How to Aoid Duplicate Photo Uploads With Photoshop Elements Organizer

Affiliate 1. Finding Your Manner Around Elements

Photoshop Elements lets y'all do practically annihilation you desire to your digital images. You can colorize black-and-white photos, remove demonic red-eye stares, or distort the facial features of people who've been mean to you. The downside is that all those options tin can arrive tough to find your way around Elements, peculiarly when you're new to the program.

This affiliate helps go you oriented in Elements. You lot'll larn what to expect when you launch the program, how to utilize Elements to prepare photos with just a couple of keystrokes, and how to sign up for and connect to all the goodies that look you on Photoshop. You'll as well acquire how to apply Guided Edit manner to go started editing your photos. Forth the fashion, you'll find out about some of Elements' bones controls, and how to become to the programme's Help files.

The Welcome Screen

When you launch Elements for the first time, you lot're greeted by the Welcome screen (Effigy i-ane). This is where you lot register Elements and sign up for your costless Photoshop.com account (U.Southward. only). Activation explains how.

Note

If you aren't in the U.S., the whole process of registering Elements works a scrap differently—see Activation.

Interestingly, the Welcome screen isn't actually Elements. It's just a launching pad that starts up ane of two dissimilar programs, depending on the button y'all click:

• Organize push button . This starts the Organizer, which lets you store and organize your image files.

• Edit button . Click this for the Editor, which lets you modify your images.

Yous tin easily hop back and forth between the Editor and the Organizer—which you lot might telephone call the ii halves of Elements—and yous probably won't practice much in one without eventually needing to get into the other. But in some ways, they function as two separate programs.

Figure i-1. Elements' Welcome screen. What you meet in the right part of the window changes occasionally, so it may not be exactly the same as this illustration. The left part of the window always stays the same, though. There yous can choose to start organizing or editing photos. The bottom of the screen always has links for signing onto Photoshop.com and displays info nigh your Photoshop.com account, if you have i. You can't bypass the Welcome screen just by clicking the upper-right Shut (Ten) push button. When you practice, the screen goes abroad—but so does Elements. Fortunately, you've got options: The box on Organizing Your Photos tells you how to permanently say adieu to this screen.

If yous kickoff in the Organizer, then once you've picked a photo to edit, you take to expect a few seconds while the Editor loads. And when you have both the Editor and the Organizer running, just quitting the Editor doesn't shut the Organizer—you lot have to shut both programs independently. When both programs are running, you tin switch dorsum and forth betwixt them past clicking the button at the upper right of the screen; the button reads Organizer when y'all're in the Editor and "Editor" when you're in the Organizer. (The Organizer push just takes a click, simply the Editor button includes a drop-down menu where you choose the editing fashion you desire.) You can also just click the Editor or the Organizer icon in the Windows taskbar to switch from one to the other.

Adobe built Elements around the supposition that well-nigh people work on their photos in the post-obit style: First, you bring photos into the Organizer to sort and keep track of them. Then, you open photos in the Editor to piece of work on them and salvage them back to the Organizer when you've finished making changes. Y'all can work differently, of course—similar opening photos directly in the Editor and bypassing the Organizer birthday—but you may experience like you're always swimming against the current if you cull a different workflow. The side by side affiliate has a few hints for disabling some of Elements' features if you lot find they're getting in your way.

The Welcome screen can also serve as your connecting bespeak for signing onto www.photoshop.com. Photoshop.com has more about Photoshop.com, but for at present you simply need to know that a bones business relationship is gratuitous if you're in the U.s. (it's non available yet in other countries), and it gives you access to all the interesting features in Elements 8 that require an Internet connection. If you're signed into Photoshop.com already, you can encounter how much of your online storage yous've already used in the graph at the bottom of the Welcome screen. There'south also a reminder of your personal URL at Photoshop.com and links to online help and to tips and tricks for using Elements. Still, you tin also get to all these things from within the Editor or the Organizer, so in that location's no need to keep the Welcome screen effectually for that.

Tip

After you create your Photoshop.com account, y'all may observe you have trouble with the Welcome screen if your Net connectedness isn't agile when yous start Elements. If the Welcome screen hangs while trying to assemble your account info, merely quit it (you may need to exercise this in Windows' Task Manager—press Ctrl+Alt+Del in XP or Ctrl+Shift+Esc in Vista to telephone call it up), and then follow the directions in the box below for starting the Editor or the Organizer directly from the plan file.

Organizing Your Photos

The Organizer is where your photos come into Elements and get out once again (when it'due south time to print or email them). The Organizer stores and catalogs your photos, and you automatically come back to it for whatever activities that involve sharing your photos, like press a photograph package (Moving-picture show Package) or making a slideshow (Slideshows). The Organizer's main window (Effigy 1-2), which is sometimes called the Media Browser , lets you view your photos, sort them into albums, and assign keyword labels to them. (In previous versions of Elements it was called the Photo Browser , and so y'all may hear that term, likewise.)

The Organizer has lots of really absurd features you'll larn about throughout this book when they're relevant to the job at hand. The adjacent chapter shows you lot how to use the Organizer to import and organize your photos, and Appendix A covers all the Organizer's different menu options. What's more, if you sign up for a Photoshop.com account (Photoshop.com), then you tin admission and organize your photos from whatsoever figurer, not simply at home.

Figure 1-2. The Media Browser is your main Organizer workspace. Click the Create tab and you can cull to start all kinds of new projects with your photos, or click the Share tab for means to let other people view your images. Click the arrow at the right of the Gear up tab (circled) for a menu that gives you a pick of going to Quick Fix, Guided Edit, or Full Edit. The Fix tab gives you access to some quick fixes correct in the Organizer, too. The Organizer also gives you some other mode to wait at your photos, Engagement view, which is explained in Chapter two.

Photograph Downloader

Elements has yet another component, which you lot may have seen already if you've plugged a camera into your figurer later installing Elements: the Photo Downloader (Figure one-3), which helps get photos direct into the Organizer directly from your camera'due south memory card.

If you've used older versions of Elements, then you'll exist pleased to know that the Downloader is more than polite than it used to be. In early versions of Elements, the Downloader ran constantly as a separate programme (whether Elements was running or not), racing to be offset on the scene whenever it detected whatsoever newly continued device that might have photos on it, and popping up its own window before the standard Windows dialog box could appear. For a few people, this was mighty convenient. But for the majority of folks (who didn't want to use the Downloader every time they plugged some photo-bearing device into their computers), it was a large nuisance. If you have an iPod, for instance, then you know how aggravating this was.

Now the Downloader appears as only one of your options in the regular Windows dialog box that you lot come across when y'all connect a device. If you want to use the Downloader, then just choose it from the list. No more interfering with your iPod, and no extra dialog box to close every fourth dimension y'all don't want to use the Downloader. It'southward a major comeback.

Figure i-3. Adobe's Photo Downloader is yet some other program you go when you install Elements. Its task is to pull photos from your camera (or other storage device) into the Organizer. To use the Downloader, just click "Organize and Edit using Adobe Elements Organizer viii.0" (circled) in Windows Vista'southward AutoPlay dialog box. (If you use Windows XP, you'll see a dialog box with similar options.) After the Downloader does its matter, you stop up in the Organizer.

You can read more about the Downloader in Chapter 2. If yous plan to use the Organizer to catalog photos and assign keywords to them, so reading the section on the Downloader tin help you avoid hair-pulling moments.

Photoshop.com

Adobe also gives you easy admission to its Photoshop.com service as part of Elements. A basic account is gratuitous, and information technology'due south nicely integrated into Elements, making it very easy to use. With a Photoshop.com account, yous can:

• Create your own website . You can make beautiful online albums that display your photos in elaborate slideshows—all attainable via your own Photoshop.com URL (web accost). Bang-up for dazzling friends and family unit. They tin even download your photos or club prints, if you choose to let them (run across Online Albums).

• Automatically back upwardly and sync your photos . Frequent worriers and travelers, prepare to be amazed. You tin gear up Elements to sync your PC-based photos to storage infinite on Photoshop.com, providing y'all with a backup, just in case. What's more, y'all can upload photos to your albums from other computers, and they automatically appear in the Organizer the next time you start Elements. See Backing Upward Your Files for more about how to use this keen feature.

• Admission your photos from other computers . When you're not at home, pop over to your Photoshop.com account to see and fifty-fifty organize your photos. That way, when y'all visit friends, you lot don't demand to lug your reckoner along—just log into your business relationship from their computers.

• Download lots of extra goodies . The Content console (The Content Panel) displays thumbnails for additional backgrounds, frames, graphics, and so on, that you can download right from Photoshop.com.

• Become lots of great free communication . Call back the Photoshop Inspiration Browser (The Inspiration Browser), and you tin choose from a whole range of helpful tutorials for all sorts of Elements tasks and projects.

The bad news is that these Photoshop.com features are available only in the United States—for now. Adobe says it plans to aggrandize this offer worldwide. Every bit of this writing, folks exterior the United States can get some of the aforementioned features, like the ability to create online albums and galleries, at Adobe's Photoshop Showcase site http://photoshopshowcase.com. (See Activation for more about the regional differences.)

To sign upwards for a free account:

1. Tell Adobe you want an account .

   But click the Create New Adobe ID button on the Welcome screen (The Welcome Screen) or at the peak of either the Organizer or the Editor'south master window. This also registers Elements. If you lot've already got an Adobe ID (if you registered a previous version of Elements, for instance), only sign in instead.

2. In the window that opens, fill in your information to create your Adobe ID .

   You need to fill in the usual address, phone, e-mail, and and so on, and choice what you'd like as your unique Adobe web accost. (Hint: something like http://johnspictures.photoshop.com is probably already taken, so y'all may need to try a few alternatives. When you click Create Business relationship, you become a message if the web accost you lot chose is already in use.) Turn on the checkbox that says you agree to Adobe's terms and conditions. Finally, for security purposes, you lot need to enter the text you see in a box on the sign-up screen.

3. Create your business relationship .

   Click the Create Account push button. Adobe tells you if information technology finds whatever errors in what you submitted and gives you a chance to become back and fix them.

4. Confirm your account .

   You'll get an email from Adobe that contains a link. Just click the link to confirm that you want to create an account, and you're all gear up. (You need to click the link within 24 hours of creating your account, or you may have to start the whole process again.)

Once yous have an business relationship, y'all can get to it past clicking Sign In at the top of the Editor or Organizer. After yous sign in, you see "Welcome <your name>" instead of "Sign In", and yous can click that to go to your account settings. (You tin as well expect at the lesser of the Welcome screen to see how much gratuitous space you lot accept left, as shown in Figure 1-four.)

Figure 1-4. In one case you sign into your Photoshop.com business relationship, the bottom of the Welcome screen tells you how much of your online storage space you're currently using and includes a link for managing backups and syncing. You besides see a link to your personalized web address (a helpful reminder).

A complimentary Photoshop.com account is a pretty nice bargain. It even includes ii GB of space on Adobe's servers for backing upwards and storing your photos. You can also upgrade to a paid account (called Plus), which gives yous more of everything: more template designs for Online Albums, more downloads from the Content panel, more tutorials, and more storage space: 20–100 GB (depending on what level membership you choose). Yet, the Plus account costs $49.99 for 20 GB, and more every bit your storage amount increases, so yous might want to effort the costless account outset to see whether y'all'll really use information technology enough to justify the expense. Because this service has been bachelor since Elements 7, you can too investigate Adobe's Photoshop.com support forum (http://forums.adobe.com/community/photoshopdotcom), every bit well as the independent forum sites (Beyond This Book) to see what people think about it.

Annotation

If you haven't bought Elements yet, Adobe tends to promote the combination of Elements and a Plus account on their website. Y'all have to hunt around a chip to notice where to buy Elements with just the free business relationship, so await carefully before you lot buy if you don't want to showtime off with the paid version.

Once you sign into your account, Elements logs you in automatically every time you launch the program. If you don't want that to happen, simply click your name at the top of the Elements window (in either the Organizer or Editor), and so, in the window that opens, cull Sign Out.

Editing Your Photos

The Editor is the other main component of Elements (Figure one-5). This is the fun part of the program, where you become to edit, adjust, transform, and generally glamorize your photos, and where y'all can create original artwork from scratch with the cartoon tools and shapes.

Figure 1-5. The main Elements editing window, which Adobe calls Full Edit. In some previous versions of Elements it was known as the Standard Editor, something to continue in mind in case yous always try any tutorials written for Elements 3 or iv.

You lot tin can operate the Editor in any of three different modes:

• Full Edit . The Full Edit window gives yous access to Elements' about sophisticated tools. You have far more ways to work on your photo in Full Edit than in Quick Fix, and if you're fussy, it's where y'all'll exercise most of your retouching work. Most of the Quick Fix commands are also available via menus in the Full Edit window.

• Quick Fix . For many beginners, Quick Fix (Figure one-6) ends up existence their main workspace. Information technology's where Adobe has gathered together the basic tools you demand to improve virtually photos. It's also one of the two places in Elements where you lot can choose to take a before-and-afterward view while you lot piece of work. (Guided Edit, described beneath, is the other.) Chapter 4 gives you all the details on using Quick Fix.

• Guided Edit . This window can be a big aid if you're a newcomer to Elements. It provides stride-by-pace walkthroughs for popular projects such equally cropping your photos and removing blemishes from them. Like Quick Fix, Guided Edit offers a earlier-and-later on view of your photo equally you lot work on it (encounter Getting Assistance) and also offers some advanced features, like the Actions Player (Using Deportment).

Effigy one-vi. The Quick Gear up window. Use the drop-down menus in the tab at the acme of the screen (circled, correct) to navigate from Full Edit to the Quick Fix window (and to Guided Edit, if you like) and back again. To compare your fixes with the original photo, burn up Before & Later view, which you get by clicking the View carte (circled, left).

The rest of this affiliate covers some of the Editor's basic concepts and key tools.

Note

If yous exit a photo open in the Editor, so when you switch back to the Organizer, you lot run into a red band with a padlock across the photograph'due south Organizer thumbnail as a reminder. To get rid of the lock and costless upward your image for Organizer projects, become back to the Editor and close the photo at that place.

Panels, Bins, and Tabs

When you starting time open the Editor, you may exist dismayed at how cluttered it looks. In that location's stuff everywhere, and maybe not a lot of room left for the photos you lot're editing, especially if y'all take a small-scale screen. Don't fret: One of Elements 8'southward all-time features is the fashion you tin customize the Editor'south workspace. At that place's practically no limit to how you can rearrange the Editor. You can leave everything the fashion it is if yous like a cozy expanse with everything at hand. Or if y'all want a Zen-like empty workspace with nada visible but your photo, you tin can move, hibernate, and turn off nigh everything. Figure 1-seven shows 2 different views of the same workspace.

What's more, in Elements 8 you can hide everything in your workspace except for your images and the menu bar: no tools, panels, or Options bar. This is handy when yous want a skillful, undistracted look at what you've just washed to your photo. To do that, simply press the Tab key; to bring everything back into view, press Tab again.

Figure 1-7. Two different ways of working with the same images, panels, and tools. You can use any organization that suits you lot. Top: The panels in the basic Elements system, with the images in the new tabbed view (Epitome windows). Bottom: This image shows how you can customize your panels. Here the Projection bin has been moved into the Console bin, and the whole thing is complanate to icons (they're to the right of the image beingness worked on). Click an icon and that console pops out so you can work with it. The images hither are in floating windows.

Note

You may notice that Elements' bill of fare bar at the very meridian of the program'due south window changes a little depending on the size of your monitor and whether yous've got the Elements window maximized to fill your screen. You lot'll either see a single row in a higher place the Options bar (Elements' Tools) with the PSE logo at the left and the Conform menu (Epitome Views) and the Photoshop.com login area at the center of the screen (as in Figure 1-7), or these items may be in a separate row above the menus that say File, Edit, Image, and and then on (as in Figure i-v). Both are perfectly normal, and you'll come across both arrangements in this book's illustrations.

The Panel bin

When you're in Full Edit, the right side of the Elements window displays the Console bin . Panels let you do things like keep track of what you've done to your photo (Undo History panel) and apply special effects to your images (Furnishings panel and Content panel). You lot'll learn nigh the various panels in detail throughout this volume.

Note

In previous versions of Elements and in older versions of Photoshop, panels were called "palettes." If you run across a tutorial that talks about the "Content palette" for example, that's exactly the same affair as the The Content Panel.

You might similar the Panel bin, only many people don't. If you don't have a big monitor, you lot may find it wastes besides much desktop acreage, and in Elements, you demand all the working room you can get. Fortunately, you don't take to keep your panels in the bin; you tin close the bin and just go along your panels floating around on your desktop, or you tin can minimize them.

You can't close the bin completely when it has panels in it, but you can minimize it to merely a narrow strip of icons by clicking the bin'south very top bar, the i with the double arrows on it. To aggrandize it once more, click the top bar once more. (If y'all pull all the panels out of the bin so that information technology'south empty, it disappears. To bring it back, click Reset Panels at the top of your screen, which resets all your panels, not only the bin.) You pull a panel out of the bin by dragging the panel'south top tab; y'all've now got yourself a floating console. Figure 1-viii shows how to make panels even smaller one time they're out of the bin by collapsing them in one of two ways. You can also combine panels with each other, as shown in Effigy i-9; this works with both panels in the bin and freestanding panels.

Figure 1-8. Yous can free up even more than space by collapsing your panels, squeeze box-fashion, one time they're out of the bin. Tiptop: A total-sized panel. Bottom left: A panel collapsed by double-clicking where the cursor is. Bottom right: The same panel complanate to an icon by clicking the very top of it (where the cursor is here) once. Click the superlative bar again to expand it.

When yous launch Elements for the first fourth dimension, the Console bin contains only ii panels: Layers and Effects. To run into how many more panels Elements actually gives y'all, check out the Editor'south main Window menu (the 1 at the acme of your screen): Everything listed in the menu's middle department—from Adjustments to Undo History—is a panel you lot can put in the Panel bin.

When you select a new panel from the Window menu, it appears in the bin if y'all're using the bin, floating on the desktop if you lot don't have whatever panels in the bin, or right where it was when y'all closed it terminal time. In addition to combining panels every bit shown in Effigy 1-9 you tin can as well plummet the Console bin or any group of panels into icons. Then, to use a panel, click its icon and it jumps out to the side of the group, full size. To compress it back to an icon, click its icon again. To aggrandize or compress the Panel bin, click the double arrows at the panel'south upper correct. You tin combine panels here by dragging their icons onto each other. So those panels open up as a combined group, similar the panels in Figure i-ix. Clicking one of the icons in the grouping collapses the opened, grouped panel back to icons. (Combined panel icons don't show a dark gray line between them in the group the fashion split icons do.) Yous tin also divide combined panels in icon view by dragging the icons abroad from each other.

Adobe sometimes refers to floating panels every bit "tabs" in Elements' menus. To shut a floating tab, click the Close button (the Ten) at its upper right, or below the X click the barely visible square (information technology'south fabricated up of four horizontal lines), and choose Close from the menu that appears. If you lot want to put a console back in the bin, drag it over the bin and let go when you see a blue line, or drag onto the tab of a console that's already in the bin to create a combined panel inside the bin.

Annotation

If yous lose panels or you move stuff around and so much that yous can't call back where y'all put things, you tin can always go home once again by clicking the Reset Panels push at the peak of your screen, which puts all your panels back in their original spots.

Figure 1-9. You tin combine two or more panels one time y'all've dragged them out of the bin. Summit: The Histogram console is being pulled into, and combined with, the Layers panel. To combine panels, drag one of them (past clicking on the panel's name tab) and driblet it onto the other panel. Bottom: To switch from one console to some other later on they're grouped, only click the tab of the one you want to use. To remove a panel from a group, merely elevate information technology out of the group. If yous want to render everything to how information technology looked when you first launched Elements, click Reset Panels (not visible here) at the top of your screen.

The Project bin

In the Editor, the long narrow photograph tray at the bottom of your screen is called the Project bin . It shows you what photos yous have open, as explained in Figure ane-10, only it does a lot more than that. At the bin's upper left are two pull-down menus:

• Bear witness Open Files . This carte lets you lot make up one's mind what the Projection bin displays: the photos currently open in the Editor, selected photos from the Organizer, or any of the albums (Albums and Smart Albums) you've made. If you send a bunch of photos over from the Organizer at once, yous may think something went awry because no photo appears on your desktop or in the Project bin. If you lot switch this bill of fare over to "Show Files from Elements Organizer", then y'all run into the photos waiting for you in the bin.

  

  Figure 1-10. The Projection bin runs across the bottom of the Editor'southward screen. It holds a thumbnail of every photo you lot have open, as well as photos you sent over from the Organizer that are waiting to be opened. Hither y'all see the bin three means: as it unremarkably appears (peak), as a floating console (bottom left), and collapsed to an icon (bottom correct). You tin too click the Close push (the X) at the bin's upper right, or right-click its tab and choose Close to hide it completely. To bring information technology back, go to Window → Project bin.

• Bin Deportment . This is where the Project bin gets really useful. You tin choose to use the photos in the bin in a project (via the Create tab), share them by whatever of the means listed under the Task panel's Share tab, print them, or make an album right in that location in the bin without ever going to the Organizer.

Tip

If you don't utilise the Organizer, then the Projection bin is a particularly cracking feature, considering it lets yous create groups of photos you can call up all together. Just put them in an album (Albums and Smart Albums), and and so, from the bin's Show Open up Files menu, select the album's proper noun to see that group again.

You lot can elevate your photos' thumbnails in the bin to rearrange them if you want to use the images in a project.

The Project bin is useful, just if you take a pocket-size monitor, you may prefer to take the space it takes up for your editing work. In Elements viii, the Project bin behaves just like any of the other panels: you can rip it loose from the bottom of the screen and combine it with the other panels. You lot can even collapse it to an icon, like the other panels, or drag information technology into the Panel bin. (If yous combine it with your other panels, the combined panel may be a piddling wider than it would be without the Project bin, although you can even so collapse the combined group to icons.) If you lot've used the past couple of versions of Elements, y'all know this is a great improvement over the onetime, fixed Project bin.

Epitome windows

In Elements 8, yous can choose how yous want to see the images you lot're working on. Older versions of Elements have used floating windows, where each image appears in a separate window that you tin can drag around. Elements 8 starts yous out with floating windows, merely yous tin can besides put your images into a new, tabbed view, which is something like the tabs in a web browser, or the tabs you'd find on newspaper file folders. The advantage of tabbed view is that you have plenty of workspace effectually the image, which is handy when you're working nigh the edges of an image, or using a tool that requires you to exist able to get outside the image's boundaries. All the things you can practise with image windows are explained on Image Views.

Incidentally, Clicking Reset Panels doesn't do annihilation to your prototype windows or tabs; it simply resets your panels.

Note

Because your view may vary, virtually of the illustrations in this book bear witness only the prototype itself and the tool in utilize, without a window frame or tab boundary effectually it.

Elements' Tools

Elements gives you an amazing array of tools to apply when working on your photos. You go almost two dozen primary tools to assist select, paint on, and otherwise manipulate images, and many of the tools take as many as six subtools hiding beneath them (see Figure 1-xi). Bob Vila'southward workshop probably isn't any better stocked than Elements' virtual toolbox.

Figure 1-11. Like any adept toolbox, Elements' Tools panel has lots of hidden drawers tucked away in information technology. Many Elements tools are actually groups of tools, which are represented by tiny black triangles on the lower-right side of the tool's icon (you tin run into several of these triangles here). Right-clicking or holding the mouse push down when you lot click the icon brings out the hidden subtools. The little black square next to the regular Eraser tool means it's the agile tool right now.

Annotation

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

The long, skinny strip on the left side of the Full Edit window (shown back in Figure ane-5—Editing Your Photos) is the Tools panel. It stays perfectly organized so you lot can always find what you want without always having to lift a finger to tidy it up. If yous forget what a particular tool does, just hover your cursor over the tool's icon, and a characterization (chosen a tooltip ) appears telling you the tool'due south name. To actuate a tool, click its icon. Whatever tool that y'all select comes with its own drove of options, as shown in Effigy 1-12.

Effigy 1-12. When a tool is agile, the Options bar changes to testify settings specific to that tool. Elements' tools are highly customizable, letting you do things like conform a castor's size and shape. Here you see the Brush tool'southward options. (The caterpillar-similar thingy at the left is a sample of the brushstroke you'd go using the tool's electric current settings.)

As the box below explains, y'all can have either a unmarried- or double-columned Tools console.

Other windows in Elements, like Quick Fix and the Raw Converter (run into Using the Raw Converter), also have toolboxes, just none is every bit complete as the one in Total Edit.

Note

If you've used Elements 5 or before, you'll find an important divergence in getting to subtools in Elements 8: You can't switch from one tool in a subgroup to another by using the Options bar anymore. Now you can choose a tool from a group only by using the tool's pop-out carte in the Tools panel, or past pressing its shortcut central repeatedly to wheel through the tool'due south subgroup. Cease tapping the primal when you see the icon for the tool yous want.

Don't worry about learning the names of every tool right now, but if you desire to see them all, they're all on display in Effigy 1-thirteen. It's easier to call up what a tool is once you've used it. And don't be overwhelmed by all of Elements' tools. You probably accept a bunch of Allen wrenches in your garage that you but use every year or so. Likewise, you'll find that you tend to use certain Elements tools more than others.

Effigy 1-thirteen. The mighty Tools panel. Because some tools are grouped together in the same slot (indicated by the little black triangles side by side to the tool icons), you lot can't ever encounter all the tools at in one case. (This Tools panel has two columns; the box on Elements' Tools explains how to switch from one to two columns.) For grouped tools, the icon yous see is the icon for the final tool in the grouping you lot used.

Tip

Y'all tin can salvage a ton of fourth dimension by activating tools with their keyboard shortcuts, since you lot don't take to interrupt what you're doing to trek over to the Tools panel. To see a tool'southward shortcut primal, hover your cursor over its icon. A label pops up indicating the shortcut fundamental (it's the letter to the right of the tool'due south name). To activate the tool, merely printing the advisable key. If the tool you desire is function of a group, all the tools in that group accept the same keyboard shortcut, so just keep pressing that key to bicycle through the grouping until you become to the tool y'all want.

Getting Help

Wherever Adobe found a devious corner in Elements, they stuck some help into it. You tin can't move anywhere in this programme without being offered some kind of guidance. Here are a few of the means you tin summon assistance if you need it:

• Help menu . Cull Assist → Photoshop Elements Help, or press F1. Elements launches your web browser, which displays Elements' Assistance files, where you lot tin search or scan a topic list and glossary. The Help carte likewise contains links to online video tutorials and Adobe's back up forum for Elements.

• Tooltips . When you see a tooltip (Elements' Tools) popular upwards nether your cursor equally you move effectually Elements, if the tooltip's text is blueish, that means it'south linked to the appropriate section in Elements; Help. You lot tin click blue-text tooltips for more information virtually any your cursor is hovering over.

• Dialog box links . Nigh dialog boxes have a few words of bright blueish text somewhere in them. That text is really a link to Elements Assistance. If you get confused about what Remove Color Cast does, for instance, and so, in the Remove Color Bandage dialog box, click the bluish "color cast" text for a reminder.

Guided Edit

If you lot're a beginner, Guided Edit, shown in Figure 1-fourteen, can be a big assist. It walks you lot through a multifariousness of popular editing tasks, like cropping, sharpening, correcting colors, and removing blemishes. Information technology also includes some features that are useful even if y'all're an old Elements hand, similar the Actions Thespian (Using Deportment) and the new Exposure Merge (Blending Exposures).

Guided edit is actually easy to apply:

1. Go to Guided Edit .

   In the Editor, click the Edit tab → EDIT Guided.

2. Open a photograph .

   Press Ctrl+O, and then, from the window that appears, cull your photo. If you already take a photograph open up, it appears in the Guided Edit window automatically. If you have several photos in the Project bin, then you lot can switch images past double-clicking the thumbnail of the 1 you lot want to work on.

   

   Figure 1-xiv. Guided Edit gives you step-by-step aid with basic photo editing. Merely apply the tools that announced in this panel once yous choose an activity. After you've selected a task, you can change the view to Before & Later on. Keep clicking the fiddling blue push button (circled) at the bottom of the window to toggle views between Afterward Merely, Before & After—Horizontal, and Before & Later—Vertical.

3. Choose what y'all want to do .

   Your options are grouped into major categories similar Basic Photo Edits and Colour Correction, with a variety of specific projects nether each heading. Just click the task you desire in the list on the right side of the window. The panel displays the relevant buttons and/or sliders for the task you selected.

4. Make your adjustments .

   Just move the sliders and click the buttons till y'all like what you see. If y'all want to start over, click Reset. If you lot alter your mind about the whole project, click Cancel.

   If several steps are involved, then Elements shows you merely the buttons and slider you need to use for the current footstep, and then switches to a new set of choices for the next step every bit you lot get along.

   If you need to adjust your view of your photo while y'all work on it, Guided Edit has a little toolbox with the Paw (The Mitt Tool) and Zoom (The Zoom Tool) tools to aid you out.

5. Click Washed to finish .

   If there are more steps, then y'all may see some other set of instructions. If you see the chief listing of topics again, y'all're all through. Don't forget to save your changes (Saving Your Work). To close your photo, press Ctrl+Due west, or leave information technology open up and switch to another tab to share it or apply it in a projection.

Note

Guided Edit shows y'all quick and easy ways to change your image, but you don't always get the all-time possible results. It's a great tool for starting out; only think that what you lot see here isn't necessarily the best you lot tin maybe brand your images look. In one case you lot're more comfortable in Elements, Quick Set up (Affiliate 4) is a practiced adjacent step.

The Inspiration Browser

Yous've probably noticed the little text alerts that zip in and out at the bottom of both the Editor and the Organizer windows, as shown in Figure ane-15. If you click one, then you get a popular-up window that suggests a tutorial explaining how to do whatsoever the text alert mentioned. Click the arrow where it says "Acquire how", and up pops the Adobe Elements Inspiration Browser, a mini-program that lets you scout tutorials. You need a Photoshop.com account (available only for U.S. residents; come across Photoshop.com) to use the Browser. (If you remember the Browser and you modify your mind about using it, or if you lot don't have an account, press the Esc key to shut information technology.) It's well worth checking out, considering the Browser is a direct connection to a slew of tutorials for things you might want to do with Photoshop Elements or Premiere Elements (Adobe'southward movie-editing programme).

The first time y'all showtime the Inspiration Browser, you see a license understanding for all the same another program: Adobe AIR, which lets other programs show you content stored online; no need to get out a web browser and navigate to a website. (Adobe AIR got installed automatically along with Elements.)

This process may seem like a lot of work, simply it's well worth the effort, since y'all can find tutorials on everything from beginner topics like creating albums to advanced subjects like working with Displacement Maps (a sophisticated technique used for things like making your photo look like it'southward painted on a brick wall, or making a page of text look like a crumpled paper). The tutorials are all in either PDF or video format. You'll run across tutorials from well-known Elements gurus here, but anyone tin submit a tutorial for the Inspiration Browser. So if you lot effigy out how to practice a projection you lot recall might be useful to others, y'all tin can create a tutorial and transport it in for approval past clicking the "Submit a Tutorial" button and entering the requested data in the window that appears. (You demand to create your tutorial every bit either a PDF or, for a video, in the Flash FLV format.)

Effigy 1-fifteen. Meridian: Click these little text banners for more information about the topic. Bottom: In these popular-upwardly windows you can either click "Larn how" to go directly to that particular tutorial, or click the faintly ghosted left and right arrows (circled; they get brighter when you mouse over them) in the pop-up window to read most other bachelor tutorials. You can also get to the Inspiration Browser by going to Assistance → Photoshop Inspiration Browser. (Non all the pop-ups accept these navigation arrows. Some have a single pointer that only takes you to the linked tutorial without letting you lot browse for others.)

You tin search for tutorials using the box on the Browser'southward left, or click All Tutorials and then filter them by category or product (so you don't take to see Premiere Elements topics if yous have only Photoshop Elements, for example). You lot can also click on i of the cavalcade headings to meet the available tutorials arranged by Championship, Author, Difficulty, Date Posted, Category, Type (video or PDF), or the average star rating people have given it. Use the buttons at the window'southward upper right to change the view from a list to thumbnails (info nearly each tutorial appears below its thumbnail).

The Inspiration Browser is a wonderful resource and may well give yous most of the assist yous need with Elements across this book.

Tip

If the author of a tutorial has a website, then the tutorial'south page has a link to information technology. Exploring these links can help yous find lots of useful Elements-related resources, every bit well as useful add together-on tools that extend Elements' capabilities (see Chapter 19).

Escape Routes

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

Undo

No matter where you lot are in Elements, y'all tin almost e'er modify your mind near what you just did. Press Ctrl+Z, and the last change yous fabricated goes away. Pressing Ctrl+Z works even if you've just saved your photograph, but only while it's all the same open—if you close the file, your changes are permanent. Go along pressing Ctrl+Z and you keep undoing your piece of work, step by pace.

If you lot desire to redo what you lot but undid, press Ctrl+Y. These keyboard shortcuts are smashing for toggling changes on and off while yous decide whether you lot really want to go on them. The Disengage/Redo keystroke combinations piece of work in the Organizer and the Editor.

Tip

You lot have a bit of control over the fundamental combination you use for Undo/Redo, if you don't like Ctrl+Z/Ctrl+Y. Become to Edit → Preferences → General, where Elements gives you two other choices, both of which involve pressing the Z cardinal in combination with the Control, Alt, and Shift keys.

Undo History panel

In the Full Edit window, you get fifty-fifty more control over the actions y'all tin undo, cheers to the Undo History panel (Figure ane-16), which you open by choosing Window → Disengage History.

Figure i-xvi. For a little time travel, merely slide the pointer (on the left, just above the cursor here) up and scout your changes disappear. You can get back just sequentially. Hither, for instance, you can't become back to the Crop tool without first undoing what you did with the Pigment Bucket and the Eraser. Slide the pointer downward to redo your work. You can too hop to a given spot in the list by clicking the place where yous want to go instead of using the slider.

This panel holds a list of the changes you've made since you opened your image. Simply push the slider upward and picket your changes disappear one by one equally you go. Like the Undo control, Undo History even works if you've saved your file: As long as you oasis't airtight the file, the console tracks every action you take. Yous tin also slide the other way to redo changes that you've undone.

Be conscientious, though: You can dorsum up only as many steps every bit Elements is set to remember. The program is initially set up to record 50 steps, but you can alter that number past going to Edit → Preferences → Functioning → History & Cache and adjusting the History States setting. You tin can fix it every bit high every bit 1,000, simply remembering even 100 steps may slow your arrangement to a crawl if you don't take a superpowered processor, enough of retentiveness, and loads of disk space. If Elements runs slowly on your car, so reducing the number of history states information technology remembers (try 20) may speed things up a fleck.

The ane rule of Elements

Equally y'all're start to see, Elements lets you piece of work in lots of unlike ways. What'due south more, most people who utilize Elements arroyo projects in different means. What works for your neighbor with her pictures may exist quite unlike from how you lot'd piece of work on the very aforementioned shots.

But yous'll hear ane suggestion from almost every Elements veteran, and information technology's an important i: Never, ever work on your original. Always, always, always brand a re-create of your image and work on that instead .

The good news is that if you store your photos in the Organizer, yous don't demand to worry about accidentally trashing your original. If you save your files as version sets (Saving Your Work), Elements automatically creates a copy when you edit a photo that'southward cataloged in the Organizer, so that you lot can ever revert to your original.

If yous're determined non to employ the Organizer or version sets, then follow these steps to make a re-create of your image in the Editor:

1. Go to File → Duplicate .

   The Duplicate Prototype dialog box appears.

2. Proper noun the indistinguishable and so click OK in the dialog box .

   Elements opens the new, duplicate paradigm in the main image window.

3. Find the original image and click its Close button (the X) .

   If you have floating windows, the Close push is the standard Windows Close push you'd see at the upper correct of whatever window. If y'all have tabs, the close X is on the right side of the prototype'south tab. At present the original is safely tucked out of harm's fashion.

4. Save the duplicate by pressing Ctrl+S .

   Choose Photoshop (.psd) as the file format when you relieve it. (You may desire to choose another format later you lot've read Affiliate 3 and empathize more about your dissimilar format options.)

Now yous don't accept to worry about making a mistake or changing your mind, considering you can always showtime over.

Annotation

Elements doesn't have an autosave feature, so you should go into the habit of saving oft as y'all work. Saving Your Work has more most saving.

Getting Started in a Hurry

If you're the impatient type and you're starting to squirm because you lot want to exist upwards and doing something to your photos, here's the quickest way to become started in Elements: Adjust an image's brightness and color residue all in i stride.

1. In the Editor, open a photo .

   Printing Ctrl+O and navigate to the image you want, and so click Open.

2. Press Alt+Ctrl+M .

   You've just applied Elements' Auto Smart Set tool (Figure 1-17).

Voilà! Y'all should see quite a deviation in your photo, unless the exposure, lighting, and contrast were well-nigh perfect earlier. The Auto Smart Fix tool is i of Elements' many easy-to-employ features. (Of grade, if you don't similar what just happened to your photo, no problem—but press Ctrl+Z to undo it.)

If you're actually raring to get, jump ahead to Chapter 4 to larn nigh using the Quick Fix commands. Only information technology's worth taking the time to read the next two chapters so y'all sympathise which file formats to choose and how to make some basic adjustments to your images, similar rotating and cropping them.

Don't forget to give Guided Edit a try if you see what you want to do in the list of topics. Guided Edit tin be a big help while yous're learning your way around.

Figure 1-17. Machine Smart Fix is the easiest, quickest way to improve the quality of your photos. Top left: The original, unedited flick. Meridian right: Automobile Smart Set makes quite a difference, but the colors are still slightly off. Lesser: By using some of the other tools y'all'll learn near in this book (similar Auto Dissimilarity and Adjust Sharpness), you can make things look even improve.

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Source: https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/photoshop-elements-8/9780596809188/ch01.html

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