Photoshop Elements 4: The Missing Manual

Creating a New File

You can also create a new blank Elements document. You want create a new blank Elements document when you're using Elements as a drawing program or sometimes 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) 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.

Note

You can't create a new blank file in the Organizer, but Elements gives you a quick shortcut from the Organizer to the Editor so you can open up a new, fresh file there. To open a new file, choose File → New → Blank File, and the Organizer creates a virgin file for you and automatically hops you over to the Editor. If you want to create a new file based on a photo that's in the Organizer, select the thumbnail, press Ctrl+C to copy it, and then choose File → New → Image from Clipboard in the Editor. Elements switches you to the Editor where you'll see your copied photo awaiting you, all ready to work on.

Picking a Document Size

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 2-4.

Figure 2-4. The ...