Before we get started, let’s get a few things out on the table. First, Guided Edit won’t do it all; Adobe has only included a few Guided Edit tasks that encompass the most commonly performed photo-editing tasks. If you want to be guided through the steps for adding type to a picture, for example, you’re out of luck. Second, before you can use Guided Edit, you need to know what you want to do so that you can choose the correct Guided Edit task. If you’re not sure what the difference is between lightening or darkening an image and adjusting its brightness and contrast, Guided Edit can’t help you figure that out.

All the tasks in Guided Edit are ones you can do yourself using the tools and commands in Full Edit mode, but Guided Edit presents them to you with explanatory text that makes them as simple to use as Quick Fixes. As you work, you can use a pop-up menu in the Task pane to choose among four view modes: Before Only, After Only, Before & After—Horizontal, and Before & After—Vertical. I prefer to use one of the Before & After modes, depending on the orientation of the picture, but if you want to display the picture as large as possible, you can choose After Only.

When you’re done with each Guided Edit task, you need to click the Done button or, in some cases, the Next button to move to the next step. You can click Cancel, next to the Done or Next buttons, at any time if you change your mind about completing the edit you’re working on; if you change your mind too late to click Cancel, you can click the Undo button in the menu bar instead.

The category of Basic Photo Edits in the Guided Edit tab includes three tasks. Let’s take a look at each of them.

When you click Crop Photo, Photoshop Elements switches to the Crop tool and draws a cropping marquee in the picture for you (see Figure 15.1). All you have to do is resize the marquee to suit your needs. A pop-up menu in the Task pane gives you the same choices that the Aspect Ratio menu offers in the Options bar in Full Edit mode: No Restriction, Use Photo Ratio, and several common photo print sizes.

Figure 15.1. The Crop tool works the same way in Guided Edit as it does in Full Edit.

The Rotate and/or Straighten Photo Guided Edit task uses the 90° Left and 90° Right commands found in the Image, Rotate submenu, offering you buttons to click for each 90° rotation (see Figure 15.2). This task also puts the Straighten tool in the Task pane so that you don’t have to go looking for it in the toolbox; it then gives you the same choices that you’ll find on the Options bar when you use the Straighten tool in Full Edit mode: Maintain Image Size or Maintain Canvas Size.

Figure 15.2. It’s difficult to straighten a picture like this one, but you can undo and redo as many times as you need to.

Finally, to use the Sharpen Photo Guided Edit task, you drag the slider in the Task pane (see Figure 15.3). This has the same effect as using Adjust Sharpness in the Enhance menu, but the slider is placed right in the Task pane so you don’t have to go looking for it.

Figure 15.3. With the streamlined Guided Edit interface, you can really focus on just the picture you’re working on.

The Lighting and Exposure category has two Guided Edit tasks: Lighten or Darken and Brightness and Contrast. Choose Lighten or Darken if the picture is overall too dark or too light; choose Brightness and Contrast if the picture looks muddy or flat.

When you use the Lighten or Darken Guided Edit task, you have two choices: You can click Auto to have Photoshop Elements adjust the photo to its liking, or you can use the three sliders to make your own adjustments. The Lighten Shadows and Darken Highlights sliders range from 0 to 100, and Midtone Contrast can be set anywhere between –100 and +100 (see Figure 15.4).

Figure 15.4. The Lighten or Darken controls are the same as the ones in the Shadows/Highlights dialog.

You also have the option of clicking Auto when using the Brightness and Contrast Guided Edit task if you want Photoshop Elements to adjust the picture for you, or you can drag the Brightness and Contrast sliders. You can adjust Brightness as low as –150 and as high as +150, but Contrast ranges between –50 and +100 (see Figure 15.5). These are the same sliders found in the Brightness/Contrast dialog (choose Enhance, Adjust Lighting, Brightness/Contrast). One useful difference between this Guided Edit activity and the regular Brightness/Contrast dialog is that the Contrast slider, which starts out set at 0, is located one-third of the way from the left end of its bar instead of in the middle, which gives you a more accurate idea of how much you can reduce or increase contrast.

Figure 15.5. Guided Edits don’t need to be done in any particular order; when I’m done brightening this picture, I’ll go back and straighten it.

Oddly, the Color Correction category of Guided Edit tasks doesn’t really include a general-purpose color fixing method. You can choose to make the colors more intense, to remove a color cast, or to adjust the colors to flatter skin tones.

When you click the Enhance Colors Guided Edit task, you’re presented with the sliders from the Hue/Saturation dialog box (see Figure 15.6). The Hue/Saturation dialog box is the same one you saw when you chose Enhance, Adjust Color, Adjust Hue/Saturation in the last hour. Of course, in Guided Edit you also have an Auto button, which functions like the Auto Color Correction command in the Enhance menu. To adjust the colors yourself, you can drag the Hue, Saturation, and Lightness sliders, with Hue settings ranging from –180° to +180°, and Saturation and Lightness falling between –100 and +100.

Figure 15.6. The only difference between the Enhance Color Guided Edit task and the Hue/Saturation dialog is that, in Guided Edit mode, you can’t restrict your changes to a particular range of colors.

Removing a color cast is a simple one-step operation using the Guided Edit task, just as it is when you choose Enhance, Adjust Color, Remove Color Cast. The hardest part of this task is choosing a color-neutral location to click in the picture, but you can keep clicking different locations until you’re satisfied. In Guided Edit mode, you can also use the Zoom and Hand tools from the toolbox to move around the image while you’re looking for just the right spot (see Figure 15.7).

Figure 15.7. I clicked the pitcher’s mound to fix a color cast in this picture.

The Correct Skin Tone Guided Edit task is like using the Adjust Color for Skin Tone command (choose Enhance, Adjust Colors, Adjust Color for Skin Tone). The Skin Tone Eyedropper tool is automatically activated, and all you have to do is locate a piece of skin on which to click. You have the same sliders: Tan, Blush, and Ambient Light, with no numbers—all your adjustments are done by eye here, with no regard to exact color values. Again, you can use the Zoom and Hand tools to move around the picture as you work (see Figure 15.8).

Figure 15.8. Clicking the baby’s knee warms up this picture considerably.

Guided Edit includes a couple multistep tasks called Guided Activities. The first of these, Touch Up Scratches, Blemishes or Tear Marks, gives you step-by-step instructions for using the Spot Healing Brush and the Healing Brush. With each tool, you first adjust your brush size to taste and then click or click and drag in the picture to erase flaws (see Figure 15.9). Of course, when you’re using the Healing Brush, you also need to click to set the point from which the brush picks up the pixels that it deposits as it paints.

Figure 15.9. Although the Healing Brush and Spot Healing Brush work the same way in Guided Edit as in Full Edit, I prefer to use them in Full Edit mode so I can switch to other tools, such as the Clone Stamp and the Lasso, as needed.

The second Guided Activity is more complex. Using the Guide for Editing a Photo, you’re walked through cropping your picture, lightening or darkening it, touching up any flaws in it, and sharpening it. Each of these subtasks looks and works just like the Guided Edit task of the same name. The most important point to take away from this task is that you should always adjust the lighting in your pictures before you retouch them, and you should always wait to sharpen until you’re done retouching.

The last two Guided Edit tasks are labeled Photomerge. These two tasks, Group Shot and Faces, use Photoshop Elements’ blending techniques in a new way to enable you to swap people in and out of group shots or features in and out of a head shot to achieve the best overall results (or, in some cases, the funniest overall results). We’ll look at how to use these two techniques in Hour 18, “Removing and Replacing Objects.”

Guided Edit mode doesn’t give you any extra features over Quick Fix and Full Edit modes, but the explanatory text and stripped-down interface make it easy to complete tasks without becoming confused or distracted. Using these tasks is a good way to get used to working in Photoshop Elements with a little hand-holding before you venture out on your own.

We haven’t had much to go over in this hour, so I’m giving you the rest of the hour off—after you complete the quiz, of course—to try out the Guided Edit tasks on your own photos. Some ideas are listed in the Activities section, but feel free to experiment.