Photoshop Elements 4: The Missing Manual

Scanning Photos

Elements comes bundled with many scanners because it's the perfect software for making your scans look their best. There are two main ways of getting scans into Elements. Some scanners come with a driver plug-in, a small utility program that lets you scan directly into Elements. Look on your scanner's installation software for information about Elements compatibility or check the manufacturer's Web site for a Photoshop plug-in to download. (If you can scan into Photoshop, you should be able to scan into Elements.) You may also be able to scan into Elements if your scanner uses the TWAIN interface, which is an industry standard used by many scanner manufacturers.

If you don't have any of these programs, you'll need to use the scanning program that came with your scanner. Then, once you've saved your scanned image in a format that Elements understands, like TIFF (.tiff, .tif) or Photoshop (.psd), open the file in Elements like any other photo.

To control your scanner from within Elements, you can choose to scan from either the Editor or the Organizer. In the Editor, go to File → Import and you'll find your scanner's name on the list that appears. In the Organizer, go to File → Get Photos → From Scanner, or press Ctrl+U. You should check out your available options for both locations, since they're probably different. For instance, you may find that you have different file formats available to you in the Editor than you do in the Organizer.

Tip

If you do a lot of ...