Photoshop Elements 8 for Windows: The Missing Manual

Emailing Photos

Elements makes emailing your photos a piece of cake. With just a few clicks, Elements preps your image, fires up your email program, and attaches your image to an outgoing email. (Of course, you can also email images without Elements' help, and you may prefer that method since you get more freedom to specify settings like file size.)

ON THE WEB: Creating Web Buttons

Elements makes it a snap to create buttons to use on web pages. Here's what you do:

1. Create a new blank file (File → New → Blank File). In the New dialog box's Preset menu, choose Web and pick a size you like; from the Background Contents menu, choose Transparent. Then click OK.

2. Set the Foreground color square to the color you want to use for your button, and use the Shape tool to draw the shape you want. (It helps to choose Actual Pixels for your view size when doing web work, because that shows you the same size you'll see in a web browser.)

3. Apply one or more Layer styles (Adding Layer Styles) to make your button look more 3-D. Bevels, some of the Complex Layer styles, and the Wow Layer styles are all popular choices.

4. Add any necessary text using the Type tool (Adding Text to an Image). You may want to apply a Layer style to the text, too.

5. Save as a GIF.

Easy, huh?

Note

Elements can prep your image and automatically launch your email program only if you're using Vista's Windows Mail, Outlook Express, Outlook, or Adobe's own mail server. The first time you use one of Elements' email features, you get a pop-up window ...