Ted Padova

Cheat Sheet / Updated 11-01-2023

As you edit images in Photoshop Elements, you need to know your way around the editor workspace and the tools panel — especially the selection tools. Check out the visual reference to the photo editor and the tools panel keyboard shortcuts, as well as the table of Photoshop Elements selection tricks. Having these references by your side will help you edit images in Elements quickly and easily.

Cheat Sheet / Updated 11-17-2022

As you edit images in Photoshop Elements, you need to know your way around the editor workspace and the tools panel — especially the selection tools. Check out the visual reference to the photo editor and the tools panel keyboard shortcuts, as well as the table of Photoshop Elements selection tricks. Having these references by your side will help you edit images in Elements quickly and easily.

Article / Updated 08-16-2022

In Photoshop Elements, you can use the Albums panel to create an album to organize your photos. You might want to organize an album for sharing photos with others on Photoshop online, assemble an album and rate each photo with a range from one to five stars, create a slide show, or just use the Albums panel to further segregate images within different categories. You can create an album with photos that share a keyword tag. For example, you might have a catalog with a number of photos taken on a European vacation. You can create keyword tags for files according to the country visited. You then might rate the best pictures you took on your trip. The highest-rated images could then be assembled in an album and viewed as a slide show. Rating images Rating photos is handled in the Properties panel. To assign a star rating to a file, right-click a photo and select Properties from that menu. The Properties - General panel opens. Click a star to rate the photo. Alternatively, click a photo, choose Edit→Ratings, and choose a star rating. Rating photos with stars in the Properties panel. When you select the Details check box on the Shortcuts bar, all your rated photos appear with the number of stars according to the rating you provided. You can easily sort files according to ratings by choosing the Edit→Ratings command and select a star rating from the submenu. When the Details check box is selected, all rated photos appear with stars. Adding rated files to an album You might want to rate images with star ratings and then add all your images to an album. Within the album, you can still choose to view your pictures according to star ratings. Creating an album With albums and star ratings, you can break down a collection into groups that you might want to mark for printing, sharing, or onscreen slide shows. To create an album, follow these steps: Click the plus sign (+) icon on the Albums panel and choose New Album from the drop-down menu. The Albums panel expands to show the Album Details. Name the new album. Type a name for the album in the Album Name text box. Drag photos from the Organizer to the items window in the Album Content panel. Alternatively, you can select photos in the Organizer and click the plus sign (+) icon to add them to the album. Drag photos to the Items area in the Album Contents panel. Click Done at the bottom of the panel. Your new album now appears listed in the Albums panel. You can isolate all the photos within a given album by clicking the album name in the Albums panel. Creating a Smart Album You can perform a search based on a number of different criteria. The Smart Album feature enables you to save the search results in an album. After you have all the files shown in the Organizer based on the searches you perform, you can create a Smart Album as follows: Open the New menu on the Albums panel and choose New Smart Album. The New Smart Album dialog box opens. Type a name for your new Smart Album. Make selections for the search criteria below the Name text box. You can search using multiple criteria by clicking the Plus (+) icon in the New Smart Album dialog box. Click the icon, and a new line appears. Click OK. The Smart Album is listed above the albums in the Albums panel. Type a name for your new Smart Album, add the search criteria, and click OK to add the album to the Albums panel. Creating an Album Category The Albums panel contains all the albums and Smart Albums you create in an organized list. By default, the albums are listed in alphabetical order. If you add many albums to the panel, the list can be long, making it difficult to find the album you want to use for a given editing session. An Album Category is no more than a divider shown in the Albums panel. You don’t add photos to the group. You nest albums within a group in a hierarchical manner. To understand how to create an Album Category, follow these steps: Create several albums. To begin, you should have two or more albums added to the Albums panel. Create an Album Category by clicking the New menu on the Albums panel and choosing New Album Category. The Create Album Category dialog box opens. Type a name for the group in the Album Category Name text box and then click OK. You new Album Category is added to the Albums panel. Click and drag an album onto the Album Category name in the Albums panel. The albums you drag to the Album Category are nested within the group. Albums are nested below an Album Category.

Article / Updated 04-13-2021

The Adjust Facial Features command is a light, automated version of the infamous Liquify feature, the power tool used to retouch many a magazine photo. Adjust Facial Features doesn't allow for much manual manipulation, but the effect is pretty dramatic, not to mention seamless and easy to use. Get ready for retouching requests from friends and family! Here's how to use this feature: Open an image in Expert or Quick mode. Choose Enhance→Adjust Facial Features.The Adjust Facial Features dialog box appears.In the dialog box, a circle surrounds the area that will be affected by the adjustments. Note that Elements first analyzes whether it's truly a face or not. We tried it with an image of a cat. No dice. Use the sliders to modify facial features such as eyes, nose, lips, chin, and face, as shown here. Elements 2021 has added a Face Tilt feature that enables you to adjust the various angles of the face. Toggle your Before and After button to view your results. Satisfied? Click OK. Not satisfied? Start over by clicking Reset. Choose Preferences→Performance and verify that the Use Graphic Processor option is selected to ensure better and smoother performance when using features like Adjust Facial Features and the Lens Blur and Liquify filters.

Article / Updated 03-26-2021

Catalogs are created, deleted, and managed in the Catalog Manager. To access the Catalog Manager in Adobe Photoshop Elements, choose File→ Manage Catalogs. The Catalog Manager opens, as shown. To keep your photos organized and your catalog files small, you can start a completely new catalog before you import photos. Follow these steps: 1. Choose File → Manage Catalogs and click the New button in the Catalog Manager dialog box, as shown. 2. When the New Catalog dialog box opens, type a name for the new catalog in the File Name text box. 3. (Optional) If you want to add the free music files that installed with Elements, select the Import Free Music into All New Catalogs check box. We recommend selecting the Import Free Music into All New Catalogs and Import Music Files check box. The Organizer ships with free music files that you can use in a variety of creations. 4. Click OK to create the new catalog. 5. Choose File → Get Photos and Videos →From Files and Folders to add files to the new catalog. Alternately you can click the Import button above Albums and Folders in the left panel. The Get Photos and Videos from Files and Folders dialog box opens. 6. Navigate your hard drive and select the photos you want to add. After you identify all the files, click Get Media. The selected photos are added to your new collection of media contained in the catalog. How to work with catalogs After you create different catalogs for your images, the following tips for working with catalogs will come in handy: Understanding how you want to organize your photos before creating your first catalog: Unfortunately, Elements doesn’t provide you with a command to split large catalogs into smaller ones. However, if you’ve created a large catalog and want to split it into two or more separate catalogs, you can manually add new photos to a new catalog and delete photos from the older catalog. Switching to a different catalog: When you need to open a different catalog file, choose File→ Manage Catalogs and select the name of the catalog you want to open. Click Open at the bottom of the dialog box to open the selected catalog. The Organizer window changes to reflect files contained in that catalog. Fixing a corrupted catalog: Notice the Repair button in the figure. If you can’t see thumbnail previews of images or open them in one of the editing modes, your catalog file might be corrupted. Click the Repair button to try to fix the problem. Improving catalog performance: When catalogs get sluggish, you might need to optimize a catalog to gain better performance. You should regularly optimize your catalog (by clicking the Optimize button in the Catalog Manager) to keep your catalog operating at optimum performance. How to back up your catalog Computer users often learn the hard way about the importance of backing up a hard drive and the precious data they spent time creating and editing. We can save you that aggravation right now, before you spend any more time editing your photos in Elements. The standard rule is that if you spend sufficient time working on a project, and it gets to the point where redoing your work would be a major aggravation, it’s time to back up files. When organizing your files, adding keyword tags, creating albums, and creating stacks and version sets, you want to back up the catalog file in case it becomes corrupted. Fortunately, backing up catalogs is available to both Windows and Mac users. For optimum performance, backing up to a 1TB USB drive will serve you best. Here’s how you can use Elements to create a backup of your catalog: 1. Choose File→Backup Catalog to open the Backup Catalog Wizard. This wizard has two panes that Elements walks you through to painlessly create a backup of your files. 2. Select the source to back up. The first pane in the Backup Catalog to Hard Drive Wizard offers these options: Catalog-only Backup: This item is new in Elements 2021. In contrast to this type of backup, a full backup backs up keywords, tags, places, events, and so on. It also includes backing up photos and videos. If you have a large catalog with many photos and videos, that backup will take a long time. If you don’t need to back up your photos and videos, you can choose this option instead, which backs up all data except the photos and videos. This option runs much faster than the full backup. Full Backup: Use this choice when you want to back up everything, including your photos and videos. Incremental Backup: Select this radio button if you’ve already performed at least one backup and you want to update the backed-up files. 3. Click Next and select a target location for your backed-up files. Active drives, external hard drives attached to your computer, or mounted network drives available to your computer appear in the Select Destination Drive list. Select a drive, and Elements automatically assesses the write speed and identifies a previous backup file if one was created. The total size of the files to copy is reported in the wizard. This information is helpful so that you know whether more than one drive is needed to complete the backup (on Windows) or a backup drive has enough space to complete the backup. 4. If you intend to copy files to your hard drive or to another hard drive attached to your computer, click the Browse button and identify the path. 5. Click Save Backup. The backup commences. Be certain to not interrupt the backup. It might take some time, so just let Elements work away until you’re notified that the backup is complete. How to back up photos and files With files stored all over your hard drive, manually copying files to a second hard drive, CD, or DVD would take quite a bit of time. Fortunately, Elements makes finding files to back up a breeze. Choose File →Copy/Move to Removable Drive and then, in the dialog box that opens, select the Copy Files check box and click Next. Select a hard drive, type a name for the backup folder, and click OK. Elements goes about copying all files shown in the Organizer to your backup source. Mac users don’t have an option for backing up photos from the Organizer to CDs or DVDs. On the Mac, you can create a burn folder in the Finder, select all photos in the Organizer, and drag the selected files to the burn folder. Click the Burn button, and the files are copied to a CD or DVD.

Article / Updated 03-26-2021

In Elements 2021 Adobe made a major change to the Camera Raw Editor user interface. If you used the Camera Raw Editor in previous versions of Elements, you’ll immediately notice the difference in the user interface (UI) when you open a file in the Raw Editor in Elements 2021. The first time you launch the Camera Raw Editor, a Setup Camera Raw screen opens and prompts you to make a choice for the UI you want to use. In this figure, you can see the initial screen after launching the Camera Raw Editor. As shown, you have a choice to use the new Adobe Camera Raw (ACR) or use the legacy UI. The new UI displays the film strip at the bottom of the ACR window by default, and you can view multiple panel settings simultaneously in the Panel Bin. You can change the filmstrip orientation from horizontal to vertical. The legacy UI displays the filmstrip, by default, on the left side of the ACR window, and you can work in only a single panel at a time. Here, we look at using the new ACR UI. The new ACR UI is the default. Double-click a raw file or choose File→ Open in Camera Raw Click in the Photo Editor. The fist screen you see is the Camera Raw Set Up screen, shown. Click OK to accept defaults and open the raw file in the Raw Editor. As you can see, much has changed in the user interface. All the features and tools you may have used in previous versions of the Camera Raw Editor are available in this upgrade. The settings have just been moved around a bit. Camera Raw files First and foremost, a Camera Raw file is a file format. Most DSLRs, many mid- to high-end mirrorless cameras, and more than 20 different cells phone cameras can save data in the Camera Raw format. Unfortunately, almost all developers use their own unique file extension when saving files. For example, Canon raw files are saved as crw or .cr2, Sony’s files are saved as .arw, Nikon’s files are saved as .nef, and Fuji files are saved with an .raf extension. Likewise, other developers use unique naming conventions. Dealing with myriad different raw file formats has been a challenge for Adobe. With each release of the Camera Raw Editor, Adobe needs to ensure compatibility with all the developers supporting camera raw. One solution provided by Adobe is Adobe’s own raw file format, which uses a .dng extension (Digital Negative). In the event that you acquire an update to Lightroom, Photoshop, or Photoshop Elements and your camera’s raw format is not supported, you can download the free DNG converter from Adobe. You may be able to convert to DNG until Adobe supports your camera’s raw files. Raw file format attributes There are several reasons you should make all your first attempts at improving your images in the Raw Editor. These include: Working with non-destructive editing. When you open a Camera Raw image in the Raw editor, all the edits you make for everything, including brightness/contrast, color corrections, tonal corrections, cropping, straightening, sharpening, and so on, are nondestructive. This means that you can always return to the original raw image, dismiss all previous edits, and start over. You don’t need to save a copy. Moreover, you can share the raw file with another user, who can work with your edited image or also dismiss all the edits and start with a fresh unedited version. Working with higher bit depths. Inasmuch as you can also use some editing features in the Elements Photo Editor on 16-bit images, in the Raw editor, all the edits you make can be made on either 8-bit or 16-bit images. To understand more about bit depth, you first need to understand dynamic range. Dynamic range is the range of f-stops between the brightest areas of a photo (the highlights) and the darkest areas (the shadows) where you can detect detail. The human eye can detect roughly 18 different f-stops. Translated into practical terms, this means that we can see some detail in the lightest areas of things like cloud formations, and we can see some detail in some dark shadows, as in a tunnel. Higher-end DSLR and mirrorless cameras capture an average of 10–12 f-stops. One camera that captures 15 stops is the Sony A7RIV. The Canon 5D Mark IV captures 12 stops; the Nikon D810 captures 14.8 stops. Smartphones cameras are becoming increasingly better, capturing images at higher dynamic ranges as well. For example, some iPhone, Google, and Samsung devices capture respectable dynamic ranges. Improvements in technology are bringing cameras closer to capturing detail in highlights and shadows that approach the ability of the human eye — but they’re not there yet. When you take a picture in Raw format, your camera captures all the data the sensor can handle. You open the higher bit image in the Raw editor and decide on the compromises you’re willing to make, such as more detail in shadows or more detail in highlights. Your final images need to be reduced to 8-bit for printing or sharing on social media websites, so you must make some decisions about where to clip the image. In other words, you decide what parts of the data you will cut off. Because Raw editing is a post-processing task, you start with all the original data and decide what data remains and what data are tossed. Sixteen-bit images offer you much more data to work with than 8-bit images do. JPEG images, on the other hand, are processed by the camera, and many of those decisions are made for you. You have more limited control over the data with JPEG files than with Raw files. Furthermore JPEG files are only 8-bit and hold much less data than the raw files do. All editing is accessible in a single dialog box. If you consider the Raw Editor as a dialog box for the moment, all image editing is handled within the editor. In the Elements Editor in Expert mode, you need to address several different menu commands to perform edits in different dialog boxes. The Raw Editor offers you a panel with sliders, where you can make changes to white balance, contrast, exposure, highlights, shadows, saturation, vibrance, and more, all from within a single panel and without the need to open multiple dialog boxes. Opening images in the Camera Raw Editor From the desktop, you can open Camera Raw images by double-clicking the mouse button on a raw image. The image opens in the Raw Editor. If you see a dialog box indicating that the image can’t be opened, it means that Adobe has not yet included support for your camera. This is sometimes the case with new Camera Raw Editor releases. If your camera isn’t supported, you can convert the image to a DNG file and open the DNG in the Raw Editor. You can also open the Elements Photo Editor and choose File→Open or press Ctrl/Command + O, select a raw image, and click OK, and the image opens in the Raw Editor. You also have a File→Open in Camera Raw menu command. You can open JPEGs, TIFFs, and PSD files in the Camera Raw Editor. Files saved as TIFF and PSD as 16-bit images can be edited in 16-bit. JPEG files are always 8-bit. You may see some YouTube videos or read articles in which authors claim that the difference between JPEG and Raw is that Raw files are not compressed and JPEG files are compressed. This is not true. Today, Raw files can be compressed with lossless or lossy compression. The distinguishing factor between JPEG and Raw is that Raw holds all data captured from the image sensor, and the camera does not process the file. JPEG files are processed by the camera, and data are clipped. When the files are saved, they are always saved with lossy compression, meaning that additional data loss occurs.

Article / Updated 03-26-2021

One of the most popular requests that Adobe receives when querying users about Photoshop Elements is “How can I select things more easily and more accurately?” In the previous release, 2020, Adobe supplied yet another great way to make a selection. Here’s how to use the Select Subject command: 1. In either Expert or Quick mode, choose Select → Subject. You can also click the Select Subject button in the Tool Options of the Quick Selection, Selection Brush, Magic Wand, Refine Selection, and Auto Selection Tool, as shown. 2. If your selection needs some cleanup after Step 1, add to or subtract from your selection using any of the selection tools. Our favorite tool for small cleanups is the Lasso tool, found in the Tool Options of the Auto Selection Tool. To add to your selection, press the Shift key while dragging across your desired image areas. To delete from your selection, press the Alt key (Option key on the Mac) while dragging across your unwanted image areas. You can also select the Add to Selection and Subtract from Selection options in the Tool Options. 3. If you need to fine-tune your selection further, click the Refine Edge option in the Tool Options and adjust the settings as desired. Refining the edges of a selection The Refine Edge option enables you to fine-tune the edges of your selection. It doesn’t matter how you got the selection, just that you have one. You can find the command in the Tool Options of the Magic Wand, Lasso, and Quick Selection tools. And, of course, you can find it on the Select menu. Here’s the scoop on each setting for this option, as shown: View Mode: Choose a mode from the pop-up menu to preview your selection. Hover your cursor over each mode to get a tooltip. For example, Marching Ants shows the selection border. Overlay lets you preview your selection with the edges hidden and a semi-opaque layer of color in your unselected area. On Black and On White show the selection against a black or white background. Show Original shows the image without a selection preview. Show Radius displays the size of the area in which the edge refinement is happening. Smart Radius: Select this option to have Elements automatically adjust the radius for hard and soft edges near your selection border. If your border is uniformly hard or soft, you may not want to select this option. This enables you to have more control over the radius setting. Radius: Specifies the size of the selection border you will refine. Increase the radius to improve the edge of areas with soft transitions or a lot of detail. Move the slider while looking at your selection to find a good setting. Smooth: Reduces jaggedness along your selection edges. Feather: Move the slider to the right to create an increasingly softer, more blurred edge. Contrast: Removes artifacts while tightening soft edges by increasing the contrast. Try using the Smart Radius option before playing with Contrast. Shift Edge: Decreases or increases your selected area. Slightly decreasing your selection border can help to defringe (eliminate undesirable background pixels) your selection edges. Decontaminate Colors: Replaces background fringe with the colors of your selected element. Because decontamination changes the colors of some of the pixels, you will have to output to, or create, another layer or document to preserve your current layer. To see the decontamination in action, choose Reveal Layer for your View mode. Amount: Changes the level of decontamination. Output To: Choose whether you want to output your refined, decontaminated selection to a selection on your current layer, layer mask, layer, layer with layer mask, new document, or new document with layer mask. Refine Radius tool: Select the Paintbrush tool on the left and brush around your border to adjust the area you’re refining. To understand exactly what area is being included or excluded, change your View mode to Marching Ants. Use the right and left brackets to decrease and increase the brush size. Erase Refinements tool: Use this tool (which looks like an Eraser), also located on the left, to clean up any unwanted refinements made with the Refine Radius tool. Zoom tool: Allows you to zoom in to your image to see the effects of your settings. Hand tool: Enables you to pan around your image window to see the effects of your settings.

Step by Step / Updated 03-26-2021

After your image has the right contrast and color, and you fix any flaws, you’re ready to work on the overall clarity of that image. Here are three new features in Adobe Photoshop Elements 2021 that can enhance your images.

Step by Step / Updated 03-26-2021

With each release of Photoshop Elements, Adobe adds to the library of Guided Edits, which enable you to do complex tasks easily by following a series of steps. Some of the edits are pure fun and whimsy, and you may use them every now and then. Others are more practical and designed to really help improve your photos. These are the ones that will become part of your regular toolkit to get your images looking their best. Here are ten favorites from Adobe Photoshop Elements 2021.

Article / Updated 03-26-2021

When you save an Elements 2021 file after editing it, you might save the file in the same file format or change the format to suit your photo service center’s specifications or to ensure that your image downloads quickly on a website. When you save, Adobe Photoshop Elements also enables you to take advantage of special features, such as saving different versions of a file or including your edited file in the Organizer as well as saving it to your hard drive. This article is your guided tour of the Save/Save As dialog box (or Save As dialog box, if you’re saving a file for the first time) and the Save for Web dialog box. How to use the Save/Save As dialog box Before you save a file, Elements 2021 offers you a new option for where you want to save your file. Choose File→Save or File→Save As and the Save As dialog box opens, as shown. Choices offered in this dialog box include saving your files to the cloud. You can choose to save files on Adobe’s servers and access the file from any computer when you log on to Adobe Creative Cloud. Or you can choose to save files locally in your computer. If you want to eliminate this dialog box from opening each time you save a file, click the check box at the bottom of the dialog box. In almost any program, the Save (or Save As) dialog box is a familiar place where you make choices about the file to be saved. With Save As, you can save a duplicate copy of your image or save a modified copy and retain the original file. However, if you’re planning to upload your final image to the web, skip the familiar Save (or Save As) dialog box and see the next section, “Saving files for the web.” To use the Save (or Save As) dialog box, choose File→ Save for files to be saved the first time, or choose File→ Save As when you want to make a copy of the open file, and a dialog box then opens. As a matter of good practice, when you open an image, choose File→Save As for your first step in editing a photo. Save with a new filename to make a copy and then proceed to edit the photo. If you don’t like your editing results, you can return to the original, unedited photo and make another copy for editing. The standard navigational tools that you find in any Save dialog box appear in the Elements Save/Save As dialog box. Here are two standard options in the Elements Save/Save As dialog box: Filename: This item is common to all Save (Windows) or Save As (Mac) dialog boxes. Type a name for your file in the text box. Format: From the drop-down list, you choose file formats. A few options make the Photoshop Elements Save/Save As dialog box different from other Save dialog boxes that you might be accustomed to using. The Save Options area in the Save As dialog box provides these choices: Include in the Elements Organizer: If you want the file added to the Organizer, select this check box. Save in Version Set with Original: This choice is a bit odd. You won’t see Version Set available for any photo you open in either Quick or Expert mode by choosing File→Open. You must load the file in the Organizer and open from the Organizer in the Photo Editor; then, when you save the file in either mode, you see Version Set available. This option provides you with opportunities to make multiple edits on a file and save as different versions all within the same file. Layers: If your file has layers, selecting this check box preserves the layers. As a Copy: Use this option to save a copy without overwriting the original file. Color: Color profiles help you maintain accurate color, and this box controls your image’s color profile. Select the box for ICC (International Color Consortium) Profile. Depending on which profile you’re using, the option appears for sRGB or Adobe RGB (1998). When the check box is selected, the profile is embedded in the image. Thumbnail (Windows only): If you save a file with a thumbnail, you can see a miniature representation of your image when viewing it in folders or on the desktop. If you select Ask When Saving in the Saving Files preferences, the check box can be enabled or disabled. If you select an option for Never Save or Always Save in the Preferences dialog box, this box is enabled or disabled (grayed out) for you. You need to return to the Preferences dialog box if you want to change the option. How to save files for the web The Save for Web command helps you prepare photos to show on the web or just onscreen. Choose File→ Save for Web. In the Save for Web dialog box that opens (see figure), you see your original image on the left, and you see the result of making changes for file format and quality settings on the right. The standard rule with web graphics is to find the smallest file size for an acceptable image appearance. In the Save for Web dialog box, you have many choices for reducing file size. Notice in the preceding figure that you see the original image with the file size reported below the image on the left. After choosing JPEG for the file type, you can see that the image size is reduced from the original 12.8MB to 733.5K. You can also use the Quality item that appears to the right of the drop-down list to adjust the final quality of the saved file. Here, you need to find the right balance between quick download times and image appearance. Just keep an eye on the preview image as well as the download time information for your optimized file. For the most accurate viewing, set the zoom size to 100 percent. In the lower-left corner of the dialog box, you can choose zoom levels from the drop-down list or just type a value in the field box. If your chosen settings noticeably degrade your image quality, you can easily discern the loss when viewing at a 100-percent view. Working in the Save for Web dialog box is a matter of making choices and viewing the results. Toggle the different file type choices and make adjustments for quality. If you see image degradation, change to a different quality setting or file format. Always look at the file-size item reported below the image on the right and try to find the lowest file size that produces a good-looking image.