end up with one entertaining photo.

You can find the Levels command in Enhance Menu > Adjust Lighting > Levels

1. When you see the levels graph, look for an area that has no data. In my example, it is the right hand side. If the right hand side has a gap, the image is probably too dark and if the graph has a gap on the left, the image is too light. You can even have a graph which is only in the center. All of these are easy to fix.

2. To fix this problem, look at the bottom of the graph. You will see 3 triangles. Simply take the triangle that is near the missing information (in this case the right one) and drag it. Drag the triangle until you get close to the graph. This will let Elements know you do not want to see this data in the photo. The change will happen before your eyes, as you drag you will see your photo getting lighter or darker. Simply set the triangle at the point where you like the results best.

Editing > Photo Cleanup without Quick Fix> Shadow Highlight

Another popular Photoshop feature brought to Elements. While levels are great for pictures that are generally overexposed or underexposed, what do you do if the picture has a combination of each?

The Shadow Highlight tool will take a look at photos that have considerable shadowing and will correct the shadowed areas of the photos while leaving the rest untouched. This tool also has two additional sliders which you can use to enhance the highlights and midtones of your image.

You can find Shadow / Highlights in the Advanced Menu > Adjust Lighting > Shadow Highlight

Editing > Red Eye

The Red Eye tool in Elements was great and honestly I did not think they would change it at all in 3. The PC users can find the Red Eye tool within Quick Fix and the toolbar while the Mac users can find the Red Eye Tool in the toolbar.

1. In the Quick Fix dialog box, select the Red Eye Tool

2. All you have to do is move the Red Eye tool cursor to an area of the eye that is red and click once. It will go ahead and remove any red in the surrounding area.

3. While not often needed, you can alter the Red Eye tool by altering the pupil size and the darken amount.

Editing > Standard Edit

Maybe you need to edit a photo that goes beyond Quick Fix. Lets finally jump into some fun things to do editing wise in Elements and make our Mac friends happy!

You can go straight from photo organizing to editing by selecting a photo or photos in your photo browser and selecting "Go to Standard Edit" from the Edit button.

Editing > The Healing Brush

The healing brush was introduced with Photoshop in version 7 and people went wacky for it. Happily, the healing brush is now in Elements and it is even cooler than the one you find in Photoshop.

Editing > The Healing Brush > Spot Healing Brush

Elements has two different healing brushes. The Spot Healing Brush and well, just the regular ole Healing Brush. Lets take a peek at the Spot Healing Brush

The spot healing brush is designed to do just that, clean up spots. Its an extremely simple tool to use. All you have to do is select it in the toolbar by holding down the bandaid icon and selecting Spot Healing Brush. Once you select the tool, simply highlight the area you want to clean up and make sure you select a little bit of the area around it. Elements will use the area around the spot to clean up the spot. Not only does this work great on blemishes, but, I have used it to remove litter from a picture, graffiti from a wall and more. It is really a great feature.

Editing > The Healing Brush > Healing Brush Tool

You probably noticed there are two different healing brushes. We already talked about the Spot Healing Brush Tool. There is also the Healing Brush tool. The Healing Brush is the more traditional Healing tool that you may have seen in Photoshop.

After you select the Healing Tool in the tool bar identify the item you want to use as the sample point. In this case we are going to remove some tough wrinkles that our Spot Healing Tool had trouble with. I am going to use the upper area of his forehead as the sample (the part without the wrinkles). You create the area to clone by holding down your alt / option key. You will notice the icon turns into a target. With the alt /option key held down, click the mouse. You have just sampled the area you would like to recreate. Now let go of the mouse key. Move the mouse to the area you want to alter. You will notice the area you cloned now being recreated when you click and drag the mouse. The really nice thing about the Healing tool is that it will not re-create the sample 100% like the clone tool does. It will remember the original lighting and texture and re-apply it! In this example, it will realize the big difference between the sample and part you want to change color change and will change the image accordingly.

Editing > The Clone Tool

The clone tool is a very popular way to add or remove features from a photo. Maybe you took a picture and there is a branch sticking out of someone's head or you would like to add more flowers to a garden. The clone tool is perfect for that.

After you select the Clone Tool in the tool bar identify the item you want to clone. In this case we are going to add another tree. If you were trying to remove an item like a bird from the sky you would identify the sky as the area you want to clone. You create the area to clone by holding down your alt / option key. You will notice the icon turns into a target. With the alt /option key held down, click the mouse. You have just sampled the area you would like to recreate. Now let go of the mouse key. Move the mouse to the area you want to hide or recreate the item and click and drag. You will notice the area you cloned now being recreated when you click and drag the mouse.

Another Tree!

Cool Fun

Now lets take a peek at some cool tools in Elements

Cool Fun > Photomerge

You probably have seen a photo panorama before. All you need is a somewhat steady hand to make a panorama. Find something stable like a tripod or even a wall to place your camera on. Keep the camera on the same axis and take some pictures, when you take your pictures, make sure you include about 30% of the previous pictures. I usually look for some sort of object to make sure they ended up in each picture. You can take as many pictures as you want to make your panorama. Well, theoretically you can only take enough pictures until you end up back at your beginning point, but, its too early to guesstimate on how many pictures that would be.

To Make a Photomerge

1. In your Photo Browser (PC) select the photos you would like to merge. Mac people will just skip to step 2.

2. Select New > Photomerge or Photomerge Panorama in Editor

This is the dialog box you will see when you select the Photomerge option. You can add additional photos or remove photos you accidentally added.

The Photomerge Dialog Box

1. You pictures turned into a panorama. You can click on one (as shown by the red outline) and use your arrow keys to move the image one pixel at a time in case in is not perfectly stitched.

2. Extra Photos: There is a small chance that Elements was not able to stitch all of the photos. If this happens, it will leave the extra photos up here. You can always add the pictures by hand by dragging them and placing them where they should be. Elements will usually realize where the stitching should happen and snap the picture into place with the others.

3. Perspective: Will add the original depth of field feeling to the panorama. While this looks cool, it takes a lot of width away from the final image because of the warping effect that happens. I recommend using this only with a large megapixel image.

4. Ok. You click this when you are happy with your work!

Note you will have to crop the final image to get rid of the extra spaces at the top and the bottom of the photo

Cool Fun > Magic Eraser

Note this is an Elements 2 screen shot. Man, that Leslie can be lazy at times. Just look for the eraser icon in Elements 3 in the toolbar.

The Magic Eraser is hidden within the regular eraser. Simply click and hold on the Eraser tool and a pop-up menu will appear with one of your eraser options being the Magic Eraser. It is very easy to use the magic eraser. Simply click on a solid color you would like to get rid of. The magic eraser will remove that color from your document. Note in the example above it would remove the white background but will not remove the white in the ducks eye. It's that good!

Cool Fun > Warped Text

This feature is found in the options toolbar when you click on the Text tool. Look for a T with a half circle under it. 1. Will display a variety of warp options 2. Will allow you to change the direction, distortion and bend amount.

Cool Fun > Divide Scanned Photos

I know as a web developer, I get a lot of paper photos that I need to put on a site. It is always entertaining watching me put them on the scanner ever so right only to have a puff of air ruin it for me. Now, you can have Elements do the tough work for you. Put the photos on your scanner and make sure you leave a solid color gap between them. It doesn't matter how crooked they are. Scan the image using whatever software you are currently using. You can also scan using the Elements Get Photos feature. Once the scan is complete go to the Image menu and select Divide Scanned Photos. Elements will look at the scan, determine where each photo is and divide them. It will also straighten and crooked ones. You can see some of the results in the photo bin in my example on the left.

Cool Fun > Filters, Styles and Effects

Filters are a quick and easy way to totally transform your photo. Elements 3 has made adding filters even easier

You should have a filters palette on the right. If you do not, go to the Window menu and select Styles and Effects.

The top of the palette has choice on what effect you would like while the right hand side widdles down your choices (for example show me only Frame Effects or show me only Text Effects). All you have to do is double click on the picture of the effect you want to use and Elements will apply it to the picture. Don't like it? No problem. You can always use the Edit > Undo command to get rid of the effect.

You can also build many filters or effects on top of each other. Don't worry, Elements supports multiple Undo's in case you are not happy with a pile of the effects your decided to use.

Sharing Your Photos

I think you will find the sharing area of Elements quite easy. Most of the features are wizard based.

To prepare your photos for a creation:

1. Select all of the photos you would like to use for your creation. The more photos your choose the slower the creation dialog box will take to appear

2. Once you have all your photos selected, click the Create button in the Elements toolbar. The dialog box shown below will appear.

As I mentioned earlier, the process to create a calendar, card postcard etc. is quite simple. The only one I think needs some explaining is the slide show.

Sharing Your Photos > Slide Show

1. The photos you selected to be part of the slideshow are listed at the bottom

The 5s below the photo is the time the photo will be on screen. You can click on it to change the time. You can also select multiple photos and change the time of all of them at the same time

You can change the order of the photos by clicking them and dragging them to the location that you would like them to appear in the slide show

2. This is the slide transition. In the example above, I have no transition type set. You can click on the nil logo to see a listing of transitions that are available for you to use. You till notice a 0s here as well. This is the time for the transition. Just like the picture timing, you can click on the transition timing to change it.

3. Allows you to add additional pictures

4. Allows you to add preset music from Elements or any music file you have on your computer. Make sure you do not use commercial music unless it falls under the guidelines for acceptable use.

5. Allows you to add narration to a slide.

6. I think this one is pretty straight forward, it adds a blank slide!

7. Adds text to a slide. While the initial text is quite boring, you can double click on it to change the font, size, color, etc.

8. Typical play interface. To see your slide show, click the play button etc etc etc

9. Fit Slides to Audio does just that, fit the slideshow to your music. I prefer to use another method. If you look below the slides you will see Click Here to Add Audio to Your Slide Show. This will bring up a window showing you the music you are using and how long it is. Within this dialog box you can customize the audio for your slide show making sure it ends on the slide you want, etc. This is a nice way to different music playing through different series of slides, etc.

FYI > Layers

Depending on the amount of time I got to spend with you, I may have touched on layers

Layers truly make Elements powerful. Layers allow you to add additional items to a photo without hurting the original. Remember back to a biology book of the human body where the body was shown on clear plastic pages. One page had the bones, another the skin, etc. That is the same idea here with layers. I can add items on individual layers. Separate they do not get in the way of each other but together they make a cool image.

Here is a closer look at the layers palette 1. Click on this document icon will create a new blank layer. FYI you do not need to make a new layer if you are typing text. The layer will be created for you automatically when you start using the text tool. 2. This layer is the white border around the flower image. when you make a new layer, it is called Layer 1 or Layer 2, etc. To change the name of the layer simply double click on its name just like you would be changing the name of a document on your computer. 3. You can join layers together so when one moves, the other one moves as well. Note, you can also do this for more than two layers. To join layers, select one layer by clicking on it (in my example the text layer is selected). Now, click on the blank square to the right of the icon on the layer(s) you would like to join this one. If all has gone correctly, a chain icon will appear. Once you see the chain icon, the layer is linked to the other(s). To unlink a layer, simply click on its chain icon and it will no longer be part of the joined layers. 4. The Eyeball icon allows you to temporarily hide a layer. Just click the eyeball and layer will hide. Want it to come back? Simply click on the blank square where the eyeball used to be and the item on the layer will appear again. s