Graphics Programs Reference
In-Depth Information
You can now adjust the settings for very dark and very light areas separately. Just click Shad-
ows/Highlights to expand that section, and you'll see two additional sets of sliders, one for
shadows and one for highlights. Both sections have the same three settings:
▪
Fade Amount
determines how much sharpening Elements applies to either the dark or
light areas of your image (depending on whether you're adjusting this setting in the
Shadows or Highlights section). It goes from 0% (no different from how the rest of the
image is sharpened) to 100%.
▪
Tonal Width
tells Elements how wide a range of brightnesses to affect. This slider starts
off at 50%. Move it to the left to restrict Elements to a smaller tonal range (darker areas
for the Shadows slider, brighter areas for the Highlights slider), or to the right for a larger
range of tones. For example, moving the Shadows slider to the left would restrict
sharpening to darker tones, while moving it to the right would include brighter areas. In
the Highlights section, moving this slider to the left restricts sharpening to lighter tones,
while moving it to the right starts including tones more toward the midrange.
▪
Radius
tells Elements how large an area around each pixel it should consider when look-
ing for areas to sharpen. If you leave this slider set at 1, that's the narrowest area avail-
able. To tell Elements to look farther, move this slider to the right.
Using these sliders lets you get attractive sharpening in the difficult outer tonal ranges, espe-
cially dark or shadowed areas, which have been notoriously difficult to work with in the past.
TIP
If you're working in the Adjust Sharpness dialog box and don't like the way your changes
are affecting your image, click the dialog box's Preset menu and choose Default to return
the dialog box to its original settings.
Creating and Saving Presets
If you have a big batch of images that you know are going to need the same sharpening set-
tings—like a dozen different shots of a model taken using your camera's burst mode or a mo-
tor drive—you can speed things up by adjusting one image with the Adjust Sharpness dialog
box and then saving those settings as a preset.
The dialog box's Preset drop-down menu makes it easy to work with presets:
