HMAUS Signal

by Joan Matsukawa, HMAUS Member

It all began with the genius of a college student working on his Mac Plus to write a block of code to change black and white illustrations for his thesis to grayscale. His brother, then working for Industrial Light and Magic (Pixar), asked if he could also make it save files in different formats – what a concept! And so it went, the Knoll brothers collaborated to create Adobe Photoshop, the most used, most valued tool of professional graphic artists and photographers. Read more.

When Photoshop Elements hit the market in 2001, everyday digital camera and web enthusiasts, teachers, and folks wanting to scan and preserve old photos had all but the high end features of Photoshop at a price they could afford. Should I choose Elements, with discounts, as low as $59 or Photoshop at $650?

Well let’s just see what Photoshop Elements can do.

One click fixes. Most of the photo fixes (lightening and darkening, sharpening, boosting color) can be done in one or two clicks. With one click you can Autofix your image or just its contrast, brightness, sharpness, color, skin tone and all the redeyes in sight. If you don’t like the result, undo it and start over.

Quickfix opens your image, in both before AND after versions if you like. It gives you a panel to control these qualities individually. Drag the sliders as you wish and save. Otherwise you can control each tool manually. I prefer to do that. Lots of options.

Select It. One compelling reason to get Elements is the ability to select just part of the image to correct it – a face, a background, an object. But unless your subject is on a solid background this can be challenging. For this, Elements offers all of the old selection tools – the free form Lasso, a Magnetic Lasso that sticks along the edge of a colored area, and a Magic Wand that grabs areas of similar color.

Version 4 adds two more to the arsenal. The Magic Selection Brush lets you brush within an area to select. You set just how large and soft (fuzzy) a brush you want to use. With the Magic Extractor you dab on the object, then dab on the background. Then it makes the selection for you. No trying to carefully draw along the edge to make the selection. Check out the new tools…

Layer It. Layers are the heart of Photoshop and Elements. Images or parts of an image on a layer can be altered separately from other layers. Layers are stacked like pieces of paper with the top layer showing the most. The lower layers show through transparent areas of the upper layers. You can drag a layer and its contents above or below another, stacking and restacking them like colored blocks to compose your final image. You can even drag the layer and its contents into another image. iPhoto can handle only one layer, Elements many.

Fix it. Once you have an area selected or copied to its own layer, you can change its appearance or duplicate, flip or rotate it. What’s fun is picking one or more of the many “filters” to change the image’s texture, shape or color. Clone (copy) one part of an image to another area. Do this to cover distracting objects, to add objects or even switch people’s faces. How fun is that?

Use the Healing Brush to clone it using the underlying texture to match it even better. Paul Kodama did an amazing restoration of one of Hawaii’s DOE Superintendents using Elements and Photoshop. Take a look.

Color it. Hue/Saturation allows you to change the overall Hue (color), Saturation (intensity) and Brightness or replace one color with another. You can paint away the color from all but the most important parts of your image for emphasis. Colorize creates a duotone (shades of a single color), rather like an old fashioned sepia tone cowboy picture. Color cast, the result of incorrect lighting when you take a picture, can be corrected with the Adjustment Photo Filter which warms (yellow/red) or cools (blue) the overall tone.

Finish it. One of my favorite ways to finish off a picture is to add a simple frame. By adding a solid colored layer above the image layer, then removing its center with a geometric or special Cookie Cutter shape, or by erasing the center with a textured brush (cool), you can create a formal or a unique frame. Add an inner shadow and it looks great. June Kadamoto’s images above are great examples. Add some text and you have a completed project. You can easily save for email, print contact sheets, make photo printing layouts (8×10, 5×7′s, wallets) and create web albums.

File it. Elements 4 now ships with Bridge to organize your hundreds of digital pictures. Bridge is a powerful cataloging tool that lets you create folders with pointers to your images, wherever they are on your computer. But more than that, it lets you easily rate your images from 1 – 5 stars, tag them by category, find out your camera settings for that image and then search for pictures by star ratings, tags or an individuals face! Can you believe that?

Learn it. Expect to spend more time learning Elements that you would learning iPhoto, but expect to do much more with it once you have. Play with the Enhance auto features, the Tools, the layers. Learn the single letter keyboard shortcuts (V for move, L for Lasso). Do the tutorials at such sites as Photoshop Elements Users.com.

But don’t expect to make any progress unless you practice.
Once you know the basics, look at other resources. My favorite authors are Scott Kelby and Matt Kloskowski. Find their books at Amazon or at second hand books at a fraction of the full price. Scott Kelby comes to Honolulu December 3 to do a one day Lightroom and Photoshop CS3 workshop.

While iPhoto 8 stores your actual images, has an awesome new cataloging feature, and can do basic edits … if you want to combine images, edit parts of them, darken or color line drawings, paint a variety of shapes with a brush, or do retouching, Photoshop Elements is money well spent. The low price belies the power of this feature packed product. Upgrade or update? The Tools and keyboard shortcuts are so consistent between versions and between Photoshop and Elements the transition from one to the other is easy.

Sadly there is no trial version for Version 4. Version 6 for the PC is out. Version 5 for the Mac never appeared. When’s the next version? What OS will it require? Rumors say 2008. We’re waiting.

So how far can you go with this? Far out fun, let me tell you. Did you see President Terrence Young’s cube and my eclipsing moon below?

Virgil Meeker made this Halloween card for his grandchildren. This is something they are going to remember always, and isn’t that what it’s all about?

Mahalo to our Photoshop Elements HOTS class stars June, Paul, Virgil and Terrence for sharing. Mahalo to the Knoll brothers and Adobe for giving us Photoshop and Photosohp Elements.

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