Photoshop Elements 8 for Windows: The Missing Manual

Free Stuff from the Internet

You have to spend some money if you want a graphics tablet, but there's a ton of free stuff—tutorials, brushes, textures, and Layer styles, for example—available online that you can add to Elements. Most of these add-ons say they work with Photoshop, but since Elements is based on Photoshop, you can use most of them in Elements, too.

Here are some popular places to go treasure hunting:

• Adobe Exchange (www.adobe.com/cfusion/exchange/). On Adobe's own website, you can find hundreds and hundreds of downloads, including more Layer styles than you could ever use, brushes, textures, and custom shapes to use with the Shape tool. Many are free, once you register. This site is one of the best resources anywhere for extra stuff. About 99 percent of the items listed are made specifically for Photoshop, but Photoshop's brushes, swatches, textures, shapes, and Layer styles work in Elements, too. See the box on Beyond This Book for help with installing your finds in Elements.

• MyJanee (www.myjanee.com). You'll find lots of tutorials and free downloads on this site.

• Sue Chastain (http://graphicssoft.about.com). This is another site with lots of downloads and many tutorials.

• Panosfx (www.panosfx.com). Panos Efstathiadis produces some wonderful actions (see the next section for more about actions) for Photoshop, and now he's adapted many of them for Elements as well. Most are free; some cost a few dollars.

• Optik Verve Labs (www.optikvervelabs.com). This is the home of Virtual ...