Graphics Programs Reference
In-Depth Information
bright sky and you've selected part of the sky. If you tell Elements to equalize based on
the selection, the program brightens the whole image to the level of the pixels in the sky
selection without including the dark, wooded areas in its calculations. So the resulting
equalized photo is much brighter than it would have been if you'd told Elements to base
its calculations on the whole photo. Equalize doesn't always work, but sometimes it does
a great job of increasing the brightness of a dim photo.
Gradient Map is pretty complicated. According to Adobe, it “maps the grayscale range
of an image to the colors of a specified gradient fill.” (If you want to know what the heck
that means, turn to Saving Gradients .) Basically, it lets you apply a gradient based on the
light and dark areas of the photo; the gradient's colors replace the existing colors. Give it
a shot and see whether you like the result.
Invert makes your image look like a negative. It's so useful in doing artistic things to
photos that Elements lets you invert images anytime by pressing Ctrl+I/ -I. To invert
just part of an image, check out the Smart Brush tools ( Correcting Part of an Image ) ,
which have some interesting variations on inversion in their Special Effects menus, or
use a duplicate layer with a layer mask ( Layer Masks ) and edit the area that's covered by
the mask.
NOTE
If you think choosing the Invert option sounds like a great way to turn negatives you
scanned in with a basic flatbed scanner into positive images, that works only if your
negatives are black and white. Color negatives have an orange mask on them that
Elements can't easily undo, so you're best off using a dedicated film scanner that's
designed to cope with negatives, or at least a scanner that has software for dealing
with the mask.
Posterize reduces the total number of colors in the photo, creating a less detailed, more
poster-like image. The lower the number you enter in the Posterize dialog box or Adjust-
ments panel, the fewer colors you get and the more extreme the result. If you want
blocky, poster-like edges in a photo, try Filter→Artistic→Poster Edges instead of—or in
addition to—this adjustment.
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