CLASSROOM IN A BOOK® The official training workbook from Adobe Systems
Adobe® Photoshop® Elements 12 Classroom in a Book® © 2014 Adobe Systems Incorporated and its licensors. All rights reserved. If this guide is distributed with software that includes an end user agreement, this guide, as well as the software described in it, is furnished under license and may be used or copied only in accordance with the terms of such license.
CONTENTS GETTING STARTED 1 About Classroom in a Book. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Prerequisites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Installing Adobe Photoshop Elements 12. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Accessing the Classroom in a Book files. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Creating a work folder . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
2 IMPORTING AND SORTING PHOTOS 28 Getting started. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 Getting photos. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 Importing attached keyword tags. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 Automatically fixing red eyes during import. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 Searching for photos to import. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Access your photos anywhere with Mobile Albums . . . . . . . . . 80 Filtering and finding photos. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82 Finding people, places, and events. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82 Locating files in the folder list. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89 Using the Timeline to refine a search . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90 Finding photos by searching for keywords. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Working with red eye. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141 Brightening a smile. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 143 Making selections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144 Why won’t Photoshop Elements do what I tell it to do?. . . . . 150 Replacing the color of a pictured object. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152 About printing color pictures. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
COMBINING IMAGES 212 Getting started. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214 Combining images automatically . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214 Creating a composite group shot. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 220 Removing unwelcome intruders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 224 Blending differently exposed photos. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 228 Using layers to combine photographs. . .
GETTING STARTED Adobe® Photoshop® Elements 12 delivers image-editing tools that balance power and versatility with ease of use. Whether you’re a home user or hobbyist, a professional photographer or a business user, Photoshop Elements 12 makes it easy to produce good-looking pictures, share your stories in sophisticated creations for both print and web, and manage and safeguard your precious photos.
Prerequisites Before you begin the lessons in this book, make sure that you and your computer are ready by following the tips and instructions on the next few pages. Requirements on your computer You’ll need about 900 MB of free space on your hard disk—around 400 MB for the lesson files and up to 550 MB for the work files that you’ll create as you work through the exercises.
Downloading the Lesson files 1 Point your web browser to www.peachpit.com/redeem, and enter the code found at the back of this book. If you don’t yet have a Peachpit.com account, follow the prompts to create one. 2 Click the Lesson & Update Files tab on your Account page to see a list of downloadable files. Click the links to download either the entire Lessons folder or the work folders for individual lessons to your computer.
About catalog files Photoshop Elements stores information about your images in a library catalog file, which enables you to conveniently manage the photos on your computer. The catalog file is a central concept in understanding how Photoshop Elements works. Photoshop Elements doesn’t actually “import” your images at all; for each image you import Photoshop Elements simply creates a new entry in the catalog that is linked to the source file, wherever it is stored.
Additional resources Adobe Photoshop Elements 12 Classroom in a Book is not intended to replace the documentation that comes with the program or to be a comprehensive reference for every feature. Only the commands and options used in the lessons are explained in this book. For comprehensive information about program features and tutorials, please refer to these resources: Adobe Photoshop Elements 12 Help and Support Point your browser to http://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop-elements.
4 IMAGE EDITING BASICS Lesson overview Photoshop Elements offers a comprehensive suite of easy-to-use tools and a choice of three editing modes, so it’s easy to achieve impressive results, whatever your experience level. Guided edit mode helps novices to learn as they work, Quick edit presents an array of one-touch controls for correcting common image problems, and Expert mode delivers all the power and sophistication experienced users expect.
Explore the many powerful and versatile editing tools that make it easy to get more from your photos in Photoshop Elements—even if you’re a beginner. Start with a few of the easy-to-use, one-step image correction features, and then experiment with some more advanced techniques, such as layering preset adjustments with the Smart Brush.
Note: Before you start this lesson, make sure that you’ve set up a folder for your lesson files and downloaded the Lesson 4 folder from your Account page at www.peachpit.com, as detailed in “Accessing the Classroom in a Book files” in the chapter “Getting Started” at the beginning of this book. You should also have created a new work catalog (see “Creating a catalog for working with this book” in Lesson 1). Getting started You’ll start by importing the sample images for this lesson to your CIB Catalog.
4 In the Confirm Deletion From Catalog dialog box, click to activate the option Also Delete Selected Item(s) From The Hard Disk; then, click OK. You’ll work more with this photo later in the lesson. Editing in Full Screen mode In the Organizer’s Full Screen mode, you’ll find the same Instant Fix buttons in the Quick Edit panel, enabling you to make substantial improvements to an image with just a click or two and assess the results at a conveniently high zoom level. 1 In the Media Browser, select DSC_0006.
Recognizing what your photo needs For some photos, applying one-click fixes in the Organizer will be enough, but when you want more control—and access to the full power of Photoshop Elements editing, adjustment and correction tools—you’ll work in the Editor. Before you explore the Editor’s three working modes, we’ll look at some of the basic concepts behind image adjustment and correction.
1 If you don’t see the Photo Bin at the bottom of the Editor workspace, click the Photo Bin button ( ) in the Task bar. 2 Watch the curve in the Histogram panel as you double-click each of the thumbnails in the Photo Bin in turn to bring that image to the front in the Edit pane. This histogram is heavily weighted towards the left and deficient in the midtones and highlights; the image is overly dark and lacks tonal depth and definition in the girl’s face.
E Tip: If you can’t find the My CIB Work folder, refer to “Creating a work folder” in the Getting Started chapter at the beginning of this book. 4 Bring the image DSC_0006.jpg to the front and choose File > Save As. Name the new file DSC_0006_AutoSmart.jpg, to be saved to the My CIB Work folder and included in the Organizer, but not in a Version Set. Click Save; then, click OK to accept the JPEG quality setting and close the file. Repeat the process for the image DSCN0532.
3 In the Levels dialog box, click Reset and we’ll try another method for adjusting the shadows. Hold down the Alt / Option key as you drag the shadows slider to the right to set a value of 70: just inside the left-hand end of the tonal curve. The clipping preview shows you where the darkest parts of the image are. 4 Watch the histogram as you release first the Alt / Option key, and then the mouse button. The histogram curve shifts to the left—possibly a little too much.
6 In the Levels controls, drag the midtone slider (the gray triangle below the center of the graph) to the right to set the midtone value to 0.8. 7 In the Histogram panel, click the yellow alert icon to refresh the display. E Tip: Your edits have caused some gaps and spikes in the histogram curve. Where possible, avoid adjustments that create large gaps; even if the image still looks good on screen, gaps indicate a loss of image data that may be apparent as color banding when printed.
Assessing a photo’s color balance Artificial light, unusual shooting conditions, and incorrect camera settings can all result in unwelcome color casts in an image. Unless your camera is properly set up to compensate for current weather conditions, photos shot on an overcast day may have a flat, bluish cast due to a deficiency in the warmer colors, while the “golden” light of late-afternoon sunshine can produce an overly warm appearance. Fluorescent lighting is notorious for producing a dull, greenish tint.
Working with the Temperature and Tint settings If you’re new to color correction, the preview thumbnails provide a useful visual reference for understanding what’s behind an unwanted color cast. Before we take a closer look at the issue in the Expert edit mode, you can correct this photo using the Balance controls and save the results for comparison to other techniques. 1 In the Temperature pane, click the preview to the left of the central thumbnail. 2 Switch to the Tint pane.
Adjusting the white balance A color cast has the appearance of a tinted transparency overlaid on all the colors in your photograph. For example, the blue-green tint commonly associated with fluorescent lighting will be visible even on objects that should appear white, and even white paper photographed under tungsten lighting will have a yellow-red cast, as can be clearly seen in our lesson image.
Making easy color and lighting adjustments In this section, we’ll begin our exploration of the Editor, taking a closer look at the tools and techniques that will enable you to get the best from your photos. Now that you’ve soaked up a little theory, you’ll find it easier to understand the processes, whether you’re using one-click fixes, or making detailed selective edits.
1 Switch to the Organizer by clicking the Organizer button ( ) in the Task bar; then, click the Import button at the upper left of the Organizer workspace and choose From Files And Folders from the drop-down menu. 2 In the Get Photos And Videos From Files And Folders dialog box, locate and open your My CIB Work folder. Ctrl-click / Command-click or marquee-select all the files with the suffix “_AutoFix.” Disable any automatic processing option that is currently active; then, click Get Media.
2 Expand the Levels pane, and then click both Auto Levels and Auto Contrast, noting the effects of the adjustments in the After view. 3 Expand the Color pane and click the Auto button. Smart Fix: Auto + Levels and Contrast: Auto + Color: Auto + Exposure: 0.7 4 Choose File > Save As. In the Save As dialog box, type DSC_2474_QuickFix as the name of the new file, to be saved to your My CIB Work folder in JPEG format and included in the Organizer but not as part of a Version Set. Click Save.
Adding quick effects, textures and frames New in Quick edit mode from Photoshop Elements 12, the Effects, Textures, and Frames panels present a range of one-click choices that make it easy to add a creative touch to your photos. You can access these three new panels by choosing from the buttons at the right of the Task bar.
Working with Auto Smart Tone Note: The Enhance > Auto Smart Tone command is available in both Quick and Expert modes in the Editor. From Photoshop Elements 12, the Auto Smart Tone feature provides a new, highly intuitive way to make the most of your photos with just a few clicks. Even if you begin with no clear idea of what adjustments an image needs, the Auto Smart Tone dialog box provides visual clues and simple controls that make the process easy.
3 Toggle the Before / After switch at the lower left of the dialog box to see the photo with and without the pre-applied automatic adjustment. 4 Click the upper-right preview—the closest to a technically balanced solution; the joystick control moves to the limit of its range in that direction. Click and hold the control; a reference grid appears. Drag the control downwards by two grid divisions to increase saturation, and one square left to deepen the shadows.
Adjusting images in Guided Edit mode Note: As you try more advanced tasks in Photoshop Elements, you may find that you need more information to solve any problems you encounter. For help with some common problems you might have while working through the lessons in this book, see the section “Why won’t Photoshop Elements do what I tell it to do?” in Lesson 5. If you’re a newcomer to digital image editing, the Guided Edit mode is a great place to start.
4 Scroll down in the Guided Edits panel, expanding the Touchups, Photo Effects, and Photo Play categories, if necessary, to see the all of the procedures and projects for which the Guided edit mode offers step-by-step assistance. In the Touchups category, you’ll find a comprehensive menu of all the most common image correction tasks, some of which involve several separate operations.
2 In the Enhance Colors pane, drag the Hue slider to the left to set a value of -33. All the colors in the image are shifted along the spectrum: the red bottle becomes purple, the blue-green glass is warmed to yellow-green, the orange bottle turns red, and the violet-blue reflections in the clear glass are shifted to cyan. 3 Set the Saturation value to 40, and the Lightness to 10. Click Done at the bottom of the Guided Edits panel.
More guided solutions Let’s try a few more of the guided touchups on a different image. 1 In the Organizer, select the image DSC_0347.jpg; then, click the Editor button. Fluorescent back-lighting behind the translucent surface on which the bottles are standing has caused a combination of problems in this photo.
Selective editing with the Smart Brush E Tip: For images with a subject that is back-lit, like our lesson photo, overall adjustments will never suit both the shaded subject and the brightly lit background. In such cases, using the Smart Brush to adjust differently lit areas in the image separately is the perfect solution.
Two new layers have been created for the adjustments; each displays a colored icon representing the gradient used for the Blue Skies effect and a black and white thumbnail representing the layer mask through which the adjustment has been applied. Colored markers—Smart Brush adjustment pins—mark the points in the photo where you started dragging with the Smart Brush for each adjustment.
Tweaking Smart Brush adjustments Each Smart Brush adjustment has its own set of controls that let you customize the effect—even in a later editing session, as long you’ve saved the file with its layers. Note: You can use the Smart Brush on the same area in an image as many times as you wish. If you re-apply the same preset, the effects are usually cumulative; if you apply more than one effect to the same image area, their effects are combined.
Working with camera raw images Raw images are high-quality image files that record the maximum amount of image data possible, in a relatively small file size. Though larger than compressed formats such as JPEG, raw images contains more data than TIFF files and use less space. Many common file formats involve in-camera processing of the incoming image data that can effectively degrade the quality of the image.
Getting to know the Camera Raw window E Tip: Click the Detail tab to access controls for sharpening image detail and reducing the grainy digital artefacts known as noise. On the right side of the Camera Raw window is a control panel headed by three tabs: Basic, Detail, and Camera Calibration. For this set of exercises you’ll work with the Basic tab—the default—which presents controls for making adjustments that are not possible with the standard editing tools in Photoshop Elements.
Adjusting the white balance The white balance presets can help you to rectify a color cast caused by lighting conditions. You could correct the white balance of a photo shot on an overcast day, for example, by choosing the Cloudy preset. Other presets compensate for artificial lighting. The As Shot preset uses the settings recorded by your camera, while the Auto setting recalculates the white balance based on an analysis of the image data.
5 Zoom out by choosing Fit In View from the Zoom Level menu in the lower left corner of the preview window. Note: Depending on where you clicked to set the white balance, you may see different values from those illustrated. The White Balance is now set to Custom and the image has become cooler. The weathered wood in the background is a more neutral gray and the skin tones are rosier. The eyes also look clearer, having lost the original yellow-orange cast.
At the left, the skin tones produced by the White Balance tool still look a little too orange. On the right, the skin tones look more natural once the Temperature and Tint values have been reduced manually. Using the tone controls on a raw image Below the White Balance sliders on the Basic tab are sliders for improving a photo’s tonal range and presence, or image definition. Exposure adjusts the overall lightness or darkness of an image.
First you’ll adjust the overall exposure and contrast; then, set the white and black points to avoid clipping at the ends of the histogram before tweaking the highlights and shadows to bring out as much image detail as you can. 1 Press the letter O on your keyboard to activate the white clipping warning; then, keep an eye on the histogram as you drag the Exposure slider slowly all the way to the right. The red areas that appear in the preview warn you which parts of the image are being clipped to white.
5 Press U on your keyboard to activate the black clipping warning, and then play with the Blacks slider. Set the Blacks to -10—the point below which the blue clipping warning appears in the darkest areas of the image. 6 Move the Highlights slider all the way to the right. Although the effect on the image is quite extreme, there is no clipping now that you’ve set the white point. Watch the textural detail reappear in the sunlit wood as you reduce the Highlights setting to -50.
Saving the image in the DNG format Each camera manufacturer has its own proprietary raw format, and not every raw file can be read or edited by software other than that provided with the camera. There is also the possibility that manufacturers might not support every format indefinitely.
Review questions 1 What are the key differences between adjusting images in Expert mode, Quick edit mode and Guided edit mode? 2 Can you apply automatic fixes when you are in Expert mode? 3 What is the purpose of the Photo Bin? 4 What is the Smart Brush tool? 5 What do the terms temperature and tint refer to in image editing? Review answers 1 Expert mode provides the most flexible and powerful image correction environment, with lighting and color correction commands and tools for fixing image defects, maki
INDEX A actions bar, 12 Add Layer Mask button, 210, 262 Add Media dialog box, 283 Adjust Color For Skin Tone dialog box, 140 adjust lighting, 176 adjustment layers, 167, 179 applying to a limited area, 168 Adobe Photo Downloader advanced options, 38 Adobe Photoshop Elements Installing, 2 Adobe Photoshop Lightroom new features, 1 Adobe Revel, 80 sharing on, 289 Adobe TV, 5 Advanced Search, 92–93 albums, 75 adding photos to, 76 in People, Places and Events views, 77 Artwork library, 242 Auto Color, 110 Auto C
about, 4 backing up, 293 creating, 9 reconnecting missing files, 19 Catalog Manager dialog box, 9 Clarity, 127 Clarity slider, 129 Clean Edges dialog box, 216 clipping, 105, 105–106, 127 clipping warning, 128–129 Clone Stamp tool, 196 color balance, assessing, 107 color cast removing, 126, 134–140 Color Cast Eyedropper tool, 140 color correction, 134 automatic, 136 correcting skin tones, 139 color management, 157 Allow Me To Choose setting, 158 Always Optimize For Computer Screens setting, 158 Always Optimi
Expert edit mode, 21 exporting, 292 photobooks, 261 export preview, 293 exposure adjusting for RAW images, 127 adjusting in Guided Edit, 164 adjusting in Quick Edit, 163 adjusting using blend modes, 165 correcting using adjustment layers, 167 problems, 160 F Facebook importing contacts, 50 sharing to, 289 faded image, fixing, 174 fading, 175 Favorites panel, 23, 244 Fill Page With First Photo option, 279 Filter Gallery, 207–209 finding duplicates, 95 finding files by object search, 95 by visual similarity,
International Color Consortium (ICC), 158 iPhoto, importing from, 36 J JPEG format, 293 K keyword tags about, 65 creating and applying, 68 finding faces, 43 importing, 32 organizing, 66 L layer masks, 170, 210, 234, 262 layers arranging, 233 copying, 166 locking, 151 masking, 217 Layers button, 257 Layers panel, 170 Layers Panel Options dialog box, 170 layer styles, 254 Layout button, menu, 23 Layouts panel, 247 lessons files copying from CD, 3 levels, 104 adjusting, 177 Levels dialog box, 104, 167 Light
P Pages panel, 246 re-ordering pages, 256 Panel Bin, 23 customizing, 25 panorama, 214 paragraph alignment options, 188 People Recognition about, 43 setting up, 43 People view, 51 tagging, 52 working with groups, 53 Pet Eye option, 142 Photo Bin, 22 photo books, 245 adding graphics, 257 changing image order, 247 exporting, 261 Photo Book setup dialog box, 246 photo downloader Advanced dialog box, 38 Standard dialog box, 37 Photo Effects guided edits, 22, 117 Photo Fix Options panel, 100 Photo Mail, 287 Photo
Red Eye Removal tool, 141 Pet Eye mode, 142 reducing file size, 286 Refine Edge dialog box, 169 renaming files, 110 Replace Color dialog box, 152 replacing color, 152 resolution, 282 Revel collaborating on a shared library, 291 Private Web Album, 290 setting up, 80 sharing to, 289 uploading photos to, 81 RGB, 158 Rule Of Thirds crop overlay, 185 S sampled source, 197 saturation, 127 Saturation slider, 118 Save For Web dialog box, 292 Scene Cleaner tool, 224 Screen, 166 Search button, 35 searching files by
Temperature adjusting, 108, 126 text centering, 188, 266, 270 creating type mask, 269 setting up, 258 style presets, 267 Text On Custom Path tool, 268 Text On Selection tool, 265 Text On Shape tool, 266 textures, adding in Quick edit, 113 Texturizer filter, 209 Threshold control Recompose tool, 190 Timeline using to refine a search, 90 Tint adjusting, 108, 126 tonal balance, 102, 162 tone controls, 127 Tool Options button, 23 Tool Options pane, 23 Touchups guided edits, 22, 117, 119 transparent, 234 Twitter
Production Notes The Adobe Photoshop Elements 12 Classroom in a Book was created electronically using Adobe InDesign CS5. Art was produced using Adobe InDesign, Adobe Illustrator, and Adobe Photoshop. Team credits The following individuals contributed to the development of this edition of the Adobe Photoshop Elements 12 Classroom in a Book: Project coordinators, technical writers: John Evans & Katrin Straub Production: Manneken Pis Productions (www.manneken.
