Photoshop Elements 3: The Missing Manual

What's New in Elements 3

This book is about Photoshop Elements 3. If you have an earlier version of Elements, you'll find a fair number of similarities. But the program's been given a pretty thorough overhaul, especially the Quick Fix feature, which gathers the basic editing tools into one window and lets you easily apply, well, quick fixes. Quick fix has several remarkable new tools—including the one-button Auto Smart Fix and the Shadows/Highlights tool for fixing areas of your photo that are too dark or too light—and finally a usably large preview window so you don't have to squint to see the potential results of your changes. Finally, the Windows version of Elements 3 is very different from previous versions. (See the next section, "The Big Difference.")

Some of the main changes in Elements 3 are:

• The dramatically redesigned Quick Fix window. Not only do you get more space to preview your changes, but the newly added tools really make what you're seeing worth looking at. In fact, you may find that the Quick Fix window becomes your main Elements workspace (Chapter 4).

• The Red-Eye tool has been redesigned. No more hours of trying to figure out why vampire-red eyes just turned werewolf gray. Now you can get great results with just one click (Chapter 4).

• You can scan as many photos as will fit onto your scanner, and Elements will automatically cut them apart, trim them, and straighten them up for you (Chapter 3).

• Help has been beefed up, too. There's help all over the place, even in the tooltips text, the little floating windows that pop up when your mouse hovers over an object on your screen.

• There are some useful new tools in Elements 3. The much sought-after Healing brush has been brought over from Photoshop, and it's even easier to use in Elements. Now you can just brush away blemishes (Chapter 9). The Shadow/High-light tool, which helps correct exposure errors, also made it over from Photoshop (Chapter 4), as has the filter gallery (Chapter 11), which lets you change the order in which filters are applied. The new Color Replacement brush (Chapter 9) is also a great timesaver. And Elements has its own new Cookie Cutter tool, which makes it a snap to crop photos so they fit into shapes like stars or hearts (Chapter 11).

• Lots of high-end photographer's tools from Photoshop have made it into this version of Elements. Photographers who shoot in RAW format will be thrilled to have a version of the Photoshop plug-in for opening and correcting photos right in Elements without using another program. Noise Reduction helps combat the graininess that is the bane of the newer high-megapixel digital cameras, and photo filters, which work just like the filters you used to attach to your film camera for correcting light or for special effects, are now part of Elements (Chapter 8).

• The batch-processing feature has lots more options. Now you can process groups of photos not only when converting file types, but also to apply basic retouching, add captions, and insert copyright notices (Chapter 8).

• Text handling has been beefed up, too. For the first time, you can enter more than one line of text without spending hours getting the lines equally spaced (Chapter 12).

• For the technically inclined, Elements now lets you work in 16-bit color depth. You're still pretty limited in the kinds of edits you can make using this extra color information, but at least you can make your most important corrections and save your photos in 16-bit so that you'll have access to the extra detail in the future.

• Photoshop Elements 3 is based on Photoshop CS (the latest version of Photoshop), while Elements 2 is based on Photoshop 7 (Elements 1 is based on Photoshop 6). The tools in each version of Elements have the same general abilities and limitations as their big brother equivalents. This is important because it means you can use plug-ins and brushes designed to work with CS that haven't been compatible with earlier versions of Elements.

• No going back now—the Windows version requires at least Windows 2000 with Service Pack 4, or Windows XP with Service Pack 1. For those using Macs: Elements 3 only works with Mac OS X 10.2.8 or higher (Adobe actually recommends 10.3 for best performance). If you have older versions of either operating system, you'll have to stick with Elements 2 or go for a system upgrade.

A quick way to tell which version of Elements you've got is to look for the version number on the CD. If the program is already installed, see page 1 for help figuring out which version you have.

Incidentally, all three versions are totally separate programs, so you can run all of them on the same computer if you like, as long your operating system is compatible. So if you prefer the older version of a particular tool, or if you are a Mac veteran who has plug-ins that work only in Classic, you can still use them. If you've been using Elements 2 or Elements 1, you'll still feel right at home in Elements 3. You'll just have some terrific new toys to play with.

Tip

If you have a Mac, you can run multiple versions of Elements simultaneously if you want, but you'll probably find you need to start the older versions before you launch Elements 3.

For Windows, running multiple versions of Elements works for some people but not for others, and Adobe doesn't recommend trying to run more than one version at the same time.

The Big Difference

There's one enormous difference between Elements 3 and earlier versions (and for that matter, between Elements and the vast majority of other Adobe products).

Adobe has abandoned its long-standing policy of making the Macintosh and Windows versions as much alike as possible. There are some big differences in what you get with Elements 3 depending on which platform you're on.

This book covers both the Windows and Mac versions. You'll see a lot of separate sections in the first three chapters and in Chapters 14, 15 and 16, because getting photos into Elements and sending them out again, to share with other people, have some major platform differences. But the heart of the book—how to use Elements to fix, create, or improve your images—is still exactly the same regardless of whether you're on a Mac or a PC. Here's a quick look at the key differences.

Windows

Adobe has merged Photoshop Album, its photo-organizing software, into the Windows version of Elements and is now calling it the Organizer. You'll use the Organizer to store your photos, assign keywords (called tags) to search for them, and set up many different ways of viewing your files.

The best part of the Organizer is the Create feature, where you can quickly make slideshows, cards, album pages, VCDs (video CDs), and lots of other fun projects. You'll also use the Organizer to access an online ordering service (at Ofoto.com) for prints and books.

If you currently use Photoshop Album or you've wanted to try it, you'll be in heaven with Elements 3. On the other hand, if you're not an Album fan, or you're content with your own organizing system, you can ignore a fair amount of the Organizer's features. But whether you like it or not, you will get dumped back into the Organizer for certain tasks, like printing a contact sheet or creating a Web Gallery.

Macintosh

So, Mac folks, should you be snarling with disappointment and feeling defrauded that you don't get the Organizer? Yes, no, and maybe.

For starters, you have total freedom of choice about how organized you want to be. iPhoto integrates well with Elements, or you can use any other organizing program, or none at all if you prefer.

Also, the Mac version of Elements 3 is closer to Photoshop CS than its Windows counterpart. For instance, while you don't get Organizer, you do get all the functionality of the wonderful Photoshop File Browser, which lets you assign and manage keywords right in the File Browser itself without going to another window to do it. Windows folks don't get all the File Browser functions because they've got Organizer for things like assigning keywords.

Elements on the Mac also offers the Photoshop versions of the Web Gallery (for creating Web pages to display your photos) and the Picture Package (for printing multiple photos at once).

Really, about all you're missing is the handy Date view option in the Organizer, the built-in online print ordering, the easy CD backup feature, and the projects in Create. These are a loss. There are some very fun things you can do with Create, although many of them have some sort of iPhoto equivalent, so it's actually just the convenience of doing it all in one window that you lose.

Two other things lacking on the Mac side are the ability to burn a VCD within Elements, and some fonts that are included for the Create projects. You'll still need a program like Toast to burn a VCD, but really that's an iffish format on either plat-form, so it's not a great loss.

If you use a Mac, you'll also probably be a little annoyed by some features of the interface, which is decidedly Windows-y, even in the Mac version. For example, you'll have to get used to Windows "X" buttons to close some windows.

The Mac folks who'll be most unhappy are those who've been yearning for Photoshop Album for the Mac platform. If you're one of them, you might want to consider that File Browser keywords do pretty nearly everything Organizer does (although you still will need to jump through a few more hoops to back your photos up). If you need a really heavy-duty image organizing system, Organizer is probably not it anymore than iPhoto. On either platform, you may still prefer a third-party solution, like JAlbum or iView Media. It depends on how elaborate your requirements are.

For actual photo editing, there is still no real difference between the two platforms. The differences are at both ends of the process—how you get your photos into Elements and keep them organized, and how you send them out to share when you're done. The real work areas are still the same for both Mac and Windows, and equally competent for both.

Overall, the Mac version is still a pretty nice update from Elements 2, and it's cheaper than the Windows version, too. If you still aren't satisfied, of course, you can always let Adobe know how you feel.