Chapter 1. Finding Your Way Around Elements
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 all those options can make it tough to find your way around Elements, especially when you’re new to the program.
This chapter helps get you oriented in Elements. You’ll learn about what to expect when you launch the program, how to use Elements to fix photos with just a couple of keystrokes, and how to sign up for and connect to all the goodies that await you on Photoshop.com. You’ll also learn how to use Guided Edit mode to help get started editing your photos. 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.
The Welcome Screen
When you launch Elements for the first time, you get a slew of options, all neatly laid out on 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.