Photoshop Elements 3.0
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[edit] Starting Photoshop Elements 3.0
Photoshop Elements is digital imaging software; this powerful program allows you to manipulate your photographs in a variety of ways. The tools that we will learn about today are the basic utilities within Photoshop. To import the photos from your camera you would want to make sure that all the software for you camera is loaded, and then in Photoshop choose File>Import>the name of your camera.
At this point Photoshop Elements should open the correct folder for your camera showing the pictures that you have taken. At this point you should be able to select any of the images that you would like to open. Then by clicking Get Photos Photoshop will open them for you.
Now you will want to save your pictures with names you can identify. To do this go to File>Save this will open a dialog box that looks similar to this.
You will see a lot of different options to save a file as. The most common format is JPEG. If you click the drop down menu next the Format you will see a long list of different file formats.
You will want to select the jpeg format, then navigate to the My Pictures folder, and click Save. Now you will see a window that comes up that looks like this.
These are the different options that you can choose for saving the photo as a jpeg. The jpeg options focus around 2 primary options. One is the Image Options that deals with the size and quality of the image. This option allows you to save the image file in different file sizes, compressing the original picture. However this can be a bad thing if you are trying to have print quality images. Size and Quality are directly related. So when you decrease the file size and you decrease the quality.
Jpegs actually loose information as you compress them. So if you change the file size to small and try to print the image later you will notice that it becomes pixilated. However if you keep the quality high you can print the image without any pixelation. If you are saving the picture for the web however you can save it at a lower quality and it won’t affect the way it appears on the screen.
Note:As a rule of thumb I save my images at a high quality and then if I am using for the web I duplicate the image and save it at a smaller size and quality.
The other options deal with the format options determine the way that the jpeg photo loads on the Internet. The Baseline (Standard) works the best for all situations that you might run into whether on paper or electronically. The other options give you more control over the way the image loads on a web page, however web designers mostly use it.
[edit] Other Saving Options
Digital images come in all different file types depending on what is being done with them. The four most common formats are jpeg, gif, tiff, and psd. Photoshop gives you the ability to work with all of these formats and save your images as any of these formats. The most common of these four formats is the jpeg. Most cameras save photos in this format. Once you have done File > Save As you will see a window that looks like this.
If you click the drop down menu next the Format you will see a long list of different file formats including jpeg, gif, tiff, and psd. Go ahead and select the jpeg format, then navigate to the My Pictures folder, and click Save. Now you will see a window that comes up that looks like this.
These are the different options that you can choose for saving the photo as a jpeg. Each different format has different options and a full explanation is out of the scope of the class. To learn more about the different formats you will want to use the Help Menu and search for something along the lines of Tiff file options to find out information about the individual options.
As very basic overview of these 4 file formats here are the reasons to use a specific file format.
- JPEG
- Printing the picture, sharing the picture with friends via email, publish viewable images on the web.
- GIF
- Creating moving web animations, making web graphics that don't need to be resized or for pages to load quickly.
- TIFF
- If you are planning on saving this files to a CD and archiving them or sending them to a print shop for large format printing this is the best format. It retains the most information related to the image.
- PSD
- If you are doing touch up work it is best to work in the native photoshop format. This gives you a lot of different options and you don't have to compress the image before saving.
[edit] What Now?
The tools within Photoshop are diverse and powerful. When you first look at the workspace in Photoshop you will see along the top the regular menus as you might see in Word or Excel. Below the menu bar is a tool bar that lets you jump to a lot of common commands; this menu is usually called the Tool menu. Along the left hand side of the screen is the tool bar that use to float in the older version of Photoshop Elements (Note: If you like to have the tool bar float you can still detach it from the side). On the right hand side you have a selection of menus that you can open and close using the arrow on the left hand side of the menu, this is called the Palette Menu. Along the bottom of the workspace is the Photo bin. This allows you to jump between different images that are open.
If you ever loose one of these menus you can easily get it back by going to Window menu and choosing the menu you would like to see.
[edit] Cropping an Image
One of the first things most people will want to do is crop or resize the photo that they have. These are two distinct operations. Cropping actually removes information from the image, while resizing changes the size of the image from say 4 by 6 to something like 3 by 5.
We will start with cropping an image. Our goal with the crop tool is to focus on a specific aspect of an image like someones face or a tree. The first thing that you will want to do is choose the crop tool from the toolbar menu 
. Once you have selected this tool you will need click and drag across the area that you want to keep.
So in the following image what I want to do is focus on the plant in the image leaving just the corner of the rock and a little of the water.
So I will start by taking the crop tool placing it in above the top corner of the plant and click and drag diagonally across the image that I want to keep. This will gray out the area that you are going to eliminate, and leave the area you want to keep in the normal colors. If you don't like the area that will be eliminated you can adjust it by using the handles (those open boxes around the border).
As you can see we have eliminated parts of the photo, and we have an image with a different focus from the original. At this point if you like the image you may want to use the save as function to save the image as something other than the original. If you simply use save you will overwrite the original.
[edit] Resizing an Image
Resizing differs from cropping in that what you are changing is the actual size of the original image. By using the same image as before I can change its physical size by going to Image>Resize>Image Size.
This will bring up a dialog box that shows you the options for resizing the image.
In general the option that you want to use to resize the image is the actual Document Size for this example I will change the size from 2.609 inches by 1.957 inches to a width of 1.5 inches. This will automatically change the height of the image for me (the little chain links next to next to the word inches means the sizes are linked together). This keeps the image proportional in size for me. So now you will have an image that looks like this
Notice that the physical size only changed, the entire image is still there, unlike when we cropped the image before.
[edit] Tools
A helpful thing about the new tool bar is that besides showing you what each tool is in the tool bar along the left hand side by hovering over the tool, you can also open the help menu by clicking on the link in the tip.
- Move Tool
- This tool allows you to move anything that you have selected in the picture. If you have multiple layers and would like to move something make sure that you are on that layer. (See Layers Below)
- Magnify
- This tool is very useful to zero in on certain parts of the picture. Perhaps you need to fix the red-eye in the picture, or want to see a smaller area of a picture. This tool does just that.
- Hand Tool
- The hand tool is used when a picture has been magnified and you want to find a specific point, instead of using the scroll bars.
- Eye dropper
- This tool allows you to select colors from specific parts of the image.
- Marquee Tool
- The Marquee tools allow you to select sections of the picture, and either cut them out, or make changes to the specific area. One good example is to select an area and add an effect to it. The tool also allows you to select different sized areas to manipulate. Notice the little arrow at the bottom right of the tool this means that there are more tools under this menu. By clicking and holding on the tool you can select the different tools (this applies to all of the tools).
- Lasso Tools
- The lasso tools are similar to the Marquee tool, but allow you more precise selection of elements in the photo. The lasso tool itself allows you to select parts of the image in any type of form. For more precise selection of elements in your photo using the Polygonal Lasso tool will allow you to create points around the image. The Magnetic Lasso tool is a nice tool to use for selecting certain parts of images without having to select the points by yourself. The Magnetic lasso looks for color variation between what you are trying to select and the rest of the image.
- Type Tool
- This allows you to add text to your image where you would like.
- Crop Tool
- Cropping a picture is when you take certain sections out of the point of view. To do this first you need to select the crop tool. Next you want to select the area you want to keep. The tool forms a rectangle so where you click initially will determine the upper corner. So click and drag using your mouse to select the area you want to keep. Once you have done this, the picture should have an area grayed out. This is what will be cut out. (You can move and resize the area by using the boxes at the corners, or the one in the middle.)
The next step is to right-click which will open a new window that gives you the option to Crop or Cancel.
By selecting Crop you will have a new picture that has eliminated the gray area. This tool is an excellent way to create smaller pictures out of one picture, just be sure to save the picture under a different name when doing this.
[edit] Other information
Color Picker- While you are working in Photoshop and want to know which colors the tools will be using you want to look at the color picker at the bottom of the tool bar. This area displays the colors that you are working with. If you want to change the colors simply double click on the box and you will be brought to a color picker for selecting colors.
- Layers
- A powerful tool within Photoshop is the ability to create layers. Layers are like multiple overheads that give you the ability to create layered photos. This may come in handy when you want to apply different effects to photos or create a collage of photos. You can create layers in a lot of different ways on is to go to the Layer>New Layer this will create a blank layer which you can add information to. Photoshop also creates layers by itself if you are adding text to a picture or adding a shape Photoshop will create a layer for that individual shape or layer. To see what layers are part of you photo go to Window>Layers. The Window menu will also let you select other menus that you may find useful as you begin to use Photoshop Elements.
[edit] Printing
You can print the picture, as you normally would, remember though your picture may not be 8 ½ by 11. However there are two additional settings allow you to print multiple images per sheet, these are under File>Print Layout. One is called a Contact Sheet that is a set of thumbnails images on a page. This allows you to see what the pictures will print like. Once you find that you like the photos and would like to print 2x3s or 5x7s select File>Picture Package. This allows you to print different numbers of standard size pictures.
[edit] Image Menu
This menu allows you to do very useful things to the complete pictures.
- Duplicate Image
- Takes the image that you have selected and creates another named imagename-copy. This is a quick way to create multiple images.
- Rotate
- Allows you to rotate the image clockwise or counter clockwise. You can enter your own numbers or rotate either 90 or 180.
- Resize
- Allows you to change the Image or Canvas (the white area around the picture) size.
- Enhance
- This gives you different setting to change your picture to what Photoshop guesses it should look like.
- Layer
- This is probably the most powerful tool. By creating layers you are in a sense creating a 3 dimensional picture in 2 dimensions. Think of a layer as an overheard overlay. Layers allow you to make changes to part of the picture then lay it on top of the other. This allows you to make a lot of changes to the image.
The Window menu is where you can open the different menus to see other options, such as color selection. The Select menu gives you options that are also helpful. Things such as select all and select inverse. This gives you the ability to cut out or manipulate very specific pieces of the image.
[edit] Photoshop 3.0 The Organizer and Creation
The newest version of Photoshop Elements is a very robust program. Adobe has taken the time to integrate a lot of new tools and features into this program. In this handout we will look briefly at some of the Organizer’s features.
[edit] The Organizer
The organizer is the newest feature within Photoshop Elements 3.0. The goal of the organizer is to make it easy for you to group images together, and create some basic projects to share with others.
The organizer gives you three ways to organize your files. The primary way is to create a Catalog for your images. One catalog will most likely be enough for most people, unless you wanted to delineate between work and home photos. The next level of organization is called Collections think of each of these as different photo shoots, or different vacations. A collection would consist of different sets of photos. So you might have your trip to Morocco as one collection, and your Mother’s 50th birthday party as another collection. The next set of organization within Photoshop Element is the Tag. A tag would represent categories of pictures. By default Elements has 6 different tags to choose from. Tags can over lap collections. For example, you may have pictures of family in both the Morocco collection and the birthday collection. By using the tags on the pictures you can find all the images of your family within the birthday and Morocco collections.
[edit] So how do you use the different organizing tools?
To start out with we want to create a catalog. For this example I am going to create a Personal Catalog. First I open Photoshop Elements 3.0 by going to Start > Programs > Adobe Photoshop Elements 3.0. This will open Photoshop Elements and you will see a screen that looks similar to this . This screen gives you a selection of options on what to do. To organize your photos you will want to choose the icon that says, View and Organize Photos. This will bring you to a new screen (Note: If you have used Adobe’s free Album software you may get a message about what Elements is doing with that file) that gives you a variety of ways to work with your photos. You shouldn’t see any photos in your album to start with.
The first thing you will want to do is Get Photos from one of the different sources that are available. To do this go to File > Get Photos > and then choose the way you are going to import the photos. For this example we are going to choose From Files and Folders. If we were using newer cameras and had the camera hooked up to the computer with a doc, or cable, we could simply choose to get the photos from the Camera or Card Reader.
After selecting, choose photos from files and folders, a file browser window like this will open. Go ahead and select the images you want by going to the 3 ½ inch floppy drive A: from your computer. Select the pictures that you want to import into your album (Note: To select multiple images you can hold the shift key and click to select images in sequence, or use ctrl and click to choose non-sequential images). Once you have chosen the pictures that you want to import into your catalog click the Get Photos button. This will open the photos in Photoshop Elements 3 Organizer.
[edit] Creating with Photoshop 3.0
The new Photoshop Elements has a really nice feature within the organizer. This feature allows you to create quite a few different project types. You can jump to the Create menu by clicking on the Create icon 
at the top of the organizer workspace. This will open up the Create screen that looks like this.
Along the left hand side of the screen is a list of all the different things that you can do with this menu. On the right you see a preview of what the project might look like when you are all done. There are 8 different types of projects that you can create using this software. We are going to take a look at two that seem to be the most popular with teachers I have worked with. They are the Web Photo Gallery and the Slide Show. After going through these two menus you should be able to create the other projects in much the same way.
[edit] The Slide Show
To start working on a slideshow simply highlight the slideshow choice and click OK. This will take you to a menu that gives you two choices. One is to create a Custom Slide Show, or a Simple Slide Show. The Simple Slide Show allows you to quickly select pictures from your collections and turns them into a PDF slide show. If you select simple slide show you will see a menu that looks like this. Once you see this menu you can simply click on Add Photos, which opens another window. This window allows you to choose your photos in several different ways. If there is a photo you want to add click on the check box to select the photo and click on the Add Selected Photos button. This will add the photos to your slide show. Once you have all the photos that you want you can adjust the size of the photos, the speed of the slide show, and the transitions for the slide show. Once this is done click Save and save the slide show where you will remember.
[edit] Custom Slide Show
If you want to add sound, text, and other things to your slide show you will have to choose the Custom Slide Show options. This will open a window that looks like this. The first thing that you will want to do is add a title slide. To do this you can click on the Add Blank Slide button on the menu. This will insert a blank slide in the time line at the bottom of the screen. By default the color will be black. If you would like to change the color of the slide you can do so by right clicking and selecting the Change Background Color option. This will open up a color chooser that you can select your color of choice from. Now that you have changed the background color you may want to add some text. To do this, simply click on the Add Text icon on the top of the screen. A small window will open that looks like this . Type your text here select the color and any other attributes that you want and click OK.
[edit] Adding Images
Now if you just want to add images to your slide show simply click on the add images icon . You can add images from either the organizer itself or from a folder that is on your computer. Select which you want to do. If you choose from folder, then you will simply browse for files the way you normally would. If you choose to add photos from the organizer you will have a window open that looks like this . All you have to do is click on the check boxes of the photos that you want then click on Add Selected Photos. Once you have all your photos you can click OK. You can also add text onto the images, add sounds to your slide show, and change the amount of length that it plays. You also have the choice to burn it to a video CD or save it as a WMV that is a Windows Movie Player file.
[edit] Creating a Web Gallery
Something that Photoshop Elements has done for a long time is give you the ability to create web galleries within the program. To create a web page that displays images you will want to select the images that you want to use in the organizer and then click on the create icon. From the create menu select Web Photo Gallery; this will open a new window.
The web gallery menu gives you a lot of different options. The first option that you will want to decide on is the layout and appearance of the page. To do this click on the drop down menu called Gallery Style. The next thing that you will probably want to chance is the Banner section of the menu. You will probably want the page title to be something like “Mr. O’Brien’s Class Trip to the Zoo” and any additional information that you want to add. For the Destination you will want to browse for a specific destination and then give a name to the site folder such as trip to zoo. You can leave all the other tabs alone the defaults work well for all the page types. If you are concerned about the size of the pictures or thumbnails click on the relevant tab and change the size. You can also change certain aspects of the color of the pages by using the Custom Color tab. Once you have all the information filled in and all your pictures chosen simply click on Save and Photoshop will take care of the rest. The only thing left to do is move the folder and pages that were just created to your web folder and then create a link to the index.html page that Photoshop Elements created and you are all done.
