MOVING PAST THE AUTOMATIC FEATURES AND GUIDES
Up to this point, we have covered simple editing features in Elements that allow you to do some basic enhancements. Now it’s time to start digging in to the Editor function of the program so that you can take more control over your image processing. Image processing in Elements can be compared to taking pictures with a digital SLR camera. You can depend on the automatic settings to create a photograph, but the camera doesn’t know what you want—only what it’s programmed to do. To obtain more creative results, you have to abandon the automatic modes and start taking control of the picture-taking process. The same can be said for image processing in Elements. There are a lot of automatic tools, many that we have already covered, that can instantly improve the look of your photograph. But once again, the program doesn’t know what it is looking at and can therefore only make educated ,: guesses about how to best process your image. To really make that H photograph look like you want, you will need to take control by using v , the tools in the Editor.
PORING OVER THE PICTURE
I found this shot while wandering around the ruins of Angkor Wat in Cambodia a few years ago. It was away from the beaten path and the crush of the crowds in a quiet, tree-shaded spot. I wasn’t sure if it was a burial plot because it was unlike the cemeteries I had seen in other locations, but the markers did remind me of tombstones. There was a symmetry to the spot that, combined with the brightly colored moss, made for a great shot.
Tools to bring your photos to life
Sometimes it doesn’t take much to breathe life into an image. It may be lacking contrast, or perhaps it needs color correction. It could be lacking good composition that would be cured by a new crop. And what image doesn’t need the proper amount of sharpening to make it pop? In this topic, we will begin working with some basic image adjustments and tools that will be the backbone of our image processing.
But before we dive in to the deep end, let’s check out some preferences that will give some behind-the-scenes help in our processing.
A QUICK HISTORY LESSON
Believe it or not, some people have never looked at the program preferences.
That’s a shame, because they are full of options that not only control how things are done in the Editor, but also let us work faster and smarter. Take the History & Cache options (Figure 5.1). The default History States setting is 50. This means that you can perform 50 operations in the Editor and then undo them. It also means that Elements is going to dedicate a large amount of memory remembering each state of the image prior to every one of those 50 operations. This is actually overkill. I rarely need more than 20 history states, so let’s start with lowering it to 20.
FIGURE 5.1
The History States preference is in the Performance section.
1. Choose Edit > Preferences > Performance.
2. In the History & Cache section, double-click in the text box that reads 50.
3. Type in 20, and then click outside the box.
You can click the OK button to set the history states, but as long as we have the box open, why not check out a few more options that might be helpful to change?
RECENT FILE LIST
There is a list in the File menu that lets you quickly access the last 10 documents that you had open in the Editor. I usually change this to 20 (Figure 5.2). I just prefer to have more of them so that I have quick access to a longer list of my recent edits.
FIGURE 5.2
You can increase the number of remembered files in the Saving Files section of the preferences.
The Recent File list is near the bottom of the Saving Files section of the Preferences box. You can quickly access the different sections of the Preferences dialog by clicking the appropriate heading on the left side.
BE PRECISE
There are a few tools that are used to either paint on the image or click in a specific location to do things like selecting a color or setting the white balance. The default setting for the brush tool is a circle, which will depict the shape and size of the brush so that you can accurately paint on your image. This works great for painting, but when it comes to accurately selecting a color with the Eyedropper tool, it is much more helpful to use a precise crosshair rather than an icon shaped like an eyedropper. To make this change, go to the Display & Cursors section and change the Other Cursors option from Standard to Precise (Figure 5.3).
FIGURE 5.3
You can change the cursor type in the Display & Cursors section.
