Confessions of a Compact Camera Shooter: Get Professional Quality Photos with Your Compact Camera

Chapter XII. Photoshop Elements Confessions

Yes, once again I must confess. I used Photoshop Elements to enhance virtually all of the pictures in this book, even if the enhancement was as simple as cropping the image or boosting the contrast just a smidge.

Overall though, enhancing pictures from compact cameras is fast, easy and fun. And it's often necessary, simply because the images that compact cameras produce can't match the image quality you get from a digital SLR. This is mostly due to the smaller image sensor on compact cameras.

Here is another confession: I actually did use Photoshop Elements—and not Photoshop CS4, its bigger (and much more expensive) brother—to enhance the pictures in this book. Photoshop Elements is actually a very powerful image-editing program, as you'll see.

On the following pages you'll find my top 21 Photoshop Elements enhancements for compact camera images. They also apply to digital SLR images.

#1: Quick Look at the Quick Mode

We'll take a just a quick look at the Quick Mode, because my guess is that you'll be working (and playing) in the Full Mode, as this offers much more creative control over your images than the wimpy Quick Mode. Two main reasons you'll probably have limited use for Quick Mode:

First, the Tool Bar (magnified and inserted here)—located ...