Photoshop Elements 4 Just the Steps

About This Book

This book cuts all the fluff out of a computer book and takes you right to steps to produce an effect, task, or job. The book is not linear. However, in some cases you might need to move around a little to understand one concept before moving to another. Each series of steps is defined with headings to simplify your task of searching for a specific item and finding similar tasks related to a particular concept. Be certain to look back at the Table of Contents when you aren’t certain where to find one task or another.

Whenever you want to get something done with this book, simply fol¬low this method:

1. Pick the task. Glance over the Table of Contents to find a cate¬gory you want to explore — something like working with layers, which we cover in Chapter 8.

2. Find it fast. This is easy because the chapters are designed with coverage of similar items within each chapter. Look over the head¬ings listed in the Table of Contents to find a specific task within a given chapter.

3. Get it done. Mimic each step and look at the accompanying fig¬ures to help you thoroughly understand a given task.

Why You Need This Book

Adobe Photoshop Elements is a true bargain. Although you pay far less for Elements than its bigger sibling, Photoshop, you acquire a sophisti¬cated program with many complex tools and methods for producingresults. The user documentation and help guides don’t suffi¬ciently describe all that you can do with the program. What’s more, to find a specific solution, you might need to wade through a lot of text to describe a method you want to use in your workflow.
This book eliminates background descriptions and detailed text explanations and takes you directly to a series of steps to produce precisely what you want to do with a photo. It isn’t a sit down seven-course meal; it’s more like a fast food restau¬rant that satisfies your appetite for knowledge immediately.

How This Book Is Organized

This book is organized into five parts. The following sections introduce each one.

Part I: Acquiring and Organizing Images

The first thing you need to know about working in Photoshop Elements is how to get photos into your computer. This first section describes acquiring photos from a variety of sources including digital cameras, digital scanners, mobile phones, CD/DVD ROMs, and media storage devices. If you have a great number of photos you copy to your hard drive, you’ll want to find out all the organization opportunities provided by Photoshop Elements that we cover in this part.

Part II: Fixing Photos

Just about any photo you acquire from any source requires you to enhance the images for brightness controls, color bal¬ance, removal of dust and scratches, and other anomalies you might find. Look to this part to discover the best way to make image enhancements.Part III: Editing Techniques

Whether it be applying an effect, merging photos, adding some text to a photograph, or a host of other edits you want to apply to your photos, this part covers it all.

Part IV: Outputting Photos

You take a photo with a digital camera, scan a photo on your scanner, or acquire a photo from another source and make edits to the photo. When you finish editing an image, the next logical step is to show the image either on screen or in a print. This part covers preparing images for screen viewing in slide shows, on Web browsers, or with other screen viewers. This part also covers printing your files locally on your own desktop printer or prepping and sending them to a commer¬cial photo lab printer.
Part V: Working with Creations

Photoshop Elements 4 is really two programs in one package: The original photo editor that was simply Photoshop Elements prior to version 3 and the former Adobe Photoshop Album program. Photoshop Album is fully integrated in Photoshop Elements 4, where you find tools and commands to help you create cards, calendars, slide shows, TV videodiscs, and more. This section covers all the marvelous features for assembling a number of different creations.
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