Photoshop® Elements 8 All-in-One For Dummies®

Chapter 3. Adding Pizzazz with Styles and Effects

In This Chapter

• Working with the Effects panel

• Taking photo effects for a spin

• Stylizing layers

• Tweaking layer styles

After you have all the basic elements lined up in your layered composite image, you may want to give it a little pizzazz. Elements provides a lot of different effects that you can apply to enhance your images. Maybe a headline would pop out a little more if you beveled the edge, or maybe that silhouetted image would take on a little more dimension if you placed a drop shadow behind it. This chapter is where you find out how to do all these things.

Seeing What the Effects Panel Can Do

Elements has organized all its various effects in one neat panel. In the Editor in Edit Full mode, choose Window

Click the down-pointing arrow in the upper-right corner (just below the close button) of the Effects panel to change the view of your effects, filters, and styles as thumbnails or as names. You'll also find a fast track to Styles and Effects help, if you need it.

The upcoming sections explain how to apply photo effects and styles. We go into a hefty discussion about filters in Book VII, Chapter 1.

Enhancing with Photo Effects

Elements provides a variety of photo effects that you can apply to your photos. Note that some effects automatically ...