Adobe Photoshop Elements Basic Photo Editing and Printing Guide;
A mini-tutorial by Judy Howle

This is just to get you started to edit, print and save a photo. There are other tutorials online (see below) that contain in-depth information on how to use all the tools, palettes, redeye removal, etc. But this will get you up and running with your photos in no time.

1. Go to File > Open to open your photo. Or use the File Browser, a nice new feature. It's a good idea to save your photo now under another name or folder to protect it in case you might accidentally save over it. You can click Save As and save it in native PS format .psd. Next, if your photo needs to be rotated, go to Image > Rotate and do it. If it needs cropping, click on the crop tool on the tool palette, the funny looking thing 3rd from top. Drag it where you want to crop. Then you can grab it at a little box on side or corner and can drag the box up, down, rotate it and drag from a corner till it looks like you want it to and drag the whole crop to reposition. Then hit Enter to crop.

Elements 2.0 Tool Bar with Crop Tool selected

Note: you can crop a photo to a specific size which is handy for printing by putting in sizes in the width and height boxes top left. The crop box will be the correct size. You can also enter a resolution if desired. To get rid of this settling later, click on the crop image at the top left and click on Reset.

2. Next, click on Enhance > Brightness/contrast > Levels. Then slide the silders at each end toward the center where the main part of the histogram starts. If the histogram is spread out to each end other than a thin line, it may not need any action but normally they do on one end or the other. You can see it change as you slide the little triangles. The middle slider affects the midtones. When it looks good, click OK. (You can try auto levels but it rarely works for me.)

3. Then if the color needs tweaking, click on Enhance > Color and use Hue/saturation but under normal circumstances, do not leave it on "Master" but click on each individual color that needs to be corrected in the drop down menu and saturate/desaturate or use the other parameters, hue and lightness, to adjust to your liking and then click OK. If the photo has a color cast use Cast under Enhance to remove it by clicking on something that should be white and possibly black and gray. If it doesn't look right, start over. (Edit> Undo) (Multi stage Undo under History - Window> Show History.) There are other features under Enhance that you might need like fill flash. (You can try auto color, it sometimes works well.)

4. Sharpening like a Pro:
Go to Filter > Sharpen > Unsharp Mask. Have the Threshold set at 3 to 4, the Radius set at .5 to1 (pixel) for most photos, and the amount you can play with. Generally from 50 to 150 depending on the size you have the photo set at and the original sharpness. Remember that it will not look as oversharp printed as on the screen. However if it looks way too sharp when you click OK, go to Edit > Undo and then redo it. Remember!! Always use Unsharp Mask AFTER reducing or enlarging the photo, not before! It's generally the last thing you do before printing or saving the image.

5. Printing from Elements:
Go to Image > Resize > Image size. When the dialog box comes up, UNCHECK resample image. Then set your size such as 7" wide 5 high or 6 x 4 or 8 x 10. You only have to set one dimension and the other will set itself accordingly. Click OK. Go to File > Print and then click on Setup, then on Properties. This is where you pick your paper and if you want it landscape or portrait, at least that's how it is with my Epson printer. Under Main is where you pick paper such as heavyweight matte or Photo quality inkjet paper, glossy etc. Under Paper you pick the size of the paper, and the orientation. That's about it. Then click OK on each OK box until it starts printing.

This is what the dialog box looks like:

6. Resizing photos for the web:
Images normally need to be made smaller and reduced in file size to e-mail or for general viewing. Open the photo, do all the editing above, BUT when you go to Image >Resize > Image size, you have the resample image checked and you ignore the lower part where you set the print dimensions and use the top part. Click on the down triangle and make sure it says Pixels in both boxes. For e-mailing, a good size is 640 wide unless it's portrait orientation, then use about 480. If you want to send it bigger that's OK but I usually limit it to 800 pixels wide just for casual viewing. Click OK. Then go to File >Save for the Web. Make sure that jpg appears in the top box under settings. It might say gif as default. Then for quality, I use medium which is 30 out of 100. Do not check progressive! Or any other thing. Then you will see the original on the left and the optimized one on the right. If it looks OK, click OK. Then give it a name AND MAKE SURE you don't save it over the original and look at the top box as to WHERE you are saving it to. You might need to make a folder on the hard drive first to save them in if you don't have one already. Click Save. Then you go to your e-mail program such as Outlook Express click on attach and browse your way to the pic file and double click to attach it to your e-mail.

Hint: when I create a folder for each batch of photos I download from the camera, I make a folder inside that folder called "edited" and put all the edited photos in it. Simplifies things enormously! And when I save an image for printing I name it thusly: redrose_print.jpg, and if I name one for emailing or the website, I might name it redrose_640.jpg to indicate the image size and file size reduction. That way,you won't have to try to decide which image was saved to print from, etc.

Elements Tutorials explains all the tools, palettes, and more, very good
Remove Red Eye Tutorial

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