The first thing you’ll probably want to do with Photoshop Elements is add some pictures to it so you can start working—or playing, depending on how you look at things. You do this in the Organizer, which is like a very big, very smart photo album (see Figure 2.1).

Figure 2.1. In Photoshop Elements, you use the Organizer to locate, group, and organize your photos.

The Organizer is where you store your photos. Unlike a real-life photo album, it can tell when and where each photo was taken, find people’s faces and ask you who they are, sort photos by how much you like them, remind you what camera you were using to take each picture, and much more. Within the Organizer, you can collect photos into albums that you can then convert to scrapbook pages, professionally bound books, or pretty much whatever else you can dream up. Each project begins in the Organizer because you have to start with a picture before you do anything in Photoshop Elements, and all your pictures live in the Organizer. Or, at least, that’s the plan that Photoshop Elements has in mind.

When you want to modify a photo, click the photo’s thumbnail in the Organizer and then click the Fix tab. Photoshop Elements asks you exactly how you want to fix the photo, using one of several autofixes right in the Organizer or using Quick Fix, Full Edit, or Guided Edit mode in the Editor. If you choose one of the latter three options, clicking that button starts up the Editor in a separate window (see Figure 2.2).

Figure 2.2. The Editor looks very much like Photoshop itself.

Exactly what you see in the Editor window depends on which mode you’re using. In Guided Edit mode, for example, the toolbox contains only two tools: the Zoom tool and the Hand tool, for zooming in and out and moving the image within the window. Full Edit mode, on the other hand, gives you access to a complete selection of 45 tools, from the Custom Shape tool to the Magnetic Lasso tool. Falling smack in the middle is Quick Fix mode, with just five tools; only one tool actually changes the image (the Red Eye Removal tool). We’ll look at all the Editor’s tools, modes, palettes, and menus later in this hour.

When you have your pictures looking the way you want them—nice, sharp images with great color, and perfectly cropped—you’ll want to do something with them. That’s where the Create tab enters the picture (if you’ll pardon the pun). This tab appears in both the Organizer and the Editor. If you click Create while in the Organizer, your new project starts with any selected photos; if you click Create in the Editor, the project begins with photos that are already open in the Editor.

You can print some of the Create projects yourself at home, such as CD and DVD labels; others are products that will be shipped to you from the company that prints them, such as photo books and calendars (see Figure 2.3). Still others are online galleries and slide shows; for the former, you need access to a website, but you don’t need any special equipment or services to produce your own slide shows. Of course, if all you want to do is order drugstore-style prints of your photos, you can do that, too. These, along with the special products such as photo books, are offered by Kodak, but you can order them from within Photoshop Elements.

Figure 2.3. Display your photos in style by creating professionally designed and printed photo books.

Having begun a project, you can modify it by adding or removing photos, rearranging photos on the pages, changing themes, adding text, and adding “extras” such as clip art or page transitions from the Content, Favorites, and Effects palettes.

Creating professional-looking projects with your photos is easy with Photoshop Elements, but simply sharing your photos with friends and family is even easier. In the Share tab (visible in both the Editor and the Organizer), you’ll find lots of ways to get your images in front of those who want to see them:

The Create options of Online Gallery and Order Prints are also available from the Share tab. Each Share task has step-by-step instructions just like the Create projects (see Figure 2.4).

Figure 2.4. You have a lot of options for sharing your photos, from plain prints to digital picture frames.

To start, the menu bar at the top of the Organizer’s window has six menus: File, Edit, Find, View, Window, and Help. You can do much of the work in Photoshop Elements by clicking buttons and dragging items around in palettes, but some of the more complicated functions take place in dialog boxes summoned by menu commands, such as printing and settings preferences. (For more on this topic, turn to “Setting Preferences,” later in this hour.)

The first thing you see in the menu bar, at its left end, is a button that takes you to the Photoshop Elements Welcome screen at any time. If you ever get lost between the Editor and the Organizer or forget what mode you need to do what you have in mind, click this button—you’ll start fresh with a clear view of your options (see Figure 2.5).

Figure 2.5. The Welcome screen is a good central location to head if you get lost.

After the Welcome screen button, you’ll see the following menus:

At the right side of the menu bar are a few other useful items, including the Undo button, which allows you to quickly remove the effects of any edit you decide you don’t like, and the Redo button, which enables you to undo your Undos. A Display menu enables you to set the way your photos are displayed in the Photo Browser (the Organizer’s main workspace). An Editor menu also lets you jump directly to Full Edit, Quick Fix, or Guided Edit mode in the Editor.

Now let’s go back to our exploration of the Organizer. Moving down from the menu bar, the next thing you’ll see is the toolbar, which contains buttons for a few functions you’ll need to access frequently (see Figure 2.6). Here’s a list:

Figure 2.6. The most common functions in the Organizer, such as rotating thumbnails, can be performed using the toolbar.

Here’s where stuff really happens in the Organizer, because this is where the photos live. The main work area, called the Photo Browser, takes up most of the screen and displays all the photos in your catalog, along with the projects you’ve created with them (see Figure 2.7). You can set the size of the thumbnail images in the toolbar and check the Details box to show or hide image data. You can also assign your own star ratings and keyword tags (such as Kids or Holidays or Vacation) to images in the Photo Browser; if you do so, your ratings and tags become part of the Details information you can display.

Figure 2.7. Zoom out to see all your photos in the Photo Browser; zoom in to see just a few.

To select a photo to work on, just click it, or click and drag to select several photos next to each other. If you want to select multiple photos that aren’t next to each other, Ctrl+click each one.

After you select your images, you can organize them by modifying their data, assigning ratings and tags, and grouping them into albums and stacks. If you’re ready to work with the images, you can choose a Fix, Create, or Share option from the Task pane. (We’ll talk about this area shortly.) First, let’s look at the organizational magic of Photoshop Elements.

The point of being organized is to be able to find what you want, when you want it, with no digging or guessing required. That’s the function of the Photo Browser’s Find bar, where you can restrict the photos shown in the Photo Browser to ones that match your search criteria: star rating, keyword tags, or visual similarity. To get started, drag a keyword (to search for other images with that tag) or a photo (to search for similar images) to the Find bar at the top of the Photo Browser window. Click a star in the Find bar to find pictures that have at least that many stars, that many stars or fewer, or exactly that number of stars, depending on your choice from the pop-up menu next to the stars.

For all this to work, however, you have to assign keyword tags and star ratings. The latter provide a good way to mark the photos you think are really something special, the ones you’d consider sending in to a calendar contest or using on your holiday cards. Creating and assigning keyword tags is only a bit more complicated.

The Keyword Tags palette is located in the Task pane on the right side of your screen. If you don’t see it, click the disclosure triangle next to Keyword Tags to open it (see Figure 2.8). You’ll see a list of keyword categories (People, Places, Events, and Other) and subcategories (Family and Friends). The next step is to customize these by adding your own keyword tags within these categories, and perhaps even your own categories. We talk about how to do that in Hour 5, “Organizing Your Photos.”

Figure 2.8. The more you use the Keyword Tags palette, the better organized your photos will be.

The area on the right side of the screen below the Organize, Fix, Create, and Share tabs is called the Task pane. Its contents vary depending on which tab you select. When you click Create or Share, the Task pane lists the projects you can do in each of those categories, such as Online Gallery, Photo Collage, or Order Prints. If you click the Fix tab, the Task pane lists several autofixes and each of the three edit modes: Full Edit, Quick Fix, and Guided Edit. At the bottom of the tab, you’ll see a More Options pop-up menu that contains rarely used options for each of these three tabs, such as Edit with External Editor in the Fix tab.

In Organize mode, the Task pane shows the Albums, Keyword Tags, and Quick Share palettes (see Figure 2.9). We’ve already looked at the Keyword Tags palette, so let’s examine the other two now.

Figure 2.9. Most of the time, you’ll want these three palettes visible in the Organizer. If you need more space for photos, you can drag the left side of the Task pane to the right to hide the palettes.

At the bottom of the Task pane is the Quick Share palette. This is a handy place to store information about people to whom you frequently have photos shipped. When the Quick Share palette contains the right names, you can order photos to be mailed to them with just a few clicks, starting by dragging the selected photos from the Photo Browser onto the recipient’s name in the palette.

The Albums palette can contain collections of photos called albums. For example, you might create an album of the pictures from your grandma’s birthday. This makes it easy to find those photos when you want to work with them or just look at them. You can also create smart albums that update their contents automatically based on the criteria you set. You’ll set up a couple of albums in Hour 5.

This bar at the bottom of the window displays the number of selected photos or projects and the total number of items in the Browser view, as currently filtered. You’ll also see the date range that those items encompass. If you agreed during program setup to receive messages about new services you can access via Photoshop Elements, this is where you’ll find them. A mailbox icon displays a red flag when you have new messages to read.

When you first glance at the menu bar in the Editor, you’ll see most of the familiar menus from the Organizer. But don’t get too complacent; they have some different commands when you’re working in the Editor. Here’s a rundown of the Editor’s menus:

You’ll encounter the commands in these menus throughout the book, so don’t feel that you need to memorize or understand them all at this point.

Instead of a toolbar, the Editor has the Options bar. Its primary function is to control settings for the tools you’ll use when working in the Editor. Its buttons and menus change depending on the active tool. For example, when you’re using one of the Type tools, the Options bar contains font, size, style, and alignment controls, among others. If you switch to the Eyedropper tool (with which you can “pick up” a color from anywhere in an image), the only thing you’ll see on the Options bar is a pop-up menu that determines the size of the area the Eyedropper samples to choose the new color (see Figure 2.11).

Figure 2.11. The Options bar is vital to using the Text tool and less so to using the Eyedropper tool.

Here’s something you won’t see in the Organizer: The toolbox contains all the tools of the digital artist’s trade, from the paintbrush to various tools that enable you to work on only a specified part of an image. The toolbox is roughly divided into sections of similar tools (see Figure 2.12).

Figure 2.12. Horizontal bars in the toolbox group together related tools.

Some toolbox buttons are marked with a tiny triangle in the lower-right corner; these function as pop-up menus holding yet more tools. Behind the Lasso tool, for instance, are the Magnetic Lasso tool and the Polygonal Lasso tool. To switch to a visible tool, just click its toolbox button; if you want to switch to a hidden tool, right-click the button where it’s hiding and choose your tool from the pop-up menu.

You’ll learn how to use all the Photoshop Elements tools as you work through this book. For now, let’s take a quick look at each tool group, just so you have a sense of what’s available to you.

Navigation and Measuring Tools

These tools enable you to move around your image so that you can view all of it at once or concentrate on just the tiny details. Click and drag with the Hand tool to slide the image around within its window, and click with the Zoom tool to increase your viewing percentage. Alt+click with the Zoom tool to decrease the viewing percentage—in other words, make the image smaller within its window. Or click and drag to zoom in on the selected area (see Figure 12.13).

Figure 2.13. Zooming in on the selected area in the left photo gives you the close-up view on the right.

The Move tool is for dragging parts of the image to a new location; it works on objects located on layers, or active selections. (You’ll learn more about making selections in the next section.) Finally, you can click with the Eyedropper tool to “pick up” the color at the location of your click and make it the Foreground color, which is applied to shapes and type that you create.

Selection Tools

When you paint things in the real world, you mask off stuff you don’t want to paint, right? That’s the principle behind Photoshop Elements selections. Using these tools, you can mask off everything in an image that you don’t want to modify, and then you paint, adjust, and apply all kinds of filters without worrying about your edits “spilling over” into other parts of the image. And believe me, making selections is a lot easier—and more effective—than messing around with masking tape.

The simplest way to create a selection is to choose either the Rectangular Marquee tool or the Elliptical Marquee tool, and then click and drag in your photo to select a rectangular or elliptical (surprise!) area. Press Shift as you drag to make your selection square or circular. When you release the mouse button, the selection is created; now you can click and drag it to a new location, if you want.

If you prefer to freehand your selections, switch to the Lasso tool. Just click in the image and drag the mouse to draw a selection around the area you want to edit. The Lasso tool is backed up by the hidden Magnetic Lasso and Polygonal Lasso tools, which offer variations on its function. The Magnetic Lasso tool detects object edges within your image and tries to “stick” to them as you draw your selection. The Polygonal Lasso tool enables you to draw a selection by clicking at the corners; Photoshop Elements fills in straight lines between your clicks to form the selection.

Now, here’s where that Photoshop Elements magic really starts to show up. If you click in an image with the Magic Wand tool, everything that touches the place you clicked and is a similar color gets added to your selection (see Figure 2.14).

Figure 2.14. A single click in the middle of the field selects the whole thing. Now you’re ready to make it purple (or not).

The two remaining selection tools are the Quick Selection Brush tool and the Selection Brush tool. With the latter, you “paint” over the area you want to select. The Quick Selection Brush tool, on the other hand, is a combination of the Selection Brush and the Magic Wand. You can select an object by painting quickly over it—there’s no need to worry about precision because Photoshop Elements analyzes the parts of the image under your cursor and uses its magic to select all the matching adjacent area (see Figure 2.15).

Figure 2.15. Using the Quick Selection Brush to paint squiggles over the bleachers results in the selection of the entire stadium, minus the sky and field.

Type Tools

With the Horizontal and Vertical Type tools, you create type—big surprise there, hmm? The Type Mask tools are a bit different; you use them to create type-shaped selections that you can then use in a number of ways. As with the Horizontal Type tool, the Horizontal Type Mask tool creates type selections that run from left to right. The Vertical Type Mask tool creates vertical type selections. One of the many fun things you can do with the Type Mask tools is fill type with a photo (see Figure 2.16).

Figure 2.16. I used the Type Mask tool to create a selection in the shape of the word Evergreen; then I cut that shape out of my picture to produce evergreen-filled type.

Crop Tools

The Crop tool enables you to trim an image to its best advantage. Using it, you can crop out peripheral objects that distract from the photo’s subject, and you can change the image’s proportions.

Similarly, the Cookie Cutter tool enables you to delete all of a photo that falls outside the bounds you set, but there are two huge differences. First, the Cookie Cutter tool comes in a variety of shapes other than rectangular; an Options bar menu enables you to choose the one you want. Second, instead of cutting off the sides of the image, it simply erases the image outside the cookie cutter area (see Figure 2.17).

Figure 2.17. Clicking the check mark deletes everything outside the tree shape, without changing the size of the image.

The final Crop tool is actually the Straighten tool, which you can use to straighten crooked photos.

Painting and Drawing Tools

It’s time for your inner artist to shine using tools that simulate several different traditional artist’s tools. The Brush is a paintbrush, with a selection of narrow and wide, soft and hard brush tips. The Pencil draws a hard, fine line. For special effects, try the Impressionist Brush, which adds soft, blurry Impressionist brushstrokes to an existing image (see Figure 2.18); or the Color Replacement Brush, which enables you to paint a blue sky pink without messing up the white clouds.

Figure 2.18. I went to town with the Impressionist Brush on the right window.

The Paint Bucket and Gradient tools work best in conjunction with selections; select the area you want to color, choose a Foreground color, and click the Paint Bucket in the selected area to fill the selection with color. Or, click and drag in the selected area with the Gradient tool to fill the selection with multiple colors shading into each other. You can control the colors used for gradients via menus on the Options bar, and you can save your favorite settings for future use.

As with the empty file you just created, each image or project has its own window that sits in the same area occupied by the Photo Browser in the Organizer. Click and drag a window’s title bar to move it out of the way, or drag a window into the Image Bin at the bottom of your screen to hide it until you’re ready to work with it.

Found in the same location as the Organizer’s Task pane, at the right edge of the screen, the Palette Bin is a handy place to store things such as the Effects palette and the Color Swatches palette. You can drag any palette into or out of the Palette Bin, and you can hide the bin by clicking the Palette Bin button at the bottom of the bin. Especially if you use Full Edit mode much, you’ll find this innovation a vital way to regain the screen area that palettes tend to gobble up as they proliferate.

Unlike the status bar in the Organizer, the Editor’s status bar appears at the bottom of each image window currently displayed in the Editor’s work area and provides information about just that image. You’ll always see the current magnification level—how large or small the image is onscreen in relation to its actual size—and you can choose what other information you want to see by clicking the triangle next to the zoom level. Here are your choices:

Most of the time, I leave my status bar set to display either Document Sizes or Document Dimensions. Settings such as Timing are interesting, but they’re not particularly useful most of the time.

At the bottom of the screen, where you’d find the status bar in the Organizer, you’ll see the Project Bin, where you’ll see a thumbnail of each image currently open in the Editor. You can switch from one image to another by clicking thumbnails in the Project Bin. If you begin a Create project from the Editor that allows multiple images, such as a photo book, you can choose from the photos in the Image Bin.

The first thing you’re likely to notice when switching from Full Edit mode to Quick Fix mode is that most of the tools go away. In Quick Fix mode (see Figure 2.20), you have access to only the Zoom, Hand, Quick Selection Brush, Crop, and Red Eye Removal tools. If you switch to Guided Edit mode, you’re left with only the Zoom and Hand tools. However, remember that Guided Edit mode presents you with the tools you need over in the Task pane, so you don’t need to look for them in the toolbox. For the most part, Options bar settings are the same throughout each editing mode.

Figure 2.20. Quick Fix mode doesn’t offer you much in the way of tools because you don’t need them to make quick fixes.

The second big change you’ll notice when moving from Full Edit mode to Quick Fix or Guided Edit mode (see Figure 2.21) is that the palettes in the Palette Bin disappear, replaced by Quick Fixes or Guided Edit topics. Finally, you’ll notice that Quick Fix mode includes controls above the Image Bin for your preview; you can see a “before” version of each photo, an “after” version, or both.

Figure 2.21. In Guided Edit mode, the tools and dialog boxes you need appear in the Task pane so you don’t need to search the toolbox and menus for them.