Photoshop Elements

Read "How to Install Photoshop":

Answered by Kiwinige:

1. Close ALL Programs
2. Navigate to your Adobe Photoshop CD or folder
3. Click the Setup.exe application icon
4. The setup wizard can be slow, but this should work. Beware of having any open programs while doing this, because they will most likely cause a memory conflict.

Adobe Photoshop is a top-notch photo editing program used by professional photographers around the world. Unfortunately, it also comes with a high-end price. Adobe's answer to the cost factor was to come out with Adobe Elements, which offers a lot of the same features as Adobe Photoshop, but it sells for about one tenth the price.

Ease

Because Adobe Photoshop is made for the professional photographer, it is more detailed and therefore more complicated to use. There are more "auto" features in Elements so the user doesn't even need to know all the menus. You can choose to let the program automatically fix contrast, levels, redeye, sharpness, contrast and color. Or, simply choose "auto smartfix" and the software uses all possible options to present you with a better photo.

Features

The basics are the same in Adobe's Photoshop and their Elements Software. Both have an Organizer and can do editing--brightness, color, cropping, sizing. Photoshop and Elements each offer menus to allow for adjusting focus and things like redeye. The difference is that there are many more detailed features in Photoshop in comparison with Elements software.

Requirements

Because Adobe Photoshop has many more features, it would make sense that it would take up a lot more room on your computer and requires more memory to work, but that is not the case. Photoshop Elements 7 running on Windows Vista requires a 2 GHZ or faster processor while Photoshop CS4 can run on a 1.8GHz. Elements also needs 1 MG of RAM to Photoshop's 512 minimum and needs more free hard drive space (1.5 GB to 1 GB) to run.

Time-Savers

Photoshop CS4 has added a number of "quick panels" to help speed up the way you work with photos. An adjustments panel can let you change color, tone and other choices with one menu. The mask panel saves time with creating and editing masks at the same time. Another feature, Content-Aware Scaling, allows for the re-sizing of photos while preserving changes that have been made proportionately. Photoshop elements requires doing most of these things individually, taking more time per photo.

Considerations

Adobe Photoshop is the choice for the professional photographer who is concerned with every detail of a photo to produce top quality. It is unnecessary for a beginner who won't even use most of the menu choices. Adobe Photoshop Elements has a lot of great tools and a reasonable price (under $100). It also has enough of these options that an amateur--or even a professional who does not need detail for high quality print wor --could get a lot of use out of.

Adobe Photoshop Elements is a leading consumer-level photo editing software that might be described as the "little brother" of Photoshop. It shares many of its older counterpart's features. The most notable missing tools are those that control professional-level output, such as the ability to save images in CMYK colors. Because only professionals need these tools, however, Elements is a good choice for most consumers.

Basics

Get started with Adobe Photoshop Elements with the Welcome window that first pops up when you start the program. This window gives you five options: Start From Scratch, Browse With Adobe Bridge, Import From Camera, Import From Scanner and Recent Images. Each of these allows you different options, but you also can go to File and then Open to get a digital image to work upon. Using Adobe Bridge, a standalone organizational tool that comes with Elements, will give you access to metadata and keyword controls. You can use each of these to help organize your images. For example, if you add the keyword Bob to all images of your uncle Bob, you can find them all later to make a photo album for him for his birthday.

Resizing

When you have an image open, the first thing to do is save a copy of it to work on. You don't want to alter the original digital image, because you may want to use it as a starting point for other projects later. So, with your digital image open, go to "File" and then "Save As," rename the image, and save it. Note that by saving your images as JPEG files, you will save hard drive space, but these are compressed files and some quality may be lost. TIFF is a better format in which to save your images for higher quality. Next, resize the image for what you need it for, whether a print or the Web. To do this, go to "Image," then "Resize" and then "Image Size." For the Web, change the Resolution to 72 dots per inch. For a print, make it at least 300 dpi.

Toning

There are a number of ways to set the tone and color for your digital images in Adobe Photoshop Elements. The first of these is the set of controls that make automatic adjustments. These are found under the "Enhance" menu and include such items as Auto Smart Fix, Auto Levels and Auto Color Correction. These will work for many images. If you need a bit more control, you can use Adjustment Layers. Select the "Edit" tab in the upper right. This will give you the Layers palette. There will be a small circle with black and white halves at the top. Click and hold this to add Adjustment Layers. The one that gives you the most control will be Levels. Use the eyedropper to the left, find the darkest area of the image and click. This balances the blacks or shadows. Use the eyedropper at right for whites. Or, use the sliders under the histogram -- bar graph -- in the center. When you are finished, go to "Layer" and then "Flatten Image" before printing and saving the final image.

Adobe Lightroom is a program that organizes and processes photos. Adobe Photoshop Elements is the simplified, consumer version of Photoshop, the well-known image editing program. Photoshop Elements is recommended for consumers that want something cheaper and with fewer editing options than Photoshop. Both Lightroom and Photoshop can be used separately to edit images.

Modules

Lightroom is setup so that users can go through a specific set of steps to organize and eventually print their images. It has 5 modules or modes. The Library Module is like a digital file cabinet where you first sort and save images. The Develop module is where you find image processing options like removing red-eye. The Slideshow module creates presentations. The Print module manages print settings. The Web module sets up photo galleries formatted for websites.

File Formats

Lightroom can handle a wider variety of formats including JPEG, TIFF, PSD, and PNG. Lightroom can edit and save RAW images. RAW, which is not an acronym, means all original settings are included in the image. The files are larger and you have more processing options. For example, you can white balance the image in the computer if you forgot to do it with the camera. Photoshop Elements doesn't process RAW images without automatically converting them to JPEG format. The JPEG format is much smaller and doesn't allow white balancing if you forgot to do it earlier.

Image Organization

Lightroom not only edits images, it acts as a database for them. It can save the original and edited images as separate catalog files in a folder. These have lrcat file extensions and are like filmstrips. This makes importing, organizing and finding photos faster. Photoshop Elements doesn't have a cataloging system, so users must keep track of original and edited images themselves.

Advanced Image Editing

Photoshop Elements offers advanced editing options like applying multiple filters to images and drawing with many different kinds of tools. Lightroom has much simpler offerings, which are also in Photoshop Elements, like contrast and brightness adjustments. It has no drawing tool options.

Web Images

Lightroom processes and uploads images intended for the web. The program can process photos and place them in galleries for a website. The gallery can be saved as a collection file so that the images can be transferred easily to an FTP site. You don't need to know HTML or Flash since there are templates within the progra

Adobe Photoshop Elements is a less complex version of Adobe Photoshop that is geared towards consumers instead of professionals. Photoshop Elements features an interface similar to Photoshop, as well as many of the same editing capabilities. Users can fully access the program's many features by taking online, interactive or instructional training for Adobe Photoshop Elements.

Adobe TV

Adobe provides an online video lesson website called Adobe TV. Adobe TV features "episodes" in each version of Adobe's available software, including Photoshop Elements. The Photoshop Elements page of Adobe TV features various episodes, including tutorials for making photo books or slide shows and sharing photos.

Software

Many companies, including Adobe and Marrutt, offer interactive training lessons and tutorials on DVDs. These classes can cover everything from the basic interface layout and tools to advanced editing and special effects.

One-On-One Classes

Many companies offer face-to-face training in Adobe Photoshop Elements, often with certified Adobe professionals. In-person lessons can be tailored to individual needs and projects, depending on the school and the trainer.

Adobe Systems' Digital School Collection software suite offers powerful options for classroom instruction and student involvement. You can engage students in projects designed to reinforce learning in subject areas from languages to math and history to science, all through a multidisciplinary exercise in creativity. From kindergarten through high school, Adobe software can help you tie graphics skills together with other subject matter and let your students show off what they have learned in front of classmates and for broader audiences in the community at large.

Adobe Photoshop Elements 9

You and your students can use Adobe Photoshop Elements 9 to create photomontages of significant figures in a history lesson, add pictures of the actors to the program for a school play, create a photo book that shows pictorial examples of vocabulary words or add visual reinforcement to almost any essential concept. Adobe Systems provides prototype lessons complete with guides and lesson plans. Use these examples as is, customize them for your class or use them as the inspiration for your own lesson materials.

Adobe Premiere Elements 9

Add movie-making magic to your lesson plans with Adobe Premiere Elements 9. Your students can create a time-lapse video showing germination of a seed or accumulation of snow through a window, write and stage a short movie featuring puppets as actors in a history lesson brought to life, dramatize part of a play or create their own video opinion essays expressing their reactions to a lesson in civics. If sample lessons don't give you an idea for your classroom, join the Adobe Education Exchange and share ideas with other teachers and administrators.

Adobe Soundbooth CS5

Podcasts add a new level of engagement to classroom projects and activities, especially as part of the Web presence for your class or school. Adobe Soundbooth CS5 can help your students create and edit everything from audio essays to music experiments and share them with other classes, family members and the community. Support foreign language instruction with student-generated tools, create oral histories featuring interesting stories from fellow students and faculty or edit recordings to share with a sister school in another country.

Adobe Contribute CS5

If you are considering adding Internet-based materials to existing lessons or expanding teaching materials to include Web-based resources, Adobe Contribute CS5 provides a simple, easy-to-use application for collaborative design and production of website materials. Your class can create galleries of student artwork, produce pages featuring the podcasts and movies you make or create link pages documenting research for a class project. This WYSIWYG editing software combines creation and review with the tools necessary to put your HTML-based pages on your website and manage your site as it grows.

Adobe Acrobat X

Reduce your school's carbon footprint by implementing digital forms for many classroom and online tasks. Adobe Acrobat X enables you to add interactivity to existing documents so you can repurpose current forms in digital format. Teachers and administrators alike will appreciate the ability to reduce their paper usage and save time by sharing information more readily and more completely. Streamlining paper-based tasks can free up budget resources to help enrich academic programs while boosting productivity.

The central processing unit is the part of the computer that carries out all of the calculations required by the computer. Each program running on the computer makes demands on the CPU while they run. It is important that the computer have a CPU that can run each program efficiently, even while the computer is under heavy load. CPU speeds are measured in gigahertz. A CPU of 2 gigahertz is capable of making 2 billion cycles per second, and this equates to millions of calculations.

Photoshop Elements 7

Photoshop Elements 7 allows users to touch up images as well as create unique digital artwork. Specifically, the software can be used for blemish and red-eye removal, photo restoration, digital enhancement and digital painting. The program offers a robust list of filters with which an entire image can be altered in only a few clicks. Similarly, identical layers can be set up and blending modes set for each. This allows the user to create very specific alterations.

Minimum System Requirements

Like all other computer applications, Photoshop Elements 7 has a list of minimum system requirements that must be met for the program to work effectively. Specifically, Photoshop Elements requires at least 1 GB of RAM, 1.5 GB of free hard drive space and Microsoft Direct X 9. To execute the calculations required to alter images in real time, the program also requires that the user have a CPU with a speed of 2 gigahertz or higher.

Importance of Processor

Sophisticated computer programs such as image editors typically require a larger than average amount of system memory and faster processors to run. This is because image editors actively alter the pixels of an image. This alteration occurs in real time, and requires calculations to be made in the CPU as well as in the computer's graphics card. In addition, actions such as switching blending modes in Photoshop Elements requires the computer to make complex calculations to apply changes to the entire image. The processor is responsible for executing these calculations. It must meet the minimum speed specified by the system requirements.

Potential Efficiency Problems

If the user attempts to run Photoshop Elements 7 with a processor that is slower than 2 gigahertz the result will likely be quite a bit of lag between the time that they issue a command and the time it is carried out. This is because the CPU must process the calculations required by Photoshop and the calculations required by the graphics card to update the image onscreen. This sort of lag can make altering an image take much longer than would otherwise be the case.

1. Open Adobe Photoshop. Open an existing image you can work with while learning how to change the colorization of an image.

2. Select the "Image" menu, the "Adjustments" submenu and then "Selective Color..." to bring up the "Selective Color" dialog box.

3. Choose a color from the "Colors" drop-down menu. The color you select here will be the color that will be changed in your image.

4. Use the "Cyan," "Magenta," "Yellow" and "Black" text boxes or sliders to increase or decrease the percentage of the colors found in your selected color. Moving the slider to the right will increase the percentages of the colors, and moving the slider to the left will decrease them.

5. Select the "Relative" method to change the existing amount of colors by the percentage of the total amount or select the "Absolute" method to adjust the colors in absolute values.

6. Click "OK" in your "Selective Color" dialog box to save the changes you made to the colorization of your image.

1. Start Adobe Photoshop. Open up an existing image file from your computer. Notice that in the Layers palette your image is set as a background layer. Change this into an actual layer to apply the color overlay to your picture.

2. Right-click on the Background layer in the Layers palette. Select "Layer From Background..."

3. Name the layer an appropriate name and keep all of the other options to their defaults. Your image is now a layer, and you can apply effects to it.

4. Select the "Layer" menu, then "Layer Style" and finally "Color Overlay."

5. Decrease the opacity of the color overlay by either using the slider or keying in a new percentage in the opacity box. As you decrease the opacity, you will be able to start seeing your image under the color overlay.

6. Choose a blend mode from the drop-down box to change the type of blend mode the color overlay is using.

7. Click on the color square by the blend mode drop-down box to change the color of the color overlay.

1. Start Adobe Photoshop and open up a picture from your files. Notice that in your Layers palette you have a layer named "Background." This is the picture that you have open.

2. Right-click on your Background layer in your Layers palette and select "Duplicate Layer..."

3. Rename your duplicate layer in the "Duplicate Layer" dialog box and click the "OK" button with your mouse. You now have two layers in your Layers palette.

4. Select the Move tool from the Photoshop toolbox. This is the button with the picture of a cursor and four-headed arrow.

5. Click your mouse somewhere on your picture, which is the duplicate layer you just created. Drag the picture towards one direction. As you drag your picture, you will see the original picture underneath this duplicated one.

6. Choose the "Edit" menu and then choose "Free Transform." The free transform option will allow you to change the shape and size of your duplicated picture.

7. Use the handles surrounding the duplicated picture to change the size and shape of the picture. You may find it necessary to use the Move tool again to get the duplicated picture to the place that you would like to have it.

1. Start Adobe Photoshop, and open two photos from your files into Photoshop.

2. Use the Marquee tool from the Photoshop toolbox to select the area of the photo that you want to copy and paste on top of the other photo.

3. Choose "Edit" from the "Copy" menu to copy the area.

4. Select the other photo by clicking on the title bar and selecting "Paste" from the "Edit" menu. You should now have the section of the first photo you copied pasted on top of the second photo.

5. Select the Magnifier tool from the Photoshop toolbox and zoom into the pasted portion of the photo.

6. Choose the Hand tool from the Photoshop toolbox to move around the combined images while your view is zoomed.

7. Use the Move tool from the Photoshop toolbox to make any adjustments to your pasted photo.

1. Open an existing image from your files after starting Adobe Photoshop.

2. Select the Lasso tool from the Photoshop toolbox. The Lasso tool is a picture of a lasso and is second from the top on the left side.

3. Outline an object in your picture using the lasso tool by clicking on an outer edge with your mouse and moving your mouse around the object until the outline is complete.

4. Select "Copy" from the "Edit" menu, and then "Paste" from the "Edit" menu. You will now have a second layer created for your selected object.

5. Use your mouse to grab hold of the new object and move it to a new location.

6. Right-click on the new layer in the Layers Palette and go to "Blending Options..." and choose a new blending mode for the object. This will blend the new object into your image.

7. Choose the eraser tool from the Photoshop toolbox to further blend your new object into the existing image. Simply run the eraser on the edge of the image to soften the edges.

1. Open an image to use for practice using the eraser tool. Select the eraser tool from the Photoshop toolbar. This is the picture of the school eraser.

2. Change the brush size on the eraser options bar underneath the menus. The larger the number of brush size, the bigger your brush will be.

3. Choose a "Mode" of either "Brush," "Pencil" or "Block." The shape you select will be the shape that your eraser will use when erasing parts of your image.

4. Make any changes to the opacity or flow of the eraser tool. Decreasing the opacity of your brush will make your brush more transparent while increasing the opacity will make it less transparent. The higher the flow, the more paint that will be released. The lower the flow, the less paint that will be released when you click your mouse.

5. Select the "Erase to History" checkbox to store a history of the erasing that you make to your image.

6. Click or click and drag with your mouse to erase a pixel or section of your image.