Adobe also gives you easy access to its Photoshop.com service as part of Elements. A basic account is free, and it's nicely integrated into Elements, making it very easy to use. With a Photoshop.com account, you can:
Create your own website. You can make beautiful online albums that display your photos in elaborate slideshows—all accessible via your own Photoshop.com URL (web address). Great for dazzling friends and family. They can even download your photos or order prints, if you choose to let them (see Online Albums).
Automatically back up and sync your photos. Frequent worriers and travelers, prepare to be amazed. You can set Elements to sync your PC-based photos to storage space on Photoshop.com, providing you with a backup, just in case. What's more, you can upload photos to your albums from other computers, and they automatically appear in the Organizer the next time you start Elements. See Backing Up Your Files for more about how to use this nifty feature.
Access your photos from other computers. When you're not at home, pop over to your Photoshop.com account to see and even organize your photos. That way, when you visit friends, you don't need to lug your computer along—just log into your account from their computers.
Download lots of extra goodies. The Content panel (The Content Panel) displays thumbnails for additional backgrounds, frames, graphics, and so on, that you can download right from Photoshop.com.
Get lots of great free advice. Call up the Photoshop Inspiration Browser (The Inspiration Browser), and you can choose from a whole range of helpful tutorials for all sorts of Elements tasks and projects.
The bad news is that these Photoshop.com features are available only in the United States—for now. Adobe says it plans to expand this offering worldwide. As of this writing, folks outside the United States can get some of the same features, like the ability to create online albums and galleries, at Adobe's Photoshop Showcase site http://photoshopshowcase.com. (See Activation for more about the regional differences.)
To sign up for a free account:
Tell Adobe you want an account.
Just click the Create New Adobe ID button on the Welcome screen (The Welcome Screen) or at the top of either the Organizer or the Editor's main window. This also registers Elements. If you've already got an Adobe ID (if you registered a previous version of Elements, for example), just sign in instead.
In the window that opens, fill in your information to create your Adobe ID.
You need to fill in the usual address, phone, email, and so on, and pick what you'd like as your unique Adobe web address. (Hint: something like http://johnspictures.photoshop.com is probably already taken, so you may need to try a few alternatives. When you click Create Account, you get a message if the web address you chose is already in use.) Turn on the checkbox that says you agree to Adobe's terms and conditions. Finally, for security purposes, you need to enter the text you see in a box on the sign-up screen.
Create your account.
Click the Create Account button. Adobe tells you if it finds any errors in what you submitted and gives you a chance to go back and fix them.
Confirm your account.
You'll get an email from Adobe that contains a link. Just click the link to confirm that you want to create an account, and you're all set. (You need to click the link within 24 hours of creating your account, or you may have to start the whole process again.)
Once you have an account, you can get to it by clicking Sign In at the top of the Editor or Organizer. After you sign in, you see "Welcome <your name>" instead of "Sign In", and you can click that to go to your account settings. (You can also look at the bottom of the Welcome screen to see how much free space you have left, as shown in Figure 1-4.)
Figure 1-4. Once you sign into your Photoshop.com account, the bottom of the Welcome screen tells you how much of your online storage space you're currently using and includes a link for managing backups and syncing. You also see a link to your personalized web address (a helpful reminder).
A free Photoshop.com account is a pretty nice deal. It even includes 2 GB of space on Adobe's servers for backing up and storing your photos. You can also upgrade to a paid account (called Plus), which gives you more of everything: more template designs for Online Albums, more downloads from the Content panel, more tutorials, and more storage space: 20–100 GB (depending on what level membership you choose). However, the Plus account costs $49.99 for 20 GB, and more as your storage amount increases, so you might want to try the free account first to see whether you'll really use it enough to justify the expense. Because this service has been available since Elements 7, you can also investigate Adobe's Photoshop.com support forum (http://forums.adobe.com/community/photoshopdotcom), as well as the independent forum sites (Beyond This Book) to see what people think about it.
Note
If you haven't bought Elements yet, Adobe tends to promote the combination of Elements and a Plus account on their website. You have to hunt around a bit to find where to purchase Elements with just the free account, so look carefully before you buy if you don't want to start off with the paid version.
Once you sign into your account, Elements logs you in automatically every time you launch the program. If you don't want that to happen, just click your name at the top of the Elements window (in either the Organizer or Editor), and then, in the window that opens, choose Sign Out.
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