Versions 3.0 heralded a completely new approach to editing photos within Photoshop Elements. Whereas in previous editions all actions were centered upon the tools and features in the Full Edit workspace, the recent versions of the program provide the digital photographer with several different levels of editing.

The options can be grouped around three different approaches to the task:

• Automatic,

• Semi-automatic and

• Manual.

Automatic Editing

The simplest tools are almost always fully automatic with the user having little control over the final results. These are the Types of color, Contrast and Brightness controls that are available in the Photo Browser either via the menu selections – Edit > Auto Smart Fix and Auto Red Eye Fix – or from the pop-up menu that is displayed when you right-click a thumbnail image in the workspace. These options provide a great place to start if you are new to digital photography and want good results quickly and easily, but experienced users will find the lack of control frustrating.

5.01 Auto Smart Fix

Suitable for Elements – 5.0, 4.0, 3.0 | Difficulty level – Basic Related techniques – 5.02, 5.03

The Auto Smart Fix feature enhances both the lighting and color in your picture automatically. The command is used to balance the picture hues and improve the overall shadow and highlight detail. Most images are changed drastically using this tool. In some cases the changes can be too extreme. If this occurs, the effect should be reversed using the Edit > Undo command and the more controllable version of the tool – Adjust Smart Fix – used instead. Adjust Smart Fix is located in the Editor workspace.

5.02 Adjust Smart Fix

Suitable for Elements – 5.0, 4.0, 3.0 | Difficulty level – Basic Related techniques – 5.01, 5.03

The Adjust Smart Fix (Editor: Enhance > Adjust Smart Fix) version of the Auto Smart Fix feature provides the same control over color, shadow and highlight detail but with the addition of a slider control that determines the strength of the enhancement changes. Moving the slider from left to right will gradually increase the amount of correction applied to your picture. This approach provides much more control over the enhancement process and is a preferable way to work with all but the most general photos.

The Auto button, also located in the dialog, automatically applies a fix amount of 100% and provides a similar result to selecting Enhance > Auto Smart Fix.

5.03 Auto Red Eye Fix

Suitable for Elements – 5.0, 4.0 | Difficulty level – Basic Related techniques – 5.01, 5.03

One of the possible side effects of using the inbuilt flash on your compact digital camera is the appearance of red eyes in the subject. Elements has always had great options for correcting this problem and the current release is no different containing a specific Red Eye Removal tool. All new for Elements 5.0 is the ability to automatically detect the presence of red eye in a photo and then correct the problem. The feature cleverly checks out the metadata attached to the photo to see if flash was used to record the image before searching for the problem eyes and automatically correcting the red hue.

Automating Editing of Several Pictures at Once

It’s true that shooting digital has meant that many photographers have saved the time that they used to spend in the darkroom processing their images. The flip side to this coin is that now we while away the hours in on-screen production instead. Surely with all the power of the modern computer and flexibility of Elements there must be quicker ways to process files. Well yes there is!

5.04 Processing Multiple Files

Suitable for Elements – 5.0, 4.0, 3.0 | Difficulty level – Basic Related techniques – 5.05, 5.06

Photoshop Elements users are able to automate a variety of editing functions with the Process Multiple Files feature located in the File menu of the Full Edit workspace. The feature is like a dedicated batch processing tool that can name, size, enhance, label and save in a specific file format a group of photos stored in a folder or selected via the file browser. The dialog’s options include:

Source – Files to be processed can be stored in a single folder, the files currently open in the workspace, pictures in the Photo Bin or images multi-selected in the file browser.

Destination – Sets the location where processed files will be saved.

File naming – Options for naming or renaming of selected files including a range of preset naming styles.

Image Size – Specify size and resolution changes after choosing the unit of measure to work with from the drop-down menu. Proportions can be constrained.

File type – Select the file format that processed files will be saved or converted to.

Quick Fix enhancement – Use the options here to apply automatic enhancement of the files being processed.

Add Labels – Add caption or file name labels to each of the processed files. Also contains an option for watermarking the pictures.

After setting the options for each of the sections in the dialog press the OK button to process the pictures.

5.05 Multi-Selection Editing

Suitable for Elements – 5.0, 4.0, 3.0 | Difficulty level – Basic | Related techniques – 5.04, 5.06

Another method of applying automatic changes to several photos at once is to multi-select photos in the Photo Browser workspace then choose an editing option from the right-click pop-up menu. There are a multitude of options available in this menu with the Rotate, Auto Smart Fix and Auto Red Eye Fix features providing quick editing changes to the selected photos. For best results always apply critical edits and enhancements manually but this technique is particularly useful if you want to process a bunch of files quickly. The added bonus is that the edited versions of the pictures are not saved over the original file but rather they are kept in a Version Set so that it is always possible to extract the original file if need be.

5.06 Bulk Red Eye Fixing

Suitable for Elements – 5.0, 4.0 | Difficulty level – Basic Related techniques – 5.04, 5.05

As well as being able to apply the Auto Red Eye Fix feature to individual photos this correction option is also available in the File > Get Photos and Adobe Photo Downloader dialogs. So now it is possible to download pictures from your camera, or import them from a folder, and at the same time be searching the images for red eye and correcting it when it is present. This is a great time saver if you regularly photograph with on-camera flash but as always for the absolute best results apply the Red Eye Fix yourself manually.

Semi-Automatic Editing

The second level of features sits in the middle ground between total user control and total program control over the editing results. The tools in this group are primarily available in the Quick Fix editor but also encompass some of the more automatic or easy-to-use controls available in the Full Edit workspace. Move to these tools once you feel more confident with the digital photography process as a whole (downloading, making some changes, saving and then printing) and find yourself wanting to do more with your pictures. Again, for the advanced user the tools listed here will provide a degree of frustration as the amount of control over the results is still limited.

5.07 Using the Quick Fix Editor

Suitable for Elements – 5.0, 4.0, 3.0 | Difficulty level – Basic Related techniques – 5.08, 5.09

The Quick Fix Editor contains a reduced tool, feature set designed to facilitate the fast application of the most frequent of all enhancement activities undertaken by the digital photographer.

The Zoom, Hand, Crop and Red Eye Removal tools and the Magic Selection Brush and Selection Brush are located in a small toolbar to the left of the screen and are available for standard image editing changes; the fixed Palette Bin, to the right, contains the necessary features to alter and correct the lighting, color and sharpness of your pictures. Rotate buttons are located at the bottom of the dialog.

One of the best aspects of the Elements 5.0 version of this editing option is the fact that the user can choose to apply each image change automatically, via the Auto button, or manually using the supplied sliders. This approach provides both convenience and speed when needed, with the option of a manual override for those difficult editing tasks.

The adjustment features are arranged in a fashion that provides a model enhancement workflow to follow – simply move from the top to the bottom of the tools starting with smart fixing and red eye correction, working through lighting and color alterations and, lastly, applying sharpening.

There is no doubt that for making speedy adjustments of your favorite images with the option of some override control, the Quick Fix editor is a great place to start. And the best thing of all is you can see the before and after results of your changes on screen via the zoomable preview windows.

5.08 Semi-Auto Full Edit Features

Suitable for Elements – 5.0, 4.0, 3.0, 2.0, 1.0 Difficulty level – Basic | Related techniques – 5.07, 5.09

Slightly different versions of the many options found in the Quick Fix Editor workspace are also available in the Full Edit as menu selections in the Enhance menu.

Unlike the Auto Smart Fix option which enhances several different image characteristics in the one action, features like Auto Levels, Auto Contrast, Auto Sharpen, Auto Red Eye Fix and Auto Color Correction generally concentrate on adjusting just one aspect of the photo, providing more specific and controllable changes to your photo.

Auto Contrast is designed to correct images that are either too contrasty (black and white) or too flat (dull and lifeless). Unlike the Auto Levels feature, Auto Contrast ensures that the brightest and darkest pixels in the picture (irrespective of their colors) are converted to pure white and black. In doing so all the tones in between are expanded or contracted to fit.

Auto Color Correct concentrates on correcting the color in the mid tones of the picture and adjusting the contrast by reassigning the brightest and darkest pixels to white and black.

Auto Levels is similar to Auto Contrast in that it maps the brightest and darkest parts of the image to white and black but differs in that each individual color channel is treated separately.

In the process of mapping the tones (adjusting the contrast) in the red, green and blue channels, dominant color casts can be neutralized.

Sometimes such automatic fixes do not produce the results that you expect. In these scenarios use the Undo (Edit > Undo) command to reverse the changes and try one of the manual correction tools detailed in the next section.

Manual Editing

The final group of tools includes those designed to give the user professional control over their editing and enhancement tasks. Many of the features detailed here are very similar to, and in some cases exactly the same as, those found in the Photoshop program itself. These tools provide the best quality changes available with Elements, but they do require a greater level of understanding and knowledge to use effectively.

The extra editing and enhancement power of these tools comes at a cost of the user bearing all responsibility for the end results. Whereas the automatic nature of many of the features found in the other two groups means that bad results are rare, misusing or over-applying the tools found here can actually make your picture worse. This shouldn’t stop you from venturing into these waters, but it does mean that it is a good idea to apply these tools cautiously rather than with a heavy hand. In fact once most users develop a good level of understanding and skill with the manual tools and features in the Full Edit workspace they seldom return to using automatic enhancement options, preferring to remain in complete control over the pixels in their pictures.

5.09 The Full Edit Workspace

Suitable for Elements – 5.0, 4.0, 3.0, 2.0, 1.0 Difficulty level – Basic Related techniques – 5.07

The Full Edit contains the features and tools used for the most sophisticated of the three different editing pathways provided in Elements 5.0. The groups of tools included in this workspace are designed to give the user professional control over all their editing and enhancement tasks.

As well as providing manual versions of all the automatic enhancement options that we have looked at so far, the Editor workspace also includes tools that enable the user to isolate where and how the editing changes are applied to photos. For this reason most advanced techniques detailed in the ensuing chapters of this book make use of the extensive tool and feature set provided in this Editor workspace.

Manual pathway choices >> Photoshop Elements provides manual alternatives for all its automatic and semi-automatic editing options. This table summarizes the specific manual features that can be used as alternatives.