Chapter 7. Basic Image Retouching
You may be perfectly happy using Elements only in Quick Fix mode. And thatâs fine, as long as you understand that youâve hardly scratched the surface of what the program can do. Sooner or later, though, youâll probably run across a photo where your best Quick Fix efforts just arenât enough. Or you may just be curious to see what else Elements has under its hood. Thatâs when you finally get to put all your image-selecting and layering skills to good use.
Elements gives you loads of ways to fix photos beyond the limited options in Quick Fix. This chapter guides you through fixing basic exposure problems, shows you various ways of sharpening your photos, and most importantly, helps you understand how to improve the colors in your images. Youâll also learn how to use the amazing Smart Brush tool that lets you apply many common fixes by just brushing over the area you want to correct.
If you want to get the most out of Elements, you need to understand a little about how your camera, computer, and printer think about color. Along with resolution (Resizing Images for Email and the Web), color is one of the most important concepts in Elements. After all, almost all the adjustments that image-editing programs make involve changing the color of pixels. So quite a bit of this chapter is about understanding how Elementsâand by extension, youâcan manipulate your imagesâ color.
Tip
Most of Elementsâ advanced-fixes dialog boxes have a Preview ...
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