Photoshop Elements for the Digital Photographer

Ever wondered how professional photographers can make the colors in some images look out of this world? In this lesson, you'll find out how they do it! You'll work with color adjustments in your images, including hue and saturation. You'll then create black-and-white images from color images using Elements's Black and White Conversion feature and pick individual colors to replace with others. You'll also learn how to make quick changes with these tools and discover a tool that can help adjust skin tones quickly.

Light is the essence of photography, but it's not always cooperative. This lesson will discuss ways to enhance and even create better lighting after you've taken an image. You'll see how to use Brightness and Contrast to improve your images, and learn some techniques for adjusting shadows and highlights. You'll also have a chance to work with the histogram, Levels, and Color Curves—all excellent tools for correcting lighting and color tones. Through all this, you'll see how Elements keeps track of your changes and lets you go back through them if you want to undo something.

In this lesson, you'll take a look at how Organizer works to keep track of your images. You'll see how to sort your pictures, add tags, and collect them in albums for use in projects like scrapbook pages and greeting cards.

In your creative projects, you'll often want to pair photos with text. Photoshop Elements gives you plenty of text tools, and in this lesson, you'll explore those and add text to your images. You'll see how Photoshop Elements uses layers with text, and you'll get tips on how to master the Layers panel. You'll also begin your study of the powerful selection tools, including the color-based Magic Wand tool and the flexible Lasso tool. With these, you'll discover the power of Feathering selections and copying selections within an image.

As you continue your study of selection tools, you'll learn how to create a silhouette image using the Quick Selection tool. You'll also practice using any of the selection tools in a reverse mode for tricky selections. You'll see how the Marquee tools let you select perfect squares and circles for use in framing and highlighting your images and how the new Text on Selection tool works with any shape! You'll also work more with Feathering and see the difference it makes, especially when you want to create a soft, blended background in your image. Finally, the lesson will go over how to add colors with the Gradient tool.

In the last lesson on the selection tools, you'll work with the Selection Brush tool for detailed and exacting work when you need it most. You'll also learn some advanced techniques for using the selection tools together. You'll work extensively with the Add to selection option and preview your work with Mask Mode. You'll have a chance to experiment with some of Photoshop Elements's filters and color options, as well as the settings in the Magnetic Lasso tool. As a final addition to your knowledge in this area, you'll have a chance to explore and work with the Select menu.

As the class draws to a close, you'll find many new tools to put to work and still more to learn. The lesson will discuss the Retouching and Correcting tools, and you'll perfect your skills with the Red Eye Removal tool (including the new Pet Eye option), the Clone Stamp tool, and both the powerful Healing Brushes and the Content-Aware Healing option. You'll learn when to use each tool for the best results. The power of Photoshop Elements will come to life as you use these tools in your final assignments.