Photoshop Restoration in Elements

Tips and tricks for restoring old photos and removing blemishes digitally Meeting notes from 02-26-08 Tools needed: A good scanner For prints, almost any scanner will do pretty well, but if you are doing small photos, slides or negatives, you will probably want to go with a nicer Epson scanner such as the  Epson Perfection 4490. These scanners offer transparancy scanning for slides and negatives as well as very high...

Photoshop Elements 5

Adobe Photoshop Elements is the standard photo editing software for consumers and many professionals. The latest edition offers many new features, but are those features worth upgrading from previous versions of the program? First, there is no upgrade version but since the program can easily be found online for under $70, it won't hurt too bad if you do want to upgrade. Photoshop Elements has been a solid program since...

Free Digital Photography Programs and Tools

MediaChance.com has some great free digital photo programs. They are very specialized tools, but they work great. IrFanview is a great program for viewing images of almost any format. It reads most camera RAW files as well as proprietary and universal image formats. Paint.NET is a free program that is designed to compete with Photoshop and CorelDraw. It works well, but is not the most intuitive. Gimp is another free...

Amazing Photoshop Elements: Layers

Everyone always seems mystified by Photoshop's layers features. While layers are very complex, I believe that they are often viewed as being more complicated than they actually are. A layer is simply a picture or transparent layer placed on top of another picture. Think of it as placing clear plastic wrap on top of a photo. By creating a layer, you prevent any damage or change to the base photo. Here is a quick list of...

Amazing Photoshop Elements: Toolbox

The Amazing Photoshop Elements Toolbox There are so many wonderful things you can do with Photoshop Elements. You will find many of our tips in our notes from previous meetings. Photoshop Elements Part I Photoshop Elements Part II Photoshop Elements Part III This time we will spend most of our time discussing the Magical Photoshop Elements Toolbox. There are three kinds of tools in the Toolbox: Hover your mouse over any area...

The Magic of Digital Filters

The Magic of Digital Filters In the world of film photography, filters are transparent coverings that are placed over a lens to enhance or alter the image. Digital filters serve the same purpose, but in a much more dynamic and dramatic way. DIGITAL FILTER: Almost all image editing programs contain filters although they may be called by a different name such as Effects or Adjustments.   Before...

Create Your Own Slideshows and Screensavers

Create Slideshows and Screensavers Here are some of the basics we discussed at the Meeting   FINDING THE RIGHT PROGRAM   Good Shareware Sites: Hotfiles Download Make sure to check if the software is trialware or freeware. HOW TO MAKE A SCREENSAVER USING YOUR OWN PICTURES IN WINDOWS XP Windows Me had a similiar screen saver option, but Windows XP made the feature even better. Since many...

Picasa 2 Revisited

We discussed Picasa 2 late last year, but since then I have discovered many more wonderful things that can be done with the program. In fact, I now use it more often than any other program for my day-to-day digital photography. HOW TO GET PICASA: 1. Either click on this button, or go to www.picasa.com and click on the Free Download button. 2. After downloading, install the program by double-clicking on the Picasa icon...

Microsoft PowerPoint slideshows

Microsoft PowerPoint is a program for creating business presentations but many people use it for creating elaborate photo slide shows. In addition to discussing PowerPoint we also talked about a few PowerPoint alternatives. OpenOffice – a great free alternative to Microsoft Office Ulead Movie Factory – for creating Slideshows and movies on DVDs or CDs There are a couple of others that I failed to mention at the...

Picasa 2

What can you do with Picasa 2? Picasa 2 is a free program made by Google that allows you to organize your photos without any effort on your part. Besides organizing photos it also has some great creativity tools including gift CDs, slide shows, and blogging tools. HOW TO GET PICASA: 1. Either click on this button, or go to www.picasa.com and click on the Free Download button. 2. After downloading, install the program by...

Fun with Photoshop Elements

Fun With Photoshop Elements Photoshop Elements is great for making pictures look better, but there are a number of tools within Photoshop Elements that you may not know about. Some are practical, others are just fun. Give layers beveled or glowing edges: This is especially fun with text, but it can also be a handy skill for scrapbook pages or photo collages. This technique works especially well with text – but you...

Elements 3 Features

What’s New In Elements 3   Quirky Features: Not all of the new features in Elements 3 are extremely useful. Although many of the new features are designed to help the beginner, they are too complicated to be of any use. Some of theses new quirky features include: 1. Create - The most useful of the quirky new features, this feature allows you to make slideshows, greeting cards, photo album pages and more....

Xatshow Slideshow & Screensaver Creator

Xatshow: create slideshows and screensavers with ease!! Xatshow is a freeware program. It can be downloaded through the following link: Xatshow.com Although the program is free – there is a more robust version which can be purchased for $39 or $99 for free upgrades for life! If you get lost in the program, you can visit the support page at xat.com for great FLASH tutorials and other help. Since the Xat...

Solving the Mystery of Layers

Basics of Layers Here are some of the basics we discussed at the Meeting What are layers: Layers are a feature of Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro and other more complex image editing programs which allow you to compile more than one image within an image. Common uses for layers: Compiling One Photo from Many Photos. The most common use for layers is to take part of an image and place it into another image. For...

Photoshop Elements Part III

Adobe Photoshop Elements Part III Layers: What is a Layer? Put simply, a layer is an image stacked on top of another image. A new layer is formed any time you paste or type. You can also manually create a new layer by going to LAYER -> NEW -> LAYER in the menu at the top of your screen. Where are My Layers? You can see your layers by going to Window -> Layers. Use techniques discussed in part I of our Elements...