Photoshop Elements 8 for Windows: The Missing Manual

Zooming and Repositioning Your View

Sometimes, rather than changing the size of your photo, all you want to do is change its appearance in Elements so you can get a better look at it. For example, you may want to zoom in on a particular area, or zoom out so you can see how edits you've made have affected your photo's overall look.

This section is about how to adjust your view of images. Nothing you do with the tools and commands covered in this section changes anything about your actual photo. You're just changing the way you see it. Elements gives you lots of tools and keystroke combinations to help with these new views; soon you'll probably find yourself making these changes without even thinking about them.

Image Views

Before you start changing your view of your photos, Elements gives you several different ways to position your image. Back in Chapter 1, you learned how to manage panels and bins. This section is just for image windows, which behave a little differently. In Elements 8, you have more choices than ever before, because you can choose between viewing your images as tabs or in their own windows. Elements automatically starts out using windows, but sometimes you may prefer to work with tabs. For instance, if you want to use the Transform commands (Transforming Images), putting your image into a tab gives you plenty of room to pull the handles. There are a bunch of options for either view, and even if you're an Elements veteran, you should read this section in case you accidentally ...