How to Show a Dont Show Again Box in Premiere Elements

Chapter 1. Finding Your Way Around Elements

Photoshop Elements lets you exercise practically annihilation y'all want to your digital images. Yous can colorize blackness-and-white photos, remove demonic cherry-red-heart stares, or misconstrue the facial features of people who've been mean to y'all. The downside is that all those options can make it tough to find your way around Elements, especially when you lot're new to the plan.

This chapter helps get you oriented in Elements. You'll learn what to expect when you launch the programme, how to use Elements to set photos with simply a couple of keystrokes, and how to sign up for and connect to all the goodies that wait you on Photoshop. You'll also learn how to utilize Guided Edit style to get started editing your photos. Along the way, y'all'll find out most some of Elements' basic controls, and how to become to the programme'south Aid files.

The Welcome Screen

When you launch Elements for the first time, you lot're greeted by the Welcome screen (Figure one-1). This is where yous annals Elements and sign upwards for your gratis Photoshop.com account (U.South. but). Activation explains how.

Notation

If you lot aren't in the U.S., the whole procedure of registering Elements works a chip differently—see Activation.

Interestingly, the Welcome screen isn't really Elements. Information technology's just a launching pad that starts upwardly one of 2 different programs, depending on the button yous click:

• Organize button . This starts the Organizer, which lets you shop and organize your image files.

• Edit button . Click this for the Editor, which lets yous modify your images.

You can easily hop back and forth betwixt the Editor and the Organizer—which y'all might call the two halves of Elements—and you probably won't practice much in one without eventually needing to become into the other. Only in some ways, they part as two separate programs.

Figure 1-1. Elements' Welcome screen. What y'all encounter in the correct part of the window changes occasionally, and so information technology may not exist exactly the aforementioned as this illustration. The left part of the window always stays the same, though. There you can cull to start organizing or editing photos. The lesser of the screen always has links for signing onto Photoshop.com and displays info about your Photoshop.com account, if you take one. You can't bypass the Welcome screen just by clicking the upper-right Close (10) button. When yous do, the screen goes away—but and then does Elements. Fortunately, you lot've got options: The box on Organizing Your Photos tells yous how to permanently say bye to this screen.

If y'all start in the Organizer, and so one time you've picked a photo to edit, you lot have to wait a few seconds while the Editor loads. And when you take both the Editor and the Organizer running, merely quitting the Editor doesn't close the Organizer—you have to close both programs independently. When both programs are running, you can switch back and forth between them past clicking the push button at the upper right of the screen; the button reads Organizer when yous're in the Editor and "Editor" when you're in the Organizer. (The Organizer button just takes a click, but the Editor button includes a drop-downward carte where you choose the editing way yous want.) You can also just click the Editor or the Organizer icon in the Windows taskbar to switch from one to the other.

Adobe built Elements effectually the assumption that most people piece of work on their photos in the following fashion: First, you bring photos into the Organizer to sort and keep rail of them. And so, y'all open photos in the Editor to work on them and save them dorsum to the Organizer when yous've finished making changes. You can work differently, of course—similar opening photos directly in the Editor and bypassing the Organizer altogether—just you may feel similar yous're always swimming against the electric current if yous cull a dissimilar workflow. The adjacent chapter has a few hints for disabling some of Elements' features if you lot find they're getting in your way.

The Welcome screen can also serve as your connecting signal for signing onto www.photoshop.com. Photoshop.com has more than about Photoshop.com, merely for at present you but demand to know that a bones account is free if you're in the U.s.a. (it's not available yet in other countries), and information technology gives y'all admission to all the interesting features in Elements 8 that require an Internet connection. If you're signed into Photoshop.com already, you tin can run across how much of your online storage you've already used in the graph at the bottom of the Welcome screen. There'southward likewise a reminder of your personal URL at Photoshop.com and links to online help and to tips and tricks for using Elements. However, you can also get to all these things from within the Editor or the Organizer, and so there's no demand to keep the Welcome screen around for that.

Tip

Afterwards you create your Photoshop.com business relationship, y'all may discover you have trouble with the Welcome screen if your Internet connection isn't active when yous start Elements. If the Welcome screen hangs while trying to assemble your business relationship info, just quit information technology (you may need to exercise this in Windows' Chore Manager—press Ctrl+Alt+Del in XP or Ctrl+Shift+Esc in Vista to telephone call it up), then follow the directions in the box below for starting the Editor or the Organizer directly from the program file.

Organizing Your Photos

The Organizer is where your photos come into Elements and go out again (when information technology's time to print or electronic mail them). The Organizer stores and catalogs your photos, and y'all automatically come back to it for any activities that involve sharing your photos, similar press a photo package (Picture Package) or making a slideshow (Slideshows). The Organizer'due south main window (Effigy 1-ii), which is sometimes called the Media Browser , lets you view your photos, sort them into albums, and assign keyword labels to them. (In previous versions of Elements it was called the Photo Browser , and so yous may hear that term, too.)

The Organizer has lots of actually cool features you'll learn about throughout this volume when they're relevant to the chore at mitt. The next chapter shows you lot how to use the Organizer to import and organize your photos, and Appendix A covers all the Organizer'south different menu options. What's more, if you sign up for a Photoshop.com account (Photoshop.com), then you can access and organize your photos from any reckoner, non just at home.

Effigy 1-2. The Media Browser is your principal Organizer workspace. Click the Create tab and you tin can choose to start all kinds of new projects with your photos, or click the Share tab for ways to allow other people view your images. Click the arrow at the right of the Fix tab (circled) for a menu that gives you a choice of going to Quick Set up, Guided Edit, or Full Edit. The Fix tab gives you access to some quick fixes right in the Organizer, too. The Organizer also gives yous another way to look at your photos, Date view, which is explained in Chapter 2.

Photo Downloader

Elements has yet another component, which yous may have seen already if you've plugged a photographic camera into your calculator afterward installing Elements: the Photo Downloader (Effigy 1-iii), which helps get photos direct into the Organizer directly from your camera's retentiveness card.

If you've used older versions of Elements, then you'll exist pleased to know that the Downloader is more polite than it used to be. In early versions of Elements, the Downloader ran constantly every bit a separate plan (whether Elements was running or not), racing to exist commencement on the scene whenever it detected any newly continued device that might have photos on information technology, and popping up its own window earlier the standard Windows dialog box could announced. For a few people, this was mighty convenient. But for the majority of folks (who didn't want to use the Downloader every fourth dimension they plugged some photo-begetting device into their computers), information technology was a big nuisance. If y'all accept an iPod, for instance, then you know how aggravating this was.

At present the Downloader appears every bit only one of your options in the regular Windows dialog box that yous see when you connect a device. If yous want to use the Downloader, and then just choose information technology from the list. No more than interfering with your iPod, and no extra dialog box to close every time you don't want to employ the Downloader. It'southward a major comeback.

Figure i-3. Adobe'south Photo Downloader is yet another programme y'all get when you lot install Elements. Its job is to pull photos from your camera (or other storage device) into the Organizer. To use the Downloader, just click "Organize and Edit using Adobe Elements Organizer 8.0" (circled) in Windows Vista'southward AutoPlay dialog box. (If you apply Windows XP, you'll see a dialog box with similar options.) Later on the Downloader does its thing, yous cease up in the Organizer.

Y'all can read more than about the Downloader in Chapter 2. If you plan to apply the Organizer to catalog photos and assign keywords to them, then reading the section on the Downloader can help you lot avoid pilus-pulling moments.

Photoshop.com

Adobe too gives you piece of cake access to its Photoshop.com service as role of Elements. A basic account is free, and it'due south nicely integrated into Elements, making information technology very easy to use. With a Photoshop.com account, you can:

• Create your own website . You can make beautiful online albums that brandish your photos in elaborate slideshows—all accessible via your own Photoshop.com URL (web accost). Slap-up for dazzling friends and family. They can even download your photos or order prints, if you choose to let them (see Online Albums).

• Automatically back upward and sync your photos . Frequent worriers and travelers, set up to be amazed. You can fix Elements to sync your PC-based photos to storage space on Photoshop.com, providing yous with a backup, just in case. What's more, yous can upload photos to your albums from other computers, and they automatically appear in the Organizer the next time yous start Elements. See Backing Upward Your Files for more most how to apply this neat characteristic.

• Admission your photos from other computers . When you're not at home, pop over to your Photoshop.com account to meet and even organize your photos. That fashion, when you visit friends, you don't need to lug your figurer along—just log into your business relationship from their computers.

• Download lots of extra goodies . The Content console (The Content Console) displays thumbnails for additional backgrounds, frames, graphics, and and so on, that you can download right from Photoshop.com.

• Get lots of not bad costless communication . Call up the Photoshop Inspiration Browser (The Inspiration Browser), and you can choose from a whole range of helpful tutorials for all sorts of Elements tasks and projects.

The bad news is that these Photoshop.com features are available only in the United States—for at present. Adobe says information technology plans to aggrandize this offer worldwide. As of this writing, folks outside the United States can become some of the same features, like the power to create online albums and galleries, at Adobe'south Photoshop Showcase site http://photoshopshowcase.com. (See Activation for more almost the regional differences.)

To sign up for a gratuitous account:

1. Tell Adobe you desire an account .

   Just click the Create New Adobe ID button on the Welcome screen (The Welcome Screen) or at the top of either the Organizer or the Editor'south main window. This also registers Elements. If you've already got an Adobe ID (if you registered a previous version of Elements, for example), but sign in instead.

2. In the window that opens, fill in your information to create your Adobe ID .

   Y'all need to make full in the usual address, telephone, email, and so on, and pick what y'all'd like as your unique Adobe web address. (Hint: something like http://johnspictures.photoshop.com is probably already taken, then you may demand to try a few alternatives. When y'all click Create Account, you become a message if the web address you chose is already in apply.) Turn on the checkbox that says you agree to Adobe'southward terms and weather. Finally, for security purposes, you need to enter the text you run into in a box on the sign-up screen.

3. Create your account .

   Click the Create Account button. Adobe tells you if it finds whatever errors in what you submitted and gives you a adventure to go back and fix them.

4. Confirm your account .

   You'll get an email from Adobe that contains a link. Only click the link to confirm that yous want to create an account, and y'all're all set up. (You need to click the link within 24 hours of creating your account, or y'all may accept to get-go the whole process once again.)

Once you take an account, you can get to information technology by clicking Sign In at the top of the Editor or Organizer. Afterwards yous sign in, you see "Welcome <your name>" instead of "Sign In", and you can click that to get to your account settings. (Yous can as well look at the bottom of the Welcome screen to see how much gratuitous space you accept left, every bit shown in Figure 1-4.)

Figure 1-four. Once you sign into your Photoshop.com account, the lesser of the Welcome screen tells you how much of your online storage space you're currently using and includes a link for managing backups and syncing. You too see a link to your personalized spider web address (a helpful reminder).

A free Photoshop.com account is a pretty dainty deal. It fifty-fifty includes 2 GB of space on Adobe'due south servers for backing upward and storing your photos. Yous can besides upgrade to a paid account (called Plus), which gives you more of everything: more than template designs for Online Albums, more downloads from the Content panel, more tutorials, and more storage space: 20–100 GB (depending on what level membership you cull). However, the Plus account costs $49.99 for xx GB, and more than as your storage amount increases, and then you might desire to try the free business relationship first to run into whether you'll really use it enough to justify the expense. Considering this service has been available since Elements seven, you can also investigate Adobe'due south Photoshop.com support forum (http://forums.adobe.com/community/photoshopdotcom), as well as the independent forum sites (Across This Volume) to come across what people think about information technology.

Note

If you oasis't bought Elements even so, Adobe tends to promote the combination of Elements and a Plus business relationship on their website. You lot take to hunt effectually a bit to find where to purchase Elements with but the gratuitous account, and so look advisedly before you buy if you don't desire to start off with the paid version.

Once you sign into your account, Elements logs yous in automatically every fourth dimension you launch the program. If you don't want that to happen, just click your name at the top of the Elements window (in either the Organizer or Editor), and so, in the window that opens, choose Sign Out.

Editing Your Photos

The Editor is the other master component of Elements (Figure 1-5). This is the fun function of the program, where y'all get to edit, suit, transform, and generally glamorize your photos, and where you can create original artwork from scratch with the cartoon tools and shapes.

Figure i-5. The chief Elements editing window, which Adobe calls Full Edit. In some previous versions of Elements it was known every bit the Standard Editor, something to keep in heed in instance y'all ever endeavour whatever tutorials written for Elements 3 or iv.

Yous tin can operate the Editor in any of three different modes:

• Total Edit . The Full Edit window gives y'all access to Elements' most sophisticated tools. You have far more than ways to piece of work on your photo in Full Edit than in Quick Fix, and if you're fussy, it's where you'll practise well-nigh of your retouching work. Near of the Quick Set up commands are as well available via menus in the Full Edit window.

• Quick Ready . For many beginners, Quick Fix (Figure 1-vi) ends up existence their main workspace. Information technology's where Adobe has gathered together the basic tools you need to amend nearly photos. It'south also one of the two places in Elements where you tin choose to accept a before-and-after view while you work. (Guided Edit, described below, is the other.) Chapter 4 gives you all the details on using Quick Ready.

• Guided Edit . This window tin be a large help if you lot're a newcomer to Elements. Information technology provides footstep-by-step walkthroughs for popular projects such as cropping your photos and removing blemishes from them. Like Quick Fix, Guided Edit offers a before-and-after view of your photograph as you work on information technology (encounter Getting Assist) and too offers some advanced features, like the Actions Player (Using Actions).

Figure 1-6. The Quick Set window. Use the driblet-down menus in the tab at the top of the screen (circled, right) to navigate from Full Edit to the Quick Gear up window (and to Guided Edit, if you like) and back again. To compare your fixes with the original photo, burn upwardly Before & Later on view, which yous become by clicking the View menu (circled, left).

The rest of this chapter covers some of the Editor'south bones concepts and key tools.

Note

If yous leave a photo open up in the Editor, and then when y'all switch back to the Organizer, you meet a red band with a padlock across the photo'south Organizer thumbnail as a reminder. To go rid of the lock and free up your image for Organizer projects, go back to the Editor and shut the photo in that location.

Panels, Bins, and Tabs

When you first open up the Editor, you may be dismayed at how chaotic information technology looks. There's stuff everywhere, and maybe not a lot of room left for the photos you're editing, peculiarly if you lot accept a small screen. Don't fret: One of Elements 8'south best features is the way you tin customize the Editor'southward workspace. At that place'south practically no limit to how yous can rearrange the Editor. You can leave everything the manner it is if you like a cozy area with everything at hand. Or if you lot want a Zen-like empty workspace with cypher visible merely your photo, you tin motility, hide, and turn off almost everything. Figure 1-7 shows two different views of the same workspace.

What's more than, in Elements eight you can hibernate everything in your workspace except for your images and the menu bar: no tools, panels, or Options bar. This is handy when you desire a skillful, undistracted look at what you lot've only done to your photo. To practise that, merely press the Tab fundamental; to bring everything back into view, printing Tab again.

Effigy 1-7. Ii dissimilar means of working with the same images, panels, and tools. Y'all can employ whatever arrangement that suits y'all. Top: The panels in the basic Elements arrangement, with the images in the new tabbed view (Paradigm windows). Bottom: This prototype shows how you can customize your panels. Hither the Project bin has been moved into the Panel bin, and the whole matter is complanate to icons (they're to the right of the image being worked on). Click an icon and that panel pops out so you lot can work with it. The images hither are in floating windows.

Note

You lot may detect that Elements' menu bar at the very pinnacle of the programme'south window changes a little depending on the size of your monitor and whether you've got the Elements window maximized to make full your screen. You'll either see a single row above the Options bar (Elements' Tools) with the PSE logo at the left and the Adjust carte du jour (Prototype Views) and the Photoshop.com login area at the center of the screen (every bit in Effigy 1-7), or these items may be in a separate row higher up the menus that say File, Edit, Image, and then on (as in Effigy 1-v). Both are perfectly normal, and you lot'll see both arrangements in this volume's illustrations.

The Panel bin

When you're in Full Edit, the right side of the Elements window displays the Panel bin . Panels let you lot exercise things like keep track of what y'all've done to your photo (Undo History console) and apply special furnishings to your images (Effects panel and Content panel). You'll learn most the various panels in detail throughout this book.

Notation

In previous versions of Elements and in older versions of Photoshop, panels were chosen "palettes." If y'all run across a tutorial that talks about the "Content palette" for example, that's exactly the aforementioned thing as the The Content Panel.

You might similar the Console bin, merely many people don't. If you don't have a big monitor, yous may notice it wastes too much desktop acreage, and in Elements, y'all demand all the working room you lot can get. Fortunately, you lot don't have to keep your panels in the bin; you can shut the bin and just keep your panels floating effectually on your desktop, or you can minimize them.

You tin can't shut the bin completely when it has panels in it, but you can minimize it to only a narrow strip of icons past clicking the bin's very top bar, the ane with the double arrows on information technology. To aggrandize it once again, click the top bar once again. (If you lot pull all the panels out of the bin and so that it's empty, it disappears. To bring information technology back, click Reset Panels at the top of your screen, which resets all your panels, not just the bin.) You pull a panel out of the bin by dragging the console's acme tab; yous've now got yourself a floating panel. Figure i-8 shows how to make panels even smaller once they're out of the bin by collapsing them in one of two means. Y'all can also combine panels with each other, as shown in Figure 1-9; this works with both panels in the bin and freestanding panels.

Figure 1-8. You tin can gratuitous upwards even more space by collapsing your panels, squeeze box-style, once they're out of the bin. Top: A full-sized panel. Bottom left: A console collapsed by double-clicking where the cursor is. Bottom right: The same console collapsed to an icon by clicking the very superlative of it (where the cursor is here) once. Click the superlative bar over again to expand it.

When you launch Elements for the first time, the Panel bin contains only two panels: Layers and Effects. To see how many more than panels Elements actually gives you, check out the Editor's main Window menu (the i at the top of your screen): Everything listed in the menu'southward heart section—from Adjustments to Undo History—is a panel you can put in the Panel bin.

When you select a new panel from the Window menu, it appears in the bin if yous're using the bin, floating on the desktop if y'all don't have whatever panels in the bin, or correct where information technology was when you closed it terminal fourth dimension. In addition to combining panels every bit shown in Figure 1-nine you tin can also plummet the Panel bin or whatever group of panels into icons. Then, to use a console, click its icon and it jumps out to the side of the grouping, full size. To compress information technology back to an icon, click its icon over again. To expand or compress the Panel bin, click the double arrows at the panel'due south upper correct. You tin can combine panels here by dragging their icons onto each other. Then those panels open as a combined group, like the panels in Figure i-ix. Clicking ane of the icons in the grouping collapses the opened, grouped panel back to icons. (Combined panel icons don't evidence a dark gray line betwixt them in the group the way separate icons practice.) You lot can also separate combined panels in icon view by dragging the icons abroad from each other.

Adobe sometimes refers to floating panels equally "tabs" in Elements' menus. To close a floating tab, click the Shut button (the X) at its upper right, or below the 10 click the barely visible square (information technology'due south made upwards of four horizontal lines), and choose Close from the card that appears. If you want to put a panel back in the bin, drag information technology over the bin and let go when you see a blue line, or drag onto the tab of a console that's already in the bin to create a combined panel within the bin.

Note

If yous lose panels or you move stuff around and so much that you can't remember where you put things, y'all tin always become home again by clicking the Reset Panels button at the height of your screen, which puts all your panels dorsum in their original spots.

Figure ane-9. You can combine two or more than panels once you lot've dragged them out of the bin. Top: The Histogram panel is being pulled into, and combined with, the Layers panel. To combine panels, drag i of them (by clicking on the console's name tab) and drop it onto the other panel. Bottom: To switch from one console to another after they're grouped, merely click the tab of the 1 you want to employ. To remove a console from a group, simply elevate it out of the group. If you want to return everything to how it looked when y'all first launched Elements, click Reset Panels (non visible here) at the peak of your screen.

The Projection bin

In the Editor, the long narrow photo tray at the bottom of your screen is called the Projection bin . Information technology shows you what photos you accept open, every bit explained in Figure i-10, but it does a lot more than than that. At the bin's upper left are 2 pull-down menus:

• Show Open Files . This carte du jour lets yous determine what the Project bin displays: the photos currently open in the Editor, selected photos from the Organizer, or any of the albums (Albums and Smart Albums) y'all've made. If you lot ship a agglomeration of photos over from the Organizer at once, you lot may think something went awry because no photo appears on your desktop or in the Project bin. If you switch this menu over to "Show Files from Elements Organizer", so you see the photos waiting for you in the bin.

  

  Effigy 1-10. The Project bin runs across the bottom of the Editor'southward screen. It holds a thumbnail of every photo y'all have open up, likewise as photos you sent over from the Organizer that are waiting to be opened. Here yous see the bin three ways: as information technology normally appears (top), as a floating panel (bottom left), and complanate to an icon (bottom right). Yous tin also click the Shut button (the X) at the bin'southward upper right, or right-click its tab and choose Shut to hide it completely. To bring information technology back, go to Window → Project bin.

• Bin Actions . This is where the Project bin gets really useful. Yous can choose to use the photos in the bin in a project (via the Create tab), share them by any of the means listed under the Job panel's Share tab, impress them, or make an album correct there in the bin without ever going to the Organizer.

Tip

If y'all don't use the Organizer, then the Project bin is a particularly great feature, because it lets you create groups of photos yous can telephone call up all together. But put them in an album (Albums and Smart Albums), and so, from the bin'southward Show Open Files menu, select the album's name to run across that group again.

You tin can drag your photos' thumbnails in the bin to rearrange them if you desire to apply the images in a project.

The Project bin is useful, but if you have a small monitor, you may adopt to have the space it takes upwards for your editing piece of work. In Elements eight, the Project bin behaves just similar any of the other panels: you tin can rip it loose from the bottom of the screen and combine it with the other panels. You lot can even collapse it to an icon, like the other panels, or drag it into the Console bin. (If you combine it with your other panels, the combined panel may be a trivial wider than it would be without the Projection bin, although you lot can still collapse the combined grouping to icons.) If you've used the past couple of versions of Elements, you know this is a nifty comeback over the old, fixed Project bin.

Image windows

In Elements 8, y'all can choose how you desire to see the images you're working on. Older versions of Elements accept used floating windows, where each image appears in a separate window that you can drag around. Elements viii starts yous out with floating windows, but you tin also put your images into a new, tabbed view, which is something similar the tabs in a web browser, or the tabs you'd find on paper file folders. The advantage of tabbed view is that you accept plenty of workspace around the image, which is handy when you're working most the edges of an paradigm, or using a tool that requires you to be able to get outside the image'due south boundaries. All the things you can do with epitome windows are explained on Image Views.

Incidentally, Clicking Reset Panels doesn't practise anything to your image windows or tabs; it just resets your panels.

Note

Because your view may vary, most of the illustrations in this book evidence only the image itself and the tool in use, without a window frame or tab boundary around it.

Elements' Tools

Elements gives yous an amazing array of tools to utilize when working on your photos. You lot become almost two dozen primary tools to help select, pigment on, and otherwise manipulate images, and many of the tools accept as many every bit six subtools hiding beneath them (meet Figure i-xi). Bob Vila'southward workshop probably isn't any better stocked than Elements' virtual toolbox.

Effigy one-11. Like any good toolbox, Elements' Tools panel has lots of hidden drawers tucked away in information technology. Many Elements tools are actually groups of tools, which are represented by tiny black triangles on the lower-right side of the tool's icon (you can meet several of these triangles here). Right-clicking or belongings the mouse button downwards when y'all click the icon brings out the hidden subtools. The piddling black foursquare next to the regular Eraser tool ways information technology's the active tool right now.

Annotation

To explore every cranny of Elements, you demand to open a photo (in the Editor, choose File → Open). Lots of the menus are grayed out if you don't take a file open.

The long, skinny strip on the left side of the Total Edit window (shown back in Figure 1-5—Editing Your Photos) is the Tools panel. It stays perfectly organized so you lot can ever notice what you want without e'er having to lift a finger to tidy it up. If y'all forget what a particular tool does, just hover your cursor over the tool'due south icon, and a label (called a tooltip ) appears telling you the tool'south name. To activate a tool, click its icon. Any tool that you select comes with its own drove of options, as shown in Figure 1-12.

Effigy one-12. When a tool is active, the Options bar changes to show settings specific to that tool. Elements' tools are highly customizable, letting you lot do things similar conform a castor's size and shape. Here you run into the Castor tool's options. (The caterpillar-like thingy at the left is a sample of the brushstroke y'all'd get using the tool'south current settings.)

As the box below explains, you can accept either a single- or double-columned Tools panel.

Other windows in Elements, like Quick Fix and the Raw Converter (see Using the Raw Converter), also have toolboxes, but none is every bit consummate as the one in Full Edit.

Note

If you've used Elements 5 or earlier, y'all'll notice an important deviation in getting to subtools in Elements 8: You can't switch from i tool in a subgroup to another by using the Options bar anymore. Now you lot can choose a tool from a group only by using the tool'due south pop-out carte du jour in the Tools panel, or by pressing its shortcut key repeatedly to cycle through the tool'due south subgroup. Stop tapping the key when you run into the icon for the tool you want.

Don't worry almost learning the names of every tool right now, simply if y'all want to see them all, they're all on display in Figure i-13. Information technology'south easier to remember what a tool is in one case you've used it. And don't be overwhelmed by all of Elements' tools. You probably have a agglomeration of Allen wrenches in your garage that y'all only utilise every year or so. Likewise, yous'll notice that you tend to employ certain Elements tools more than than others.

Effigy 1-13. The mighty Tools panel. Because some tools are grouped together in the same slot (indicated past the piffling black triangles adjacent to the tool icons), you can't ever see all the tools at once. (This Tools panel has 2 columns; the box on Elements' Tools explains how to switch from one to two columns.) For grouped tools, the icon you lot come across is the icon for the last tool in the group you used.

Tip

Yous can save a ton of time by activating tools with their keyboard shortcuts, since yous don't accept to interrupt what y'all're doing to trek over to the Tools panel. To come across a tool'southward shortcut primal, hover your cursor over its icon. A label pops up indicating the shortcut key (it's the alphabetic character to the correct of the tool's proper noun). To actuate the tool, just press the appropriate key. If the tool you desire is role of a group, all the tools in that group have the aforementioned keyboard shortcut, and then just keep pressing that key to wheel through the group until you get to the tool y'all want.

Getting Assist

Wherever Adobe institute a stray corner in Elements, they stuck some help into it. You tin can't move anywhere in this program without being offered some kind of guidance. Here are a few of the means you tin can summon assist if you need it:

• Help carte . Choose Help → Photoshop Elements Aid, or press F1. Elements launches your spider web browser, which displays Elements' Help files, where you tin search or scan a topic listing and glossary. The Help menu also contains links to online video tutorials and Adobe's support forum for Elements.

• Tooltips . When you see a tooltip (Elements' Tools) pop upwardly under your cursor as y'all motion effectually Elements, if the tooltip's text is blue, that means information technology'southward linked to the appropriate section in Elements; Assist. You can click blueish-text tooltips for more information well-nigh whatever your cursor is hovering over.

• Dialog box links . Virtually dialog boxes have a few words of vivid blue text somewhere in them. That text is actually a link to Elements Assistance. If you go confused about what Remove Color Cast does, for instance, so, in the Remove Colour Cast dialog box, click the blue "colour cast" text for a reminder.

Guided Edit

If you lot're a beginner, Guided Edit, shown in Figure i-14, tin can be a big assistance. It walks yous through a multifariousness of popular editing tasks, like cropping, sharpening, correcting colors, and removing blemishes. It besides includes some features that are useful even if you're an old Elements manus, like the Actions Role player (Using Actions) and the new Exposure Merge (Blending Exposures).

Guided edit is actually easy to employ:

1. Go to Guided Edit .

   In the Editor, click the Edit tab → EDIT Guided.

2. Open up a photo .

   Press Ctrl+O, and then, from the window that appears, choose your photo. If you already have a photo open up, it appears in the Guided Edit window automatically. If you lot have several photos in the Projection bin, then you can switch images by double-clicking the thumbnail of the one yous want to work on.

   

   Figure 1-14. Guided Edit gives you stride-by-stride help with basic photo editing. Just utilize the tools that appear in this console once you lot choose an action. Later you've selected a task, you tin can change the view to Before & After. Proceed clicking the picayune blue button (circled) at the bottom of the window to toggle views between Afterwards But, Before & After—Horizontal, and Before & After—Vertical.

3. Choose what you desire to practice .

   Your options are grouped into major categories like Basic Photograph Edits and Colour Correction, with a variety of specific projects under each heading. Just click the task y'all want in the list on the correct side of the window. The panel displays the relevant buttons and/or sliders for the task you selected.

4. Make your adjustments .

   Just move the sliders and click the buttons till you lot like what y'all run across. If yous want to commencement over, click Reset. If yous change your heed nigh the whole projection, click Cancel.

   If several steps are involved, then Elements shows y'all only the buttons and slider you demand to employ for the current step, and and so switches to a new set of choices for the next pace as you lot go forth.

   If you need to accommodate your view of your photograph while yous piece of work on it, Guided Edit has a little toolbox with the Hand (The Manus Tool) and Zoom (The Zoom Tool) tools to help you out.

5. Click Done to terminate .

   If there are more steps, then you may see another gear up of instructions. If you see the main listing of topics again, you're all through. Don't forget to save your changes (Saving Your Piece of work). To shut your photo, press Ctrl+W, or get out information technology open up and switch to some other tab to share it or utilize it in a project.

Note

Guided Edit shows you quick and piece of cake means to change your prototype, but y'all don't always get the all-time possible results. It's a cracking tool for starting out; simply think that what you see here isn't necessarily the best you can possibly make your images look. In one case you're more than comfortable in Elements, Quick Fix (Chapter 4) is a expert side by side step.

The Inspiration Browser

Yous've probably noticed the little text alerts that zip in and out at the bottom of both the Editor and the Organizer windows, as shown in Effigy 1-xv. If yous click one, then you become a popular-upwardly window that suggests a tutorial explaining how to do whatever the text warning mentioned. Click the pointer where it says "Learn how", and upward pops the Adobe Elements Inspiration Browser, a mini-program that lets yous watch tutorials. Yous demand a Photoshop.com business relationship (available but for U.S. residents; see Photoshop.com) to use the Browser. (If you call upwards the Browser and you change your mind about using it, or if you lot don't have an account, press the Esc key to close it.) It'due south well worth checking out, considering the Browser is a direct connectedness to a slew of tutorials for things you might desire to exercise with Photoshop Elements or Premiere Elements (Adobe's movie-editing program).

The first time you start the Inspiration Browser, you lot run into a license agreement for yet some other programme: Adobe AIR, which lets other programs show yous content stored online; no need to get out a web browser and navigate to a website. (Adobe AIR got installed automatically along with Elements.)

This procedure may seem like a lot of work, but information technology's well worth the attempt, since yous can find tutorials on everything from beginner topics like creating albums to advanced subjects like working with Displacement Maps (a sophisticated technique used for things like making your photo await similar it's painted on a brick wall, or making a folio of text look like a crumpled newspaper). The tutorials are all in either PDF or video format. You'll see tutorials from well-known Elements gurus here, simply anyone can submit a tutorial for the Inspiration Browser. And then if yous effigy out how to do a project you think might exist useful to others, you tin create a tutorial and transport it in for approving by clicking the "Submit a Tutorial" button and inbound the requested data in the window that appears. (Y'all need to create your tutorial as either a PDF or, for a video, in the Wink FLV format.)

Figure one-15. Superlative: Click these trivial text banners for more data virtually the topic. Bottom: In these popular-up windows you can either click "Acquire how" to go directly to that particular tutorial, or click the faintly ghosted left and right arrows (circled; they go brighter when you mouse over them) in the popular-upward window to read about other bachelor tutorials. You lot can besides get to the Inspiration Browser by going to Help → Photoshop Inspiration Browser. (Not all the popular-ups have these navigation arrows. Some have a single arrow that only takes you to the linked tutorial without letting yous scan for others.)

You lot can search for tutorials using the box on the Browser's left, or click All Tutorials and and so filter them by category or production (so you don't take to see Premiere Elements topics if you have only Photoshop Elements, for case). Y'all can likewise click on one of the column headings to see the bachelor tutorials bundled by Championship, Author, Difficulty, Date Posted, Category, Type (video or PDF), or the average star rating people have given it. Utilize the buttons at the window's upper right to change the view from a list to thumbnails (info about each tutorial appears below its thumbnail).

The Inspiration Browser is a wonderful resource and may well give yous virtually of the assist you need with Elements beyond this volume.

Tip

If the author of a tutorial has a website, then the tutorial's page has a link to information technology. Exploring these links tin can assist you find lots of useful Elements-related resources, as well equally useful addition tools that extend Elements' capabilities (run across Chapter 19).

Escape Routes

Elements has a couple of really wonderful features to help yous avoid making permanent mistakes: the Undo control and the Undo History console. After you've gotten used to them, you'll probably wish it were possible to use these tools in all aspects of your life, non just Elements.

Undo

No thing where you are in Elements, you can almost always alter your heed most what you just did. Press Ctrl+Z, and the terminal modify you made goes away. Pressing Ctrl+Z works fifty-fifty if you've just saved your photo, merely only while information technology'due south all the same open—if yous close the file, your changes are permanent. Keep pressing Ctrl+Z and you go along undoing your work, step by step.

If you want to redo what you just undid, press Ctrl+Y. These keyboard shortcuts are great for toggling changes on and off while you make up one's mind whether you really desire to continue them. The Undo/Redo keystroke combinations work in the Organizer and the Editor.

Tip

Y'all accept a bit of control over the key combination you use for Undo/Redo, if you lot don't like Ctrl+Z/Ctrl+Y. Go to Edit → Preferences → General, where Elements gives you two other choices, both of which involve pressing the Z central in combination with the Control, Alt, and Shift keys.

Undo History panel

In the Full Edit window, you get even more than control over the actions y'all tin undo, thanks to the Undo History panel (Figure 1-16), which you open up by choosing Window → Undo History.

Figure 1-16. For a petty fourth dimension travel, merely slide the pointer (on the left, just higher up the cursor here) upwards and sentinel your changes disappear. You tin can become back simply sequentially. Here, for case, y'all tin can't go back to the Crop tool without start undoing what you did with the Pigment Bucket and the Eraser. Slide the arrow downwards to redo your work. Yous tin also hop to a given spot in the list by clicking the identify where you want to go instead of using the slider.

This panel holds a listing of the changes you've made since you opened your epitome. Just push button the slider upwards and sentinel your changes disappear i by 1 as you get. Like the Disengage command, Disengage History even works if y'all've saved your file: Every bit long equally you haven't closed the file, the panel tracks every action you have. You tin can too slide the other way to redo changes that you've undone.

Be conscientious, though: You lot can back upwardly but as many steps equally Elements is prepare to remember. The program is initially fix to record 50 steps, but y'all can change that number by going to Edit → Preferences → Performance → History & Cache and adjusting the History States setting. You can gear up information technology every bit loftier equally one,000, but remembering even 100 steps may slow your system to a crawl if you don't have a superpowered processor, plenty of retentiveness, and loads of disk space. If Elements runs slowly on your machine, then reducing the number of history states it remembers (attempt 20) may speed things up a bit.

The one rule of Elements

Equally you're first to see, Elements lets you work in lots of different means. What's more than, nearly people who utilise Elements arroyo projects in different ways. What works for your neighbor with her pictures may exist quite different from how you'd piece of work on the very aforementioned shots.

But you lot'll hear 1 suggestion from nearly every Elements veteran, and it'southward an important ane: Never, e'er work on your original. Always, always, e'er make a re-create of your epitome and work on that instead .

The good news is that if you store your photos in the Organizer, you don't need to worry well-nigh accidentally trashing your original. If yous save your files as version sets (Saving Your Work), Elements automatically creates a re-create when y'all edit a photo that's cataloged in the Organizer, so that you can always revert to your original.

If you're determined non to use the Organizer or version sets, then follow these steps to brand a copy of your image in the Editor:

1. Get to File → Duplicate .

   The Duplicate Image dialog box appears.

2. Name the duplicate and so click OK in the dialog box .

   Elements opens the new, duplicate image in the principal image window.

3. Find the original image and click its Shut push (the X) .

   If you lot have floating windows, the Close button is the standard Windows Close button you'd come across at the upper right of any window. If you have tabs, the close X is on the right side of the image's tab. Now the original is safely tucked out of harm's way.

4. Save the indistinguishable by pressing Ctrl+Southward .

   Choose Photoshop (.psd) as the file format when you save it. (Y'all may want to cull another format later on you've read Chapter 3 and understand more well-nigh your different format options.)

Now you don't have to worry about making a mistake or changing your mind, because you lot tin can ever start over.

Annotation

Elements doesn't take an autosave feature, so y'all should go into the habit of saving oft every bit you piece of work. Saving Your Work has more virtually saving.

Getting Started in a Bustle

If you lot're the impatient type and you're starting to squirm because you desire to be upward and doing something to your photos, here'south the quickest way to get started in Elements: Adjust an epitome'south brightness and colour balance all in one stride.

1. In the Editor, open a photo .

   Press Ctrl+O and navigate to the image you lot want, and then click Open.

2. Press Alt+Ctrl+M .

   You've merely practical Elements' Auto Smart Prepare tool (Figure ane-17).

Voilà! You should see quite a difference in your photo, unless the exposure, lighting, and contrast were almost perfect earlier. The Auto Smart Fix tool is 1 of Elements' many like shooting fish in a barrel-to-employ features. (Of course, if you don't like what just happened to your photo, no problem—simply press Ctrl+Z to undo it.)

If you're really raring to become, jump ahead to Chapter 4 to learn about using the Quick Fix commands. Merely it's worth taking the fourth dimension to read the next 2 chapters so you lot empathise which file formats to choose and how to make some basic adjustments to your images, like rotating and cropping them.

Don't forget to give Guided Edit a try if you see what yous want to practice in the list of topics. Guided Edit can exist a big assistance while you're learning your style effectually.

Effigy 1-17. Automobile Smart Fix is the easiest, quickest way to improve the quality of your photos. Elevation left: The original, unedited picture. Height correct: Machine Smart Set makes quite a difference, but the colors are still slightly off. Bottom: By using some of the other tools y'all'll acquire nigh in this volume (like Auto Contrast and Suit Sharpness), yous tin make things look fifty-fifty better.

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