Photoshop Elements 5: The Missing Manual

14 Photoshop Elements 5: The Missing Manual

The Welcome Screen

The Welcome Screen

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 (Figure 1-1).

Interestingly, the Welcome screen isn’t actually Elements. It’s a launching pad that,

depending on the button you click, starts up one of two different programs:

• The Organizer, which lets you store and organize your image files.

• The 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 five 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 Quick Fix window (which is

actually part of the Editor) where you can perform amazing color corrections

with just a click.

Figure 1-1:

The Elements Welcome

screen gives you five

main activities to choose

from (there’s also a

Tutorials link in the

upper-right corner). Hold

your cursor over any of

these options ...