Photoshop Elements 4: The Missing Manual

Introduction

All of a sudden, everyone in the world seems to be getting a digital camera. And no wonder. When you go digital, you get instant gratification—you can preview your photos as soon as you take them, and there's no more wondering how many duds you're going to get back from the photo store.

You save a bundle on printing, too, since you can pick and choose which photos to print. Or maybe you're thinking that printing's pretty 20th century. Maybe you want to post your photos on a Web site, email them to friends, or create a really cool slideshow with fancy transitions and music.

If the digital camera bug has bitten you, you're probably aware of something else: the image-editing and picture-organizing software that comes with most cameras is pretty limited when it's time to spruce up your digital photos. Even if you're scanning in old prints and slides, you'll want a program that'll help you rejuvenate these gems and eliminate the wear and tear of all those years.

Enter Photoshop Elements 4: an all-in-one program that can help you improve your photos, keep them organized, and make top-notch prints and truly nifty creative projects.

Why Photoshop Elements?

Adobe's Photoshop is the granddaddy of all image-editing programs. It's the Big Cheese, the industry standard against which everything else is measured. Every photo you've seen in a book or magazine in the past 10 years or so has almost certainly passed through Photoshop on its way to being printed. You just can't buy anything that gives you more control over your pictures than Photoshop does.

But Photoshop has some big drawbacks—it's darned hard to learn well, it's horribly expensive, and many of the features in it are just plain overkill if you don't plan to work on pictures for a living.

For several years, Adobe tried to find a way to cram many of Photoshop's marvelous powers into a package that normal people could use. Finding the right formula was a slow process. First there was PhotoDeluxe, a program that was lots of fun but came up short when you wanted to fine-tune how the program worked. Then Adobe tried again with Photoshop LE, which many people felt just gave you all the difficulty of full Photoshop but still too little of what you needed to do top-notch work.

Finally—sort of like the "The Three Bears"—Adobe got it just right with Photoshop Elements. It took off like crazy, because it offers so much of the power of Photoshop in a program that almost anyone can learn to use. With Elements, you too can work with the same wonderful tools that the pros use.

With the earliest versions of Elements, there was something of a learning curve. It was a super program but not one where you could just sit down and expect to get perfect results right off the bat.

In each new version, Adobe has added lots of push-button-easy ways to correct and improve your photos, and there are even more automated ways to do things in Elements 4. If you've been scared of Elements because you've heard about how tricky it is, you can stop worrying and jump right in.