Adobe Photoshop Elements

Document Size increases on changing from Higher PPI to Lower PPI || What exactly is PPI - Pixels Per Inch in a Photograph

2012-02-29T08:35:00.000-08:00

First of all, Let's understand what PPI is ? PPI stands for 'Pixels per Inch', which has literal meaning that when a image is constructed, how many pixels are places in one inch region of that photograph. More the pixels, better is quality and increase the chances of using this image for various purposes. This is one of the reason that many times people reduce the PPI for a photograph before posting on websites or blogs, so that others can't use them for any commercial purpose. Let's continue this discussion from here...

PPI stands for 'Pixel Per Inch' and at times, DPI is also used in different context. DPI stands for Dots per inch. But for now, let's refarin from confusing between these two terms and focus on term PPI which is most of the times discussed when we talk about printing technologies for images. Many Digital Imaging softwares use PPI in various workflows.

What effectively means when we say 300 PPI? We have a photograph which has 300 pixels in each inch and 100 PPI means 100 pixel in every inch of a photograph.

Now let's take an example of Nikon's Full Frame D700 Camera which produces an image of 4256 by 2832. So if we set 300PPI, we will get a photograph which will have following dimensions -

Height - 2832/300 = 9.44 inches
Width - 4256/300 = 14.18 inches

And if we set the same image at 100PPI we will get following dimensions -

Height - 2832/100 = 28.32 inches

Width - 4256/100 = 42.56 inches

Which means increasing PPI means, decreasing size of photographs and many folks think it otherwise !!!

Please comment back in case you like it or have more queries about it.

Some of the Best Tutorials on Layers in Adobe Photoshop Elements || How to use Layers in Adobe Photoshop Elements

2012-02-27T07:50:00.000-08:00

Today again someone asked us about Layers and as usual we kept discussing about it for a long time. Here we thought of digging down through some of the already available tutorials online and shared here. Let's check out these and share some very specific things about Layers in Adobe Photoshop Elements...

Even after looking at these Videos, do you feel that there are still few questions which are unanswered? If that's the case, we would recommend to go through following link to read the stuff clearly - http://www.adobe.com/designcenter-archive/photoshopelements/articles/what_are_layers.html

Please feel free to comment back with further queries related to Adobe Photoshop Elements.

Incorrect Sunbofders created while importing through Adobe Photo Downloader in Adobe Photoshop Elements 10.0 || Hot-Fixes for Adobe Photo Downloader in PSE10

2012-02-25T07:31:00.000-08:00

Recently Adobe found some problem with Adobe Photo Downloader in Adobe Photoshop Elements 10.0 and some fixes have been provided. This mainly talks about the workflow when users download media-files (photos or videos) using Adobe Photo Downloader, subfolders are created with an incorrect date. Select Advanced Dialog > Create Subfolder > Shot Date from Adobe Photo Downloader to create a subfolder for the downloaded assets. The subfolder name has an incorrect date. This is the user problem Adobe has tried to fix.

If you are facing this issue and want to resolve check out following links as per your version of Adobe Photoshop Elements 10.0.

http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/930/cpsid_93025.html - For Users having Windows version of Adobe Photoshop Elements

http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/930/cpsid_93050.html - For Users having Mac version of Adobe Photoshop Elements

Skin Color Correction in Adobe Photoshop Elements || Red, Cyan & Yellow color corrections for natural skin color.

2012-02-24T06:29:00.000-08:00

Skin Color Correction is one of the main topic which is discussed many times in various Photo Editing workshops, Conferences and popularly in Fashion workshops. Today we are going to discuss some very basic workflows which can help you getting decent skin colors are adjustments. This article is mainly around some basic tools which can be used to correct colors in general, but example is mainly for skin color. Let's check out these basics and see how these work for you...

Before we start with Color Correction in Adobe Photoshop Elements, let us make this clear that skin color varies from one region of the world to other and so values of basic colors. But method we will discuss should be helpful in handling all natural shades of human skin.

1. As a logical step, we would want to open the photograph in Adobe Camera Raw Dialog, so just go to File Menu and select Open as option as shown in the image below.

2. Following dialog will be opened. Select the Photograph and open as a Camera Raw file which can be defined in the second dropdown.

3. The very basic idea to open in Adobe Camera Raw dialog is to do some basic adjustments like Auto White-Balancing etc.

4. Notice the huge difference by just selecting Auto option in White-Balance Control of Adobe Camera Raw Dialog in Photoshop Elements.

5. When done with basic adjustments in Adobe Camera Raw dialog, click on Open File button which will open the photograph in Adobe Photoshop Elements Editor workspace. Now go to Adjustment Layer options and select Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layer in Adobe Photoshop Elements as shown in image below.

6. At first we select Yellow channel and played with Saturation slider mainly. This photograph was too vibrant, probably due to wrong White balance and odd light conditions while photo was shot. Saturation is too high, so we reduced it for yellow. Image below shows the photograph before change.

7. Here are results after reducing Saturation for Yellow channel and then moved to Cyan and also played with Red.

8. Hope you got the idea of playing with different colors channels and their saturation level. This gives lot of flexibility in controlling Saturation, luminance and Hues of various color channels like Red, Green, Blue, Yellow, Cyan and Meganta.

8. As an added thing we can continue to play around with other Adjustement layers for Birghtness, Contrast etc... Hope the Final results shown on very first photograph are reasonable and you are able to simulate similar ones. Please feel free to leave your comments about the article or your further queries around the same.

Converting a Colorful Photograph into Black and White in Adobe Photoshop Elements || Part-2

2012-02-22T08:08:00.000-08:00

This is continued version of our last article where we saw how Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layer can be extremely useful in getting better Black-&-White Photographs in Adobe Photoshop Elements.

This articles continues from there and if you haven't seen the earlier one, just have a look at http://photoshopelementsbyadobe.blogspot.in/2012/02/converting-colorful-photograph-into.html ...

Keep first article open to see the Black &White shown in that one and compare with the ones shown here. In last article we discussed about using Hue/Saturation to get different shades of Blacks, Whites and Greys. Today we shall see the fruther scopes of improving your Black and White Photographs.

Levels Adjustment Layer is one of the next steps which helps in getting good shapes of Whites, Greys and Blacks. Here you get three pointers on single slider. The extreme left slider is for adjusting dark pixels of your Photograph, Middle one is to adjust Midtones and right one is for Bright pixels. Move around with these and see how you like the overall configuration of Levels. Levels are separately discussed at http://photoshopelementsbyadobe.blogspot.in/2011/01/magic-of-level-adjustments-in-adobe.html, in case not aware of levels at all.

After that Brightness/Contrast Adjustment Layer can be a logical step to go for. For me probably the last step for now and will give decent results for Final Black-&-White Photograph.

Converting a Colorful Photograph into Black and White in Adobe Photoshop Elements

2012-02-21T06:05:00.000-08:00

Converting a colorful photograph into Black and White is quite easy with softwares like Adobe Photoshop Elements. There are different ways of converting a colorful Photograph into Black&White in Adobe Photoshop Elements and here we are going to discuss one of the preferred workflow by people who want to take advantage of different shades of colors to better play with Blacks, Whites and Grays in final result. Let's see what exactly this means and it there really a way to flexibly using color shades during conversion into Black and White...

Let's first try to understand how this conversion happens from different colors to Black and White. As we know that we have three primary colors - Red, Green and Blue. Other colors are made up of different combinations of these three basic colors. Each of these colors have different shades. E.g. - There can be multiple shades of RED - from light/bright Red to Dark Red and similarly applies to other basic colors Green and Blue.

Now let's take a example of 8-bit image which can have 256 values of RED and other two basic colors. When we convert a Photograph into Black and White, each value of basic color is mapped to corresponding value on Black and white scale of 0-255 where one extreme means pure white and other means pure black. Middle shades are grey with different shades and Luminosity. Now if we play with these shades of Red, Green and Blue and then convert into Black & White, we can have better Black-&-White results w.r.t. contrast and overall placements of Blacks, Whites and Greys. Hope this is clear. If not, we are no more discussing it further and would take this up as a separate topic and hopefully you will be able to make out from the workflow we are going to discuss. Let's go with Step-by-Step Guidelines to make a photographs Black-&-White.

1. Open a colorful Photograph in Adobe Photoshop Elements Editor.

2. Now go to Adjustment Layers option in Layer panel on right and select 'Hue/Saturation' Adjustment Layer.

3. On selecting Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layer, you will see following dialog and you may want to rename the layer.

4. Finally your workspace will look like the one shown below. A new Adjustment Layer on top of Background Layer of your colorful Photograph and three sliders in the bottom - Hue, Saturation and Luminance for each color mentioned in the dropdown- Master, Red, Green, Yellow, Cyan, Blue, Magenta.

5. Now select Master and reduce the Saturation to -100. This will make your photograph Black and White. So basically you are done here with basic conversion and further we are going to discuss the best way to optimizing Black-&-White results.

6. Here we are going to discuss a very basic step for optimizing our Black and White results. You will notice changes in each version of black & white you see below. We are not showing the best results and idea is just to demonstrate the way of doing it and how it can impact your final result.

So select any color in the drop down and play with Luminance slider. As you move, there should be some change in your Blacks, Whites and Greys. Select the most prominent color to actually notice is clearly.

Play with same slider for some other color and after 1-15 minutes you will start making out the differences and correct values for your choice of Black & White photograph.

For now, we are stopping here and will surely continue from here to make this Black and White result better from other aspects...

How to prepare a Photograph for posting on a Website or Blog !

2012-02-20T08:37:00.000-08:00

Recent article on resizing Photographs for Websites or Blog is received very well. Looking at the same we thought of sharing some quick Tips about preparing photographs for Websites or Blogs. As of now, we are just trying to figure out the main reasons of optimizing photographs before upload on web.

Here are some of the main reasons people try to optimize their photographs and please feel free to comment back if you have any other reason for optimizing photographs before uploading to your website/Blog.

1. To have reasonable size of the Photographs from Server-Space utilization point of view. Especially someone who uploads lot of media files like Photographs, Videos etc online, space is one of the main concern.

2. To avoid copyright infringement by print media folks/companies. Many times, local publications download photographs from web and reproduce them on paper, which is hard to track. The only way to avoid such infringements is by putting the Photographs in a way, such that downloaded Photograph could be used for printing.

3. To avoid delays in page-loading on your website or Blog. Page Loading is one of the important parameter which impacts your traffic on website or blog. In fact many ranking systems take this criteria into consideration for average page-load time of a Website or Blog.

4. Avoiding online infringement of Copyrights for your Photographs. These days, it's quite easy to see that people easily start using photographs on their websites. It's fine in case it's for something good and non-commercial. But of-course, such action should always happen with proper intimation of using the Photographs.

5. Not allow download of Photographs on your Website or Blog.

Let's hold on here and make this list complete before we move to one of the optimal workflows in Adobe Photoshop Elements for preparing photographs for Website or an online blog/community.

How to reduce file-size of a Photograph before posting it on a Website or a Blog?

2012-02-19T03:17:00.000-08:00

Although we have many times discussed preparing photographs for web, but this is mainly focused on downsizing your Photographs. Many times, folks are mainly focus of space utilization on servers of their website or blog. Few of the folks want to reduce the size so that it doesn't take much time before uploading to a website or a blog OR sending through email. Here we shall mainly be focusing on resizing a Photograph which will reduce the size upto a desired value.

So let's go step by step to achieve it.

1. Open the file in Adobe Photoshop Elements, which you want to reduce in size.

2. Go to File menu and select 'Save As' and opt for JPEG

3. Give a new name to your Photograph in Save As dialog and click OK.

4. Following show dialog will be shown on clicking OK in Save As Dialog of Adobe Photoshop Elements Editor. In this dialog if you notice there is a mention about current file-size of this Photograph. Please see on right side of the small dialog.

5. Now if you start moving Quality Slider towards the left, size will automatically decrease. When it reaches around your desired value, just stop and continue. Moving this slider to left means you are decreasing Quality of the photograph which will not be very noticeable on web. It mainly increases the compression level of your final JEPG.

6. Apart from that there are three option which also impact size of your Photograph. So try selecting any of these one by and see which fits better for you for further compression - Baseline Standard, Baseline Optimized, Progressive.

How to correctly crop your photographs to look more beautiful || Golden Rule, Rule of Thirds & Grid Crops in Adobe Photoshop Elements

2012-02-18T02:48:00.000-08:00

With latest version of Adobe Photoshop Elements there are some cropping guided templates provided for users. Using these cropping templates you can get wonderful compositions without even thinking about the rules. It's just that you need to understand the right way of using these templatized cropping options.

Golden Ratio, Rule of Thirds and Grid, these are three cropping templates provided in 10th version of Adobe Photoshop Elements.

Here is a good link to better understand the meaning of these three rules - http://photoinf.com/Golden_Mean/Eugene_Ilchenko/GoldenSection.html

Top Five Basic Tips to make your Photograph Extra-Ordinary from a very casual & ordinary shot

2012-02-17T07:54:00.000-08:00

Today one of my friend came to me and asked about some basic tips to improve his casual shots from last trip to Europe. During the process, I told him very basic things which helped him making Photographs better. I thought of sharing the top five edits one should try to make an ordinary photograph extra-ordinary. Let's check out...

Let's take a casual shot and go step by step to understand the sequence of Edits I would recommend !

1. Open a Photograph in Adobe Photoshop Elements through File Menu.

2. Select Crop tool on Left Tool-bar and remove unwanted areas. Also try to fit your main subject as per rule of thirds, if possible. If you don't know about it, forget and we shall share more details about it.

3. Now do to Adjustment Layer options below Layer Panel and select Levels. Levels Adjustment Layer makes a lot of difference to a Photograph. See the screenshot below to understand what you need to select and click.

4. Notice the highlighted part below, which should also be visible on your workspace of Adobe Photoshop Elements.

5. Moved extreme sliders towards inside until you feel that it's making photograph too dark or too light. When done, select the middle pointer and play with it. Extreme pointers are for handling Darker Pixels and Brighter pixels of a Photograph. Middle slider works on Mid-Tones. Levels help in making elements of the photograph stronger. At times, it can be a big blunder is not used appropriately.

6. Notice the changes we did to this Photograph and amount of movement in each slider. You may choose to stick to a limit which will also give you decent results unless photograph is not clicked in extreme light conditions - Dark area or very bright area.

7. Now check out the image below to know about next adjustment we are going to discuss. Next is to select Brightness/Contrast Adjustment Layer.

8. Play with Brightness and Contrast sliders. Both of these sliders need to b used in sync as right mix of Brightness and Contrast is important. For example, if you have photographs with darker shades, you may want to increase the Brightness by keeping contrast low or Vice-versa.

9. Hope so far you have been liking the change in above photograph and the photograph you are trying in your Photoshop Elements. If you are not trying it., believe me it's not going to help anyway. So if not started yet, open your workspace and follow from top. If not completely, you will enjoy the process and the sequence shared here. With practice you can do miracles with these editing steps. It's all about understanding the compositions with respect to lighting, contrast, colors and placement.

10. At times, Editing tend to change the colors in a photograph. In above photograph I notice pale colored tint and want to remove that. At least want to keep the hen in white. So let's select Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layer.

11. In above photograph Saturation of Yellow is decreased so that it looks white and more real. At the same time Hue of red is changed in conjunction with increasing the Saturation.

12. We have applied four adjustments to original Photograph so far - Crop, Levels, Brightness/Contrast, Hue/Saturation. Now we want to just add a frame to the photograph. Few people don't like Frames so can simply avoid the last step and we promise to share more tips around making photograph beautiful with minimal efforts.

13. If want to add frame, go to Image Menu and Resize Canvas Size.

14. Below shown dialog will be shown. Choose the border size accordingly with color of your choice and click OK.

You are done with this and hope you understood the basic concepts around these 5 editing controls which is more important than your final result. It's completely OK, if you haven't got right result in one go. Now you can simply save the results as PSD and later adjustment layers can be tweaked to make them better.

How to Export Photographs for publishing on Websites or your Blogs || Save for Web in Adobe Photoshop Elements

2012-02-16T08:59:00.000-08:00

Most of the folks prefer to share on Websites or Blogs as it's one of the best ways of presenting your serious work. in Adobe Photoshop Elements, there are different ways of saving photographs in different formats and there are some cool options to process multiple in one go. Today we shall discuss a way of saving files specifically for Web and reducing the risk of infringing your Copyrights.

Let's go step by step and understand the process of saving your Photographs or creations for your website or Blog.

1. When you done with editing, just go to File Menu of Editor in Adobe Photoshop Elements.

2. Select 'Save for Web' option in File Menu. On selecting this option your photograph will be opened in dialog shown above which is known as Save of Web window in Adobe Photoshop Elements.

3. In this dialog, you get different options to reduce size of your photograph to better fit for your blog or website. There are various parameters on basis of which size of a file can be reduced -

a. File Format, because file format signifies the level of compression for a particular photograph.

b. Color depth - As you reduce the value from 256 you will see decrease in file size which is shown just below the final photograph on right side.

c. New Width and Height will of-course reduce the size of your Photograph drastically.

Overall this dialog provides lot of details about your Photograph and at the same time provides instant impact of any change you do for saving as new file. If you have some transparent areas in the photograph save the file in PNG so that effect is taken care on your HTML Website or Blog. In same way, animations can be saved in GIF format.

Please feel free to ask more questions on this through comments.

How Creative Cropping in Adobe Photoshop Elements can enhance overall looks of a Photograph || Creative Framing Technique in Adobe Photoshop Elements

2012-02-15T03:54:00.000-08:00

I am not very sure we should call it creative cropping or Creative Framing, as the final results can be seen as good because creative style of cropping a Photograph or implicit framing which is achieved by saving this Photograph as PNG to maintain the transparency. Anyways, here is our tutorial after a long time. During last few weeks, we were only discussing some of the problems or non-creative stuff about Adobe Photoshop Elements. Let's check out how this works in Adobe Photoshop Elements...

Let's go step by step and see how above mentioned results can be achieved in Adobe Photoshop Elements.

1. Open a Photograph in Editor Workspace of Adobe Photoshop Elements.

2. Creative a Duplicate Layer of the main Photograph.

2. Select Cookie Cutter in Toolbar of Adobe Photoshop Elements Editor and there are various options available on top. the Black region in every Cookie Cutter indicates that the region which will retain the details of photograph and others will go away. So we have will select something rectangular with some rough edges.

4. Now apply the cutter to the photograph and commit when happy with it. If facing difficulty in seeing actual results, just uncheck the visibility of first layer.

5. Above is finally looking result when we apply Cookie Cutter and don't show the background layer.

6. After Step-5, save above result as a PNG which will show the results as you see in first Photograph in this article.

7. Let's move ahead and try to utilize this crop as creative way of framing the Photograph. Select Background layer and opt for Adjustment Layer for Hue/Saturation.

8. Now reduce the lightness to zero for the cropped region which will create a Black Frame around the cropped Photograph.

Here is the final result.

Unlike Other Tutorials, this tutorial is written with an assumption that you know basics of Tools and Layers in Adobe Photoshop Elements.

For further Queries around this or anything else in Adobe Photoshop Elements, please feel free to comment back.

Valentine Ideas for Creative users of Adobe Photoshop Elements

2012-02-14T05:12:00.000-08:00

Love is in the air and everyone want to present something special to his/her partner. Some people spend time in finding right stuff in markets, few plan a long drive to some romantic place and there are lot many other ways to make this day special & memorable. At the same time creative folks try to do something different. Also there are folks who are e-Creative, who are best in identifying right online creative solutions to get an amazing result finally. At the same time, some folks may want to try their Elements skills to present something more personalized stuff. Here we have tried to list down some of the Valentine ideas, which can be achieved through Adobe Photoshop Elements. Let's see more about the same.

(Photo Credits - Vibha Malhotra @ PHOTO JOURNEY)

Here are some of the options which were given by various Elements users when they were asked about the best way of utilizing Adobe Photoshop Elements for Valentine's Day :-

1. Create Custom Greeting for your Loved ones. Greeting card can have the couple with some cool graphics pasted on it which finally come out as a Greeting Card. This options is suggested almost everyone we asked to design this article.This is the most obvious thing to do and goes with traditional stuff like presenting rose, greeting-card and some chocolates etc.

2. Second most popular option was given as creating a slideshow with appropriate music in the background. Some of the folks suggested that option of creating slideshow suites better for folks who are celebrating first valentine, as lovely photographs from last year can be used with appropriate music. Some recommended songs by one of the user -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ut5uC91FcbI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTahKIAwwBo

These two were main options suggested and apart from these following options could also be explored..

3. Creating a printed collage in large size. A poster sort of stuff created with Valentine Backgrounds and some photographs which keep the memories strong.

Other suggestions were not very strong, so not thinking of putting them here. Few rare suggestions were - Creating a Photo Book with a lovely theme around Valentine, creating a Music CD with few videos created out of slideshows and custom CD/DVD label with a couple photograph on it etc.

Still we feel that it's too less to put as a new article. So please comment back with your ideas around the same and we shall keep updating this for next Valentine in 2013 !!!

Adobe Photoshop Elements Vs. Adobe Bridge || Differences, Advantages & a Comparitive Study

2012-02-12T11:14:00.000-08:00

Many times this becomes a main topic of discussion that what exactly is the difference between Bridge and Elements Organizer. Many times, people are confused about some very common workflows in Bridge with Elements Organizer. Here we are going to discuss few very basic things like - How do we get Elements Organizer or Adobe Bridge, Basic Philosophy of these software, Technical differences, How they treat your Photographs, What precautions you need to take with these etc. Let's discuss more about these and try to understand that which one is best for what kind of Photographers...

Both Adobe Bridge and Elements Organizer are software which help in better organizing our Photographs or Photo-shoots, but in different ways. Adobe Bridge is a Software which comes with Adobe Photoshop and tightly integrated with it. At the same time, Elements Organizer is a part of Photoshop Elements which is a software meant for Non-Pro, Amateurs or Hobbyist folks.

Adobe Bridge is simply a browser for Photographs like we have Windows Browser, where all files actually lies on your hard disk and it provides a mean of accessing those files easily. Opposite to Bridge, In Elements, files which you want to access through Organizer need to be imported which is not required in Bridge. In Elements, Import means that now onwards application knows about those files and lot of other organizing capabilities can be used for those photographs of other media files. This part is most tricky one, which would be clear on trying both of these softwares for some time.

In Adobe Photoshop Elements Organizer, references of files are kept in a database and actual files always remain on hard drive. At times, people get confused that import means creating new files inside Elements Organizer which is not true.

If we see in terms of functionality, probably Elements Organizer provides more controls for doing basic editing in same workspace and sharing options at same place. Taking a pause here, I recommend you to try both of these applications in Trial Mode and decide which one suites to you.

You can also go through following link if you interested in using Photoshop Elements on Mac with Adobe Bridge - http://barbarabrundage.com/2011/01/13/using-bridge-with-photoshop-elements-9/

Why I am seeing limited number of options in Save As dialog of Adobe Photoshop Elements || Lesser saving options in Adobe Photoshop Elements

2012-02-12T05:56:00.000-08:00

Are you trying to save your photograph as a JEPG and not finding this option in Save dialog OR facing the same problem for other file-format, here is a short answer for your problem.

Most of the times, we have observed this sort of problems with folks using DSLRs. This happens when you try to save 16-bit photographs into other file-format. So simple solution is to change the image mode to 8-bit and try saving again. Here are two simple ways of changing image mode of a Photograph -

1. In Adobe Camera Raw Dialog, there is a small dropdown in the bottom through which you can change it to 8-bit and Open image in Editor workspace to save it further.

2. Other way is through Image Menu. There is an option Mode which helps in changing image mode.

Feel free to post your further queries on this topic or Adobe Photoshop Elements, through comments.

Processing, Exporting and Saving Raw Files in Adobe Photoshop Elements || Which format is best to save the RAW Changes - JEPG, PNG, TIFF or something Else?

2012-02-10T06:51:00.000-08:00

With increasing Popularity of Digital SLRs and high power of RAW files, most of the folks are moving to shoot in RAW formats like NEF, CR2 etc. So here we are mainly going to discuss the usual workflows of Processing RAW files in Adobe Photoshop Elements, Exporting them into another file format, which format is appropriate as per personal usage goals etc. Let's have a deep dive into ideal workflows for RAW file users.

There are lot of articles around processing Camera RAW files in Adobe Photoshop Elements and most of them are accessible from http://photoshopelementsbyadobe.blogspot.in/search/label/Adobe%20Camera%20Raw .

If you have never tried Adobe Camera Raw Dialog for processing your Photographs, check out http://photoshopelementsbyadobe.blogspot.in/2010/01/i-love-adobe-camera-raw-dialog-in.html . Here we talked about various adjustment controls in detail. This is basic recommendation for every Raw shooter. When you start using your RAW files in PSE, it's important to know that Adobe Camera Raw Dialog can handle multiple Photographs at a time. Which means that open all your Raw file from one shoot in Adobe Camera Raw Dialog and process them to adjust lighting colors and other relevant stuff. When done with all editing, you can simply click DONE if for now, you have no need to share these Photographs with friends or on your website or blog.

If you have to share your Photographs, the very first thing is to think about is saving these Photographs in a format which can be easily viewed by the end user of that photograph. E.g.- If you want to share with friends, export in JPEG. If interested in preserving the photograph in viewable format PNG-24 is recommended. If you want to put photographs on Website, export them into small JPEG and watermark as well. In case, thinking of getting them printed from a professional printing agency, use TIFF to export.

For Saving RAW photographs, you have to click Open instead of DONE in Adobe Camera Raw Dialog. This will open your Raw files in Editor workspace. Now you can use Save-As for saving your Photographs in different viewable format. Now, if your Raw files are 16-bit you may not see options to save in JPEG. For that, you need to convert the files into 8-bit and then save.

There are two ways to convert your 16-bit Raw files into 8-bit :-

1. Change the value in Adobe Camera Raw Dialog - There is a small dropdown in the bottom for switching between 8-bit and 16-bit.

2. Go to Image Menu and select Mode.

In case you are planning to save the files for yourself and not want much compression, PNG is recommended. PNG-24 can be saved through 'Save for Web' option.

For Bulk export, you may want to check out http://photoshopelementsbyadobe.blogspot.in/2010/02/batch-processing-in-adobe-photoshop.html, which is most efficient way to exporting files for your Website or Blog.

Please feel free to put your comments to know more about Camera Raw or adobe Photoshop Elements.

Don't have DVD Drive in my Computer || How to install Adobe Photoshop Elements on a computer having no DVD-Drive

2012-02-09T02:54:00.000-08:00

Does it sound weird to you? If not, you are definitely dealing with latest technologies or smart enough to understand the other way of doing so :). Today when I read one of such problem, I was feeling sad about the person who had received a PSE box as a gift and doesn't have DVD drive on his machine. For some time I was blank and feeling uncomfortable in replying to that person on Adobe Forums. But of course, there is a solution to every problem and companies like Adobe provide enough solutions to deal with such situations. Let's discuss more around this interesting incident with more light on latest technologies, where Hardware limitations can be overcome.

This is a new ear of Cloud Computing and many of the software companies are moving to online solutions. Although Desktop products by Adobe are not that path for now, but solutions to such problems exist.

Good part is that software delivered in boxed form in various retail stores or online shops like Amazon.com are also available as Download. But does a user need to pay for download again. No !! Because licensing is mainly governed by serial key you have, you can simply download trial version of Adobe Photoshop Elements and use the serial you have purchased with box. This was pretty simple solution but somehow it got missed fro my mind and thought of sharing this today :)

As an additional information, Adobe Photoshop Elements downloadable version is also available on Amazon.com now.

How to see File-Names in Adobe Photoshop Elements Organizer || Seeing Photograph Names in Organizer Image-Well

2012-02-08T06:36:00.000-08:00

Recently we saw an interesting discussion on Adobe Forums, where one of the user of Adobe Photoshop Elements is confused about the fact that filenames are shown in Orgaizer at times and disappear soon. After more discussion around the same, it came out as a desired behavior which is governed through some settings and controls in Elements Organizer. Let's go through following steps to understand it in better way.

In your Organizer, if you are seeing only Thumbnails and no information like Date or Filename then probably Details option is off in View Menu. Please go to View Menu and check that Details is checked.

There are high chances that you will start seeing date under Image thumbnails and if not then you have too small thumbnails inside Organizer Imagewell. If you are seeing Dates now, then move to next step, other go to the bottom and understand the function of Thumbnail Size Slider in Organizer which plays a major role.

Now ensure that 'Show File Names' option is checked. if it's not then you will only see Date information and not file-names.

After checking both the options for Details and Show File names, you should be able to see appropriate information below each thumbnail in elements Organizer. Even now, you are failing to see any information, please go to Thumbnail Slider on the top and increase Thumbnail Sizes in your Elements Organizer.

Please feel free to put comments here with your specific queries around this topic or anything else in Adobe Photoshop Elements.

How to import Contacts from V-Cards, Microsoft Outlook OR Outlook Express to Adobe Photoshop Elements Organizer || Importing Contacts in Elements Organizer

2012-02-07T00:05:00.000-08:00

Adobe Photoshop Elements Organizer being a media management software helps in huge way when it comes to sharing your Photographs with Clients, Friends or Family. There are lot of sharing workflows which include Photo-Mails, Photographs as attachments in an email, Share to online portals like Flickr and Facebook etc. For email workflows, we can also keep all appropriate Contact-Ids, so that we need not remember emails ids all the time or need not to open other software to check contacts/email-ids. Contacts can be very easily imported from Microsoft Outlook, Outlook Express or V-Cards into Adobe Photoshop Elements Organizer. Let's Check first workflow of importing from V-Cards.

1. Launch Adobe Photoshop Elements Organizer.

2. Go to Edit Menu of Organizer and Select 'Contact Book...'

3. It will launch following dialog and we need to click on 'Import' button on top of this window.

4. For Import, we shall be presented with following three options - V-Card, Microsoft Outlook, Outlook Express.

5. Select VCard File and click OK. On this following window will be shown where you have to explore the location with VCF file is lying and just select it.

As you select a VCF file and click OPEN, your contacts will be imported into the Organizer. Now, you should be able to use these contacts in all available workflows where we need to enter Email-Ids.

How to get rid of People Recognition Rectangles in Adobe Photoshop Elements Organizer || Hiding Face Recognition Rectangles

2012-02-03T00:56:00.000-08:00

Recently we discovered that some of the folks don't want to see people recognition controls all the time. And the first obvious thing is to stop Automatic People Recognition in Adobe Photoshop Elements Organizer. This can be easily achieved through Preferences dialog of Organizer. There is an option to uncheck 'Analyze Photos for People Automatically' option in Media-Analysis Preferences, which can be seen in the image shown below.

By unchecking this option, we actually say not to work on detecting faces in photographs but after this rectangles for already recognized faces will be shown in Organizer. If you want to get rid of these rectangles as well, just go to Edit Menu and uncheck 'Show People Recognition'. First image shows how to do it.

Please feel free to comment back with appropriate feedback about this article or others on this blog.

All JPEGS opening up in Adobe Photoshop Elements on Double-Click || How to select an application for opening a particular file by default?

2012-01-26T09:45:00.000-08:00

Many times we see people asking about a very annoying problem through which JPEG or other image formats start opening with random applications installed and even it's annoying at times, when your photographs stat opening up in Adobe Photoshop Elements Editor for viewing them. Let's see hwy it happens and how to get rid of such problems -

Let's go step by step to achieve this -

1. Right click on one of the photograph on your Computer, which is giving some problem related to application association for opening a Photograph always in an unwanted manner. Following Context Menu would be shown on Right Click.

2. Now go to 'Open With' Menu and click 'Choose Program...'

3. Following dialog will be shown on clicking 'More Options...'. In this dialog, select the default application in which you want to see your Photographs.

4. While selecting the appropriate application for opening your Photographs, make sure that you select following option - 'Always use selected program to open this kind of file' . This will ensure that selected program/application will be launched on double clicking your JPEGs or any other selected file type.

Adobe Photoshop Elements Organizer can automatically import newly shot photoigraphs from your Hard Disk || Auto-Import/Watch-Folder Functionality in Organizer

2012-01-25T08:25:00.000-08:00

In Adobe Photoshop Elements, there is a very easy way through which you can opt for automatically importing new Photographs or other media files on your Computer. This work on a basic concept of locating few files at a particular logcal location on your Hard Drive. Let's go Step By Step to know the basic workflow to use this powerful feature of Adobe Photoshop Elements Organizer.

1. Launch Adobe Photoshop Elements Organizer and go to File Menu

2. Under File Menu, Select 'Watch Folder' : On Clicking this option above shown dialog will be shown - 'Watch Folders'

3. Now Click on Add button yo select the location where you usually put your photographs after coming from any vacation or party etc. Following dialog will help you in locating appropriate folder on your computer.

4. Here we have selected two location, One is common where all kinds of Photographs are put and at other location where photographs shot by Nikon D700 are put. Select location should be shown on left portion of this dialog.

5. By Default 'Notify Me' option is selected, which means that if you have anything new at these locations, you will get a notification to ask that if you want to import your photographs/other media files into Organizer. If you don't want notification and directly want to import into Organizer, select the other option below it - 'Automatically Add Files to Elements Organizer.'

This is one of the extremely simple workflow in Adobe Photoshop Elements Organizer through which you can automatically import files into Organizer, but make sure that Photographs are put in registered locations. If locations are different, this will obviously not work.

Please feel free to comment back about your view about this post about Watch Folders in Elements Organizer and do let us know in case you have any specific questions related to any feature areas in Adobe Photoshop Elements.

Can't open/launch Welcome Screen from Home button on Adobe Photoshop Elements Editor or Organizer || Adobe Photoshop Elements not working anymore

2012-01-23T01:16:00.000-08:00

If you are one of the few user of Adobe Photoshop Elements, who are facing some problems with launching the application or not able to open Welcome Screen from Editor or Organizer, then first we would like to ask few very simple questions -

Q1. Are you using 10th version of Adobe Photoshop Elements

Q2. Are you using Auto Launch settings for directly launching Editor or Organizer without even showing Welcome-Screen?

Q3. Can you live without using Auto-Launch Settings?

Now if your answers are 'Yes' for first two questions, then following step by steps guidelines will work for you to resolve following two problems -

1. Nothing happens on double clicking PSE icon on Desktop or Start-Menu and it work only once aftr reach restart for computer.

2. Nothing happens on clicking HOME button in Editor or Organizer, while Welcome Screen should be launched in this case.

Step-by-Step Guidelines to resolve above mentioned problems -

1. Restart your computer.

2. Double Click Adobe Photoshop Elements icon.

3. It will either launch Editor or Organizer, as per settings you had applied through Welcome Screen.

4. Open Task Manager - Now right click on Windows Task-Bar in the bottom and click 'Task Manager' option.

5. In Task Manager, go to processes Tab and locate a process called 'Photoshop Elements 10.0'.

6. Select this process and click 'End Process'

7. Now click on Home button in Editor or Organizer.

8. It will launch Welcome Screen.

9. Click Settings on Welcome Screen.

10. In Settings dialog, opt first option which says that always launch Adobe Photoshop Elements Welcome Screen and click OK.

If you have followed above mentioned steps and you have 'Yes' answer for Q3, you are done. And if for Q3, your reply is 'No', of course you would have figured out that above workaround is not what you would want to do. But for now this is only way we could figure out for this problem. Somehow Welcome-Screen keeps running in the background when we select auto-Launch Settings and it's not a problem for all. Only few of the users are seeing this issue.

In case you are not interested in using above solution, please mention in comments and follow for reply backs so that when we update the other workaround, you get to know.

How to avoid Welcome Screen of Adobe Photoshop Elements || Don't want to se Welcome Screen by directly launching Editor or Organizer

2012-01-22T07:14:00.000-08:00

At times, many folks don't want to use Welcome Screen as they consider it a advertising media. Although reason is not completely right, as many times useful information about updates is also shared with users of Adobe Photoshop Elements. But if you are one of the user who has decided not to use Welcome Screen, due to this or other reason, check out the quick way of avoiding Welcome Screen and Launching your top use part of Adobe Photoshop Elements. Let's see Step by Step guidelines for avoiding Welcome Screen in Adobe Photoshop Elements.

One simple workflow provided by Adobe is to set default application to be launched every time when you Double click Adobe Photoshop Elements icon. Let's see exact steps and then discuss another way of avoiding Welcome Screen Completely.

1. Launch Welcome Screen (probably last time)

2. Click on 'Settings' link on top right part of Welcome Screen in Adobe Photoshop Elements.

4. Following dialog/window will be shown with three options and you can opt one of them. Options are quite explanatory as you can see here -

a. Just Show the Welcome Screen

b. Always Launch Elements Organizer Only

c. Always Launch Elements Editor Only

5. If you select any of the last two options, only that application will be launched on double clicking PSE icon on your desktop or Start-Menu of Windows. And in case you want to other applications, it possible form within your default application. E.g. - If you select to launch Editor always, you can launch Organizer & Welcome Screen from Editor. Home button launches Welcome Screen and there is another icon for Organizer as well.

As you may noticed that it has a limitation that you can only opt for launching one application always. So if you select to launch Editor always, and want to use Organizer during one of the session, you first need to launch Editor and then Organizer can be launched from Editor. Means launching of non-Default application will always have one extra step.

Other trick to avoid Welcome Screen in Adobe Photoshop Elements is creating shortcuts of Organizer and Editor on your desktop and double-click on the one which you intend to use.

Please share your feedback about this article and let us know in case you want to anything specific about Adobe Photoshop Elements.

Adobe Photoshop Elements is not launching anymore on my computer || Elements Organizer or Editor is not working

2012-01-20T01:17:00.000-08:00

At times, we have seen folks on forums discussing about the generic issues that they fail to launch Welcome Screen, Organizer or Editor of Adobe Photoshop Elements. Many times, insufficient details could not reach to final resolution of the problem but there is a very generic thing which can be checked and resolved.

Sometime processes keep running in the background even when you have closed the application, which may cause the problem that you are continuously clicking the icon/buttons to launch Welcome Screen, Organizer or Editor of Adobe Photoshop Elements. Since it's actually running in the background, we think that software(Adobe Photoshop Elements) has stopped working for us. Please have a llok at Task Manager to have an idea that how running processes look in Windows Task-Manager -

The highlisghted regions in Task-Manager shows three processes of Adobe Photoshop Elements -

PhotoshopElementsOrganizer.exe - Adobe Photoshop Elements Organizer

PhotoshopElementsEditor.exe - Adobe Photoshop Elements Editor

Photoshop Elements 10.0.exe - Adobe Photoshop Elements Welcome Screen

You will see these processes running, when you are using any of these applications of Adobe Photoshop Elements. In some of the odd cases, you may even see them when nothing is shown to you on screen. That is something unusual, which may happen in some of the rare and unknown scenarios. If you ever see such thing, please follow below mentioned steps to resolve it.

How to Solve -

1. Launch Windows Task Manager by right clicking on Windows-bar in the bottom and select 'Task Manager'.

2. It will launch the same window, which you see above.

3. In Task Manager, locate the process or exe which is giving you trouble.

4. Select it and button 'End Process' will be enabled.

5. Click on 'End Process' and it will show 'Task Manager Warning' dialog. Read the warning carefully and take appropriate action.

If you click OK, you are done and can relaunch Adobe Photoshop Elements on your computer. We know this is very generic thing and at times, may not work for you.

Please feel free to comment back with your feedback or in case you are facing some other related problem with Adobe Photoshop Elements.