Photoshop Elements 3: The Missing Manual

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Photoshop Elements lets you do practically anything you want 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 finding your way around the program has gotten a lot more complicated than it used to be, especially if you're using the Windows version.

This chapter helps get you oriented in Elements. You'll learn about what to expect when you start up the program, and how to use Elements to fix your photos with just a couple of keystrokes—a great new feature in this version.

Along the way, you'll find out about some of Elements' basic controls and how to get hold of the program's Help files if you need them. Elements is absolutely crammed with help at every turn. Adobe did their best to make it as easy for you as possible.

This book covers Photoshop Elements 3. If you're not sure which version of Elements you have, the easiest way to find out is to look at the program's icon (the file you click on to launch Elements).

You can use this book if you have an earlier version of Elements, because a lot of the basic editing procedures are the same, but there are some pretty substantial differences between Elements 3 and the earlier versions, much more so than between Elements 1 and Elements 2.

When you launch Elements for the first time, you get a veritable smorgasbord of options, all neatly laid out for you in the Welcome screen (the Windows version is shown in Figure 1-1 and the Mac version in Figure 1-2).

Figure 1-1: The Windows Welcome screen gives you six main activities to choose from (there's also a Tutorials link in the upper-right corner). Hold your cursor over any of these options for more details about each choice. You can't bypass the Windows Welcome screen just by clicking the Close button. If you do, the screen goes away—but so does Elements. Fortunately, you've got options: the box on page 6 tells you how to permanently get rid of the Welcome screen.

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When you launch Elements for the first time, you get a veritable smorgasbord of options, all neatly laid out for you in the Welcome screen (the Windows version is shown in Figure 1-1 and the Mac version in Figure 1-2).

Figure 1-1: The Windows Welcome screen gives you six main activities to choose from (there's also a Tutorials link in the upper-right corner). Hold your cursor over any of these options for more details about each choice. You can't bypass the Windows Welcome screen just by clicking the Close button. If you do, the screen goes away—but so does Elements. Fortunately, you've got options: the box on page 6 tells you how to permanently get rid of the Welcome screen.

Interestingly, the Windows Welcome screen is not actually Elements. It's a launching pad that, depending on the button you click, will start up one of two different programs:

Organizer, which lets you store and organize your image files.
Editor, which lets you edit your images.

It's quite easy to get back and forth between the Editor and the Organizer—which you might call the two different faces of Elements—and you probably won't do much in one without eventually needing to get into the other. But in some ways, they still function as two separate programs. In any case, the Welcome screen offers you no less than six choices for how to get into Elements:
Product Overview offers a round-up of all the features inside Elements.
View and Organize Photos takes you to the Organizer, where you can store and sort all your images.
Quickly Fix Photos brings you to the wonderful new Quick Fix window (which is actually part of the Editor) where you can perform amazing color corrections with just a click.
Edit and Enhance Photos

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How you organize your photos depends a lot on whether you're using a Windows PC or a Mac. In Windows, you can import and organize your images directly within Elements' Organizer program, while most Mac people will probably use iPhoto if they want to keep their photos organized.

If you're using Windows, the Organizer is where your photos come into Elements and go out again. The Organizer stores and catalogs your photos, and you automatically come back to it for any activities that involve sharing your photos, like printing a photo package or making a slideshow. The Organizer has three main sections, as shown in Figure 1-3:

Photo Browser lets you view your photos, sort them into collections, and assign keyword tags to them.
Date View is a fun feature that lets you see your photo imports organized by the date you brought them into the Organizer. It's even laid out like a calendar.
Create is where you come after you've finished editing your photos and are ready to use them in slideshows, album pages, greeting cards, and other projects.

The Organizer has lots of really cool features, and in the body of this book you'll meet them when they're relevant to the image-editing task at hand. The next chapter shows you how to use the Organizer to import and organize your photos, and Appendix A covers all the Organizer's different menu options.

Section 1.2.3.1: Photo Downloader

Actually, the Windows version of Elements has one other component, which you might have seen already if you've plugged your camera into your computer since you installed Elements: the Photo Downloader (Figure 1-4).

This bumptious little program is meant to help you get your photos into the Organizer, and it's more zealous than a personal-injury lawyer on the scene of an accident. It sniffs out any device you attach to your computer that might possibly contain photos and races to the scene, elbowing the Explorer dialog box out of the way. Depending on the speed of your computer, it may show up before the Explorer dialog box or slightly after it. You have to dismiss the Downloader first if you want to use another program to import your photos.

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In addition to the Organizer, the other main section of Elements is what Adobe now calls the Editor. If you've used Elements in the past, this is the Elements you're used to, although it also has some added features in this version, most notably a hugely improved Quick Fix window.

Photo editing is exactly the same whether you're using Windows or Mac OS X. There are some differences in what you can do from the File Browser, which is where you can start projects like panoramas on a Mac, but otherwise there's not a jot of difference in how you edit a photo. You can see how much alike they are in Figure 1-6.

Figure 1-6: As you can see, there's almost no difference between the Standard Edit window in Windows (top) and Mac OS X (bottom), except for the basic differences between the two operating system controls. Your tools are exactly the same and so are the techniques for using them. The long, skinny strip down the extreme left side of the screen is the Toolbox.

You can operate the Editor in either of two different modes:

Quick Fix. For many beginners, this may end up as your main workspace. Adobe has gathered together the basic tools you need to improve most photos and it's the one place in Elements where you can have a before-and-after view while you work. Chapter 4 discusses using the Quick Fix in detail.
Standard Edit. The Standard Edit window gives you access to Elements' most sophisticated tools. There are far more ways to work on your photo in Standard Edit than in the Quick Fix, and if you're fussy, it's where you'll do most of your retouching work. Most of the Quick Fix commands are also available via menus in the Standard Edit window.

The rest of this chapter covers some of the basic concepts and key tools you'll come across in the Editor.

Elements gives you an amazing array of tools to use when working on your photo. You get almost two dozen primary tools to help you select, paint on, and otherwise manipulate your photos, and many of the tools have as many as four subtools hiding beneath them (see Figure 1-7). Bob Vila's workshop probably isn't any better stocked than the Elements' virtual toolbox.

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If you're the impatient type and you're starting to squirm because you want to be up and doing something to your photos, here's the quickest way to get started in Elements. You can adjust the brightness and color balance all in one step.

While you're in the Editor, open a photo.

Press Ctrl+O (⌘-O) and navigate to the image you want, then click Open.
Press Alt+Ctrl+M (Option-⌘-M).

You've just applied Elements Auto Smart Fix tool.

Voila! You should see quite a difference in your photo, unless the exposure, lighting, and contrast were almost perfect before. The Auto Smart Fix tool is one of the many easy-to-use new features in Elements 3. (Of course, you may not like what just happened to your photo, but that's why you bought this book.)

If you're the really impatient type, you can jump right to Chapter 4 to learn about using the Quick Fix commands. But it's worth taking the time to read the next two chapters so you understand which file formats to choose and how to make some basic adjustments to your images, like rotating and cropping them.

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Now that you've had a look around Elements, it's time to start learning how to get photos into the program, and also how to keep track of where these photos are stored. As a digital photographer, you may no longer be facing shoeboxes stuffed with prints, but you've still got to face the menace of photos piling up on your hard drive. Fortunately, Elements gives you some great tools for organizing your collection and quickly finding individual pictures.

In this chapter, you'll learn how to import your photos from cameras, digital card readers, and scanners. You'll also find out how to import individual frames from videos, how to open files that are already on your computer, and how to create a new file from scratch. After that, you'll learn how to organize and find your pictures once they're in Elements, either by using the Organizer (Windows), or the Editor's File Browser (Mac and Windows).

Elements gives you lots of different ways to get photos into your computer, but if you're using Windows, the simplest tool is the Adobe Photo Downloader. If you don't like the Downloader or if you're using a Mac, later in this section you'll learn about other ways to import your photos.

Regardless of your operating system, first carefully read the instructions from your camera manufacturer. These directions should always take precedence over anything you read here that might seem to suggest doing something differently.

If you're using Windows, you may have already made the acquaintance of the Photo Downloader, since it automatically appears whenever you connect a camera or card reader—even if Elements isn't running.

If you're already in the Organizer, you'll see the "Get Photos" window instead. Its window is identical to that of the Downloader, except that you can't choose a different catalog if you have more than one (catalogs are covered on page 30).

The Downloader window is divided into two main parts (see Figure 2-1). On the left side are the thumbnails of your photos. The little checkmarks next to each image indicate which photos will be imported; just uncheck the ones you don't want to bring into the Organizer. If you've already imported some of the images, the Organizer tells you so and doesn't import them again.

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Elements gives you lots of different ways to get photos into your computer, but if you're using Windows, the simplest tool is the Adobe Photo Downloader. If you don't like the Downloader or if you're using a Mac, later in this section you'll learn about other ways to import your photos.

Regardless of your operating system, first carefully read the instructions from your camera manufacturer. These directions should always take precedence over anything you read here that might seem to suggest doing something differently.

If you're using Windows, you may have already made the acquaintance of the Photo Downloader, since it automatically appears whenever you connect a camera or card reader—even if Elements isn't running.

If you're already in the Organizer, you'll see the "Get Photos" window instead. Its window is identical to that of the Downloader, except that you can't choose a different catalog if you have more than one (catalogs are covered on page 30).

The Downloader window is divided into two main parts (see Figure 2-1). On the left side are the thumbnails of your photos. The little checkmarks next to each image indicate which photos will be imported; just uncheck the ones you don't want to bring into the Organizer. If you've already imported some of the images, the Organizer tells you so and doesn't import them again.

The right side of the window is where you can adjust the settings for where your pictures are stored and how their folders are named.

Figure 2-1: The Photo Downloader is the easiest way to get your photos into the Windows Organizer. If you want to control how many photos appear in the Downloader's main window, use the image size slider to adjust the size of the thumbnail photos. (You'll see a similar slider in all the main Organizer windows, too.)
Move the slider all the way to the left for the smallest possible thumbnails. As you move it to the right, the thumbnails get progressively larger so that you see fewer and fewer at once. You can also enlarge a thumbnail to maximum its size by double clicking it.

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If you've got photos already stored on your computer, you have several options for opening them with Elements. If the file format is set to open in Elements, just double-click the file's icon to launch Elements and open the image. (If you want to change which files automatically open in Elements, see the box on page 26. You've also got a few ways to open files from within Elements:

From the Organizer (Windows only). Go to File → Get Photos → From Files and Folders, or press Ctrl+Shift+G, then select your file. The other options in the Get Photos menu (like opening files stored on a mobile phone) are covered in Appendix A.
From the Editor (Mac and Windows). Go to File → Open or press Ctrl+O (⌘-O) and select your file. To bring up the Editor's File Browser so you can choose from a thumbnail view of your photos, press Ctrl+Shift+O (Shift-⌘-O) and navigate to the photo you want. There's more about the File Browser later in this chapter.
From the Welcome window (Mac only). The Mac Welcome screen includes a list of recently opened photos, or you can click the Open File for Editing button to bring up the File Browser window.

Elements can open PDF files (choose File → Open), but if they're longer than one page, Elements lets you open only one page at a time. If you need to extract a particular graphic from a PDF file, or all the graphics from a multi-page PDF file, go to File → Import → PDF Image, and Elements extracts all the graphics from the file for you.

How do I stop Elements from opening all my files?

Many people are dismayed to discover that once they install Elements, it opens every time they double-click any kind of graphics file—whether they want the file to open in Elements or not.

If you're using the Windows version of Elements, you can control the file types associated with Elements by going to Edit→File Association in the Editor. Alternatively, both the Windows and Mac operating systems also let you adjust which program opens when you double-click a file. On either platform, first find a file of the type you want to change and:

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Elements comes bundled with many scanners, because it's the perfect software for making your scans look their best. There are two main ways of getting scans into Elements. Some scanners come with a driver plug-in, a small utility program that lets you scan directly into Elements. Look on your scanner's installation software for information about Elements compatibility or check the manufacturer's Web site for a Photoshop plug-in to download. (If you can scan into Photoshop, you should be able to scan into Elements.) You may also be able to scan into Elements if your scanner uses the TWAIN interface, which is an industry standard used by many scanner manufacturers.

If you don't have any of these, you'll need to use the scanning program that came with your scanner. Then, once you've saved your scanned image in a format that Elements understands, like TIFF (.tiff, .tif) or Photoshop (.psd), open the file in Elements like any other photo.

To control your scanner from within Elements, in the Editor, go to File → Import and you'll find your scanner's name on the list that appears. In Windows, you can also scan from the Organizer by choosing File → Get Photos → From Scanner, or by pressing Ctrl+U.

If you do a lot of scanning, check out the "Divide Scanned Photos" command (page 47) for helpful tips on how to quickly scan in lots of photos at the same time.

Also, you can save yourself a lot of drudgery in Elements if you make sure your scanner glass and the prints you're scanning are both as dust-free as possible before you start.

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Elements lets you capture a single frame from a video and use it the way you would any still photo. This feature works best if you choose a movie that's already on your computer.

Elements can read many popular video file formats, including .avi, .wmv, and .mpeg. You do need to have a program on your computer (besides Elements) that's capable of viewing the video file. For example, to view a QuickTime movie, you need to have QuickTime installed on your PC.

The video capture tool in Elements isn't really designed for use with long movies. You'll get the best results with clips that aren't more than a minute or two long, at most.

To import a video frame go to File → Import → Frame From Video, and then in the Video import dialog box:

Find the video that contains the frame you want to copy.

Click the Browse button and navigate to the movie you want. After you choose the movie, the first frame should appear in the window in the Frame From Video dialog box.
Navigate to the frame you want.

Either click the Play button or use the slider below the window to move through the movie until you see what you want.
Copy the frame you want by clicking "Grab Frame."

You can grab as many frames as you want. Each frame shows up in the Elements Editor as a separate file.
When you have everything you need, click Done.

While this is a very fun thing to be able to do, it does have certain limitations. Most important, your video is going to be at a fairly low resolution, so you're not going to get a great print from a video frame.

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You can also create a new blank Elements document. You'd want to do this when you're using Elements as a drawing program or when you're combining parts of other images together, for example.

To create a new file, go to the Editor, and choose File → New → Blank File (or press Ctrl+N [⌘-N]) to bring up the New File dialog box. You have lots of choices to make each time you start a new file; they're all covered in the following sections.

The first thing you need to decide, logically enough, is how big you want your document to be. You can choose inches, pixels, centimeters, millimeters, points, picas, or columns as your unit of measurement. Just pick the one you want in the Width and Height pull-down menus and then enter a number. Or you can choose one of the many preset sizes shown in Figure 2-3.

Figure 2-3: The list of preset document sizes is divided into groups, each of which features popular file sizes and resolution settings for a variety of common uses. For example, the fourth group from the top includes traditional photo print sizes, and the group after that lists widely used choices for onscreen graphics. The default Photoshop Elements size is 5" x 7" at 72 pixels per inch, which works well if you're just playing around and trying things out.

If you decide not to use one of the presets, you need to choose a resolution for your file. There's a lot more about resolution in the next chapter, but a good rough guide is to choose 72 pixels per inch (ppi) for files that you'll look at only on a monitor and 300 ppi for files you plan to print.

Elements gives you lots of color choices throughout the program, but this is probably your most important one because it determines which tools and filters you can use in your document. The three choices available in the Color Mode menu are:

RGB Mode.

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If you use Windows, the Organizer is where you keep track of your photos and start most of your projects for sharing your photos. You can see all your photos in the Organizer, assign keywords (called tags) to make it easier to find the pictures you want, and search for your photos in many different ways.

There are three main windows in the Organizer. Create is where you make calendars, greeting cards, album pages, and other fun stuff. Date View is an alternate way to look at and search for your photos, as explained in Figure 2-6. The Photo Browser is the most versatile of the three and your main Organizer workspace—that's what the rest of this section is about.

The Organizer stores the information about your photos in a special database called a catalog. You don't have to do anything special to get started—Elements creates your catalog (named My Catalog) automatically the first time you import photos. It's possible to have more than one catalog, but most people don't, since you can't search more than one catalog at a time.

Figure 2-5: The checkered background is Adobe's way of indicating that an area is transparent. (It doesn't mean you've somehow selected a patterned background.) If you place this photo into another image, all you'll see is the shell itself, not the checkerboard or the rectangular outline of the photo.
If you don't like the size and color of the grid, you can adjust them in Edit → Preferences → Transparency (Photoshop Elements → Preferences → Transparency).

Your catalog can include photos stored anywhere on your computer, and even photos that you've moved to remote disks and CDs. There aren't any limits on where your originals can be located, but once your photos appear in the Organizer, it's better to move them from within the Organizer as opposed to using another method (like Windows Explorer).

The Organizer lets you choose to edit in programs other than Elements by going to Organizer → File Preferences → Editing → Use a Supplementary Editing Application. So if you want to supplement Elements with a program like Paint Shop Pro, or even Photoshop, it's easy to do.

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The Organizer isn't the only place to rummage through your photos. The Editor also includes a File Browser that lets you look through thumbnail images of all your photos as well as search for particular images. Being able to search while working in the Editor is a great timesaver, since it can save you from having to switch back to the Organizer.

If you have a Mac, the File Browser is where you assign keywords to your photos. The Mac File Browser is very similar to the one that comes with Photoshop CS, while the Windows version doesn't contain quite as many capabilities. The Mac-specific information comes later in this section. For now, everything applies to both platforms.

The File Browser is organized a little like the Organizer's Folder view. Starting at the top of the File Browser, down the left side of the window you see the folder hierarchy of your hard drive (the Folders palette), a Preview palette, and at the bottom, a palette for your metadata (page 39) (and keywords, covered later, if you're on a Mac). Your thumbnails appear in the main window on the right.

You can choose how much space to give to each palette as explained in Figure 2-11.

Figure 2-11: You can customize the view in the File Browser the same way you can in the Photo Browser: by dragging the dividers to make an area bigger or smaller. If you want more space to see your EXIF info (page 39), drag the top bar of the Metadata palette upward. Double-clicking a palette's title collapses the palette.

Although Elements calls them "palettes," you can't move them around like regular palettes—they stay tethered to the File Browser.

To call up the File Browser, just press Ctrl+Shift+O (⌘-Shift-O) while you're in either Quick Fix or Standard Edit mode. If you have a Mac, you can also launch the File Browser by clicking "Open file for editing" in the Welcome screen.

It's very easy to use the File Browser. Navigate through the Folders palette the way you would go through a folder view anywhere else on your computer. Click a folder, and the main File Browser window displays thumbnails of any photos in the folder (you'll also see any subfolders that contain graphics files). You can open any of the folders that show up in the main window by double-clicking them.

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Last chapter, you learned how to get your photos into Elements. Now it's time to look at how to trim off unwanted areas, straighten out crooked photos, and save your files. You'll also learn how to change the overall size of your images and how to zoom in and out, to get a better look at things while you're editing.

Windows folks: from here until Chapter 14, you need to be in the Elements Editor. If you're still in the Organizer, press Ctrl+I to go to the Standard Edit window.

Almost everyone knows the frustration of carefully placing a photo on a scanner, only to find that your scan has come out crooked. Elements includes a wonderful command—Divide Scanned Photos—that solves this problem. Not only that, but you can scan several photos at once, and Elements straightens them out and chops them apart for you. Anyone who's slogged their way through digitizing generations of ancient snapshots will testify that this a very big deal indeed, almost worth the whole price of Elements.

Figure 3-1 shows how you can use Elements to help save time. Put as many photos on the scanner bed as you can fit, and once you've gotten your scan into Elements, you can use Divide Scanned Photos to separate and straighten the individual images.

Start by scanning in a group of photos. The only limit on the number of photos is how many you can fit on your scanner. It doesn't matter whether you scan directly into Elements or use your scanner's own software. (See Chapter 2 for more about scanning images into Elements.)

Figure 3-1: Consumer-grade flatbed scanners are generally pretty slow, so it's a huge timesaver if you can scan four photos or even six photos at a time, as shown here. Elements can automatically separate and straighten the individual photos from a group scan like this one.

Sometimes it pays to be crooked. Divide Scanned Photos does its best work if your photos are really crooked, so don't waste time trying to be precise when placing your pictures on the scanner.

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Almost everyone knows the frustration of carefully placing a photo on a scanner, only to find that your scan has come out crooked. Elements includes a wonderful command—Divide Scanned Photos—that solves this problem. Not only that, but you can scan several photos at once, and Elements straightens them out and chops them apart for you. Anyone who's slogged their way through digitizing generations of ancient snapshots will testify that this a very big deal indeed, almost worth the whole price of Elements.

Figure 3-1 shows how you can use Elements to help save time. Put as many photos on the scanner bed as you can fit, and once you've gotten your scan into Elements, you can use Divide Scanned Photos to separate and straighten the individual images.

Start by scanning in a group of photos. The only limit on the number of photos is how many you can fit on your scanner. It doesn't matter whether you scan directly into Elements or use your scanner's own software. (See Chapter 2 for more about scanning images into Elements.)

Figure 3-1: Consumer-grade flatbed scanners are generally pretty slow, so it's a huge timesaver if you can scan four photos or even six photos at a time, as shown here. Elements can automatically separate and straighten the individual photos from a group scan like this one.

Sometimes it pays to be crooked. Divide Scanned Photos does its best work if your photos are really crooked, so don't waste time trying to be precise when placing your pictures on the scanner.

Divide Scanned Photos works the same way whether you've got a Windows computer or a Mac.

Open your scanned image file in the Editor.

It doesn't matter what file format you used to scan in your group of photos.
Divide, straighten, and crop the individual photos.

Go to Image → Divide Scanned Photos. Sit back and enjoy the view as Elements carefully calculates, splits, straightens out, and trims each image. You'll see the individual photos appear and disappear as Elements works through the group.

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Owners of print photographs aren't the only ones who sometimes need a little help straightening out their pictures. Digital photos sometimes need to be rotated. For example, not all cameras output photos so that Elements (or any other image-editing program, for that matter) knows the correct orientation for your picture. Some cameras send portrait-orientated photos out on their side, and it's up to you to straighten things out.

Fortunately, Elements has rotation commands just about everywhere you go in the program. If all you need to do is get Dad off his back and stand him upright again, here's a list of where you can perform a quick 90-degree rotation on any open photo:

Quick Fix (page 83). Click either of the Rotation buttons at the top of the Control Panel.
Standard Edit (page 11). Select Image → Rotate → Rotate 90° Left (or Right).
File Browser (page 39). Click the left or right arrow at the top of the File Browser window.

Remember that in the File Browser, you're actually rotating a thumbnail replica of your image; the actual image won't be rotated until you open the image file.
RAW Converter (page 189). Click the left or right arrow at the bottom of the Preview window.
Organizer (Windows only; page 30). You can rotate a photo almost any time in the Organizer by pressing Ctrl+the left or right arrow key. Another way to rotate is to go to Edit → Rotate 90° Left (or Right). Finally, there's a pair of Rotate buttons to click at the bottom of the Photo Browser window.

Those commands all get you one-click, 90-degree changes. But Elements has all sorts of other rotational tricks up its sleeve, as explained in the next section.

Elements gives you several ways to change the orientation of your photo. To see what's available, in the Editor, go to Image → Rotate. You'll notice two groups of Rotate commands in this menu. For now, it's the top group you want to focus on. (The second group does the same things, only those commands work on layers, which are explained in Chapter 6.)

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Whether or not you straightened your digital photo, sooner or later you'll probably need to crop it—trim it to a certain size. There are two main reasons for cropping your photos. If you want to print on standard sizes of photo paper, you usually need to trim off part of your image so it fits onto the paper. The other important reason for cropping your photo is to enhance it. You can crop away distracting objects in the background or other people you don't want in the picture, for instance.

A few cameras produce photos that are proportioned exactly right for printing to a standard size like 4" x6". But most cameras give you photos that aren't the same proportions as any of the standard paper sizes like 4" x6" or 8" x10". (The width-to-height ratio is also known as the aspect ratio.)

The extra area most cameras provide gives you room to crop wherever you like. You can also crop out different areas for different size prints (assuming you save your original photo). Figure 3-6 shows an example of a photo that had to be cropped to fit on a 4" x 6" piece of paper.

Figure 3-6: When you print onto standard sized paper, you may have to choose the part of your digital photo you want to keep. This photo came from the camera as you see it in the left figure; it had to be cropped down to make it the right shape for a 4" x 6" print.

If your photo isn't in the Organizer, it's best to perform your crops on a copy, since trimming is going to throw away the pixels outside the area you choose to keep. And you never know—you may want those pixels back someday.

You can use the Crop tool in either the Standard Edit or Quick Fix window. The Crop tool includes a helpful list of preset sizes to make cropping easier. If you don't need to crop to an exact size, here's how to perform basic freehand cropping:

Activate the Crop tool.

Click the Crop icon in the Toolbox or press C.

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Sometimes, rather than changing the size of your photo, all you want to do is change its appearance in Elements so you can get a better look at it. For example, you might want to zoom in on a particular area, or zoom out, so you can see how edits you've made have affected your photo's overall composition.

This section is about how to adjust the view of your image inside Elements. Nothing you do with the tools and commands in this section changes anything about your actual photo. You're just changing the way you see it. Elements gives you lots of tools and keystroke combinations to help with these new views; soon you'll probably find yourself making these changes without even thinking about them.

Before you start resizing your view of your photos, Elements gives you several different ways to position your image windows. When you first use Elements, if you have more than one photo open at a time, your photos tile themselves so that you can see them all simultaneously. If you have two photos open, for instance, each photo window spreads itself out to take half the available space on your desktop. You're not stuck with this layout, though.

When you go to Window → Images, you get several choices for how your image windows should display:

Maximize. Each photo window takes up the entire Elements desktop. You can also click the large square at the right of the Editor shortcuts bar to switch to this view.
Cascade.Your image windows appear in overlapping stacks. Most people find this the most practical view when you want to compare or work with two images.
Tile. Your image windows appear edge to edge so that they fill the available desktop space. With two photos open, each gets half the window, with four photos each gets one quarter of it, and so on. If you click the four squares in the Shortcuts bar you get this view.
Match Zoom. All your windows get the same magnification level as the active image window.

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The previous section was about how to resize the view of your image as it appeared on your monitor. Sometimes you need to change the size of your actual image, and that's what this section is about.

Resizing your photo brings you up against a pretty tough concept in digital imaging: resolution. Resolution is the term for the amount of detail your image can show, and it's dependent on the number of pixels in your photo. Where it gets confusing is that resolution for printing and for onscreen use (like email and the Web) are quite different.

Figure 3-14: Meet the Navigator. You can travel around your image by dragging the little red rectangle—it marks the area of your photo that you can see onscreen. You can also enter a percent number for the size you want your photo to display at, or move the slider or click the zoom in/out magnifying glasses on either side of it to change the view. The Navigator's just great for keeping track of where you are in a large image.

Print resolution and onscreen resolution are measured in different terms. The number of pixels you need for best results is quite different depending on what you want to do with your photo. For example, you need many more pixels to create a good-looking print than you do for a photo that's going to be viewed only onscreen. A photo that's going to print well almost always has too many pixels in it for onscreen display, and its file size is usually pretty hefty for emailing. So you often need two different copies of your photo for the two different uses. If you want to know more about resolution, a good place to start is www.scantips.com.

This section gives you a brief introduction to both screen and print resolution as they pertain to using the Resize Image dialog box correctly. You'll also learn how to add more canvas (more blank space) around your photos. You'd add canvas to make room for captions below your image, for instance.

To get started, open a photo you want to resize and go to Image → Resize → Image Size. This brings up the Image Size dialog box, shown in Figure 3-15.

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After all your editing and resizing effort, you want to be sure that you don't lose any of those files you struggled so hard to create. Saving your work is easy in Elements. When you're ready to save your file, press Ctrl+Shift+S (⌘-Shift-S) to bring up the Save As dialog box. The Windows version is shown in Figure 3-21.

The top part of the Save As window is pretty much the same as it is for any program—you choose where you want to save your file, what you want to name it, and the file format you want. (There's more about file formats later.) You also get some important choices that are unique to Elements:

As a Copy. When you save an image as a copy, Elements makes the copy, names it "[OriginalFileName] copy," and puts the copy away. You still have the original on your desktop. If you want to work on the copy, you must open it. Sometimes Elements forces you to save as a copy: for instance, if you want to save a layered image and you turn off the layers option. (See Chapter 6 for more about layers.)

Figure 3-20: The Add Canvas dialog box isn't as complicated as it looks. The strange little Anchor grid with arrows pointing everywhere lets you decide exactly where to add new canvas to your image. The white box represents your photo's current position. By clicking in any of the surrounding boxes, you tell Elements where to position your photo on the newly sized canvas. In the top pair of images, the new canvas has been added equally around all sides of the existing image. In the bottom pair, the new canvas has been added below and to the right of the existing image.
Layers. If your image has layers, turn on this checkbox to keep them. If you turn off this setting, Elements usually forces you to save as a copy. To avoid having to save as a copy, flatten your image (page 145) before saving it.
Color profile (Mac)/ICC Profile (Windows).

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With computers, you just never know what's going to happen, so "Be prepared" is a good motto. If your computer crashes, it won't be nearly so painful if all your photos are safely backed up someplace else.

Elements makes it very easy to save your files to any add-on storage device like a Zip drive or an external hard-drive. Of course, you can just do a Save As and choose your storage device as the destination, but it's also easy to back up to CDs (and DVDs, if you have a DVD burner).

Both Windows XP and Mac OS X also have CD-burning utilities built right into the system. The box on page 81 explains how to use them. But if you have a Windows computer, you're in for a treat with the Elements Organizer. It lets you burn CDs or DVDs right from the Organizer and gives you many different options for backing up your photos and catalogs (page 30). All those options are covered in the next section.

You can also burn directly from iPhoto if you prefer, but the discs you burn in iPhoto can't be read by Windows computers or most commercial photo processors.

If you're using Windows, the Organizer offers you a simply swell way to back up your photos. It's one of the best parts of the Organizer, and it's certainly very thorough, even going so far as to label the CD you create (Figure 3-23).

Figure 3-23: The Organizer walks you through every step of backing up your photos. It doesn't forget a thing, even reminding you to write the disc's name on it when you're done. Okay, Mom.

If you have a Mac, iPhoto also has its own backup utility, if you use that program.

In the Organizer, select the files you want to back up.

If your images are scattered throughout your catalog, (page 30), you might want to gather them together into one collection for simplicity's sake.

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One of the most significant improvements in Elements 3 is the way you can dramatically improve the appearance of a photo with just a click or two—even if you have no idea of what you're doing. The Quick Fix window gathers together easy-to-use tools that can help you adjust the brightness and color of your photos and make them look sharper. You don't need to understand much about what you're doing, either. You just need to know how to click a button or slide a pointer with your mouse, and then decide whether you like the look of what you just did.

If, on the other hand, you do know what you're doing, you may still find yourself adjusting things like shadows and highlights in the Quick Fix window because it's the only place in Elements that gives you a before-and-after view as you work.

In this chapter, you'll learn how to use all the tools available to you in the Quick Fix window. You'll also learn about what order to apply the fixes so you get the most out of all the tools.

If an entire chapter on Quick Fix is unsatisfyingly slow, you may want to start off by trying out the ultra-fast Auto Smart Fix: a quick-fix tool for the truly impatient. Page 20 tells you everything you need to know.

Getting to the Quick Fix window is easy. If you're in the Editor, go to the Shortcuts bar and click the Quick Fix button. If you're in the Organizer, on the Shortcuts bar, click the Edit button's drop-down triangle, and choose "Go to Quick Fix." The Quick Fix window looks like a stripped-down version of the Standard Editor (see Figure 4-1).

Figure 4-1: The Quick Fix window. If you have several photos open when you come into the Quick Fix window, you can use the Photo bin to choose the one you want to edit. You can also call up the Editor's File Browser (page 39) by pressing Ctrl+Shift+O (⌘-Shift- O) to search for new photos without leaving the Quick Fix window.

Your tools are neatly arranged on both sides of your image: on the left side, there's a four-item Toolbox, and on the right side, there's a collection of quick-edit palettes stored inside the Control Panel. First, you'll take a quick look at what tools Quick Fix provides you with. Then, later in the chapter, you'll learn how to actually use them.

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Getting to the Quick Fix window is easy. If you're in the Editor, go to the Shortcuts bar and click the Quick Fix button. If you're in the Organizer, on the Shortcuts bar, click the Edit button's drop-down triangle, and choose "Go to Quick Fix." The Quick Fix window looks like a stripped-down version of the Standard Editor (see Figure 4-1).

Figure 4-1: The Quick Fix window. If you have several photos open when you come into the Quick Fix window, you can use the Photo bin to choose the one you want to edit. You can also call up the Editor's File Browser (page 39) by pressing Ctrl+Shift+O (⌘-Shift- O) to search for new photos without leaving the Quick Fix window.

Your tools are neatly arranged on both sides of your image: on the left side, there's a four-item Toolbox, and on the right side, there's a collection of quick-edit palettes stored inside the Control Panel. First, you'll take a quick look at what tools Quick Fix provides you with. Then, later in the chapter, you'll learn how to actually use them.

The Toolbox holds an easy-to-navigate subset of the larger tool collection you'll find in the Standard Edit window. All the tools work the same way in both modes, and you can also use the same keystrokes to switch tools here, too. From top to bottom, the Quick Fix Toolbox holds:

The Zoom toollets you telescope in and out on your image so that you can get a good close look at details or pull back to see the whole photo. (See page 61 for more on how the Zoom tool works.)
The Hand tool helps move your photo around in the image window—just like grabbing it and moving it with your own hand (page 63).
The Crop tool lets you change the size and shape of your photo. You crop off the areas you don't want (page 54).
The Red Eye toolmakes it a snap to fix those horrible red eyes you see in flash photos (page 87).

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The tools in the Quick Fix window are pretty simple to use. You can try one or all of them—it's up to you. And whenever you're happy with how your photo looks, you can leave Quick Fix and go back to the Standard Editor.

If you want to rotate your photo, you can do it here by clicking the appropriate Rotate button at the top of the Control Panel. (See page 49 for more about rotating photos.)

If you click the Quick Fix Reset button, just above your image, you'll return your photo to the way it looked before you started working in Quick Fix. This button undoes all Quick Fix edits, so don't use it if you only want to undo a single action. For that, just use the regular undo command: Edit → Undo or Ctrl+Z (⌘-Z).

Everyone who's ever taken a flash photo has run into the dreaded problem of red eye—those glowing, demonic pupils that make your little cherub look like something out of an Anne Rice novel. Red eye is even more of a problem with digital cameras than with film, but luckily, Elements has a simple and terrific Red Eye tool for fixing it. All you need to do is click the red spots with the Red Eye tool, and your problems are solved.

To use the Red Eye tool (Figure 4-4):

Open a photo.

The Red Eye tool works the same whether you get to it from the Quick Fix Toolbox or the main Toolbox in Edit mode.
Zoom in so you can see where you're clicking.

Use the Zoom tool to magnify the eyes. You can also switch to the Hand tool if you need to drag the photo so that the eyes are front and center.
Activate the Red Eye tool.

Click the Red Eye icon in the Toolbox or press Y.
Click in the red part of the pupil with the Red Eye tool (see Figure

Table of Contents

Section 1.2.3.1: Photo Downloader