Adobe® Photoshop® Elements 9 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 9 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.
If you’ve used an earlier version of Photoshop Elements, you’ll find that this Classroom in a Book® will teach you advanced skills and provide an introduction to the many new and improved features in this version. If you’re new to Adobe Photoshop Elements, you’ll learn the fundamental concepts and techniques that will help you master the application.
Adobe Photoshop Elements 9 Classroom in a Book is part of the official training series for Adobe graphics and publishing software developed with the support of Adobe product experts. Each lesson in this book is made up of a series of self-paced projects that will give you hands-on experience using Photoshop Elements 9.
The Adobe Photoshop Elements 9 Classroom in a Book includes a CD attached to the inside back cover. On the CD you’ll find all the image files used for the lessons in this book, together with additional learning resources.
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.
You’ll need about 750 MB of free space on your hard disk—around 200 MB for the lesson files and up to 550 MB for the work files that you’ll create as you work through the exercises.
The lessons in this book assume that you have a working knowledge of your computer and its operating system. Make sure that you know how to use the mouse and the standard menus and commands, and also how to open, save, and close files. Can you scroll (vertically and horizontally) within a window to see content that may not be visible in the displayed area? Do you know how to use context menus, which open when you right-click (Windows) / Control-click (Mac OS) items? If you need to review these basic and generic computer skills, see the documentation included with your Microsoft® Windows® or Apple® Mac® OS X software.
You must purchase the Adobe Photoshop Elements 9 software separately and install it on a computer running Windows Vista®, Windows® XP, Windows® 7, or Mac® OS X. For system requirements and complete instructions on installing the software, see the Photoshop Elements 9 Read Me file on the application disc and the accompanying documentation.
The CD attached to the inside back cover of this book includes a Lessons folder containing all the digital files you’ll need for the lessons. As you work through the exercises, learning to organize and manage these files is an essential part of many of the projects in this book. Keep the lesson files on your computer until you have completed all the exercises.
Note
The files on the CD are practice files, provided for your personal use in these lessons. You are not authorized to use these files commercially, or to publish or distribute them in any form without written permission from Adobe Systems, Inc. and the individual photographers who took the pictures, or other copyright holders.
Create a new folder named PSE9CIB inside the username/My Documents (Windows) or username/Documents (Mac OS) folder on your computer.
Insert the Adobe Photoshop Elements 9 Classroom in a Book CD into your CD-ROM drive. For Windows users: if a message appears asking what you want Windows to do, choose Open Folder To View Files Using Windows Explorer, and then click OK. If no message appears, open My Computer and double-click the CD icon to open it.
Locate the Lessons folder on the CD and copy it to the PSE9CIB folder you’ve just created on your computer.
When your computer has finished copying the Lessons folder, remove the CD from your CD-ROM drive and put it away.
Now you need to create a folder for the work files that you’ll produce as you work through the lessons in this book.
In Windows Explorer (Windows) / the Finder (Mac OS) open the Lessons folder that you copied to your new PSE9CIB folder on your hard disk.
Choose File > New > Folder (Windows) / File > New Folder (Mac OS). A new folder is created inside the Lessons folder. Type My CIB Work as the name for the new folder.
Note
In this book, the forward arrow character (>) is used to denote submenus and commands found in the menu bar at the top of the workspace or in context and options menus; for example, Menu > Submenu > Command. The forward slash character (/) is used to separate equivalent keyboard shortcuts and commands for Windows / Mac OS, in the order shown here.
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. Whenever you assign a tag or a rating to a photo, or group images as an album, the catalog file is updated. All the work you put into organizing your growing photo library is recorded in the catalog.
As well as digital photographs, a catalog can include video and audio files, scans, PDF documents, and any presentations and layouts you might create in Photoshop Elements, such as slide shows, photo collages, and CD jacket designs.
The first time you launch Photoshop Elements it automatically creates a default catalog file (named My Catalog) on your hard disk. Although a single catalog can efficiently handle thousands of files, you can also establish separate catalogs for different purposes if that’s the way you prefer to work.
For each of the first three lessons in this book—which deal with importing, organizing, sorting, and searching images—you’ll create and load a new, dedicated catalog into which you’ll import the lesson sample images. In this way, any mistakes you make will be easy to rectify; if you lose track—or simply wish to repeat the exercises—you can clear the catalog and start again without affecting the lessons to follow.
In Lesson 4—once you’ve worked through the lessons on organizing and have become familiar with the workspace—you’ll create one more catalog that you can work with for the rest of the book.
Adobe Photoshop Elements 9 Classroom in a Book is not meant to replace the documentation that comes with the program, nor 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 and tutorials about program features, please refer to these resources:
Adobe Community Help. Community Help brings together active Adobe product users, Adobe product team members, authors, and experts to give you the most useful, relevant, and up-to-date information about Adobe products. Whether you’re looking for a code sample or an answer to a problem, have a question about the software, or want to share a useful tip or recipe, you’ll benefit from Community Help. Search results will show you not only content from Adobe, but also from the community. With Adobe Community Help you can:
Access up-to-date definitive reference content online and offline
Find the most relevant content contributed by experts from the Adobe community, on and off Adobe.com
Comment on, rate, and contribute to content in the Adobe community
Download Help content directly to your desktop for offline use
Find related content with dynamic search and navigation tools
To access Community Help. The Community Help application downloads when you first install Photoshop Elements 9. To invoke Help, press F1 or choose Help > Elements Organizer Help in the Organizer, or Help > Photoshop Elements Help in the Editor. This companion application lets you search and browse Adobe and community content, and to comment on and rate any article just as you would in the browser.
You can also download Adobe Help and language reference content for use offline, and subscribe to new content updates (which can be downloaded automatically) so that you’ll always have the most up-to-date content for your Adobe product. You can download the application from www.adobe.com/support/chc/index.html
Adobe content is updated based on community feedback and contributions. You can contribute in several ways: you can add comments to both content and forums—including links to web content, or publish your own content using Community Publishing. You’ll find more information about how to contribute at www.adobe.com/community/publishing/download.html
See http://community.adobe.com/help/profile/faq.html for answers to frequently asked questions about Community Help.
Adobe Photoshop Elements 9 Help and Support. Point your browser to www.adobe.com/support/photoshopelements/ where you can find and browse Help and Support content on adobe.com.
Adobe TV. http://tv.adobe.com is an online video resource for expert instruction and inspiration about Adobe products, including a How To channel to get you started with your product.
Resources for educators. www.adobe.com/education includes three free curriculums that use an integrated approach to teaching Adobe software and can be used to prepare for the Adobe Certified Associate exams.
Also check out these useful links:
Adobe Forums. http://forums.adobe.com lets you tap into peer-to-peer discussions, and questions and answers on Adobe products.
Adobe Marketplace & Exchange. www.adobe.com/cfusion/exchange is a central resource for finding tools, services, extensions, code samples, and more to supplement and extend your Adobe products.
Adobe Photoshop Elements 9 product home page. http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshopel/
Adobe Labs. http://labs.adobe.com gives you access to early builds of cutting-edge technology, as well as forums where you can interact with both the Adobe development teams building that technology and other like-minded members of the community.