Photoshop Elements 3.0

[scubahiro]

Hi,

I just recently purchased PShop Elements 3.0. I have looked around this board and elsewhere for tutorials to try to get up and running, but I am having a difficult job navigating. What I need is an easy step by step for dummies, even the one posted here is too complex. Could someone help me out and point me in a direction to start fixing these photos? Or, is there a book I might buy? I have played around with the autofix, and that is about the only thing I can get to really make a difference.

A little step by step help, pretty please :dazzler1:

Scubahiro

 

[aquamann]

Try www.dpreview.com in the forums section under pc tools. I'm sure you'll find plenty of help there.

 

[Charlie99]

A little step by step help, pretty please :dazzler1:

Scott Kelby has some great books on Photoshop Elements. His book doesn't address underwater photos, but his step by step procedures will teach you a lot about the various tools in PE3, which you can then adapt for your needs.

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Here's a few hints on getting using something beside Autofix.

1. LAYERS are a crucial element of Photoshop. Open up the layer pallette bin (little icon on lower right), drag your background layer up to the left hand little icon to duplicate it. Then play around with the menu box for blending mode and opacity. Or, using menus, do "Layers | Duplicate." (first the Layers menu, then Duplicate on than menu.)

2. " Enhance | Adjust Color | Remove Color Cast " will open up a dialog box and change the tool to an eyedropper. Find a spot that is supposed to be black, grey, or white and click on that. This is useful to get rid of that blue or cyan color cast of underwater photos.

If you do this color cast correction to your duplicate layer (step 1 above), you can easily go back to the original and do it over.

3. "Enhance | Adjust Lighting | Shadows/Highlights" is a tool that has been added in version 3.0. Great for bringing stuff up out of the shadows.

4. "Enhance | Adjust Lighting | Levels" will let you adjust individual color channels. But this type of adjustment affects the active layer permanently. A better way to do the same adjustment is to go to the Layers Palette and click on the 2nd from left icon, "create adjustment layer". This puts the levels adjustment into a separate layer than you can modify at will.

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Hope this helps.

Charllie

 

[kevreid]

Hi,

I just recently purchased PShop Elements 3.0. I have looked around this board and elsewhere for tutorials to try to get up and running, but I am having a difficult job navigating. What I need is an easy step by step for dummies, even the one posted here is too complex. Could someone help me out and point me in a direction to start fixing these photos? Or, is there a book I might buy? I have played around with the autofix, and that is about the only thing I can get to really make a difference.

A little step by step help, pretty please :dazzler1:

Scubahiro

Just caught your post today, have you made any progress? I have PE3. I'm a novice but have managed to make some progress that might help you get started. Let me know if you have it under control or still looking to get started.

 

[Dee]

This is a link to Adobe's Elements tutorial page.... http://www.photoshopelementsuser.com/tutorials/

Hope this helps.

 

[PapaBob]

Scubahiro: You are right about my article if that is what your were referring to. It assumes basic knowledge and was written with PSCS in mind. Besides there were no screenshots in the article (hadn't figured out to plug them in when I wrote it) and it is real hard to learn this stuff without visual aids.

I recently bot PSE3 to help a family member learn how to use it. If you want, post a sample picture and I will try to help you walk through some basic adjustments. It would be a useful learning exercise for me too. If you try it on your own and run into a snag, then post your problem. Kevreid will kibitz and add his own comments.

Charlie has some good ideas. Play around with his suggestions, see what you come up with, and post any questions you then have. Work with the automatic adjustments first to see what they do. Then move to levels. Work on a duplicate layer as Charlie suggests so you can trash it and start over if things dont work out. There are some advanced layer techniques you can try once you get the hang of the basic tools.

There is a learning curve for this software and no universal one click adjustments that work all the time. If you come to enjoy playing with it, you will do fine.

---Bob

 

[scubahiro]

Hi,

Sorry for the delayed response. But, I hope it is not too late to take you up on posting a picture and a step by step. I have tried to attach a picture to this email and would appreciate any help you can offer. But, it says the picture is too large--it says 200 max. Any thoughts as to how I might post?

Cheers,

Scubahiro

Scubahiro: You are right about my article if that is what your were referring to. It assumes basic knowledge and was written with PSCS in mind. Besides there were no screenshots in the article (hadn't figured out to plug them in when I wrote it) and it is real hard to learn this stuff without visual aids.

I recently bot PSE3 to help a family member learn how to use it. If you want, post a sample picture and I will try to help you walk through some basic adjustments. It would be a useful learning exercise for me too. If you try it on your own and run into a snag, then post your problem. Kevreid will kibitz and add his own comments.

Charlie has some good ideas. Play around with his suggestions, see what you come up with, and post any questions you then have. Work with the automatic adjustments first to see what they do. Then move to levels. Work on a duplicate layer as Charlie suggests so you can trash it and start over if things dont work out. There are some advanced layer techniques you can try once you get the hang of the basic tools.

There is a learning curve for this software and no universal one click adjustments that work all the time. If you come to enjoy playing with it, you will do fine.

---Bob

 

[justleesa]

Hi,

Sorry for the delayed response. But, I hope it is not too late to take you up on posting a picture and a step by step. I have tried to attach a picture to this email and would appreciate any help you can offer. But, it says the picture is too large--it says 200 max. Any thoughts as to how I might post?

Cheers,

Scubahiro

Try this site. Janee is great and the others are helpful too.

 

[Kim]

One little tip. If you are using the AutoFix command - don't. A bit further down is the Adjust AutoFix command. If you use that then you can control how much AutoFix is applied. I have often found that a picture looks (to me!) much better at slightly less than the full amount - typically 70-80%

 

[Charlie99]

I have often found that a picture looks (to me!) much better at slightly less than the full amount - typically 70-80%

I find this true with just about every correction

I do wrinkle removal with clone and healing tools, but then it makes the person look too young. So I crank back in some of the original.

I color correct and it looks fine, until I come back a few minutes later. Then I decide to back off the correction a bit by lowering the layer opacity a bit to mix back in some of the original.

So it goes with my corrections until I finally do the final sharpening. And then decide to back it off a bit.